Chapter Eighteen
Full Moon, Open Heart (…and legs. But mostly heart.)
I’m still crouched beside the fire pit, picking through the remains of our sacred arts-and-emotional-crafts night, trying to gather both my supplies and the scattered remains of my composure, when I realize I’m not alone.
The others have drifted off, carried by the ritual’s afterglow, back to their domes or the woods or wherever emotionally raw men go when they’ve just symbolically burned their false selves under the moon, but one of them stayed.
Seb.
He’s still there.
He’s quiet, unmoving, standing a few feet from me like a sentinel or maybe something older, some kind of forest god who’s just been patiently watching this whole time, waiting for silence.
I glance up, unsure what to say, because he’s not smiling and he’s not speaking. He’s just there, holding my gaze like he’s choosing his moment with precision.
“I thought everyone left,” I say, my voice softer than I meant it to be.
He doesn’t respond with words.
He steps forward instead, moving slowly, and lowers himself into a crouch beside me without breaking eye contact. For a long second, we just sit there in the flicker of dying firelight and pine smoke, saying nothing. Then he dips two fingers into the shallow bowl of ash I’d nearly forgotten I set down.
He brings his hand to my shoulder, and with deliberate gentleness, he paints a line across my skin.
It’s not a symbol.
Not a word.
Just a line. A connection.
My body tenses for a moment, somewhere between surprise and that raw ache that comes from being seen too clearly, but I don’t move away.
He dips again. Brushes a smear across my collarbone. Then another down the inside of my arm, slow and careful, like he’s mapping something sacred.
He still hasn’t said a word, and yet the quiet between us feels thick with meaning, the kind that doesn’t need to be spoken. It isn’t silence, it’s a language he seems fluent in, and suddenly, I’m desperate to respond in kind.
I reach for the ash bowl, my fingers trembling slightly, and press my hand against his chest without asking, leaving a broad, imperfect mark across his sternum.
He closes his eyes for the briefest second but doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away.
I draw another line, curved and senseless, just beneath the edge of his collarbone.
He opens his eyes again, and there’s something wild and unspoken in them, something reverent. He leans in, just enough for me to feel his breath on my cheek, but doesn’t kiss me. Instead, he holds perfectly still, offering more of himself without instruction or demand.
We move together without speaking, without breaking the fragile rhythm we’ve found, painting ash across each other’s skin as though our hands know more about what we need than our mouths ever could. Every touch is intentional. Every mark feels like a confession we’re not brave enough to say out loud.
And when he finally lowers me back into the grass with slow, careful hands, I don’t resist.
Not because I’ve surrendered.
But because I want to.
His hands are still marked with ash when he lays me down.
No words, no hesitation, just calm, careful movement that feels somehow more intimate than anything spoken.
The grass beneath me is cool and slightly damp.
I wonder briefly if this is where the robe was always meant to end up, crumpled at my feet, sacrificed for some ancient rite of emotional combustion and absolutely inappropriate forest sex.
Seb settles over me with the kind of quiet strength that should be intimidating but isn’t. He doesn’t overwhelm. He surrounds. His presence fills the space around me like smoke from the fire, curling into every place I didn’t know I was aching.
When he kisses me, it’s slow and searching, not gentle so much as thorough, like he’s trying to learn my mouth before he claims the rest. His lips are warm and rough, his tongue confident but patient.
I make some kind of embarrassingly sacred sound into his mouth that probably echoes through the trees like a prayer to whatever deity is in charge of letting feral men ruin robe witches under the moon.
He doesn’t undress me all at once. He takes his time, slipping the fabric from my hips like he’s unwrapping a prophecy, his palms dragging across my thighs with a reverence that makes my whole spine arch. By the time he reaches the hem of my underwear, I’m already pulsing, already grasping at his arms, already wondering if I’ll survive what’s coming.
And then he lowers his mouth between my legs.
No warning.
No hesitation.
Just that steady, devastating heat as he parts me with his tongue and begins to worship like he’s been starving for this exact ritual.
I moan, loudly, because there’s no way to be quiet about this, and one of my legs hooks around his shoulder without permission, pulling him closer, grounding myself against the solid pressure of his jaw as he licks me in long, deliberate strokes that make my vision start to blur.
He groans against me when I grind against his mouth, like I’m the one giving him something, and that thought nearly sends me over the edge right then.
His fingers dig into my thighs, anchoring me, spreading me open as he sucks gently on my clit, then harder.
I gasp, the sound cracking apart at the end as my whole body clenches around the sudden, shocking heat of my orgasm. I arch, I swear, I possibly speak in tongues for a moment.
He doesn’t stop. Not until I’m trembling against the grass and trying to remember how breathing works.
He kisses my thigh once before pulling back, his face flushed, mouth slick, and eyes full of something I do not have the emotional vocabulary for.
I try to speak.
Fail.
Try again.
“Okay,” I breathe, swallowing around what might be tears or laughter, “That was… spiritually cleansing.”
Seb doesn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth shifts slightly, his version of a smirk.
Then he’s pulling me up, moving like he’s not even winded, and guiding me over him until I’m straddling his lap, completely naked, covered in ash, and realizing I may never emotionally recover from what’s about to happen.
His cock is thick and hard against my thigh, and I reach down to wrap my hand around it, loving the way he inhales sharply, his jaw twitching like he’s trying not to react. He’s big, of course he is, and my mouth waters at the sheer weight of him, thick and hot and heavy in my palm.
I grind against him once, twice, letting us both feel the drag, the heat, the almost, and then I shift my hips and sink down, slowly, letting him fill me inch by inch until I’m seated flush against him and full in a way that feels entirely unfair to anyone who isn’t me right now.
He groans, quiet but guttural, and his hands grip my hips like he’s anchoring himself, like he’s the one trying not to come apart. And gods, the way he feels inside me, thick and stretching and perfect, it’s enough to make me shudder.
I start to move, slow at first, rolling my hips in tight, grinding circles, and his eyes lock on mine, wide and dark and awed.
It’s not just fucking.
It’s worship.
And I’m the altar, the sacrifice, the priestess and the sin.
I ride him like I’m offering something, like this is the final ritual, the most sacred one, and I don’t know if the fire is still burning behind us or if I imagined it all, because all I know is the way he holds me, the way he groans when I tighten around him, the way he thrusts up into me once, sharp and deep, like he’s branding his name into every place I’ve been empty.
When I come again, it’s sharp and hot and sudden, and I cry out his name like it’s an invocation.
He follows a moment later, hands bruising my hips, mouth open on a gasp, and for one long, shuddering breath, we just stay like that, bodies locked together, limbs tangled, ash-smeared and ruined and reborn.
The fire is low now.
Just embers and shadows, flickering quietly like they’re trying not to intrude.
Seb hasn’t moved.
Neither have I, really.
We’re still tangled together, skin sticky with sweat and soot, breath uneven, legs half-numb from the uneven ground. My cheek rests against his chest, and I can hear the slow thud of his heartbeat beneath the ash I painted there earlier, steady and calm like nothing about what just happened surprised him.
He runs a hand slowly down my back, his fingers dragging along my spine in lazy, grounding circles. There’s no pressure, no urgency, just the kind of touch that says, I’m still here , without asking anything in return.
Everything aches, but in the best way, like I’ve been stretched and filled and rebuilt from the inside out.
I don’t speak.
Neither does he.
But gods, it feels like we’re saying everything.
His other hand finds my hair, fingers combing gently through it, and I want to laugh because there is absolutely no way there isn’t a twig or a pine needle in there somewhere. Possibly a beetle. But he just keeps going, slow and soft, and I swear it’s the closest thing I’ve felt to prayer all week.
I shift a little, still on top of him, but no longer moving. Just settling.
His hands settle too, one on my waist, the other at the nape of my neck, and we stay like that, breathing into the stillness, surrounded by the remains of a fire and the echo of something neither of us is ready to name.
Eventually, I press a kiss to his shoulder. Not because I meant to. Just because it felt like the right thing.
He hums. Low. Deep.
And then, barely above a whisper, rough like gravel, he says, “You okay?”
It’s such a simple question, but the way he asks it makes me want to cry a little, because it’s not casual. It’s not performative. It’s not just what you say after sex. It’s him, seeing me in all my post-ritual unraveling and still wanting to make space for the answer.
I nod against his chest. “Yeah,” I say softly. “Actually… I think I am.”
We lie there for a while longer, letting the night settle over us like a second skin. And even though I know I’ll eventually have to get up, find my robe, make up some story about an after-ritual grounding exercise involving exposure therapy and bark, I let myself stay.
Because this moment? This one’s mine.
I don’t know how much time has passed with us curled together like this, bodies tangled, skin still warm, breaths syncing up like some ridiculous nature poem, but eventually, he moves.
He doesn’t say anything.
He just shifts, slow and certain, and gathers me into his arms like I weigh nothing, like I’m not covered in ash and sin and moonlight and half of the forest floor. He carries me all the way back to my dome without a word, as if I’m something sacred. Something claimed.
Like I was a ritual he didn’t want to break by speaking too soon.
And maybe that’s exactly what I am now. A ritual. A warning.
A woman who just let a silent woodsman rearrange her soul under a pine tree.
When the flap of my dome closes behind me and I’m finally alone, naked, sore, ash-smeared, and deeply emotionally compromised, I grab my phone from beneath a pillow and open a message to Callie with fingers that are still trembling.
ME:
i think i’ve spiritually married five men in a bonfire haze. please advise.
i just had ash sex in the woods with the forest god of brooding silences and now i’m spiritually raw and possibly addicted.
I stare at the blinking cursor for a second. Then add:
ME:
do you think i need more snacks or fewer feelings?
And hit send.