26. Rhys
Rhys
I've kept one watch or another all my life. Nothing I ever stood through a gale asked as much of me as that night. Nothing ever gave back the way it gave, either.
She came up off the kitchen chair with the wave rolling through her, and her scent went from simmer to spring flood in the space of a breath.
Butter and salt, gone rich and dark and wanting.
It filled the flat to the rafters. Something older than manners stood up in each of us at once.
Hudson had the lamps low and the water jug filled before she'd crossed the room.
Miles had her laughing even while her hands shook.
And I carried her the last three steps to the nest, because she lifted her arms to me and said my name.
There are orders a man doesn't need twice.
She'd chosen the order of the night without ever saying it that way. Me first. I'd have argued, if she'd left room. She didn't.
"You promised." She pulled me down into the wool and the warmth. Her eyes were fever-bright and completely her own. "Next time, you said. It's next time, Rhys."
We got each other out of our clothes without grace and without caring. The heat had her fully now. Slick on her thighs, her whole body flushed and open and demanding. The scent of her sat so thick and sweet in my throat I could have lived on it.
I put my mouth on her first, because I wanted her over the first edge before I ever pressed in.
Slick and swollen and sweet, her clit hard under my tongue, her hands already fisted in my hair.
It didn't take long, and it wasn't quiet.
She rode my tongue and swore at me with great warmth and came with a shout that must have carried to the quay.
The heat didn't even pause for it. That's the way of a wave. It wants the whole of the thing.
"Inside me," she said. "Now. All of you, now."
I set myself at her entrance and there was one breath, one, where the whole spring gathered.
Then I sank into her in one long stroke, no halfway about it this time, the heat and the give and the welcome of her all at once, and she took me with a sound that was relief and greed in the one breath. Full. Finally.
Her body closed round mine like it had been keeping my place.
Nothing careful survived in either of us after that.
I drove into her the way she demanded, deep and hard and whole, her heels in my back, her nails in my shoulders, the nest holding the both of us.
Her hips rose to meet every stroke. The wool wall shook.
She came again like that, before the knot, out of nowhere and all at once, clenching round me with a broken-off shout, her nails scoring my shoulders.
Heat gives no quarter and asks none. I worked her through it and she surfaced already demanding, her mouth at my jaw, her hands hauling me deeper.
Sweat stood on the both of us. The lamp made her golden.
I've built boats my whole life and never once made a thing half so worth the labour as that woman looked, wanting me.
Somewhere in the middle of it she laughed, wild and free, at nothing, at everything.
I felt the laugh ripple down the length of her and grip me, and I nearly went then and there.
The knot came up fast. Faster than I could have held if I'd wanted to. The base of my cock swelled with every stroke, catching at her, dragging a higher sound out of her each time it caught. And this time there was no line to hold. This time she wanted the tide all the way in.
"Give it to me." Her voice had gone ragged and certain. "Rhys. All of it. Don't you dare hold back on me tonight."
"Look at me, then." Same as the first night. Her eyes came up and locked on mine, huge and dark and sure.
I pressed the knot home.
It went slow, the swell of it stretching her wide and wider, her breath climbing with every fraction it gained, and then her body took the whole of it at once, easy, meant, made for.
We locked. The fullness of it pulled a sound from her I'll hear the rest of my days.
Her whole body seized around it, sweet and hard, and she came apart on the instant, wailing, her heels drumming my back.
The clutch of her dragged me over the edge with her.
I came in her deep and kept coming, the way a knot empties a man, wave after wave of it, tied into her heat with her heartbeat going round me like the sea round a hull.
When the shaking eased I got us onto our sides, still locked, her face in my throat, and pulled the blanket up over the both of us.
Her toes found my shin under it. Cold, of course.
They always are. I have never been gladder of a thing in my life.
Then came the part nobody puts in the songs. It's the best part. I'd defend that in any court in Cornwall.
Half an hour, near enough, tied together in a warm nest with nowhere to be and no way to leave.
Her breath slowed against my neck. My hand went slow in her hair.
The heat gentled right down while we were knotted, the wave spent for now, and she turned soft and heavy and talkative against me, the way she goes after a good service.
"Your stove," she said, into my throat. "The workshop stove. That was the first place in ten years my shoulders came down. Did you know that? I sat on that sawhorse and felt them go, and I never once worked out why."
"The stove knew."
"The stove knew." A soft laugh moved through her, through me, through the knot, everywhere.
"And that lifeboat speech has been in my head all week.
Like a song. I didn't want it out." Her fingers moved over my knuckles, idle, learning them.
"Rhys. All those lunches at my long table.
Saying nothing. Passing the salt. What were you thinking, all that time? "
So I told her, into her hair, where the words could go quietly.
"That I'd wanted this so long the wanting had a workbench and its own set of tools. That I used to time my walk up the hill to the ovens coming on. For the smell of the bread." A breath. "For the chance of your voice."
She laughed, with me still knotted deep inside her, and the feel of it went through me like sunrise.
"Ten years of tides," she said, "and the boatwright was timing his walks."
"Aye. Badly, some mornings. You bake late on Thursdays."
"Baked," she said. "Past tense. Thursdays are yours now."
"Ours," I said, when the swell finally eased and let us slip apart. Not a question. Not a claim, either. A mug set down where a mug goes.
"Yours." She stretched, shameless, glowing. "All three. I'd shout it off the quay, only I'm busy."
The wave was well down now, and the flat turned itself over to the tending.
Hudson had the stove fed and a fresh jug at the nest's edge before she'd finished stretching, and she drank half of it straight off, to Miles's applause.
Then Hudson knelt in at the wool with a warm flannel and washed her, slow.
Her arms. Her back. The nape of her neck, under the damp curls, with the exact care he gives a hurt hand or a new-planed door.
And she purred.
None of us had ever heard it. She had never once made it.
A low sweet omega sound rolled up out of her chest under his hands and filled the flat like a second stove, and her eyes flew open, mortified and delighted while it was still running.
"That's new," she said, and it kept running while she said it, which set Miles off, which set her off, and the purr rode straight through the laughing like it had always lived there.
Hudson's face through all of it is a thing I mean to keep to my grave.
Miles fed her while the flannel worked. Of course he did.
Bread and honey, torn small, one piece at a time, entirely smug about the whole operation.
She'd fed this hill since March and sworn off being fed the whole way down it.
Now she sat in the wool with her eyes shut, purring in fits, taking bread from his fingers like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Nobody said what it meant. The nest knew.
She dozed a while after that, against my shoulder, one hand keeping hold of the flannel sleeve. The stove ticked. Down the harbour the tide went about its business. And near midnight her scent turned again. Rising. Wanting. The next wave was coming in, and it wasn't coming for me.
I kissed her knuckles and gladly gave her over. The night was long yet, and the watch was ours. This heat had only just started.