22. Nash
NASH
Caleb takes the maps off me at four p.m. and tells me to go away.
"Everything's staged. The Kettering boys have the boats, Loon River's got the tunnel approach walked twice, and your mother has more field dressings than a county hospital.
" He puts a hand flat on my chest when I go to argue.
"Nash. You've been on your feet since Tuesday.
You go down that raise like this and you'll get somebody killed.
Take some time for you, that's your Beta talking and it's not a suggestion. "
So I take Erin up the Cutter drainage to my grandfather's shack, and neither of us pretends it's about the walk.
The stove's already warm because Wyatt's been using the place as a relay post, and there's a jar of my mother's arnica on the table with no note, which is her all over.
Erin sits down on the bunk and starts laughing and can't stop.
"Sorry. Sorry." She wipes her eyes. "Your mother left us medicated massage oil and I've had four hours of sleep since Thursday and it's the funniest thing that's ever happened."
"She'd say it's for your shoulder."
"My shoulder's fine. My shoulder is the only part that's fine." She flops backward and stares at the boards. "Nash. Do you know what I did this morning? I lied to a security contractor about a fictional child who likes cranes."
"You got seven trackers fitted."
"Six. One's in my jacket pocket like a shameful souvenir."
I sit on the bunk and pull her boots off, one and then the other, and set them by the stove. She goes quiet while I do it. When I look up her eyes have changed.
"That's a domestic thing," she says.
"It's a dry-boots thing."
She sits up and takes my face in both hands and kisses me, unhurried this time, nothing in it about dying.
I kiss her back the same way, unhurried, and let my hands slide under her shirt.
I peel it up and off; she lifts her arms, and the fabric falls away.
I map along her ribs with my palms, then lower, unhooking her trousers and working them down her hips.
She kicks them free. Bare on the bunk, she reaches for my shirt and pulls it over my head.
My belt, the buttons, she shoves the trousers down until I can kick them off.
My cock is already hard, heavy against my stomach.
She wraps her fingers around it and strokes from base to tip, slow.
I groan into her mouth and ease her onto her back only long enough to kiss down her throat, her collarbone, taking one nipple into my mouth and sucking while my hand touches between her legs.
She's already wet as I push two fingers and slide them inside, curling against the spot that makes her hips lift.
My thumb finds her clit and rubs in tight circles.
She breathes out my name and rocks onto my hand.
I keep the rhythm steady until her thighs start to tremble.
When she comes the first time it's quiet, a long shudder and the tight clench of her pussy around my fingers.
I work her through it, slower now, then sit up against the rough wall of the bunk and pull her with me.
She straddles my lap, knees bracketing my hips.
I guide the top of my cock to her pussy, and she sinks down onto me in one long, controlled slide.
She takes me deep bringing a low sound that feels dragged from somewhere under my ribs.
She braces her hands on my shoulders and starts to move, slow rolls of her hips that let me feel every inch of her gripping me.
I keep my hands on her waist, then higher, mapping the shape of her, the way her body shifts as she takes me deeper.
Our mouths stay close, sharing breath. I watch her face, the soft parting of her lips every time she sinks down.
I thrust up to meet her, matching the rhythm, and the bunk creaks under us.
She leans in so our chests press together; I feel the rapid beat of her heart against mine.
My hands slide down to her ass, guiding her, pulling her tighter onto my cock with every roll.
I reach between us and rub her clit with two fingers, matching the pace of her movements.
Her head tilts back as she moans louder, I place my other hand in the center of her spine, and a broken sound leaves her as she comes a second time.
Her pussy flutters hard around me, and the squeeze almost takes me with her.
I hold on, slowing it down so that I can keep going.
Then I shift. I wrap an arm around her waist and roll us carefully so she's on her back again, but I don't stay there.
I pull out only long enough to turn her onto her side, facing the wall, and settle in behind her.
One of her legs I draw up and back over my hip.
I slide back into her pussy from behind in one smooth thrust, deeper this way, and the angle makes her scream.
I keep one arm banded across her chest, hand splayed over her heart, and the other low on her hip, holding her steady while I start to move.
Long, deep strokes that let me feel every inch of her.
She reaches back and digs her fingers into my thigh.
I bury my face in the curve of her neck and breathe her in, fucking her slow and thorough, my cock dragging across the place inside that makes her voice break.
I pick up the pace, hips snapping forward, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the shack.
"Fuck, Nash." She screams, soft and wrecked.
I can feel the pressure building low in my spine.
Her pussy keeps tightening in little pulses.
I keep the arm across her chest, keep the deep thrusts, and when she shatters the third time the clench of her body is too much.
I bury myself and come with a low, punched-out groan, both of us coming together like it's the last time.
I stay there for a long moment, still buried deep, forehead pressed to the nape of her neck, both of us breathing hard.
My cock is still half-hard inside her, twitching with aftershocks.
Eventually I ease out, making us both shiver.
I shift us carefully onto our sides on the narrow bunk and pull her back against my chest, one arm still banded across her.
She tucks her head under my chin. Outside, the wind moves through the trees.
Inside, the only sound is our breathing evening out.
I drag the thin blanket over us and keep my hand splayed low on her stomach, feeling the steady rise and fall of her.
Neither of us speaks for a while. Her hand traces a scar on my shoulder.
"Six weeks," she says.
"Since we met."
"Six weeks, and I've spent thirty-one years being extremely careful about everything." She props up on an elbow. "Tell me about after. I want to hear it out loud from you, because I've been building it in my imagination and I'm worried I invented the whole thing."
"There's a house," I tell her. "Fifty yards up from my parents', empty since Hazel's brother died. Good roof, bad wiring, a woodstove that draws like a chimney fire. It's got a south room with four windows and no purpose."
"That's a lab."
"That was the thought."
Erin puts her forehead against my collarbone. "Keep going."
"You'd have your permit. You'd be out on the water at six most mornings and back for lunch." I run my hand down her back. "There'd be a lot of arguing about the tractor. My father would be insufferable about your microscope. My mother would feed you until you couldn't walk."
"And you?"
"I'd still be a game warden. That doesn't stop." I take a breath. "There'd be nights I'd be out with the pack and you'd be alone in that house, and I'd want you to know that's not me carrying something away from you. That's just my obligation."
"I know."
"And there'd be a morning, some morning, when we'd have this conversation in daylight instead of six hours out from going under a lake."
She's quiet. Then: "I want the part where it's boring. That's what I've worked out about myself this month. Everyone assumes I'm here for the mystery. I want the Tuesday in November where nothing happens and there's soup."
"Then we'll have soup."
We talk about the other thing at seven, sitting up with the blanket around us both.
She turns to face me. "Your bond picked me. I've had weeks to decide what I think about that, and here it is. I'm glad it happened, because it put you in my life. And it has absolutely nothing to do with why I'm staying."
"Erin…"
"Let me finish, I've rehearsed." She takes my hand. "I'm staying." Her voice goes rough. "Nothing I've decided is fate. Fate can't make somebody grow. That's just you, Nash, being better on purpose, over and over, where nobody was watching."
I can't speak.
"I love you." She says it steady, chin up. "If we walk out of that hole tomorrow, I'm choosing this."
I pull her in and hold her hard enough to hurt us both.
"I've loved you since you were annoyed about a binder," I tell her. "But I've chosen you since the night you told kids that time is part of a number."
The allied leaders are in the yard when we come down, and I do the last thing on my list before the fighting starts. I bring Erin to the fire with my hand at the small of her back and I don't let go of it.
"Before we walk through tomorrow one more time," I say, "there's something you should hear from me directly.
Erin Lawson stays in this valley. Not as a biologist, not as a guest we're tolerating because she's useful.
She's my future mate, and she'll be a permanent voice in this pack's business, and I'd rather you knew it tonight than worked it out from how I behave. "
Loon River stares at her, then at me, and his mouth goes crooked.
"Hanson, I'd worked it out from how you already behave."
Marrow Creek's Alpha stands up. She's lost her ground, her cousin, and a settlement her family held for two centuries, and she crosses the fire and takes Erin's hand in both of hers.
"Bracken and Marrow Creek both," she says. "Whatever your Alpha's asking, we've already agreed to it. Welcome."
Hazel, behind me, makes a small sound and pretends it's the smoke. We finish the plan at one a.m. with many people committed and every timing written down.
Then Wyatt appears. "It changed again," he gasps. "The beat underneath, Nash, it stepped up twice in the last hour and it hasn't come back down. And there's light on the water again. Not three seconds this time. It's been going on for eleven minutes."
Erin's already moving toward the maps, and she's doing arithmetic out loud as she goes.
"That's not another ramp test," she says. "They've started the final commissioning sequence. They're getting ready to draw."