Chapter 14 #2
She sank down onto me by degrees; her face going slack with it, and I felt every bit of her open to take me.
I held dead still through all of it, sweat standing out on me, every animal part of me screaming to drive up and bury itself, beaten down flat under the want to give her exactly this and nothing less.
She worked me into her until there was no more of me left to take, until she was flush against my hips with me as deep as I had ever been, and we both went still there, joined and shaking.
The pull in my chest had hauled me toward her for weeks.
East down the ridge road, across a crowded street, through the bars of a cell.
It had never once let up since the first breath of her in that office.
Now she was here, all the way down on me, signed and mine and going nowhere, and for the first time the pull had nothing left to do.
It went quiet. It went so quiet it near undid me worse than her mouth had.
"Mate." I couldn't keep it in any longer. "My mate."
"Yours." She started to move, a slow roll of her hips that dragged a sound up off the floor of me. "Say it again, I lost my mind a little the first time. God. There. Yours. I'm yours, say it."
"Mine." I had my hands fisted in the sheets and my hips lifting to meet her now, past all hope of staying still. "Mate. Mine."
She rode me and I gave her everything I had from underneath, and we found it together, that rhythm we'd been building toward since a mug of cocoa went cold on my table.
She braced her hands on my chest and took me deep and ground down hard, gone past words to broken sounds and my name and the one word traded back and forth between us until it stopped meaning anything and meant the whole of everything.
I got a thumb down to where we were joined and worked her in time with her own pace and felt her start to clench around me, climbing.
"Lorkin, I'm—come with me, don't you dare go without me."
"I've got you." Every part of me had gone tight, holding. "Go. I'm right behind you."
She came apart on top of me, clamping down around me in waves, and I let go of the last thread I'd been holding and went over with her, driving up deep and spilling endless and pouring her name into the small space between us while she shook through it.
The quiet thing in my chest blazed up white and total for one long beat, every part of me swung round to point at her and stayed there, and then it eased back down to a low steady warmth I understood, somehow, I'd be feeling for the rest of my life.
We came down tangled and soaked and wrecked; she sprawled over my chest, my arms locked around her, both of us breathing like we'd run the length of the valley. I dragged the blanket up over her back. Her heart slowed against mine.
She traced one finger along an old scar on my chest, not asking after it, just following the line.
"So," she said into my skin.
"So."
"That's mine now. Officially. We filled out a form."
"I remember."
"I'm going to be unbearable about it." She propped her chin on me, and under the teasing her eyes had gone soft, soft and a little wet. "You know that, right? I'm telling everyone. I'm telling the goat."
"You do that."
I got a piece of her hair off her face and tucked it back, and I went looking for the way to say a thing I'd never once had a use for.
There had never been anyone to say it to.
I had made sure of that, the same way I made the blades, so nothing soft could ever be taken off me.
The words sat heavy and strange behind my teeth.
"I love you." Plain. It was the only way I had it. "I do not say it right. I haven’t had the practice. But I want you to have it said. I love you."
Her face crumpled, and she pressed it down into my chest for a moment, and when she came back up she was crying and grinning at once, a wet ruin of a thing.
"I love you too, you giant idiot." She scrubbed at her cheek with the heel of her hand. "God. Look at me. I had a whole funny thing ready and everything."
"I know you did."
We lay there a while and didn't say much.
That kind of quiet used to crawl on me. I could lie in it for hours now.
After a bit she started up again, drowsy, building the thing in front of us out loud the way she built everything, the supper table at the orchard and the two of us at it, a buggy of her own so she could run her errands, the years stacking up easy.
I let her talk and set my own pieces in where they fit, and the future she laid down between us stopped sounding like a thing that would be taken off me and started sounding like a thing we'd get to keep.
She went quiet, looking past me to where the dark shape of the forge stood against the last of the light.
"Hey." She walked her fingers up my chest. "Can I ask you something, and you can't get weird about it."
"I can't promise that."
"Have you ever thought about making, I don't know." She waved a vague hand. "Normal things. Pots. Pans. A nice kettle. Something a person could put on a stove instead of into a body."
I looked at the forge through the window, the rack of blades I'd hung against a war I'd been so sure was coming. A kettle.
I laughed. It came up rough and surprised, a sound I don't make often, and her whole face lit at it like she'd won something.
"Pots and pans," I said.
"I'm just saying. There's a market. Every house in this town eats off something, and half of it's ugly."
"I'll think about it."
"That's a yes. That's a blacksmith yes, I can tell." She settled back down against me, smug and warm and impossible, and tucked her cold feet up between my legs out of what I can only believe was pure spite.
I jerked and swore. She laughed into my chest. I pulled the blanket up over the both of us and held on, and didn't let go.