Chapter 5 Avery
five
Avery
He's still there when I wake up.
I didn't tell him to stay. Didn't tell him to go either, which amounts to the same thing.
He's on his back with one arm behind his head, already awake, watching the ceiling like it owes him something.
The gray light of early morning catches the lines of his face.
The scar along his jaw. The tattoos on his shoulder that I traced last night without asking what they meant.
I should say something practical. I'm very good at practical.
"The council meets at seven," I say.
"I know."
"You should be gone before Harry does rounds."
"Too late." His voice is rough with sleep. "He walked past the window an hour ago."
I close my eyes. "Of course he did."
"He didn't knock."
"Small mercies."
Dutch turns his head to look at me. I look back. Neither of us pretends this is nothing.
"The deal was you'd leave," I say. "Old Hawk is dead. That was the agreement."
"You want me to go?"
I should say yes. I've been saying yes to the hard thing for three years and I'm good at it.
"No," I say.
He looks as if he just stopped holding his breath. I can see it in the way his shoulders relax. "Okay."
"I'm not saying what this is."
"I'm not asking you to."
"Dutch."
"Avery." He reaches over and tucks my hair back, fingers trailing along my jaw, easy and unhurried. "Go run your council meeting. I'll get coffee."
"Harry's going to be insufferable."
I get up. So does he. We move around each other in the small space without bumping into things, which tells me something I'm not ready to look at directly.
He leaves to get coffee. I get dressed. Through the window I can see the settlement waking up. There’s smoke from the cook fires, voices, the creak of the gate on its new hinges.
I let myself feel proud for exactly ten seconds.
Then I go run my settlement.
Jenna falls into step beside me during the morning check.
She appears at my elbow with that careful, watchful way she has, the one that used to mean she was mapping exits and now means something else. I'm still learning the difference.
We walk in silence. She's good at silence. Better than most adults.
"I want to do something useful," she says finally. "Not what I was doing before."
"You were useful yesterday. You held your post."
"I missed every shot."
"You called the second wave through the north gap. Three of my people were in position because of that." I look at her sideways. "That's not nothing."
She absorbs this. "I want to learn the medical building. Sarah let me help with the wounded and," She stops. "I didn't panic. I thought I would."
I think about what Old Hawk trained into her. Observation. Steadiness. The ability to walk into a place that wants to kill you and look calm. Those are her skills. She just spent years pointed in the wrong direction.
"Talk to Sarah," I say. "Tell her I sent you."
The smile is small and quick, the kind she doesn't quite know she's making yet. She peels off toward the medical building and I watch her go and feel the tight thing in my chest ease by a fraction.
"That was well done."
Dutch. Coffee in hand, appearing from behind the equipment shed.
"Don't." I take the cup he's holding out. "Don't make it a thing."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were about to say something."
"I was going to say you're good at seeing what people need."
I drink my coffee and say nothing, because if I respond to that I'll have to acknowledge that his opinion of me has started to matter, and I'm not doing that before seven in the morning.
Being with him feels natural. He matches my pace without thinking about it, which is the kind of thing I notice and wish I didn't. Below us the settlement moves through its morning, alive and intact, and Dutch walks beside me like he's been doing it for years.
"So, what’s next," I say.
He glances at me.
"I want to know what you're going to do."
"I haven't decided."
“What's the problem?"
He's quiet a beat too long. "It would mean leaving."
I keep my eyes forward. The east wall. The new bracing on the third section that still needs checking. Very interesting things to look at.
"And?" I say.
"And I'm finding that harder to picture than I expected."
The morning noise fills the space between us. Harry shouting at someone about the water supply. The sound of hammering from the west side. Normal. Ordinary. Ours.
"Check the east wall with me," I say.
He lets me redirect. He always lets me redirect, and he's always still there when I come back around. That's the thing I keep bumping into, the thing I don't have a word for yet.
We go check the east wall.
That night is different from the one before.
No battle behind us. No adrenaline to explain it away. Just Dutch in my quarters because I didn't tell him not to be, sitting on the edge of the bed while I pull off my boots, and the particular quiet of two people who've stopped pretending they don't want to be in the same room.
I lean against his shoulder and we stay like that, quiet, while the settlement settles into night around us. Then his thumb traces a slow circle on my wrist and I feel it everywhere, and the nature of the evening shifts.
I turn my face up to his.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He kisses me slowly. Not like the night before, that was desperate, post-battle, both of us half out of our minds with relief and want. This is so much more meaningful.
I let him take it.
When he lays me back I go without argument, which is not something I do often, and I think briefly that I should probably find that alarming and then he puts his mouth on my throat and I stop thinking about it.
"Tell me what you want," he says against my skin.
"Less talking."
He laughs, low, the sound of it vibrating against my collarbone. His hands move over me like he has all night and means to use it, finding the places that make me pull in a breath and coming back to them, learning me.
"Dutch."
He works his way down my body until I'm gripping the sheets and my hips are moving of their own accord and he hasn't even touched my pussy yet.
"Please," I hear myself say.
"There it is."
His mouth finds my pussy and I stop being quiet about any of it.
My fingers twist into his hair and he makes a low sound against me that I feel everywhere.
He takes his time. That's the thing — he takes his time like he's got nothing else to do, like he wants to learn exactly what wrecks me and keep doing it until I can't think straight.
His tongue circles my clit slow and then slower, and I'm already embarrassingly close, already pulling at his hair, already saying things I won't remember.
"There! Don't you dare stop!"
He doesn't stop. He slides two fingers inside me and curls them and keeps his mouth working and I shatter, back arching clean off the bedroll, thighs clamped around his head, the orgasm rolling through me in waves that don't quit. He works me through every second of it.
I'm still shaking when he comes back up my body. I get my hand around his cock before he's finished moving. He’s thick and hard and he hisses through his teeth when I stroke him, his hips pushing forward without permission.
"Avery."
"I know." I pull him down. "Now."
He pushes inside me and we both go still.
That moment. That specific moment where it's just the fullness of him and his weight and his eyes on my face, serious and completely present. It's the thing I wasn't ready for. Not the wanting. The being seen while wanting.
Then I roll my hips and he groans and the moment breaks open into something better.
He fucks me deep and steady, one hand braced by my head and the other gripping my hip, and I wrap my legs around him and take everything he gives me and ask for more. He gives me more. His mouth finds my throat, my jaw, comes back to my mouth, and I taste myself on him and feel that everywhere too.
"Harder."
He gives me harder. Drives into me until the bedroll is skidding across the floor and I'm making sounds I've never made for anyone and I don't care, I don't care about any of it except more.
"I've got you," he says against my throat, rough and low. “But, I’m gonna come. Fuck!”
"Don't stop!" My nails rake down his back. "Come inside me, please.” I don’t care about the risks. I want to feel him lose it. I want us to be joined in every way.
He doesn't stop. He reaches between us and presses his thumb to my clit and keeps moving and I come apart completely, clenching around him, his name the only word I have.
"Inside," I manage, tightening my legs around him, pulling him deep. "I want to feel you."
He makes a sound that's almost pained and then he's there buried to the hilt, his whole body shuddering, cock pulsing as he spills into me hot and deep.
His hips jerk through it, losing the rhythm completely, and I hold him through every second of it with my legs locked around him and my hands gripping his back and my face pressed to his neck.
He collapses against me, heavy and breathing hard, and I feel him everywhere. The weight of him. The warmth of it still inside me.
We lie there for a long time not saying anything.
Afterward he stays. I don't tell him to leave.
I stare at the ceiling in the dark and think: I am in serious trouble.
I think it without dread. That's new.