Chapter Sixteen —Alexei #2
She didn’t offer a judgment on that. Neither did she soften it nor try to reframe it into something more palatable. She just nodded, as though she understood the grief of being readied for a world instead of held from it.
We walked through the trees after that, along the narrow path that followed the ridge south.
The cold air smelled like pine resin and something mineral, like the earth was exhaling after a long time of holding its breath.
Isla walked beside me without filling the silence, and I found I didn’t want to fill it either.
When she slipped on a patch of exposed root, and my hand caught her arm before I’d consciously decided to move, we both stilled for a moment—her hand finding my forearm, steadying herself, and neither of us in any particular hurry to let go.
*****
The evening folded in around the cottage the way evenings do in the mountains, with a heaviness that felt like the dark was choosing to arrive slowly so you’d have time to prepare.
I built the fire higher. Isla sat on the floor in front of it, back against the couch, legs stretched toward the warmth.
I poured two fingers of whiskey and sat beside her.
We talked. We argued, mildly, about whether the ridge path circled back or dead-ended.
It was a debate that mattered to no one and required no resolution.
It turned into something else, some edge to it that wasn’t hostility, that charged the air between us the way a storm charges the air before it breaks.
I put my glass down.
She turned her head to look at me, and whatever she’d been about to say dissolved.
I touched her jaw first, and when she didn’t move away, I tilted her face toward mine.
The firelight moved across her. She was watching me with that third expression again, the one I didn’t have a word for, and I understood abruptly that I’d been circling this moment for longer than I’d acknowledged.
It was intimacy. This silent, deep intimacy we shared before we even touched.
I kissed her slowly, with no urgency or desperation. I’d call it the kiss of a man with nothing to prove and nowhere else he needed to be.
She made a small sound against my mouth, something softer than surprise, and her hand came up to the side of my neck, fingers pressing in at the base of my skull. I felt it through my entire body.
I pulled back just enough to look at her.
“If you want this to stop—” I began.
“Are you crazy? I don’t,” she rushed.
I kissed her again, and this time neither of us was cautious.
I laid her back against the floor, the fire crackling close, and moved over her slowly, learning her by unhurried degrees.
I moved my shirt from her shoulders and pushed it open, putting my mouth to the curve of her throat, the hollow below her collarbone, the inside of her wrist when she raised her arm above her head.
She arched into each contact like she was meeting me halfway, her body rising to close whatever distance I left between us.
She reached for me, and I let her. I let her pull the buttons of my shirt open and spread her palms flat against my chest, feeling the topography of old damage, scar tissue, and hard muscle—and she didn’t flinch from any of it.
She mapped me the way she’d moved through the cottage that first night, with quiet, thorough attention.
I stripped her of her underwear and bralette unhurriedly, taking my time with every inch of skin revealed, because I was a man who did nothing without intention, and my intention here was to understand her completely.
She was warm in the firelight, her breath already coming faster, and when I moved down her back body and pressed my mouth to the soft skin of her inner thigh, she slurred, “Alexei.”
I learned what she needed. I gave it without rushing, my tongue moving along her clit and moist flesh. I sucked and licked until she came in gasps into my mouth.
By the time I settled my dick between her thighs, we were both breathing hard, and she was looking at me with eyes dark and unfocused, her fingers twisted into my hair.
I deliberately pushed inside her slowly, watching her face the whole time, and felt her breath break apart on a long exhale that reached something in me that had been sealed for a very long time.
We moved together with the fire going low and the room warm and neither of us speaking, because the language that would have contained this hadn’t been invented yet.
She wrapped her legs around me, and I drove deeper, and she made sounds I recorded somewhere below conscious thought as mine. And when she broke, I followed her down with my face pressed into the curve of her neck, her pulse beating hard against my lips.
Afterward, she lay against my chest and her breathing slowed by degrees into something regular and deep.
I didn’t move. I didn’t reach for my phone, a drink, or any of the thousand habits I used to reestablish the perimeter between myself and feeling.
I lay in the cooling firelight with Isla’s weight against me and felt something unfamiliar settle across my chest like a hand placed there in the dark.
Calm.
It was so foreign I almost didn’t recognize it. And then I recognized it, and something cold moved through me underneath the warmth, because calm was what got you killed. Peace was what you felt right before you stopped watching the doors.
I waited until her breathing was deep and even. Then I dressed quietly, lifting her and carrying her into the bedroom and onto the bed. I covered her with the duvet and watched her body settle into sleep again with an unblinking gaze before getting off the bed.
I walked the perimeter.
Trees remained still. The access road empty in both directions. The southern slope undisturbed.
We were safe. I knew we were safe. I had just confirmed it.
I told myself this as I stood in the cold, and every nerve in my body hummed its low, constant alarm the way it always did when I had something real left to lose.
I went back inside, but I didn’t sleep.