Chapter 12 #3
“I was terrified,” she said. “Watching you leave. Knowing where you were going, what you might face… I stood on the porch with Angelina and I thought: if he doesn’t come back, I will never forgive myself for whatever happened between us at the lake.
For taking that risk when I might have lost him the same day.
” She looked at me, her blue eyes reflecting firelight.
“And then you brought her home. Blood on your sleeves, that look on your face, and Sabrina in your arms, and I realized… God, I rely on you. Both of us do. In ways I didn’t fully understand until I watched you walk out that door ready to kill for her. ”
I looked at both of them. Sabrina with her flower crown tilted sideways on her light blonde hair, the bruise on her cheek dark in the firelight, her damaged wings folded behind her with the careful posture of someone still learning their new limits.
Gabriella with her dark blonde hair loose around her shoulders, her wingless back straight, her eyes steady on mine with the clarity of someone who had decided, against considerable evidence, that honesty was worth the risk.
“All those years,” I said. “None of it compares to sitting here with you two. Not one second of it.”
The fire popped. A log settled, sending a shower of sparks upward into the dark where they hung for a moment before fading.
Neither girl spoke. They didn’t need to.
The way Sabrina’s hand found mine across the blanket, and Gabriella’s shoulder pressed against my other side, said everything their mouths were too busy feeling to articulate.
The fire had burned down to coals that glowed orange in the dark, and the air held that warmth that comes after a summer day when the ground has been baking all afternoon and isn’t ready to give up the heat just because the sun has.
Sabrina stretched, her arms above her head, her back arching in a way that made her breasts press against her dress, and looked at the lake with an expression that contained seventy percent mischief and thirty percent genuine desire for cool water on warm skin.
“We should swim,” she said.
It wasn’t a question. Sabrina rarely asked questions when she already knew the answer, and the way she was already standing, already reaching for the ties at the neck of her dress, suggested that the democratic process had been deemed superfluous to requirements.
Gabriella glanced at me, then at the lake, then back at me.
The shyness was there, faint but visible, the hesitation of someone who had spent nineteen years being the wingless one in a family of angels and had developed a relationship with her own body that involved more negotiation than celebration.
“It’s dark,” she said.
“Hence ‘night swim,’” Sabrina replied, already loosening the second tie. “The alternative is ‘day swim,’ which we are technically too late for, unless you’ve developed time travel while I wasn’t looking, in which case I have several questions about your priorities.”
Gabriella laughed, and the sound did something to my chest that felt dangerously close to affection. “Fine. But if something with teeth lives in that lake, you’re the one explaining to Angelina why her daughter came home with fewer limbs than she left with.”
Sabrina’s dress was coming off now, pulled over her head in one motion that left her standing in the firelight in nothing but the thin cotton chemise she wore beneath.
They undressed. I watched, because pretending not to watch would have required a level of self-discipline that six years of war had thoroughly burned out of me, and what unfolded in the firelight was the kind of sight that makes a man grateful for the failure of his moral compass.
Sabrina first. Her dress came off, and she stood naked in the moonlight with the confidence of a woman who had spent years being looked at and had decided, at some point, that being seen was preferable to being hidden.
Her body was exactly what the pageant judges had been awarding trophies for: full breasts with pink nipples that tightened in the cool air, a narrow waist that flared to hips with curves that the firelight traced in gold, long legs, and the rounded, firm backside that had drawn quiet admiration from every village boy with functioning eyesight. Her wings extended slightly behind her.
Then Gabriella. Her dress came off, and she stood with her arms at her sides, not hiding but not performing either, just existing in her skin the way Gabriella did everything: honestly, without embellishment.
Her body was leaner than Sabrina’s, shaped by years of farm work rather than pageant training, with small, firm breasts, a flat stomach, hips that curved gently, and legs that were long and strong from carrying herself through a world built for fliers.
Without wings, her back was smooth and straight, the muscles visible beneath the skin in the way of someone who lifted things regularly and had stopped apologizing for the strength it gave her.
They were beautiful in different ways. The kind of different that makes comparison not just pointless but actively missing the point, like trying to decide whether a sunrise is better than a clear night sky when what matters is that both exist and you are fortunate enough to witness either.
I undressed too. Boots, shirt, trousers, and then I was standing with them at the water’s edge with nothing between my skin and the night air, and the way both sisters looked at me.
Sabrina’s gaze traveling down my chest to the scars, to my cock which was already half-hard from the combined effect of moonlight and two naked women, and Gabriella’s eyes steady on my face with that softness she reserved for moments she had been waiting for, made the water feel suddenly necessary for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature.
We waded in. The lake was cool. Sabrina went under first, surfacing with her light blonde hair streaming, water cascading down her breasts, and the sound she made was pure joy.
Gabriella followed, more cautiously, and when the water reached her waist she looked back at me with an expression that suggested she was remembering the lake where this had all begun, and whatever she saw in my face made her smile.
We swam. Or splashed, more accurately, the half-swimming half-play that adults revert to when they remember that bodies of water were invented primarily for the purpose of making dignified behavior impossible.
Sabrina dunked me. I caught her around the waist and lifted her, and she shrieked with laughter that carried across the lake to wherever the night birds were pretending not to notice.
Gabriella watched from a few feet away, smiling, and when Sabrina splashed her she retaliated.
The playfulness turned. I’m not sure when, exactly.
One moment we were splashing, laughing, the water cool and the night warm, and the next I was standing between them in the shallows where the lakebed was smooth stone beneath my feet, and Gabriella was in front of me, her body warm and wet against mine, and I was kissing her.
My mouth on hers, my hands on her waist, feeling the lean muscle beneath her skin, and behind me, I could feel Sabrina’s presence, her breath on my shoulder, her body close enough that the heat of her reached me through the cool water.
I turned, still holding Gabriella with one arm, and kissed Sabrina the same way: slow, thorough, my free hand finding the curve of her hip beneath the water, and neither girl looked away.
Gabriella’s hands rested on my back, her fingers tracing the long diagonal scar from the arrow wound, and Sabrina watched her sister’s hands on my skin with an expression that contained no jealousy, only a quiet, shared wanting that made my cock harden completely against Sabrina’s thigh.
We ended up standing in the shallows, water to our waists, moonlight silver on wet skin, and I washed them.
One at a time, because my hands only reached so far and my attention only split so many ways, and because some gestures deserve their own moment.
I started with Gabriella. My palms flat against her wingless back, feeling the smooth muscles, the dip of her spine, the geography of a body that had carried itself through a world not built for it and had emerged not diminished but defined by the carrying.
I washed her shoulders, her arms, my hands moving carefully and when my thumbs traced the curve of her breasts beneath the water she made a moan that went straight to my cock.
Then Sabrina. I was gentler with her wings, my fingers careful on the feathers where the ropes had left their marks, and she leaned into the touch with a trust that made my throat tight.
My hands moved over her shoulders, down her arms, across the full curves of her breasts where the water beaded and caught the moonlight, and when I cupped her face and kissed her again she sighed against my mouth in a way that suggested she had been holding that breath for six years.
They touched me. Sabrina’s hands on my chest, tracing the scars with fingers that knew each one from stories and were now learning them from touch.
Gabriella’s palm flat against my stomach, feeling the muscle tense beneath her hand, her thumb brushing the lower edge of my ribcage where the puckered scar from the spear sat like a misplaced comma.
And then, gradually, they touched each other.
Sabrina reached across and brushed wet hair from Gabriella’s face, her fingers lingering at her sister’s temple.
Gabriella’s hand found Sabrina’s hip beneath the water, her fingers tracing the curve with the curiosity of someone exploring a country they had only ever viewed from a distance.
The jealousy was gone. In its place was something warmer, the intimacy of two women who loved the same man and had decided, against all available logic, that this did not require them to love each other any less.