30. Evander
EVANDER
Three days of clearing the pass, briefing federal teams, and answering the same questions from four different agencies have hollowed me out like no rescue ever has.
I come through my own front door well after dark, boots caked, shoulders aching from carrying weight my body barely registers, and I stop short at the threshold.
There's a lamp on in the living room. Camille is folded into the corner of my couch with a mug, a stack of her own paperwork abandoned across her lap, half-asleep and stubbornly waiting up.
"You didn't have to stay," I say, though every bit of me is glad she did.
"I wanted to see your face before I convinced myself you'd been buried under something again." She sits up, blinking the drowse away. "You look terrible, Van."
"I've been told worse by kinder people."
"There are no kinder people than me. I'm a delight." She pats the cushion beside her. "Sit down, I have news, and you're going to want to be off your feet for it."
I lower myself next to her, and the couch takes my weight with a groan I sympathize with. She faces me, tucking one leg beneath her, and there's a brightness in her that hasn't been there since the mountain nearly killed us both.
"The federal team finished their preliminary review this afternoon," she says. "It's enough. They're freezing every Northstar acquisition pending prosecution. Nothing moves, nobody sells, nobody buys, nobody so much as surveys until this is settled."
"And the line itself?"
"The preliminary recommendation is repair, not closure." She watches me absorb it. "They can't argue systemic failure anymore. The evidence proves sabotage, so they fix the railway, they fund the modernization, and Stonehaven stays connected. You won, Van. Your mountain is safe."
I've spent so long braced against the next catastrophe that hearing there won't be one feels almost physically impossible to hold.
My whole adult life has been organized around the certainty that something is always coming for the people I love.
Now a tired woman on my couch is telling me danger is over, and we beat it, and I'm allowed to set it down.
"Say something," she prompts. "This is the part where the emergency coordinator gets to be relieved."
"I keep waiting for the catch."
"There isn't one." Her voice softens. "You can stop standing guard for a minute."
"That's the part I don't know how to do.
" I scrub a hand down my face. "The avalanche didn't scare me half as much as this does.
On the mountain I knew what to fight. Now the fighting's over, and your assignment ends, and you're free to go back to the life you had before this.
That terrifies me more than the snow ever did. "
She's quiet, taking that in.
"I'm not going to ask you to stay for me.
I watched my father decide other people's choices for them because he thought he knew best, and I swore I'd never do that to someone I…
" The word catches. "Whatever you decide about where you live and what you do, it has to be yours.
Free and clear, I only want the future you actually pick, not one I talked you into. "
"You know what your problem is?" she says.
"You think loving somebody and deciding for them are the same move.
They're not." She reaches over and threads her cold fingers into mine.
"I don't have the whole answer yet. I honestly don't know what staying permanently looks like.
I've never done permanent. It's foreign to me. "
"But?"
"But I know I don't want this to end when the paperwork does.
" She holds my gaze without flinching. "I don't want to file my report and drive out of that pass and let you become a memory.
That's the truth I've got tonight. It's not a promise about zip codes.
It's bigger than that and smaller than that at the same time. "
I lift her hand and press my mouth to her knuckles. She makes a low sound and shifts closer, and the exhaustion that flattened me at the door burns off like frost under a hard sun.
"Van." My name comes out unsteady. "The mountain's not going to explode this time."
"I noticed."
"Nobody's radioing us. Nobody's tracking through the storm. There's no reason to hurry and no reason to stop."
"I noticed that too."
She climbs into my lap, knees straddling my hips, and takes my face in both hands, except now there's no urgency driving it, no fear underneath demanding we prove we're still breathing.
This is a decision, unhurried and deliberate, made in a warm room with the door locked against the world.
When she kisses me it's slow, thorough, an unspooling rather than a collision.
My hands wander her body without the frantic edge that governed every touch before.
There's time, that understanding changes everything about how I hold her.
She strips my flannel off my shoulders and traces the healed places where the wreckage caught me, and I catch her fingers and bring them to my mouth.
She giggles low against my throat, and that sound makes my restraint loosen.
Her hands go to my belt, working the buckle open.
The zipper comes down, and she reaches inside.
Her fingers close around my cock and stroke the length of me once, firm.
I lift my hips so she can shove the pants lower, and I toss them aside with my foot.
Naked under her, I rise to my feet and start walking her to the bedroom.
On the way, we are kissing passionately, and I stumble into a wall still holding her and she laughs.
In the bedroom, I put her down and I peel off her own shirt over her head, admiring her body.
Her eyes have a desperation in them, and I unclip her bra and her breasts hit the cool air, her nipples harden instantly.
She undoes her own pants, and lowers them, stepping out of them, and then grabs my wrists and pulls me to the bed.
I lower over her, stroking her face, and my mouth finds her neck. She gasps as I cup and massage one breast. This time it’s slower, passionate, more than what it ever was before. Her smooth skin, and hard nipples make my cock twitch against her, and she reaches down again, gripping it, stroking it.
I groan into her neck, and start lowering myself, kissing her collarbone, her breasts and finally her soaking wet pussy.
I push her legs apart and my mouth meets her.
I reach for my own cock as I lick her pussy and stroke slowly.
Then I reach up, and push two fingers inside her.
Her back arches, and I place my forearm over her hips to keep her pinned.
Moving faster with my tongue and curling my fingers, her moans increase in loudness, and I thrust harder.
My own groans vibrate against her, and she threads her fingers through my hair pushing me down.
I feel her pussy tighten, and she screams one of her silent screams as she comes.
Her legs shake, and her hips urging to jerk but my arm isn’t allowing her.
When she calms, I rise up and lay over her.
She reaches for my cock and guides it to her entrance while leaning up to kiss me.
She shifts and I push inside her, both gasping at the stretch and tightness.
I fuck her slowly, watching every reaction on her face, understanding her body, what she needs, what her body is screaming for with each thrust. Her body reacts to every sensation.
I feel myself close, but I’m not ready, so I pull out, pulling her up off the bed.
I’m about to turn her around, and bend her over when she moves lower, sliding down my body until her mouth is level with my cock.
She takes the head between her lips and sucks, tongue pressing flat against the underside.
I grip her hair hard to keep from thrusting forward as she works me deeper, taking more of my length, one hand stroking what her mouth can't reach.
The wet heat of her mouth pulls a low sound from my chest. She keeps the pace steady until my thighs start to tense, then she pulls off with a soft pop.
She stands back up, and I gaze at her, ready to fuck her relentlessly. I swing her round, push her down, and thrust into her in one fast motion. Her moan sends tremors through me.
"Like that?" I ask.
"Yes." She moans.
I start fucking her fast, almost coming right out before pounding straight back in. Her pussy taking me deep, and her walls grip. I pull her head back, and reach down to her clit with my free hand, rubbing fast.
"Fuck, yes." She screams.
Her fists curl into the sheets, and I feel the build up of pleasure rushing through me.
I control myself, I’m not ready yet. I want to feel every bit of her coming all over me.
I swing her back around, lift her legs onto my hips and stare into her eyes.
I know she’s as close as I am. Still gripping her hair, I squeeze her ass and relentlessly fuck her.
"Come for me." I whisper.
At that moment, I feel my cock expand, and her walls clench around me.
Her mouth lets out a moan that I’ll remember forever, and we both come hard.
Both hers and my thighs are shaking, her pussy continuously clamping and pulsing around me in strong waves that don’t seem to stop.
The force of the orgasm taking over us. I hold still, feeling every sensation, and she rakes her nails into me.
My fingers are digging into her hips, she hasn’t stopped moving through the aftershocks.
My head drops as the orgasm eases, our breathing uncontrollable, and she kisses my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her, and drop to her side so we stay connected with her legs still around me, then she rolls away stealing half the blanket and the pillows.
I laugh and pull the remaining corner of the blanket over myself. She nudges one cold foot against my calf, apparently deciding that's sufficient compensation.
"So," she murmurs. "What now, Coordinator?"
"Now I sleep for a week."
"After that."
I turn my head to gaze at her, this exhausting, unyielding, entirely essential person who argued her way into my life and my secret and apparently isn't leaving yet.
"I want to take you into the den, properly.
Not for the investigation, not because the survey marker's down there.
Because it's the oldest part of who I am, and I want you to see it. "
Her eyebrows climb. "You realize introducing a woman to the ancestral cave family is an aggressively serious relationship milestone."
"You surrendered your claim on normal somewhere around the second avalanche."
"That's fair." She settles her head against my shoulder, smiling into my skin. "Okay. Show me the den. But I'm bringing a flashlight, because I don't trust your night vision to look out for mine."
"Deal," I tell her, and I fall asleep without listening for the next disaster.