Aislin
Ikiss him and I stop thinking.
That's the thing about it — I've been thinking for weeks. Every morning at sunrise with my knuckles wrapped and my jaw set and my brain cataloguing exits and threats and how far we are from the tree line and whether the supply cart is scheduled today or tomorrow.
Every night with my three weapons under the bed and my ear turned toward the door and my body refusing to stop being a fist even in sleep. I have been thinking, constantly, for so long that the absence of it is the most disorienting thing that has ever happened to me.
His hand is still cupping my jaw. I feel the warmth of it against my cheek — enormous, careful, the particular gentleness of something that could break you and has chosen not to — and something in my chest shoves hard against my ribs and I think: I'm sick of this.
Not of him. Not of any of it.
Of the fear.
I am so desperately sick of the fear.
I pull back just enough to breathe and he doesn't chase me, he lets me go the instant there's any space between us, and that — that — is the thing that does it.
Every time. Not the teasing or the sunrise sparring or the way he'd run alongside that bloody obstacle course shouting at me until I forgot to be terrified.
It's this. The way he stops. The way he's always made stopping look effortless.
"I ran," I say. My voice comes out lower than I expect. "After the first kiss. Today. Every time you've made me see that maybe I don't have to fight this, I've ran."
He looks at me. His hand drops from my jaw but doesn't go far, settling at the curve of my neck where he can feel my pulse against his fingers if he wants to. "You did."
"I was stupid."
Something flickers in his gray eyes — not the teasing version of him, not the loud one that fills up rooms and shouts at obstacle courses. The real one. The one that lives underneath all that noise and has been quietly watching me for weeks and never once asked for anything back.
"You were scared," he says. "That's different."
"Maybe." I reach up and wrap my fingers around his wrist — the one attached to the hand still resting at my neck — and I hold it there because I want it there.
"But I don't want to keep running. Not from you.
" My grip tightens. "I want you. I know my head is screaming at me.
I know all the reasons it's a terrible idea and I know what happened the last time I trusted someone and I know — I know — I might get hurt.
" I look up at him straight. No flinching.
"But if the result is getting to be with you, Ursik, I don't care. Not one bit."
The breath he lets out is slow. Controlled. Like a man who has been holding something very carefully for a very long time.
"You make me laugh," I say, and the words come up from somewhere underneath all the armor without asking permission.
"You make me feel — like I'm worth something.
Like I'm not just a guard dog standing in front of everyone else.
Like I'm—" I stop, press my lips together, try again.
"You're the only good thing in my life right now, Ursik.
The only thing that feels real. And I walked away from you because I got scared to trust someone and I'm not doing that again. "
He stares at me for a moment that stretches long enough to make the back of my neck prickle. Then he makes a sound low in his chest — not words, just something that comes from somewhere very deep — and he picks me up.
Just like that. His hands at my waist and then I'm off the ground, my legs wrapping around him automatically because he's so large that it's either that or dangle, and his mouth finds mine as he turns for the tree line.
He doesn't put me down.
He walks the whole way — through the pines, past the edge of the sparring ground, down the path toward the cluster of longhouses where the senior warriors bunk — kissing me the entire time.
Not frantic, not clumsy, but sure. Like a man who has thought about this extensively and planned for every variable.
His hands shift to keep me steady and I feel the flex of his arms each time he adjusts and I decide, firmly and with my whole chest, that I do not mind being carried in the slightest.
"Anyone could see us," I say against his mouth.
"Good." He keeps walking. "They can have something to talk about."
I laugh. The sound surprises both of us, bright and real, and his whole face changes when he hears it — something in the set of his jaw going soft, his eyes crinkling at the corners — and then he's kissing me again before I can say anything else, shouldering open the door to his quarters without breaking contact.
Inside is warm.
He keeps a fire going even in spring, which I already knew because I've walked past his window on perimeter checks and noticed the orange light. I've noticed a lot of things about Ursik and I've been pretending I haven't and I am done pretending.
He sets me down on the edge of the bed — low, wide, covered in furs that smell like pine and woodsmoke — and he stands in front of me with his hands loose at his sides and looks at me with that careful, steady look.
"I need you to know," he says. His voice is low. "I don't want you to push me away again."
Something in my throat tightens. "I won't."
"I mean it, Aislin."
"So do I." I reach out and take the front of his shirt in both hands.
"I was stupid for walking away. I was stupid every time I kept my distance when what I actually wanted—" I pull, drawing him down toward me, "—was this.
" My mouth grazes his jaw, just below his ear.
"I want you so much, Ursik. You are funny and kind and you have always gone the distance for me.
You are such a good male, and sometimes, I don't think I deserve it. "
"You deserve the world."
I lean back to look at him. "All I want is you."
The sound he makes against the side of my head is somewhere between a growl and something much more undone.
We undress each other without urgency. His hands move over my clothes the way he does everything — deliberate, unhurried, like he has considered what he's doing and made a decision about it.
I do the same to him, working at the laces of his shirt until it's over his head, and then I stop and look because I've been not-looking for weeks — even in the cave, I didn't take him in really — and I'm allowed to look now.
He's enormous. I knew that. But knowing and seeing are different things — the broad shelf of his chest, the deep green of his skin in the firelight, the way every part of him is built for war and currently dedicated entirely to being gentle with me.
The scar running across his ribs from some raid I don't know the name of.
The missing fingers on his left hand. Evidence of a life I haven't heard the whole of yet and want to.
"You're staring," he says.
"I know." I press my palm flat to his chest. His heartbeat is fast. I note that with considerable satisfaction.
"Aislin."
"Ursik."
His mouth curves, the slow private one that isn't performing anything, and he tips me back against the furs and I pull him with me.
There's a moment, with his weight settling against me — careful, distributed, nothing crushing even though he absolutely could — where I feel the last of it leave my body. Not gone permanently.
I'm not naive enough to think trauma dissolves like spring frost at the first warmth. But right now, in this specific moment, with this specific man breathing against my neck and his hand splayed warm across my ribs — it loosens. Steps back. Gives me the room.
I take it.
I pull him down and I don't hold anything back as he kisses me long and deep. As his hands move down my body and between my legs. As he stretches me, making me soak his hand until I am pleading.
And then he flips us.
I straddle his lap, the furs pooled around us and his hands braced at my hips and his forehead tipped down toward mine. My body is shaking with my need for him and only him.
I haven't checked the door. I haven't thought about exits. I am entirely here, in this room, in this body, with this ridiculous, enormous man — and I feel, with some astonishment, like myself.
Like the version of me that exists before everything went wrong.
I rock my hips, slow, testing, feeling the blunt heat of him against me — not yet, just the pressure, the promise of it — and he makes a sound low in his throat that I decide immediately I want to collect.
"Beautiful," he says. Low and rough and without any performance to it. Just fact, stated plainly, the way he'd tell me my guard was dropping or my footwork was off. Matter-of-fact and total. "You feel so good."
I press down and he groans — real and helpless, his hands tightening at my hips — and something in my chest does something complicated that isn't entirely about the physical.
I reach between us and take him in my hand and his whole body goes still, breath suspended, gray eyes on mine.
I take my time. I watch his face. I like watching his face — the way every expression moves across it without apology, nothing held back, nothing managed.
He's so present. Always. It used to unnerve me.
Now I understand it's one of my favorite things about him.
I sink down.
The stretch is slow. Full. His jaw tightens and his exhale comes out unsteady and I feel every inch of him and I keep going, working down unhurried, until I'm seated and we're both breathing like we've just completed a different kind of sparring entirely.
"Alright?" he manages.
"More than." I roll my hips, just barely, a test, and his grip at my waist flexes hard. "Very much more than."
His laugh is breathless. The sound loosens something in me and I start to move — a slow roll, finding the rhythm, the angle — and his head tips back for a moment before he brings it back level and looks at me like I'm the most interesting thing he's encountered in his entire life.
I brace my hands on his shoulders and I ride him and I say the things I've been turning over in my head for weeks without meaning to.
"I hated you being loud," I tell him, breathless, "when I first got here.
I thought it was — I thought it meant you were dangerous.
" I roll my hips deeper and his groan is gratifyingly wrecked.
"And then I realized you're just — full of it.
Life. You're just full of life and joy and it spills over everywhere and I—" I falter as he rolls up to meet me and the thought scatters.
"I need that. I didn't know I needed it but I do. "
His hands slide up my back, drawing me closer, his mouth finding my jaw.
"All of it," I manage. "The noise and the laughing and the way you shout at people during the obstacle course like they can't hear you from three feet away—"
"They go faster." He says it into my neck, strained but absolute.
"They do." I press my lips to his temple, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. "You're everything I want. I didn't want to want you and you just—" I pull back to look at him, moving against him, heat building. "You just kept showing up."
"I always will." His voice has gone rough, scraped down to its foundations. His forehead drops to mine, the two of us sharing breath, the rhythm between us building into something that crowds out every other thought. "Aislin, I will always be there for you."
I bite back asking why. I want to learn to just accept the way he cares for me without questioning it.
But Ursik sees it anyway.
"I have always liked everything you are," he says, his thumb pressing to my jaw, tilting my face up.
"The sharp tongue and the way you stand in front of every person you care about without thinking twice about yourself—" He groans, low and unsteady.
"—and the good heart you hide like it's a liability. All of it. I want all of it."
Something in my chest cracks wide.
"I'll protect it," he says. "All of it. Every part of you." His hands tighten and his voice breaks at the edges. "I swear it."
I crash over it with his name in my mouth and he follows me — his whole body shuddering, the groan he makes rough and unguarded and completely his — and I hold on and let him and I don't run.