Chapter 6
Owen
I crossed the marker on purpose this time.
Not the stone. The line under it. Three years ago I had come in during a raid and let her men put a rope on me and walk me to a cabin. That was the old mistake. This time I stopped short of her dirt and stayed in the trees like a trespasser who knew exactly where the trespass started.
Reilly was up the hill for most of the afternoon.
I didn’t need a scout to tell me. The bond sat in my gut and pointed at the hall.
Heat. A door closing. The thin shock of her getting herself off and not getting enough of it.
I stood with my shoulder on a pine and my cock fat in my pants and did not put my hand on it.
I had already done that in the dark. Doing it here, with eight wolves and Melanie at my back and Landers scouts somewhere on the loop, was how a man got his company killed for a fist.
Melanie watched the path, not me. “If you come in your pants I’m leaving you on this river.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re breathing like a man who is not fine.”
I adjusted myself once, rough, through the cloth, and it made it worse. The head was wet enough to stick. The base had that swell on it again, the one that wanted in. I left my hands on my belt and watched empty trail until my eyes hurt.
Joss came up from the horses. “Hillsford patrol on the far ridge went off east. They saw us or they saw enough.”
“They always see enough,” I said. “Hold the trees. No one steps out unless I do.”
He nodded and went back.
The afternoon dragged. I could smell her hall the whole time.
Woodsmoke. Grain boiled too thin. Pack-nerves.
Under it, her. Soap and skin and the sour-sweet of a bond that had been left to rot on purpose.
My mouth watered. That was not a phrase I liked about myself.
It happened anyway. I kept seeing the cabin floor.
Her legs open on the table before that. My mouth on her, two fingers in, her coming on my tongue.
I kept seeing the yard after. The rite. Her throat moving when she said my name in order to throw it away.
I wanted both things at once. That was the part I had not found a job hard enough to work out of me.
A squirrel went through the brush and my wolf tried to treat it like a threat because there was nowhere else to put the voltage.
I clenched my jaw until it ached. Melanie handed me water and I drank it and it did nothing for the fact that I was leaking into my underwear waiting for a woman who had already told me, in front of witnesses, that I was not hers.
“Contract,” I said, mostly to hear a word that wasn’t her name. “If she comes, I say the cut. I say coin. I say I don’t need a bed in her hall.”
“You need a bed in her hall,” Melanie said. “That’s the problem.”
“I need the west cut watched and Hillsford not on our river by winter.”
“And her on her knees. Don’t split it up for me. I already know the split.”
I didn’t answer.
When the bond jerked tighter I knew she had left the hall.
Not a guess. A pull. Downhill. Multiple bodies with her. Huntington’s smell came later, wool and steel and a man who did not like me. Rifles. Two. She was not alone. Good. If she had come alone I would have put her against the marker stone and I would not have started with a sentence about cattle.
“Hold,” I said.
The company held.
I saw her at the last bend before she saw me.
Same walk. Different coat. Hair tied like she had put herself back together in a hurry.
Marshall Huntington at her shoulder. Two wolves back with rifles pointed at the dirt and not at me yet.
She stopped at the stone and put her hands where I could see them.
That was for her men. It was also for me.
She knew I was in the trees. Of course she knew.
The smell hit clean.
Reilly. Wet. She had changed clothes and it had not mattered.
I could smell her cunt on the wind like she had just had her fingers in it, which she had.
The bond lined that up with the hour I had spent not touching myself and my cock jumped so hard I had to lock my knees.
I tasted her. Memory and now, mixed. I wanted my face between her legs at that stone in front of her beta.
I wanted to lick her until she couldn’t stand up and then turn her around and shove in and knot her on her own marker while Huntington decided whether to shoot me.
I bit the scar on the inside of my cheek and stepped out of the trees.
Not all the way to the stone. Onto my side of the dirt. Open hands. No blade in them. My coat hid some of the problem in my pants. Not enough if anyone looked. Huntington looked. His mouth went flat. He looked at her next, which meant he could smell it on both of us and he was doing math.
Reilly’s eyes went to my face, then my throat, then my mouth. She did not look down. She didn’t have to. I watched her pupils and the way she locked her stance like her knees had an opinion.
“Tillson,” Huntington said.
“Huntington.”
“You’re on our line.”
“I’m on my side of it.”
Reilly said, “Owen.”
My name in her mouth did exactly what it had done in the cabin. Heat down the spine. Cock throbbing against cloth. The knot-swell fattened another degree, shameless. I stayed where I was.
“Reilly.”
We stood there with the river on my left and her hall on her right and three years of a rotten bond strung between us like wire.
“You left prints,” she said.
“I wanted them found.”
“That’s a choice.”
“So was the yard.”
Huntington shifted his rifle strap. Reilly didn’t look at him.
“You’re not coming up the hill,” she said.
“I didn’t ask to.”
“Then say why you’re on my river.”
I had the sentence ready. West cut. Hillsford gaps. Paid watch. Coin and meat, no banner, no claim. I opened my mouth and the wind shifted and I got a full hit of her, heat and soap and the wet cloth between her legs, and the sentence fell apart.
I took a breath through my teeth. “Hillsford is done pretending. You’re eating seed. Gareth is going to write you a date if he hasn’t already. The cut is open. I have eight wolves in those trees and more if the job is real. That’s why.”
“A contract,” she said.
“A contract.”
Her gaze dropped, finally, to my belt, then came back up like she was angry at herself for it.
I let her look. I was hard enough that the shape of it was not a secret.
She swallowed. I watched her throat and wanted my mouth on it and wanted my teeth in it and wanted the rite unsaid, which was not on offer.
“You could have sent the warning with a trader,” she said.
“I sent one three years ago. You used it. You’re still short on grain.”
“So you brought your cock to the marker to talk about grain.”
Huntington made a noise. Reilly didn’t take it back. The heat in her smell spiked when she said cock. I smelled fresh wet. My own body answered with a pulse of precome that I felt catch in the cloth.
“I brought a company,” I said. “The rest came with me. You know why. Don’t make me describe it in front of your beta.”
“Describe the contract,” she said. “That’s what we’re here for.”
Melanie’s voice came from the trees, not loud. “Owen.”
A warning. I didn’t turn. “Stay back.”
Reilly’s eyes flicked past my shoulder. “She can come out. I’m not doing this with rifles only on my side.”
“She’s fine where she is.”
“Then start talking terms before I decide this is a provocation and Gareth gets a letter that writes itself.”
I took two steps closer. Not over the line. Close enough that I could have reached her if I was stupid. Close enough that her breath hit my mouth when the wind died. She did not step back. Huntington did, half a pace, rifle still down but not friendly.
She smelled like my cabin dream. She smelled like she had come on her own hand and hated it. I wanted to put my fingers in her pants right here and show her what a real one felt like after three years of that. I did not.
“Paid watch on the west cut,” I said. My voice came out lower than I wanted.
“My wolves, your ground, written terms. We don’t sleep in your village.
We don’t eat your seed. You pay in coin if you have it and meat if you don’t.
I don’t answer to your council. I don’t stand in your hall.
Hillsford comes across, we push them. That’s the job. ”
“And you,” she said.
“What about me.”
“Where do you sleep.”
There it was. Not the cut. The cabin. She knew it when she asked. I saw it land in her face.
“Not in your hall,” I said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I sleep with my company.”
Her mouth tightened. “The holding cabin is storage now.”
“Good.”
“It isn’t good.” She said it quiet, for me, not for Huntington. “If I put you in the village Idony will call it a claim. If I put you on the bench west of town I can sell it as a contract. If I put you in that cabin I am a liar in front of people who already watched me reject you.”
“Then don’t put me in the cabin.”
She looked at my mouth again. I was close enough to see that her nipples were tight under the shirt. Binding, still. I wanted it off. I wanted my thumbs on her while Huntington stood there and decided whether the pack was worth this.
I dropped my voice. “You came down here wet. Don’t ask me where I sleep like that’s the only problem in this dirt.”
“Owen.”
“You said my name in a room I wasn’t in.
I felt it. I came in the trees this morning to the echo of it and it didn’t do anything but make this worse.
You want a contract, I’ll give you a contract.
You want me to pretend I can’t smell your cunt from this stone, I won’t do that.
I did the rite. I walked. I did not go blind. ”
Huntington said, “That’s enough.”
Reilly lifted a hand without looking at him. He stopped. Good beta. Miserable job.
She breathed in through her nose. “Written terms. Not here. Not with you looking at me like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like the floor.”
I almost smiled. I didn’t. “Then bring paper to the cabin or bring paper to the bench. I’m not walking into your hall to watch Idony Vetch smell this and file it.”
“The cabin,” she said.
Two words. Wrong words. Right words. My cock kicked. She saw that, or she felt it. Color in her face that wasn’t cold.
“Reilly,” Huntington said.
“Storage,” she said, to him, to me, to the stone. “It has a table. We sign there. He stays on the bench after. Not the village.”
She had already put me in the cabin. She could call it storage. She could call it a table. She had put me back in the room where I had knotted her and she had done it in front of her beta with her underwear wet.
I should have said the bench only. I should have said no cabin. Melanie was going to take a strip off me for this.
“Fine,” I said.
Reilly nodded once. Her hands were still out where people could see them. They were not steady now.
“You don’t touch me in that room,” she said.
“You put me in that room.”
“I mean it.”
“Then don’t stand this close to me at the marker and say cabin.”
We were too close. I could have had my tongue in her mouth in one move. She looked at it like she was thinking the same move from the other side. The rifles behind her were a fact. My company in the trees was a fact. The rite was a fact. None of that was in charge of my dick.
I stepped back first. One pace. Two. The bond yanked like I had taken something off a hook. She locked her knees again.
“Sunset,” she said. “I bring paper. Marshall comes in with me. Your second can stand at the door. We write the watch and the pay and you keep your hands on the table.”
“Sunset,” I said.
She turned before I could say her name again. Huntington stayed facing me until she was on the path, then followed. The rifles went with them. I stood on my side of the marker until I could not smell her heat as a separate thing from the river.
Melanie came out of the trees. She looked at my pants, then at my face.
“The cabin,” she said.
“There’s a table.”
“Owen.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. You’re going to sit in the room where she rejected you with a hard-on and a pen and she is going to sign a watch contract like that fixes it.”
“It pays.”
“It pays.” She laughed once, no humor. “I’m at the door. If you put your hands on her in front of Huntington I am not starting a war with Landers Ridge for your knot.”
I walked back into the trees. I made it to my horse. I did not mount. I put my forehead on the saddle and opened my belt because I was going to be useless until sunset if I didn’t.
Melanie said, “For fuck’s sake,” and turned her back.
I dragged my cock out. It was wet to the shaft, dark, the knot-swell thick enough that my fingers didn’t meet around the base.
I spat on my palm and stroked hard and fast and thought about her at the stone saying cabin.
I thought about putting her on that storage table and pulling her pants to her boots and licking her until she soaked the paper.
I thought about fucking her from behind with my hand on her mouth so Huntington wouldn’t hear, knotting her anyway, coming in her while she tried to write terms. I came in four, five pulls, thick, over my fist and into the dirt under the horse, a grunt I could not keep behind my teeth.
It left me shaking and still half-hard and no smarter.
I wiped my hand on dry needles. I buttoned up. I turned around. Melanie was still facing the river.
“Sunset,” I said.
“I heard her.” She glanced back, jaw tight. “Keep your hands on the table, Owen. I meant it. You go in there and finish what you just started and we are not a company anymore. We’re a problem she can hand to Hillsford with a ribbon on it.”
I looked at the path Reilly had taken. I could still feel her going up it, wet, angry, trying to turn me into ink.
I had crossed the marker on purpose.
I had not walked to her hall.
I was going to sit in that cabin at sunset and sign a contract with a woman whose cunt I could still smell on the wind, and I was going to put my hands on the table like that was a thing I could actually do.