Chapter 8
Owen
She put the paper on the same table I had held her open on.
I already knew she would. I had sat in the chair before she came down and looked at the wood and found the place where her hand had slammed when she came on my mouth.
The grain was still the grain. Storage crates along the wall did not change that.
Melanie in the door did not change that.
Huntington behind her with a face like a closed knife did not change that.
Reilly sat across from me and her knee hit mine under the table and she pulled it back.
I felt the contact in my cock. I had come in the dirt after the marker and it had not taken the swell down for long.
By sunset I was hard again, wet at the head, the base thick against my thigh.
I kept my hands on the chair until she told me to sit, then I put them on the table because she had made that a rule and because if I put them in my lap I was going to grip myself in front of her beta.
She talked terms. West cut. Coin. Meat. No banner.
I said the price was low because it was.
I should have doubled it. I should have made it ugly enough that no one could call this crawling.
I let the cabin be the rest of the price instead.
I told her to put the quartering on the page.
She wrote it. Her handwriting went to hell on the line about no claim.
I signed anyway.
Owen Tillson, on a watch contract, in the room where I had knotted the woman signing under me. I watched her write Reilly Landers, acting Luna, and I wanted to drag the paper onto the floor and put her on it.
Huntington witnessed. Melanie would not come off the door.
Reilly stood up and the smell that came off her when the air hit her pants made my mouth fill.
She was soaked. She had been soaked at the marker.
She had gotten herself off after, I could still feel the echo, and it had not held.
I told her to leave before I put a hand under the table.
I meant it. Huntington got her out. The door closed.
I sat in the chair until their steps died on the path.
Then I stood up and my cock dragged against my pants so hard I had to catch the table. Melanie opened the door two inches.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m not coming in. I’m telling you the company is on the bench west like we said. I’m on first circuit. If you leave this cabin before morning I will put you down myself.”
“I’m not leaving.”
She looked at the way I was standing. “Handle it and sleep. Do not walk up that hill.”
She shut the door.
I dropped the bar. I stood in the lamp with my belt still fastened and looked at the floor.
I knew the exact boards.
Third from the stove, the one with the dark knot in the wood.
Her shoulder had been there. Her hair had been there.
I had come in her there with my knot locked and my teeth in my own cheek.
I went down on my haunches and put my hand on that board like a fool and left it there until the heat in my palm felt like a cheap trick.
Then I opened my belt.
My cock came out already wet, dark at the head, a string of precome from the slit to the cloth.
The knot-swell was enough that I could get my hand around it and feel that I needed more than a hand.
I spat. I stroked from the swell up and twisted at the top the way her fist had in this room.
My hips punched air. I looked at the table while I did it.
I looked at the bench. I looked at the door she had walked out of with my name on a contract and her cunt dripping.
I would have had her in one step. She had stood close enough. Huntington would have had to shoot me or watch. I had not taken the step. That was going to keep me company all night.
I got on my knees on the boards because standing was making my legs shake.
I fucked my fist and thought about putting her face-down on the table with the contract under her tits and shoving into her from behind.
Tight. Wet. The wet sound she made last time.
My knot slapping her until she said please and then pushing it in anyway.
I thought about her rule. No touch. I thought about breaking it with two fingers first, just to check, the way I had told her I would, sliding up through that soaked cloth and into her while she tried to talk about meat.
I came hard onto the floor. Onto those boards. Thick stripes on the dark knot in the wood. I kept stroking through it until it hurt and another pulse spilled out of me, thinner, and I had to put my other hand on the table leg to stay up.
It did not go down.
I sat on my ass on the floor with my pants open and my cock still heavy against my wrist and laughed once at the lamp. Three years. A rite. A walk I had been so proud of. And I was on the same floor spending myself on the same boards because she had written holding cabin in a clean line.
I wiped the wood with my shirt tail. That was worse. Now the shirt smelled like come in a room that already smelled like her. I threw it at the bench and sat there bare-chested until the sweat dried.
The bond was not quiet.
She was up the hill. Door locked. I felt her sit on a bed.
I felt the ugly little spike of her hand in her clothes.
I felt her come short and mean with my name in her mouth.
My cock lifted in my lap like it had been invited.
I put my palm over it, not stroking, just pressure, and breathed until the echo passed.
“Fuck you,” I said, to her, to me, to the room.
No one answered.
I got up and checked the window. Trees. Path empty.
Melanie would be on the circuit. Joss would have the eight on the west bench with a fire low enough not to advertise a company to Hillsford.
I should have been there. I was here because I had asked to be here and because she had said yes with a pen.
I lay on the bench. It was too short. I put my arm over my eyes and my other hand on my stomach and tried to sleep.
My cock lay fat on my hip. Every time I started to drift I was back in the night with her.
Not the yard. I could not make the yard come first. It was always the table, her thighs in my hands, my tongue on her clit, two fingers turned up inside her while she said my name like she didn’t want to.
Then the floor. Then the knot catching. Then her legs locking. Then the shove.
I gave up on the bench.
I stood at the table again and opened the contract copy she had left on my side like I might forget the terms by morning. I read my own name. I read hers. I read no claim, no bite, no rite reversal implied by quartering. I pressed my thumb down on that line until the ink smeared.
Implied.
I wanted to write a different line under it. I wanted to write that I could still taste her. I wanted to write that if she came down here with another report tonight I was going to put her on this table and lick her until the paper was unreadable. I didn’t write it. I set the pen down.
Sleep still wouldn’t come. I took my cock in my hand a second time because it was that or walk the path.
I went slower. Dry at first, then spit, then the slick of what was still on my skin.
I thought about her mouth. The second time in this room, after the knot, when she had pushed me on my back and sucked me clean and made me come again with my hand in her hair.
I thought about doing that to her on the bench with the door barred, her knees over my shoulders, my nose in her, getting her off until she forgot she had a hall.
I came on my stomach this time, less, enough to make a mess I had to wipe with the same shirt.
Afterward I was raw and still not empty. The bond sat in my gut like a hook.
A soft knock at the door.
I had my pants up before I opened it a crack. Melanie. Only Melanie.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Huntington sent a runner to the bench. Meat at dawn. Don’t go to the hall for it.” She looked past me into the cabin, then at my chest, then at the shirt on the floor. “Christ, Owen.”
“Say what you came to say.”
“Hillsford lights on the far ridge. Not crossing. Counting. If they smelled you at the marker they smelled her too. You need to be on the cut at first light looking like a hired watch, not like a man who just fucked a floor.”
“I didn’t touch her.”
“I know you didn’t touch her. The whole ridge knows you didn’t touch her. That is not the same as clean.” She held my eyes. “If she comes down tonight, you do not open this door.”
“If Hillsford comes down tonight I open it.”
“Hillsford isn’t who I’m talking about.”
I shut the door on her. I barred it. I sat on the bench and put my boots back on because being barefoot on these boards was making me stupid.
I did not sleep in any way that counted.
I dozed and came up out of it with my hips pushing the air and a groan in my throat and the smell of her so strong I looked at the door expecting her.
The door was shut. She was still in her rooms. The bond was just cruel.
I got up and pissed out the side window like an animal because I was not walking to the privy past Melanie with a hard-on again.
I washed my hands in the basin someone had left on a crate.
Cold water. I put some on the back of my neck.
I put some on my cock, which was a bad idea.
The cold made me jump and then the blood came back worse.
I stood over the basin with my pants open and my jaw locked and I did not start a third time. I buttoned up. I sat on the bench with my elbows on my knees and waited for the gray.
When it came I read the contract again. Paid watch. Closed door. No claim. I put my hand on the floorboards one more time, on the exact place, and I hated that I knew it without looking.
Then I took my coat and I went out to be a hired watch on a cut that was actually in trouble, with her smell still in the cabin behind me and my own spend wiped into the wood like a mark no rite had done anything about.
Melanie was waiting on the path with two of the eight.
She sniffed once and shook her head. “You’re going to the cut. You’re going to look at tracks. You are not going to look at that hall.”
“I signed a job.”
“You signed a job in a room you should have burned.” She started walking.
“Keep your hands on the work, Owen. She put you in there because she wanted you in there. That does not mean she will choose you when Gareth Hills puts a date on the table. I need you to remember the yard when you remember the floor.”
I remembered both.
I followed her west with my body still half in that cabin and the bond dragging back toward the ridge, toward a locked door and a woman who had told me not to touch her in a room she had given me to sleep in.
I did not look at the hall.
I wanted to. I put my teeth in the old scar on the inside of my cheek and I went to the cut like the contract was the only thing I had come for.