Chapter 12
Owen
I walked the village because a man taking pay should know what the pay was standing in front of.
Melanie didn’t like it. Huntington liked it less.
Reilly wasn’t in the yard. I went anyway, after the patrol, with blood washed off my hands and her still on my fingers if I was honest. The tree in the wash had not taken anything down.
It had made it worse. I had her slick dried in the lines of my knuckles and a cock that had been half-fat since I pulled my hand out of her pants.
Landers Ridge in daylight was thinner than the hall admitted.
Kids too quiet. Not scared-quiet. Hungry-quiet. A pot on a stoop with more water than meat. Wire reused on a chicken run. A boy mending a boot with twine. They looked at me and looked away. Rogue. Company. Tillson, if they had the nose for it. I did not blame them.
The widow was in the lower houses.
I did not know her name. She knew my face.
Tillson Ford had not been large. She had a sister there, or a husband, or she had only been on the road the week of the fire.
She smelled the old smoke on me the way people did if they had stood close to that kind of burning.
She looked at my mouth. She shut the door.
I stood in the path with the door in my face and understood the yard better than I had wanted to.
Reilly had said the rite with my come in her because this was what she was holding. Not a banner. This. Quiet kids and a closed door and Hillsford on the ridge waiting for a reason. I got it. I wanted her worse for getting it. That was the part that would not do the decent thing.
I walked back out without stopping at the hall.
The west bench had a fire. Joss glanced at my face and did not ask. Melanie did.
“You went up there.”
“I needed to see it.”
“You needed to smell her door.” She poked the fire. “Huntington said if you walk the village again without a runner he’s calling it a claim on his dirt.”
“It isn’t a claim.”
“Tell that to the widow who shut you out. Tell it to your dick. Then go to the cabin if you’re going to be useless here.”
I went to the cabin.
I barred the door. I sat at the table with a map of the cut I did not need to look at.
I could still feel Reilly up the hill. Ribs hurting.
Council in her mouth. My fingers in her memory.
I had my belt open before I decided to, palm on my cock over the cloth, not even taking it out, just pressure.
I stopped. If I came now I was going to come again the second she got within ten feet of this room.
I told myself she would not come.
She came after dark with a map in her hand.
One knock. I knew the weight. I opened the door and she stood there in a coat with paper like paper was going to save either of us. No Huntington. No Melanie. The path behind her empty.
“The west posts,” she said. “I want them marked against the clasp line.”
“You have a hall for that.”
“Are you going to let me in.”
I let her in. I barred the door. She set the map on the table and did not look at it. The room took her smell and put it on every surface I had already wrecked. Wet. She was wet from the walk down. I was hard before the bar settled.
“This is a mistake,” she said.
“Yes.”
She went for my belt at the same time I went for hers.
Standing, first. I backed her into the door she had just come through and got her pants open and my hand in, two fingers straight into her, no patience.
She was soaked. She made a sound against my throat and got my cock out and wrapped her fist around it and stroked once, tight, smearing the wet at the head down the shaft.
I fucked her with my fingers and she pumped me with her hand and we stood there like that, clothes still on, her coat half off one shoulder, my mouth on her neck not her mouth.
I pulled my fingers out and yanked her pants down to her boots. She stepped on the heels and kicked free of one boot and then the other, clumsy, angry. I lifted her. Her back hit the door. She got a leg around me and I dragged the head of my cock through her wet and shoved in.
Hot. Tight. She clenched on the first stroke and I had to stop buried in her or I was going to knot in a stand-up fuck against a door.
Her nails went through my shirt. I held her ass and thrust. The door thudded.
She put her own hand over her mouth. I took it off and put mine there instead, same as the tree, and drove up into her until her eyes went unfocused.
I didn’t last long like that. Too tight. Too long since the floor. I pulled out and set her on her feet before the swell at the base could catch. She made an angry noise at the empty and I turned her around and bent her over the table.
The map went under her tits. I shoved back into her from behind and the sound of it was filthy and loud.
I held her hip and her shoulder and fucked her through the paper.
She pushed back to take it. I reached around and found her clit and rubbed in time with my hips.
She came on my cock with the map wrinkling under her, a hard squeeze that almost pulled the knot in against my will.
I kept her coming with my fingers until she slapped the table and then I pulled out again because I was swelling for real.
“Floor,” she said.
We went down beside the bench. I got her shirt up and the binding down and put my mouth on her breast, sucked a nipple until she grabbed my hair, and then I was between her legs again, pushing in to the root.
Her knees came up. I got a hand under her ass and drove.
The boards knocked. Same boards. I felt it in my teeth.
The knot started to catch.
Fat, dragging on her on every stroke, ready to lock. She felt it. Her eyes opened.
“Don’t,” she said.
I pulled out.
It hurt. My cock slapped against her stomach, shining, the swell thick and obvious, and I came like that, shaking, pumping onto her belly and the underside of her tits in thick stripes while she watched.
I stroked myself through it because I could not stop the hips.
Come on her skin. On the boards. On my knuckles.
I groaned into her shoulder and did not bite.
She reached down while I was still twitching and rubbed my spend into her clit with two fingers, using me, and came again with my cock still jerking against her wrist. I felt that one go through her and into the bond and I almost shoved back in and knotted her anyway.
I didn’t.
We lay there with my forehead on the floor next to her head and her hand sticky between us.
“No bite,” she said, after she could talk. “No knot. You don’t stay in me like that. You don’t stay the night.”
“You came to the cabin.”
“I know where I came.” She stared at the ceiling. “Rule one. Say it back.”
“No bite. No knot. No night.”
She nodded once. Her mouth was close to mine. We still had not really kissed. I licked the place on her neck I had had my teeth off of and she shivered and then she sat up.
Come on her stomach. Map torn on the table. Her pants inside out on the floor. She looked like the night I had already lost. She started putting clothes on with the same face she had used then.
I sat on the boards and watched her. My cock was still heavy, not finished with the idea of her. I did not touch it. I did not ask her to stay. The rule had been her mouth and I had already broken enough for one door.
“The posts,” she said, and then she laughed once, ugly, because the map was a smear of wrinkles and a bootprint. “I’ll mark them in the hall.”
“Reilly.”
“Don’t.”
“The village looks like I thought it would. I walked it. I get why you said it in the yard.”
She paused with her belt in her hands. “And.”
“And I still just fucked you on the same floor. Getting it doesn’t make me decent.”
“I didn’t come down here for decent.” She fastened the belt. The binding was crooked under her shirt. She left it. “Meat at dawn. You stay off the village without a runner. Huntington meant that.”
“Did he send you with the map.”
“No.”
Good. I wanted that to be hers.
She went to the door. I stood up, pants still open, and put the bar up for her. She looked at my cock once, wet, marked with both of us, and then at my face.
“If I knock again it’s a report,” she said.
“If you knock again I’m going to open it.”
She went out. I barred the door behind her. I listened to her take the path. I could feel her walking with my come under her shirt, smeared on her stomach, and the bond carried that like a filthy trophy.
I sat down on the bench.
I understood the rite.
I also had her on my cock in my head, standing and table and floor, and the way she had said don’t when the knot caught, and the way I had pulled out and spent on her instead of in her. My hands were shaking. I wiped them on the ruined map.
Melanie would smell this from the turn. Huntington would smell it on her when she hit the yard. I did not care enough. That was the problem.
I lay on the bench in the dark and did not sleep. I could feel her up the hill washing me off her stomach, or not washing, I couldn’t tell, and I could feel the rule sitting in the room like a third body.
No bite. No knot. No night.
I said it out loud once so I would hear it in my own voice.
Then I put my hand on the boards beside the bench, on the place I knew, and I left it there until the heat in the wood felt like nothing but wood.
It didn’t.
I got up at some point and cleaned the table because leaving the map like that was a note for anyone who opened the door. I burned the paper in the stove. I washed my cock in the basin with my jaw locked. I did not come again. I was empty in the way that wasn’t empty.
At gray I put on the spare shirt and unbarred the door. The path was cold. I went to the cut like a man who had been paid to watch it.
Melanie took one breath of me and closed her eyes.
“She came to the cabin,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you opened it.”
“Yes.”
“You are going to get this pack hung next to yours.” She started walking. “Hillsford is going to miss those scouts today. You need to be a watch. Not a hole she can come down a path into.”
I was both.
I walked the cut with her smell still in the skin under my shirt and the rule in my mouth and the village in my head, quiet kids and a shut door, and I wanted Reilly Landers in a way that understood every reason she had said the rite and did not care enough to stay off her anyway.