Chapter 15
Reilly
Edward was at the west bench with a wrapped loaf and questions on his face.
I found out from a runner who thought he was being useful.
The boy caught me in the yard and said the young Landers was sitting at the company fire with bread.
I went down the cut path with my coat closed and the river still in my body from the night before.
I was sore. I was already wet from walking toward Owen, which I hated.
I came into the fire smell and saw my brother on a log across from Owen Tillson like that was a thing we did now.
Owen was not charming him. Cup in his hand. Eyes on Edward. Answering only what was safe. I heard the tail of it.
“—eight wolves, sometimes more. We don’t fly a banner. That’s the job.”
Edward saw me and stood up too fast. The bread sat on the log. Melanie Vernon was at the far end of the bench with a look that said she had already decided this was my problem. Joss found a pot to scrape.
“Home,” I said.
“I brought food.”
“They get meat at dawn from a runner. They don’t get you.”
Owen didn’t stand. He looked at me, then at Edward, then at the fire. He had the decency not to smile. I could smell myself on him from the river even after a wash. Edward could not name that smell. Melanie could.
Edward picked up the loaf and held it like proof. “The pack is already talking. They talk about the cabin. They talk about the river. They talk about you going down the path at night. Sitting in the kitchen pretending I don’t hear it isn’t protection.”
The bench went quiet. A piece of wood popped.
“Walk,” I said.
Edward walked. I went with him until the company was behind us and the hall was not yet in front. Owen stayed by the fire. The bond tugged anyway, low in my belly, heat that had nothing to do with my brother.
“You don’t go to that bench,” I said.
“I’m twenty.”
“You’re my brother and you are the easiest thing Hillsford could take off a road. You don’t sit with a Tillson company and hand them bread like we’re family.”
Edward’s mouth shook once and then steadied. “Is he the reason you don’t sleep.”
“Edward.”
“I’m asking because Pell used the word shame in the lower hall this morning. Idony shut him down. Marshall looks at you like he’s waiting for a body. I can be quiet in the kitchen or I can know what I’m being quiet about.”
I could have lied. I had already lied in council. It had gone through me like a hand.
“Yes,” I said. “He is part of it. The rite still stands. The contract still stands. That is all you carry. You don’t buy it with bread and you don’t test it at their fire.”
He searched my face. “Are you going to send him away again.”
“If the pack needs it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting on this path.” I took the loaf out of his hands. It was still warm. Someone in the kitchen had given it to him because he asked. “Go home. If I see you on the west bench again I will put a watch on you and you will hate me for it.”
“The pack is talking whether I’m at that fire or not.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating me like I can’t smell what’s on you when you come through the side door.”
I didn’t hit him. He was right. I pointed at the hall. He went, back stiff, ears red. I stood on the path with a loaf and the bond pulling toward a fire I was not going to walk back into with bread in my hands.
Melanie met me halfway, not close enough to have heard every word, close enough.
“Keep the boy off my fire,” she said.
“I am.”
“Keep yourself off my lead’s cabin if you want this company to look like a watch when Hillsford comes.” No heat in it. Worse. “I can smell you on his sheets. So can Joss. So can anyone with a nose and a grudge. Your brother just sat in it.”
“He won’t sit in it again.”
“See that he doesn’t.”
I took the loaf to the kitchen and put it on the table like it had never left.
I sat council for an hour. Pell said confusion on the cut when he meant whore.
He did not use either of the real words.
He talked about morale and the lower houses and a contract that had been arithmetic until it started walking around in the dark.
Idony cut him off with levy numbers. Marshall did not look at me.
Edward stood at the wall and kept his mouth shut and looked at me like the path talk was still happening.
I lasted until night.
I told myself I would not go down. I sat on my bed with my boots on.
I took them off. I put them on again. The bond did not care about Edward or Pell.
It sat between my legs and pointed at a barred door under the ridge.
I had come on Owen’s fingers in a wash and on his cock in a cabin and in a river and it had not made this quieter.
Slower, I thought, as if speed had been the problem.
I went to the cabin.
No map. No report. One knock. He opened like he had been standing behind the door. I stepped in. He barred it. The lamp was low. The bench still smelled like us.
“Edward doesn’t come back there,” I said.
“I didn’t invite him.”
“You answered him.”
“He asked what the job was. I told him the job.” Owen’s voice was flat. “I didn’t tell him about the river. I didn’t tell him about this room.”
“The pack is telling him without you.”
“Then keep him off the bench. I won’t feed him answers he can take to Pell.”
We stood with that. I put my hands on his belt because I had not walked down in the dark to fight about bread.
He stopped me.
“Slow,” he said.
I almost laughed. “Since when.”
“Since you shook on my floor and ran. Since the water. Since your brother sat on my log with a loaf.” He took my coat off and hung it on the chair like that mattered.
He took my shirt up and dropped it. He untied the binding and pulled it off and he didn’t grab.
He looked at my breasts in the lamp. Then he bent and put his mouth on the left one and sucked, unhurried, and held the right in his hand, thumb rubbing the nipple until it hurt in the good way.
I grabbed his hair. He switched sides and did the same, slow, teeth a little, then tongue, and I was dripping down my own thigh before he touched me below the belt.
He went to his knees.
He opened my pants and worked them down with the underwear. Boots next. I held the table so I would not fall. He put my back against the edge and opened my thighs with his hands and looked at me. Wet. Swollen. He knew. He put his mouth on me anyway like he needed it confirmed with his tongue.
Not the frantic lick from the first night in this room.
Slow. He dragged a flat tongue up through the slick from my entrance to my clit and did it again.
Then the point of his tongue on the clit, small circles, then a pause that made my hips chase his mouth.
He held my thighs open so I could not close him out.
Two fingers slid into me, easy, turned up, found the spot he could find in the dark now, and rubbed in time with his mouth.
I made a sound I tried to kill. He hummed against my clit and did not speed up.
“Owen.”
He didn’t answer with words. He sucked. Soft, then firmer.
His fingers pumped, not fast, a steady curl.
I came the first time with my hand knotted in his hair and one heel on his back, a hard clench on his fingers, slick on his chin.
He licked me through it. He did not stop.
I tried to close my knees. His shoulders kept them open.
The second build was slower and worse. Too much and not enough.
He eased off when I twitched away and waited until I pulled his head back in myself, which I did, and I hated that I did it.
He took me up again with the same patience.
Sucking. Fingers. The wet sound of it in the quiet cabin.
I came the second time crying.
Not pretty. Salt in the corners of my eyes, stomach jerking, a noise I stuffed behind my teeth. My cunt squeezed his fingers in pulls I could not stop. He kept his mouth on me until I was shaking and then he pulled his fingers out and licked them like he had on no one else’s watch.
He lifted his head. Chin shining. Eyes on me.
“I didn’t say stop because I wanted you to stop,” I said.
“I know.”
He stood, picked me up, and put me on the bench.
He went to his knees again, pulled my hips to the edge, put my legs over his shoulders, and put his mouth back on me.
I was too sensitive. I swore at him and grabbed his hair and did not pull him off.
He licked softer. Then he pushed his tongue inside me and used his nose on my clit and his hands held my ass so I could not get away from it.
I cried again, messy, one arm over my eyes, mouth open.
The third one broke something the river had left standing.
No fight. No cold water. Just his mouth and the lamp and a rule I could still say if I had to speak.
When he stood I was wrecked. I pulled him down by the shirt and opened his pants with clumsy hands. He was hard, wet at the head, the swell already obvious. I stroked him once and he hissed through his teeth.
“In,” I said.
He laid me back on the bench and pushed into me slow. I was so wet it was easy and so swollen it still made me gasp. He buried himself to the root and stopped and breathed against my neck. His mouth opened on my skin. I felt teeth want to happen. He closed his mouth and didn’t bite.
He fucked me slow. Deep. The bench creaked.
I wrapped my legs around him and took it.
Every time the knot started to catch on the pull-back I said don’t and he shortened the stroke until the swell only rubbed instead of locking.
His forehead was on mine. His mouth brushed the corner of my mouth once.
I turned into his throat so it would not become a kiss we had not earned back.
I came on his cock with my heels in his back, a long grind, tears still wet on my temples from his mouth. He shook. I felt him swell for real.
“Out.”
He pulled out. I pushed him onto his back on the bench, straddled his thighs, and took him in my fist, then in my mouth.
I locked my hand around the base so the knot stayed out of my throat and I sucked the rest until he came on my tongue, groaning like it hurt, hips fighting not to thrust. I swallowed.
I crawled up his chest because my legs were finished and I put my head on him and I did not mean to sleep.
I slept.
Two hours. His arm around my back. His heart under my ear. His cock soft against my hip. The bond went quiet in a way it had not been quiet since the yard. I woke in the thin dark before gray with drool on his skin and my thigh thrown over him and the rule sitting on the room like a person.
No night.
I sat up. He woke with me.
“Stay,” he said. Not a command. A thing he wanted.
“I can’t.”
He watched me dress. Binding crooked. Shirt. Pants. Boots. His taste in my mouth. My face stiff from salt. I could still feel his tongue when I closed my thighs.
“Edward was right about the talking,” he said.
“I know.”
“Joss wants to tell Ford on your ground. I said no.”
I paused with my hand on the bar. “Good.”
“For now. He won’t drop it.”
“Neither will Pell.” I unbarred the door. Cold. He was still on the bench, bare chest, mouth wet from me, eyes awake. “No bite. No knot. I broke the night by two hours.”
“I noticed.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
I left before dawn. The path was empty. Melanie was not at the turn, which meant she had been and gone and chosen not to put her body in my way.
The hall was dark. I used the side door.
I washed my face and not my mouth. I lay down in my own bed and smelled him on my skin and felt the two hours like a theft I would have to pay for when the lamps went on.
Edward was in the kitchen at first light. He looked at me. He looked at the wet in my hair from the basin. He did not ask if I had gone to the bench.
“I stayed off it,” he said.
“Keep staying off it.”
“The pack is still talking.”
“I know.” I poured water. My hands were not steady. My thighs were still loose from his mouth. “Talk doesn’t get you a seat at that fire.”
Marshall came in, took one breath of me, and shut his eyes for a second.
“Two hours,” he said. Not a question. He could smell how long I had been in that room. “Hillsford’s letter will be here today or tomorrow. If you could not stay out of his cabin after the river, I am putting a man on the path tonight.”
“Put him on the cut.”
“I will put him where you keep going.”
I ate grain I did not want. I felt Owen wake fully in the cabin and find the bench cold. I felt him put his face on the place I had lain. I stood up before I went back down to let him put his mouth on me again.
Edward watched me go into the hall.
Silence was not protection. He had that right.
I still sent him home. I still left the cabin before the sun. I still had Owen’s mouth on me when Idony put a sealed Hillsford letter on the table and looked at my throat like she already knew what the week was going to cost.