CHAPTER 29 #2
I have had Beck at my mouth, at my jaw, at my ribcage, between my thighs at his own kitchen table; I have not had him at the bone of my ankle. The kiss is small and warm. The thumb at my clit moves slow.
Three points of contact. Tate inside me. Levi at my tongue. Beck at my ankle and at my clit.
I move on Tate.
The rain on the canvas above four bodies.
I count pulse beats — at Tate's wrist at my hip, at Levi's wrist at my temple, at Beck's wrist at my clit. Three at each. I have never counted at three men at once. The pulses are not in time with each other; they are in time with my own. My own pulse is the count, and theirs are the answer.
The first orgasm comes quick.
Tate strokes up once, slow, to the hilt and back to the head and to the hilt again — easy, I feel him think it in his hand — and Beck's thumb at my clit moves and Levi's cock is at my tongue, and I feel the small bright climb of it and I come around Tate's first deep stroke with my hand at the back of Levi's neck and my heel against Beck's cheekbone.
I cannot cry out — Levi is in my mouth — but my throat makes the sound I make when I come, and Levi feels it at the head of him, and he stays still for the small bright second.
Beck says, low, "There you are, sweetheart."
Levi pulls back from my mouth one half-inch so I can breathe. He says, soft, "Love. Look at me. " I look at him. He goes back to my tongue.
I move on Tate again.
Tate goes slower under me; he reads me. Beck has lifted his mouth from my ankle to the inside of my knee — the second new place.
His thumb is at my clit still, his other hand at the back of my calf.
Beck is learning me at the parts of my body he has not yet known by mouth.
I think — slow, with Tate inside me and Levi at my tongue and Beck at the inside of my knee — my men are learning me again tonight.
The second orgasm is slower.
It builds for a count I lose. Tate's hand spreads at my belly low — the belly Tate did not let himself want for two and a half years.
He moves under me with a long deep stroke.
Beck's mouth has come up from the inside of my knee to the inside of my thigh, his thumb still at my clit, the bone of his jaw against my thigh.
The cap of his sandy-brown hair catches the milk-white light.
Levi is steady at my tongue. I come long this time, around Tate. The climb is long and the unwind is long, and I lose Tate's name in my throat and I lose Levi's and Beck's, and Levi pulls back from my mouth a second time so I can sound, and I do.
Tate says, into my hair, "Darlin'."
Beck says, "Sweetheart."
Levi says, soft, "Love."
The rain on the canvas.
I am at the long climb again with no rest between.
Tate is moving slow under me; Beck has gone from my inner thigh to my hip with his mouth, his thumb at my clit still steady, the heel of his other hand at the back of my calf where the muscle lifts; Levi has come down to my ear from my mouth, his right hand spread wide at the side of my throat — palm only, the open warm palm of a man who has decided he will never put weight on a woman's windpipe — his thumb at my pulse there in counting.
I count back at him. Three beats. Three.
I feel them say my name.
Tate at my hair at the nape under the bone pin: "Willa."
Beck at my hip with his mouth: "Willa."
Levi at my ear with his throat-palm: "Willa."
Three voices at almost the same beat. The rhythm is the rhythm of the rain on the canvas above us.
The third orgasm comes up under all three names and under three pulses and under the soft drum of the rain, and I am at the long-held place — the place that is the place — and I open my mouth and I say what I have not said all summer and what I have said once before in this body and what comes now of itself, the second time only:
"Christ — fuck — yes — all of you — all of mine."
I come.
I come for the long count. I hold the long count.
The cunt around Tate is tight and loose and tight again at my own pulse.
Beck's thumb at my clit holds. Levi's palm at my throat holds.
Tate's belly under me holds. I am the third climb's long unwind and the rain is steady on the canvas and the milk-white pooled light is at the canvas's underside and the basin is green at the edges and the four of us are under one roof.
Levi finishes first.
He has been at my mouth and at my ear the long ride.
He has not been inside me tonight. He pulls his cock back from where his stroke had returned to my open palm at my own collarbone, and he holds himself in his own freckled fist, and he finishes on my throat at the soft hollow above my clavicle and on the rise of my collarbone.
He says, low, into my ear and into my hair under the bone pin —
"Love. Love. Christ's teeth. All of mine. Mine."
He kisses my temple. He sits back on his heels at my shoulder.
Beck finishes second.
He has come up from my hip with his mouth to my belly, to the low curve where Tate's hand is, and his thumb has been at my clit through the third orgasm, and he has held himself back through three of mine.
He kneels at my hip — he is no longer at my ankle, he is no longer at my inner knee, he is at my hip, his scarred left palm spread across the curve of bone there — and he holds himself in his other fist, and he finishes on the inside of my thigh with his face against my hipbone. He says, low —
"Sweetheart. Christ Almighty. Mine."
He kisses the hipbone. He kisses the curve like a quarter-moon at my lower back where the wagon-wheel hub bruised me at nineteen — the curve he has known four months — and the kiss is the kiss of a man who has decided he will keep it.
Tate finishes last.
He has held longest. He has been inside me through all three. He moves once more — slow, deep — and then his breath stops for one beat and his hand spreads wider at my belly, and he comes inside my cunt with a low slow groan I feel up under my ribs, and he says —
"Darlin'. Mo chridhe. Willa. Mine."
His face is at the back of my neck, the bone pin under his jaw a half-inch from his mouth. He stays inside me.
The three of them have said mine — Levi first, Beck second, Tate last — and the saying has the rhythm of the rain on the canvas above, the small irregular beat the rain has been making for an hour. The word is not a chant. The word is a count.
I think, slow, with my eyes on the milk-white pooled light of the canvas's underside —
I am theirs and they are mine.
We lie.
The Hudson Bay blanket and the indigo-and-cream quilt are warm under me.
Beck slides up to my right. Levi slides down to my left.
Tate stays at my back with his arm across my hip.
His hand is at my belly low; Beck's hand is on Tate's hand; Levi's hand is on Beck's hand on my belly low; my hand is the last hand on top of all three.
Four hands on the same belly under the canvas in the rain.
The rain holds on the canvas above four bodies.
I lie with my eyes on the milk-white pooled light. The lantern at the corner of the hollow is low. Ardent is grazing twenty yards off, a single horse-shape in the dim, the bone-and-rawhide charm at his bridle catching no light.
I turn my face to Beck.
"Beck. I am yours."
He looks at me. His hazel-green eye holds mine. He says — and the saying is a thing I have waited four months and one week to hear in plain words from this mouth —
"I am yours, Willa."
I turn my face the other way to Levi.
"Levi. I am yours."
I turn my head a half-inch and I can feel Tate's mouth at the bone pin in my braid at the back of my neck.
"Tate. I am yours."
He says, low, at my hair under the pin, "I am yours, darlin'."
He has said it once before — at the rag-rug, in front of the cold stove, alone, the morning the rain began three weeks ago. He says it now with the others. The three voices have answered me each in turn.
Beck says, soft, "Willa."
Levi says, soft, "Willa."
Tate says, soft, "Willa."
The four-way bond is fully spoken at last.
I think — with the rain still on the canvas and four hands on my belly and the bone pin in my hair —
we have signed for each other in writing in June; the country signed for us in the drought and the fire; we have signed for each other tonight in the rain.
The rain holds on the canvas above four bodies — the soft long drum that is the basin's answer to the asking it has been doing all summer, the drum that is the milk-white light at the canvas's underside, the drum that is the four pulses I felt at once at the climb and feel now slowed under my fingers at all three wrists at my belly.
I press my thumb to the cleft of my eyebrows once — to hold the size of what has just been spoken under the roof of an oiled freight canvas in October. I keep my thumb there a slow count. I take it down.
The fire is low. The lantern is low.
Beck props on one elbow. The starburst-scar at his third rib catches the last small gold of the fire. He looks at me, at Tate behind me, at Levi at my left. He speaks low into the long quiet under the canvas.
"Tomorrow morning we go down to Larkspur Bend and we set the date."
I say, slow, "October twelfth."
Tate says, "Aye."
Levi says, "Aye."
Beck says, "Aye."
The four of us under the canvas. The rain on the canvas. The bone pin in my hair. The gold band on my left fourth finger. The date set for the second wedding seven days out.
The rain holds.