We went outside this morning, just for an hour, walking the tree line where the last of the May snow still clung to the shadowed roots of the lodgepole pines.
The air had been cold and bright and so clean it almost hurt, and he'd walked behind me with his hands in his pockets, pointing out the hawk circling above the eastern ridge, the tracks of something small and fast cutting through the mud.
I'd found three perfect pinecones and put them in my pocket like treasure. He'd watched me do it without a word, that almost-smile ghosting the corner of his mouth. Neither of us mentions the outside world. Neither of us mentions time. As if naming either might make the sand run faster.
It's impossible to think we aren't destined. It isn't just that we both love silence together, or that he loves spicy food—he scarfed down the beef noodles I made yesterday and then had seconds.
It isn't just that we both feel lost in our own families. At dawn, after he had exhausted us both again, I probed and he told me about his three sisters and his mother, who all live in LA. That they loved him but wanted him to be different. Wanted him to be who he was before he went into the military. Wanted him to be more than he was capable of now.
I felt his sense of isolation acutely because I have lived a version of it myself.
It's not just this place, I think, drawing my needle through the worn cotton of his shirt. It’s not just this insatiable desire, this sense of freedom running through my veins.
It's him. He's the one who's made this feel like home. He's the one who's made me feel like I've been nothing but a ghost before—drifting through rooms, through years, taking up space without ever quite landing anywhere. Which reminds me of the ghost romance I stole from my stepsister once.
Putting the shirt aside, I pick up the small field notebook and pencil I filched from his shelf last night and uncap it. The pages smell like old paper and graphite. I've been filling in the empty alphabet since yesterday, and I bend over it now, tongue between my teeth, finishing the last few letters.
"You've been playing with that since last night." Elias speaks the words into my upper back, his breath warm through the thin cotton. One large hand rests open on my belly—warm, heavy, proprietary in a way that makes something purr low in my chest—while the other strokes slow lines up and down my side.
He's always touching me. Sometimes his fingers bracket my neck and he’ll swoop in for a possessive, breathtaking kiss. Sometimes he’ll run his fingers through my hair as if I’m the anchor that keeps him here. I wonder if he realizes how much he touches me.
“Want to show me?"
"Promise you won't make fun of me or be scandalized."
"I won't." He presses the words into the nape of my neck, his lips warm against my skin, and I writhe on his lap restlessly, the friction of him beneath me already doing things to my body that my still-tender flesh really can't afford right now.
"None of that, Princess." He tightens his arm around my middle, a firm, immovable band of heat.
"But I need you," I say, shifting and pressing my face into the notch of his throat. He smells of woodsmoke and warm skinand that particular scent that is just him, just Elias, that I have already filed away somewhere I'll never lose.
"What you need is a break." The words rumble up through his chest against my cheek. "Jesus, Iris. You flinched when I took you this morning. I—please. I can't bear to hurt you."
The complaint lingers on the tip of my tongue—moments are running away like a freight train—but I don't release it. I can't ruin this time I have with fears about the future. I nod instead and lick at the hollow of his neck, taste the salt of his skin, feel the slight catch of his breath when I do.
His hands sneak under my shirt. Both of them, large and certain, cupping my breasts, thumbs finding my nipples and rubbing lazy circles until they stiffen and push back against him.
"That's just mean if you aren't going to take me," I say, pouting, but thrusting my eager flesh deeper into his hands anyway, chasing the pressure.
"I'm going to get hungry in a little while, baby girl." His voice drops low, that rough gravel register that does catastrophic things to my nervous system. "And I'm going to want to eat you out."
My pussy weeps at the promise, the muscles clenching and unclenching on nothing. Outside the pines dance in the afternoon breeze and the wood stove ticks quietly in the corner. In here it's just his hands on me and his breath at my ear and the slow, unbearable simmer of wanting him that never fully goes away.
It's like there's a chip under my skin that recognizes his voice. His touch. Even the exact rhythm of his breath.
"Now let me see it," he says, and takes the notebook from my hand. Opens it and begins to read aloud.
"A for Anal." A pause. "Crossed out."
"B for Blow Job." Another pause, longer. "With a dot instead of a check."
"C for Cock-Warming."
"D for Dirty Talk."
"E for Erotic Massage." His voice drops on that one, turning deep and husky, and I feel it vibrate through his chest and straight down my spine.
He flips the pages slowly, then tilts my chin up with one finger until I'm looking at him. Those green eyes are warm and dancing. "Want to tell me what this delightful list is?"
