Page 100 of Godless Saints

Moon walked beside me. The tension in his shoulders had eased a fraction. The isolation was doing something to him. I’d forgotten life could feel this quiet.

“Cold?” I asked.

He shot me a look. “Freezing. Why are we out here?”

I grinned, already pulling my sweater over my head. “Because I want to swim.”

Moon’s eyes widened. “You’re insane. It’s winter.”

“Exactly.”

I stripped down completely, naked under the cold sky, and walked toward the small lake behind the cabin. Black water. Thin ice rimmed the edges. Gray Highland hills closing in on every side. I didn’t hesitate, just dove in.

The shock was brutal. Freezing water closed over my head. My lungs seized. My skin screamed. I came up laughing. Real laughter. The kind that tore out of my chest and echoed across the hills. Moon stood on the bank, staring like I’d lost my mind.

“Come on, prince,” I called, grinning through chattering teeth. “Strip. Get in.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” he muttered, but he was already pulling off the sweater, then the sweatpants, standing naked in the cold air.

He stepped in slowly, then shrieked the second the water hit his thighs. “Fuck! Cillian, it’s freezing! Holy shit—”

He lunged forward, half falling, half diving, and came up gasping, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes wide with shock. I laughed again, the sound cracking open something in my chest I didn’t know was locked.

Moon stared at me. “You’re beautiful like this,” he said, almost accusingly. Water dripped from his lashes. His lips were already turning blue. “Laughing. Wild. Like you don’t give a fuck about anything.”

I yanked him closer under the water and dragged us both down. His legs wrapped around me. His mouth crashed into mine. Under the surface we kissed like idiots, freezing, laughing into each other, tongues deep and greedy. I gripped his ass hard, pulling him tighter against me.

I lifted him out of the water afterward, both of us shivering violently, and carried him back to the dock. I grabbed the massive towel and wrapped it tight around his shivering body, rubbing his arms hard.

Moon pressed his face into my neck, teeth chattering hard. “We’re going to get pneumonia,” he muttered against my skin.

I laughed against his wet hair and pulled him closer, rubbing his back through the towel. “Worth it,” I said, grinning. “You, me, and hypothermia. Not a bad way to go.”

He made a weak, frustrated sound but stayed plastered against me.

I kept the towel locked around him and steered us back inside, my arm banded tight across his shoulders the whole way. By then, the snow had turned to rain.

The fire had burned low, nothing but glowing embers and the occasional soft crack of dying wood. Rain drummed steadily against the cabin roof. The sofa was old leather, cold at the edges.

I’d talked him into it with a straight face. Skin to skin, Moonshine. Best way to avoid pneumonia. You said it yourself. He’d rolled his eyes but went along with it. Now we were tangled completely naked under a thick blanket on the sofa, his bare skin pressed flush against mine.

Moon was sprawled half-asleep on my chest, his slow breaths brushing my collarbone. My hand stayed buried in his dark hair, fingers stroking lazily through the strands.

I was reading an old book I’d found on the shelf, but the words had stopped making sense twenty minutes ago. All I could focus on was the weight of him. The way his leg was thrown over mine. The steady thump of his heart against my ribs.

I turned a page anyway, just to have something to do with my hands that wasn’t pulling him even closer.

“Do you ever want to get married, Hyun?” I asked quietly.

Moon lifted his head, staring like I’d grown a second head. “Woah. Did you just call me Hyun?”

“That is your name, right? Or am I thinking of the wrong Saint Lucia boy… fuck, I feel used.”

Moon blinked. “It was Betty White, you idiot. And I’m not marrying the asshole who turned my life into a scandal and then fucked me until I couldn’t walk.”

“So timing’s the issue?”

He dropped his forehead against my chest. “You’re actually unhinged.”