Page 25 of The Last Great Omegaverse

I do.

The rhythm I find is slow and deep, more rock than thrust, every stroke meant to be felt rather than taken. The couch creaks softly beneath us. The throw blanket half-slides to the floor. I keep one hand cradling the side of her face, thumb stroking the curve of her cheekbone, while the other slips beneath her lower back to tilt her just enough that every glide of my cock brushes the place that makes her breath hitch. She meets me with the same unhurried pace, legs wrapped loosely around my waist, heels resting against the backs of my thighs.

There is no urgency here. No heat-driven scramble. Just the tender slide of skin, the quiet sounds we make, the way her hands stroke up and down my back like she’s learning the shape of me by touch alone. I kiss her between thrusts—soft, open-mouthed kisses that taste like shared breath and the faint tang of her earlier release. When her eyes flutter closed I press my mouth to the corner of one eyelid, then the other, then the tip of her nose, until she’s smiling against my lips.

“You’re beautiful like this,” I murmur, the words coming out without any of my usual polish. “Absolutely fucking beautiful.”

She answers by tightening her legs around me and pulling me deeper, a soft sound of pleasure vibrating between us. I can feel the pleasure building in her the same way it’s building in me—slow, calm, like water rising.

When she comes the second time it’s more hushed than the first, a long, rolling wave that makes her pussy pulse around my cock. The sensation pulls me over with her. I bury my face in the curve of her neck and come in deep pulses, holding her close through every aftershock, hips still rocking in tiny, instinctive movements until the last of it fades.

We stay joined for a long time afterward, neither of us in any hurry to separate. My cock softens slowly inside her. Her fingers brush over my skin. The fire has burned down to glowing coals, casting just enough light to see the soft, satisfied look on her face.

Eventually I ease out of her with a shift of my hips. The small loss of warmth makes her sigh a sound of protest, but I gather her close again immediately, pulling the throw blanket up over both of us. She relaxes against my chest with a contented sigh, one leg draped over mine, her cheek resting over my heartbeat.

“Stay,” she says again, sleepy now, already tugging the blanket higher instead of leading me toward the stairs. “Right here’s fine. It feels like the appropriate location, honestly, given where this whole thing started.”

“The couch that started as my good deed is now the couch where I actually get to enjoy myself. Poetic.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

I don’t. I pull her back against my chest, blanket tangled around us both, and press a quiet kiss to the top of her head. Outside, the night is calm and cool. Inside, the only sounds are the soft tick of the clock and the steady rhythm of her breathing evening out against my skin. For once I don’t feel the need to fill the silence with a joke or a story or anything at all. I just hold her, rich and bare and real in my arms, and let the quiet sink around us like it belongs there.

We fall asleep right there on Eleanor’s ancient, entirely-too-short couch, limbs tangled, the scent of rain and woodsmoke and the two of us mixed together in the air, and it’s the quietest, least performed I think I’ve been around another person in years.

Chapter 11

Wren

39 Days To Go

Silas and I spend the morning of day twenty-one counting pumpkins, which is a more absurd sentence than I ever expected to think in earnest. We’re crouched in the dirt with a clipboard and a running tally that keeps coming out better than either of us predicted.

“That’s not right,” he says, for the third time, recounting a row we’ve already counted twice. “Say it again.”

“Forty-one viable in this row alone. I counted twice, got the same number both times.”

“That row was half rotten three weeks ago. I remember, I helped clear it.” He crouches down, running a thumb over a healthy vine like he’s checking for some trick in the leaves, some obvious explanation he’s just not seeing yet. “Storm should’ve finished off what the blight didn’t. Instead, it’s outproducing rows we never touched at all.”

I don’t have an answer for him. I’ve been chasing one since the first week, though. A soil test kit from Pete’s that came back with two identical samples; a straight question to Silas out on the fence line that got me nothing but his own admission of ignorance; three separate evenings with Eleanor’s old crop-rotation notebooks, looking for anything that might explain it and finding nothing but ordinary farming records, weather notes, and blight warnings.

Every avenue’s dead-ended the same way. Good soil, apparently, with no explanation attached. And now it’s not just that one patch anymore. The section we replanted late, after the storm washed out half the original seedlings, the section Coop swore was a lost cause and planted anyway out of stubbornness more than optimism, has caught up to rows that never suffered any damage at all. Pumpkins coming in heavier than they should this early in the season, vines thicker, color turning faster.

“Maybe Eleanor did something with the rotation we don’t know about,” I offer, without much conviction, because I’ve already checked and there’s nothing in her notes to suggest it. “Maybe it’s just a good year.”

“Maybe.” Silas doesn’t sound convinced either, but he doesn’t push it further, just marks the number down and moves to the next row.

I let it go for now, not because I’ve stopped wanting the answer, but because I’m running out of places left to look for it that don’t involve tearing this farm apart board by board.

By the time we finish the count, the tally sits high enough that Silas actually whistles, impressed despite himself.

“You might make the deadline,” he says. “Genuinely might. Didn’t think I’d be saying that three weeks ago.”

“Don’t jinx it.”

“I don’t believe in jinxes.” He glances at the healthy patch near the fence, then back at me, something considering in his expression that he doesn’t voice. “I believe in numbers. And the numbers are saying you might pull this off.”

I let myself feel that relief, just for a second, before I fold the clipboard shut and remind myself there are still thirty-nine days between now and actually believing it.