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I look at her, face flushed, her body glistening with sweat, and I know she is close.

The headboard cracks against the wall. And I can feel her start to come. Her pussy is clamping around my cock in waves while screams tear from her throat.

"Fuck! Gage! Oh my God!"

"That's it, baby" I growl. "Come for me, Maren. Come all over my cock." I keep pounding into her as the spasms start to slow down until I feel them start to climb up into a second orgasm and I lose it.

My own climax starts and my jaw clenches. I bury myself to the hilt inside of her with a groan that seems dragged from the bottom of my soul as I call her name.

"Fuck! Maren!"

I spasm and pulse repeatedly until I empty all my come inside of her.

I collapse onto the bed next to her, my breath coming in gasps. I roll her back on her side and put my arms around her and give her a kiss. She turns to me, her finger traces my jaw. "That was amazing, Gage. Thank you."

"Oh, it was my pleasure, believe me."

"We should get up, right?" She asks.

"I think we can lay here for just a little while longer," I say as I pull her into a comfortable embrace. We lay together trying to catch our breath and slow our racing hearts into the silence of the perfect morning as we fall back asleep.

***

I told her the truth earlier and she believed me, but there's still an envelope in the inside pocket of that jacket I’ve been sitting on for days.

I come back up and put it on the bed.

She looks at it. She doesn't touch it.

"That's what you didn’t want to show me last Friday, on the porch. "

"Yes."

"Okay." Her voice has gone somewhere flat and careful. "Just tell me then."

So, I tell her the county clinic sits behind the hardware store and Lila hasn't been on the schedule there since the end of June. Four months. Every shift starting at eleven, every weekend she couldn't come, every time she was slammed. She lied about it all.

I tell her the woman at the front desk lit up at the name and asked how she was doing and mentioned pumpkin bread.

I tell her about the door. That when I pulled the burned one off its hinges I found a thread of red wool fused down inside the split, where the middle line of the sigil drove into the grain. Under the surface. Put there while the wood was still opening.

I tell her I burned one strand in the salt and it came up blue.

Maren picks up the envelope then. She holds it on her knees without opening it.

"Blue means they used it to try to reach me, right?"

"Yes. That’s right."

"Like the towel? Like my pillow?"

"Yes."

"So Lila burned my door."

"No." I crouch down so I'm not standing over her. "That's the part I've been trying to figure out, and it's the reason I sat on it. I want you to have all the facts before you decide anything. Blue proves the thread was used. It doesn't prove how it got out of her coat."

She turns her head.