Page 20 of Iron and Ivory

Life is fine.

It's perfect.

Thirty-six people didn't die last week. No lines were crossed, no sins committed, no forgiveness needed.

Nothin' happened that I gotta carry.

Nothin' happened at all.

The world is just this—her weight against my chest, her breath on my throat, the smell of her hair which is nothing like dirt, and nothing like cold, and nothing like anything I got words for in my particular fuckin' vocabulary.

Just this.

Just her.

Just calm.

Savannah's hand finds me before I'm ready for it, which is funny, ya know, 'cause I'm always ready for her. But there's ready and there's ready, and she slides her palm down my stomach and grabs me through my jeans and I just⁠—

Stop.

Just stop everything.

Stop thinkin' about the compound, and the clay, and the way Havoc's boots looked when we wrapped him. Stop thinkin' about the FBI comin' and the silence that's worse than a siege. Stop countin' the dead.

Stop.

She's got me in her hand and she's not in a hurry. That's the thing. She squeezes slow and deliberate, like she's testin' the weight of me, like she's got all night and knows it, and I don't move, don't push into her, just let her do it. Let her have it. Let her take her time.

My forehead drops to hers.

She strokes me through the denim, slow rolls of her palm, and I just breathe. In and out. Feel my pulse everywhere at once.

My hand finds the hem of her hoodie and slides under it, up her ribs, and there's nothing there, no bra, just her skin under my rough palm and she makes that sound, that small quiet sound she thinks I don't catalog every time, and I cup her breast in my hand and just hold it. Not grabbin' or demandin'. Just holdin', feelin' her heartbeat come through her chest into my palm like it's askin' to be found.

She keeps strokin' me.

I keep holdin' her.

We're kissing again, slow, unhurried, the kind of kissin' that's got nowhere to be, the kind that doesn't need anything else to justify it. Not the ragged tearing urgent kind from last week. Not the desperate prove-it-now kind from the silo after the vote. Just—this.

Mouths movin' together easy, her hand on my cock like a question she already knows the answer to, my thumb dragging over her nipple and feelin' her breath catch against my lips when I do it.

She arches into me just slightly. Not askin'. Just respondin'. Like she's tuned to my hands the way I'm tuned to every sound she makes.

This feels different.

I know it and I don't say it and I don't look at it straight-on because if I do it's gonna have a name and I don't want it named.

I want it just like this—her palm warm on the outside of my jeans, her breast in my hand, her mouth on my mouth, the fairy lights breathin' somewhere above us, both of us pretendin' like this is the thousandth time and not⁠—

Don't.

Keep kissin' her, Demon.

Just keep kissin' her.

But I can't help it. The words form in my mind. Badlands got away with what we did, but it's not real. It's temporary. And this… this could be the last time I ever get her to myself.