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I hook my hand behind his neck. “Don’t make me wait another two hundred years.”
His eyes darken. “You wouldn’t survive it.”
“Cocky.”
“No.” His mouth brushes mine. “Experienced.”
I laugh against his lips then pull him with me into the dirt.
He comes down hard. His weight drives me into the warm black soil and it gives, cradling my spine like hands that have been waiting centuries to hold something. The Earth pulses beneath me—thump, thump, thump—matching the rhythm of my heart, or his, or the field itself. I can’t tell anymore. “Kai.” My voice is barely there.
He doesn’t answer. His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the hollow above my breast, each kiss a brand in the cold air. His hands slide under my camisole over my heated skin, palms rough with calluses and packed Earth, and the soil beneath me shivers, rippling against my back like a tongue.
I gasp. “What—“
“The Earth knows what I want.” His thumb brushes my nipple and I arch into the dirt, the soil shifting to cradle me closer, wetter, warm and clinging to my bare skin. “It’s been listening to me for two hundred years. It knows how I like to take.”
My breath catches. “So take me.”
He pulls my shirt over my head, then removes my bra and tosses them both into the corn. His eyes track over me, naked from the waist up, and the Earth warms beneath my spine like it’s breathing, like it’s alive and hungry. “I’m going to fuck you in the dirt where the first Bride was buried, Sage. I’m going to make the Earth remember what it feels like to be worshipped.” He spreads my knees with his thigh and the soil moves, shifting to hold me open.
I cry out at the sensation, at the filthy intimacy of it, the dirt cradling me like fingers spreading me wide.
“Tell me to stop.” He says while lifting my skirt, his eyes never leaving mine. “Tell me this is too much, too fast, too wrong, and I’ll stop. I’ll wait another hundred years. I’ll wait until the dirt takes me back and doesn’t give me up.”
I look up at him—immortal, desperate, filthy with Earth—and I feel the pulse beneath me build like a heartbeat in the ground, like the Earth itself is aroused. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
He rips my panties clean off me then undoes his jeans pulling them down over his hips along with his boxers.
I look down at his body as the moonlight cuts across scars I don’t have names for, muscle earned in this very field, and between his legs—
Fuck.
He’s massive. Hard. The tip of him glistens in the dark and I realize he’s been walking around like this since the bonfire, since he watched me dance, since centuries of need built up in an immortal body that doesn’t forget anything.
He catches me looking. “Experienced,” he reminds me, and then he’s on me, skin to skin, the Earth rising to meet us both. The first thrust drives me deep into the soil and the dirt catches me, cradles me, holds me open for him.
I scream and he covers my mouth with his, swallowing the sound, and beneath us the ground moves, rippling in waves that match his rhythm.
“Feel it?” he growls against my lips, and I do—I feel everything, the dirt warm and slick between my shoulder blades, the roots curling around the hollow’s edge like fingers gripping a bedframe, the pulse of the Earth matching the pulse of him inside me, stretching me, filling me. “The Earth is wet for you, Sage. It opens for you the way you’re opening for me. Wet. Ready. Wanting.”
“Kai—“
“You wanted to know what the Tiller does.” He pulls back, only to slam into me deeper causing the Earth to shudder. The warm soil clings to my hips, my thighs, inside me where his fingers dig into my ass and lifts me into his next thrust. “I prepare the Earth. I break it open. I make it ready—“ Another thrust, harder, and I claw at his back, my nails filling with dirt, the taste of soil on his tongue in my mouth. ”—to receive.”
“Fuck—“
“That’s the idea.” His hand slides between us, thumb finding my clit where we’re joined, and the sensation rips through me like lightning striking the ground. “Over two hundred years since I touched anyone who wasn’t a ghost in a ritual. Two hundred years of waking the Earth with my hands, and never being allowed to take what it offers. Two hundred years of watching Brides burn, and wanting to fuck the need out of my system in the dirt where it started.” His pace quickens, each stroke driving me deeper into the warm black soil, and I feel it building—not just in me, but around me, the Earth rising to meet his thrusts, the dirt clinging to my sweat-slick skin, the roots at the hollow’s edge trembling with the same tension coiling in my belly. “You’re going to cum for me,” he says, and it’s not a question, it’s a command in a voice that has ordered seasons to turn, crops to grow, women to burn. “You’re going to cum for me in the dirt where it started, where the first Bride screamed, where every fucking ritual before you ended in blood and ash-” His thumb presses harder, circles, and I moan loud enough to scare every crow in the county. ”—and you’re going to show me what we could’ve had if they’d let us choose this instead of taking it.”
The Earth pulses.
I shatter. The orgasm tears through me like the ground splitting open, like roots breaking bedrock, and I scream into his shoulder as the soil beneath us ripples, cradling me through wave after wave.
He keeps moving, keeps fucking me through it, his rhythm breaking apart as he chases his own release, as the Earth seems to urge him on, the dirt clutching at his knees, his hips, wanting him to finish what he started. “Sage—“ It’s a prayer, a curse, two hundred years breaking open in one word. “Sage, I can’t—”
“Give it to me.” I claw at his back, his hair, anything I can reach, my voice raw. “Kai, fill me. Let the Earth feel what it’s been missing. Let it have this.”
He buries himself to the root and the Earth roars.
