He kissed me like he’d been dying, and I was the only thing who could save him. It wasn’t like the gentle, soft kisses we shared before. This kiss was hard and desperate like he wanted to devour me. And for the first time in a very long time, maybe the first time ever, I just let go.
I kissed him back just as fiercely, gently nipping at his lip and letting his tongue sweep through my mouth. I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up in his lap, straddling him, but I wasn’t complaining. His cold hands slid up under my jacket and my shirt until they found my bare skin. I jumped at the cold touch, and he stopped.
“This ok?” he murmured against my lips.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Your hands are just cold.”
His lips curled against mine. “Sorry.”
“I’ll warm them up for you,” I added, and he pulled back to grin at me, heat sparking in his eyes.
He helped me slide my jacket down my shoulders and then returned to slide his hands across the skin of my stomach. They were freezing but warmed against my heated skin. I could feel the calluses on his palms, but his touch was so gentle it made my eyes prickle.
"Tell me to stop at any time," he said. "If you feel uncomfortable—"
I interrupted him by finally getting my hands in his hair just like I’d wanted, sliding my fingers through the soft waves before gathering a handful at the back of his head and tugging. He groaned against my mouth in a way that made heat pool in my stomach. His hands traveled upward under my shirt, tracing the shape of my body like he wanted to memorize me. When he palmed my breasts, those calluses scraped against my nipples and I whimpered.
“Gods, Bones,” he said in a low groan.
A brief flash of self-consciousness went through me. All of me was small, and the Reapers had made plenty of comments about how I lacked curves. But that unease vanished almost as quickly as it came as his hands roamed the slopes of my breasts. His lips trailed down my jaw to my neck, and I couldn’t even feel the cold anymore, only him. Then I felt his fingers tracing the horrible brand on my chest and I stilled, my cheeks heating with discomfort again.
“I’m sorry,” I found myself saying faintly. “I know it’s so ugly and—”
He swiftly pulled away so he could meet my gaze. His eyes looked almost black and there was no mistaking the desire there.
“Nothin’ about you is ugly.” He pressed his entire palm flat against the brand on my chest. “Not this.” His other hand traveled around to my back, gently running over the thick healing scars and rough flesh that still ached with pain. “Not this. You don’t ever need to apologize for your scars.”
“But—” I tried to protest, feeling shaky.
“These scars are proof you survived,” he interrupted softly. “That you walked through fire, and you came out the other side. You’re a godsdamned warrior, Bones, and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
My eyes welled up and his other hand slid around to my back to gently pull me closer again, his head dipping to press a kiss to the brand on my chest.
“How are you real?” I whispered, my heart so full of joy and want and sorrow and longing that it hurt.
"I'm real," he murmured with a soft smile, straightening so he could kiss my lips again, this time gently. "This is real, darlin'."
“I don’t know if I believe it.”
He smiled against my lips. “Let me try and prove it to you then.” His hands tunneled into my hair, cupping the back of my head and deepening the kiss.
I melted into him, tilting my head to give him better access, my arms twining around his neck, pressing our bodies even closer together. I couldn’t get enough of him, wasn’t sure if I’d ever get enough of him. I’d never felt this way from a kiss, so out of control and so steady at the same time. Everything about this felt right, and it made me realize with a sudden clarity that being with Trey would be something new. I’d never been with someone just because I wanted to be with them. There were no desperate plans in my head, no ulterior motives. It felt like surrendering, but I had no idea a surrender could feel so beautiful. When he pulled back minutes, maybe hours later, a noise of protest escaped my lips. He chuckled.
“Not here,” he murmured. “I want you in a place that’s warm so I can see every beautiful inch of you without worryin’ about you getting frostbite.”
My toes curled inside my boots and I thought of the trading post we planned to sleep at tomorrow night. The heat sparking in his eyes told me he was thinking about it too. I was sitting in his lap, facing him, my legs stretching out behind him. His fingers ran through my hair.
“Your hair is so beautiful,” he said softly. “When you came out of the brothel with Clarity and you had it down, I just about forgot myself.”
My cheeks warmed but in a pleasant, heady way.
His hand left my hair to cradle my face, brushing his thumbs across my cheekbones. “And don’t even get me started on your freckles.”
My blush deepened and he smirked a little when he noticed.
“Or your eyes.”
I couldn't resist the giddy smile that crossed my face, so I leaned forward and buried my face in his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around me, resting gently on my sore back. I took a deep breath. No wonder I'd grown attached to that quilt. It smelled so much like Trey and Trey—
I took a shaky breath, the realization hitting me. “You smell like home.”
“The lavender soap?”
“No,” I whispered, “just you.” That’s why I loved his scent so much. My eyes prickled. I wondered how long I’d been making that association without realizing it.
His arms tightened around me and he pressed a kiss to my temple. His voice came out rough with emotion when he spoke, “I’ll be your home as long as you need.”
We stayed that way for a while, wrapped up together and listening to the sounds of the forest. After a few minutes, he shifted.
“Let’s take off our boots so we can get these rocks in there to dry ’em out.”
I reluctantly left his lap, unlacing my shoes and pulling my wet woolen socks off as he did the same. My feet were bright red with cold and I winced, trying to rub some warmth back into them. Trey maneuvered the warm rocks into our socks with sticks as I held them open. Steam rose from the socks as he held them up.
“Now we put these in our boots. You got a spare pair of socks?”
I dug around in my bag, searching for the pair I’d grabbed, pulling things out as I searched. When I held them up, he was staring at me with a soft knowing smile.
“What?” I asked, confused.
“I thought for sure you’d take my quilt and stuff it down the outhouse hole or something.”
I looked down at the quilt I’d pulled out of my pack and then back up at him. “Raven gave it to me.”
“Yeah, I asked her to. You were shivering with that shitty blanket you had so I gave you my winter one.” His eyes were so beautiful in the firelight. “My mom made that quilt.”
My fingers trailed over the soft surface of the blanket, emotion overwhelming me that he trusted me with something so precious. "It's beautiful," I whispered. "I loved it because it smelled like you." My cheeks warmed again with the realization that he had indeed been home for a while. "I guess that makes sense now."
He beamed at me, brighter than the sun.
After we got everything ready in our little camp for us to sleep, we curled up together in the middle of the bedroll, adding the quilt on top before Trey rolled the sides back up around us. I took a deep breath, loving that his scent surrounded me now. We’d both taken off our jackets, comfortably warm in our little shelter with our legs entwined and arms wrapped around each other. Trey had piled the wood where he could reach it to throw more on the fire when it began to die down. It felt a little strange to be trying to sleep in the middle of the day, but I wasn’t about to complain.
He kissed my forehead and I tilted my head up so he could capture my lips again. He kissed me like he wanted to savor the taste of me. I wasn't sure when I began to move against him, when his arms tightened around me, or when our kisses turned greedy and wanting, but the warmth that spread through me seemed to settle between my legs. I wanted more, and I’d never felt this way before. Being intimate with Vulture had been pleasurable enough, but calculated. Being intimate with Zip had sometimes been pleasurable, but more felt like a task that I had to get through. Being intimate with Trey felt…intimate.
“I know I said I wanted to wait,” he said roughly, “but gods, I want to touch you.”
“Yes,” I breathed, “please.”
He chuckled, a low sound that made me want to shiver. "Where do you want me to touch you, Bones?"
"Everywhere," I murmured, but my fingers glided over the top of his to pull his hand down toward the front of my pants.
He groaned what might have been a curse, and when I released him, his hand slid slowly down the front of my pants. His fingers were cold, but they blazed a trail of heat across my skin. At the first touch of his fingers between my legs, I whimpered out loud and he froze again.
“Is that—” he started to say, concerned.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered.
I tilted my head up to look at him and the heat that sparked in those warm brown eyes made me feel like I was on fire. His lips curled into a crooked smile as he began to move his fingers again, stroking and circling, picking up speed. I arched toward him, my breath catching as the pleasure increased. I tried to slide a hand down between us, desperate to feel the hard length of him pressing against my thigh, but he caught my wrist with his free hand.
“It’s my turn.” His teeth flashed in a lazy grin and his thumb pressed down exactly where I wanted it, making me jolt with a gasp of pleasure.
I needed to do something with my hands, so I slid my arms up around his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him. His free hand slid up my shirt, across my stomach to my breasts as he slipped a finger inside of me.
“Oh gods, Trey,” I moaned, desperate for more and hot enough to burst into flames.
“Fuck,” he swore as I moved against him, whining with pleasure as he worked in a second, “Bones.” He said my name like a low groan of desire.
I wanted to hear my name on his lips like that forever. No, I wanted to hear my real name—
The heat built to something almost unbearable. “Trey,” I gasped, my fingernails digging into his shoulder, “please.” I didn’t even know what I asked for, just that I needed more of him, all of him.
“Let go, darlin’,” he said, low and husky. “I got you.”
His fingers curled inside me and I swore to the gods I saw stars. My muscles clenched, my legs shook, and the pleasure that rushed through me felt like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I babbled his name, clutching his shirt in both fists. When the wave of pleasure faded, I felt like a rag that'd been wrung out, boneless. He withdrew his hands, and I looked up at him as I caught my breath to see him grinning.
“Your eyes were glowing,” he said smugly.
I stared at him, certain I’d heard him wrong. “Glowing?” I asked.
“Glowing,” he repeated. “They looked like liquid gold.”
I stared at him, my mouth slightly open in astonishment. That had never happened before, but I'd certainly felt like liquid gold. His grin widened at my expression.
“Well that’s new,” I said.
He looked so pleased with himself that I started giggling, still reeling from the heady pleasure that had coursed through me. Pure delight lit up his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of hearin’ you laugh.” He met my gaze and his eyes grew dark with desire again. “Or hearin’ you say my name like that when I’m touchin’ you.”
I had to force myself to breathe evenly. His smug smile reappeared as if he knew exactly how his words affected me and he ducked his head to kiss me.
“Consider that a warmup for later,” he murmured against my lips.
“Isn’t it my turn now?” I raised my eyebrows and he laughed.
“Now it’s time to sleep. You’ll have to wait.”
I glared at him, but uncertainty slid through me. “You don’t feel…frustrated?”
His smug expression melted into his sweet smile. "No, darlin'." He pressed his lips to my forehead. "That was all for you."
I curled into him, my head on his shoulder as he pulled me close. I’d never met anyone like Trey. I still didn’t understand why he loved me, but gods, I knew it.
Tell him.
I wasn’t sure if that soft voice in my head meant my real name or that I loved him too, but either way, I pressed my lips together and tried not to feel like a damn coward. I just needed a little more time.
“Bones, darlin’, wake up. You’re just dreamin’.”
My eyes jerked open with a gasp. I was sitting straight up, half out of the bedroll, terror tensing every muscle in my body. Trey sat next to me, not touching me, but speaking in a low gentle voice. Night had fallen. I focused on him in the light of the campfire, trying to calm the raging panic in my chest.
“Sorry,” I got out between gulping gasps of air.
“S’ ok,” Trey murmured, “can I touch you?”
I nodded, confused. He caught my hand, squeezing it tight, and tugged me a little closer. I shivered, but not just from the cold.
“I tried to touch you earlier and you panicked,” he explained. “You were talkin’ about a wolf.”
I stiffened in fear, and his eyes narrowed on my face. For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
“Bones,” he whispered, slipping his arms around me, “please let me in.”
I stayed stiff in his arms for several breaths, but as his warmth seeped into me, my body slowly relaxed and melted into his. I needed to open up. I wanted to, even as my hands started trembling.
“Not a wolf,” I said before I lost my nerve. “Wolf. My oldest brother.”
He paused. “Who’s Dune?” he finally asked.
Panic began roaring in my ears, but to my shock, I heard myself say, “My other older brother.”
“What happened to them?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, tears burning at the back of my throat. “I killed Dune.”
In the silence, I startled at his fingers under my chin, tilting my head up. I opened my eyes to see so much compassion and kindness in his eyes.
“Tell me about it?” he asked.
I stared at him, silent for a long time, but the words begged to be released—the secret I’d never told a soul.
"Dune was a couple years older than me, and he was the only one who knew what I could do," I whispered as though afraid to speak any louder. "He was trying to help me get better at healing. He'd bring me injured animals and he came to me whenever he had a scrape or cut. But he wanted me to push myself and I was too scared. Sometimes…the animals that were really hurt still died. And I didn't want to…" I sucked in a ragged breath. At some point, my gaze had dropped to his chest instead of his face, afraid of what I might see in his eyes. "So one day we were arguin' about it and he got so angry. And…” I had to stop and breathe for a moment. “I know it sounds crazy, but he stabbed himself in the gut. I tried to stop him, but he…he did it, and then when I tried to heal him…” It got harder to push the words out, my throat tightening. “I don’t know what happened. It was like something went wrong and my powers hurt him instead of healing him. He started screaming like I was torturing him and the bleeding wouldn’t stop and then…then…he just died.”
In the silence, I didn't dare look at his face. Maybe he'd change his mind. Maybe he'd decide to leave. What kind of person killed their own brother? Maybe he didn't believe Dune had done it himself. Wolf sure as hell didn't. No one in their right mind would just stab themselves—
“Bones.” Trey’s voice sounded so gentle, and suddenly I was more afraid of his forgiveness than I was of him pushing me away.
“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut again. “Don’t. I killed him.”
“Sounds like you tried to heal him to me,” Trey said, his warm hands on my face.
I tried to push away the images that bubbled up, but it seemed I’d released them just by speaking Dune’s name. I could see his sandy blond hair blowing around his face in the hot summer breeze, the weird determined gleam in his blue eyes, and the flash of the knife. I could smell the blood that dribbled out between his hands. I could hear his screams of pain when my healing power flowed into him, my desperate cries for help, and then Dune’s pleas for me to stop, but I couldn’t stop because he was dying and I knew if I didn’t heal him with my power, he’d die.
I could see Wolf’s face when he found us, the rage on his face when Dune cried his name, his horror at the blood and the knife, and the way he looked at me like I was a monster as he tried to stop the bleeding. Then Dune gave an awful shudder and went still, and the silence was worse. I stared numbly at his empty blue eyes, convinced at any moment he would blink and laugh at me for being so scared.
I remembered Wolf snarling at me through his sobs, the feel of the hot rooftop beneath my bare feet when I panicked and tried to run, Wolf's body crashing into me, knocking me to the roof so hard I couldn't breathe for a moment, his voice screaming in my ear, asking me what the fuck I'd done. And I had no answers because I didn’t fucking know. I didn’t know. But Dune was dead. He was dead and he was never coming back, and his blood coated my hands and my clothes, and I’d killed him.
“Why would Dune fucking stab himself in the gut?” Wolf roared at me as I sat curled in a tiny ball in the cell that smelled like vomit. “That doesn’t make any sense! I saw you! You stabbed him.”
"I didn't. I didn't do it. I was tryin' to help him." I was struggling to breathe, I was crying so hard.
“You’re lying.”
I'd never seen him so angry. I'd never seen my oldest brother look at me like he hated me like he wished I'd been the one to bleed to death on the rooftop.
“Come, Wolf.” Pa’s voice sounded cold and hard as he dragged Wolf away. He wouldn’t even look at me, no matter how much I begged him to. “The council will decide what to do with her.”
Wolf jerked himself free, slamming into the bars so hard I shrieked. “I don’t understand. Tell me why you did it! Why would you kill him? He loved you!”
“Hey.”
I came back to the present. Trey cupped my face as tears rolled down my cheeks. I tried to duck my head, embarrassed, but he held my face still.
“Bones,” he said, “it wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know that,” I bit out. “You weren’t there.”
“Maybe not,” he said, refusing to let me look away. “But I know you, an’ I’ve seen how far you’ll go when you’re trying to save someone. So I know it wasn’t your fault.”
“It was—”
“You just about killed yourself to heal everybody in the hold from that sickness, even people I know you hate, people who have hurt you. We were fucking abducting you and you still healed me. You saved my life, and you did it ’cause you’re a good person who cares about people. So no, I don’t think you murdered your brother, Bones. I think it was a horrible accident, and I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“Stop it,” I snapped at him, jerking my head free.
“Stop what? Stop tryin’ to show you how everyone else sees you? Cause no, I’m not gonna stop doin’ that.” He smiled.
I closed my eyes and more tears rolled down my cheeks.
“C’mon. Let’s try and get a few more hours of sleep, ok?”
When he tugged me, I went with him, sliding back into the bedroll and his arms. The wolves started howling again, but they sounded farther away. I could hear Trey's heart beating in his chest and it soothed me. He believed me. He was the first person to believe me about what happened that awful day. I felt foolish now for thinking he wouldn't. Trey had never wavered, despite everything.
“You’re a river. You don’t break, you bend.”
Well if I was a roaring river, shifting and unpredictable, Trey was the very mountain below us, steady and constant.
When I woke up in the morning, frost coated Trey’s long eyelashes and my nose felt numb with cold, but entangled together inside the bedroll we were toasty warm. Our fire had died to glowing coals, but we needed to get moving anyway. His eyes blinked open, and I watched him focus on my face and smile that sweet, warm smile.
“You’re still here,” he murmured.
I slid my hands up his chest to twine around his neck, watching his pupils expand in surprise. When I stretched up to kiss him, his arms tightened around me, his lips meeting mine. Kissing him was addictive. I didn't want to stop. Gods, I was so fucked.
I forced myself to pull away after a few minutes. “C’mon, we better get moving,” I whispered.
We packed up our small campsite and buried our fire in the snow in case anybody tracked us here. I knew they would be tracking us eventually. I just hoped we’d be able to get far enough away. When we started walking again, Trey reached out and grabbed my hand with a grin. I raised an eyebrow at him as we walked hand in hand.
“So, you and me, we’re a thing now, right?” he asked.
“Depends. What’s ‘a thing’ mean?”
“Means you’re mine and I’m yours. We don’t make love with anybody else.”
“Make love,” I repeated, amused, but I couldn’t deny that was exactly what he’d done last night.
He gave me a playful glare. “It also means I get to take care of you. No more ‘I’m fine’ shit.”
“What if I am fine?”
“Ok, smartass, you can say you’re fine if you’re actually fine. I mean no lying. It means that I get all of you and you get all of me. The good and the bad. It means I’ll always have your back. No matter what.”
Blooms filled my chest again. “Do I get to kiss you whenever I want?”
He grinned, delighted. “You sure do.”
“I’ll think about it.”
His outraged face made me burst out laughing, and he lit up. “Gods, I love your laugh.” He pulled me close, eyes dancing as I tripped over both our snowshoes.
“I guess if we’re gonna be a thing, you get to hear me laugh.” I grinned.
“It’d be an honor, darlin’.”
When he kissed me, the warmth that ran through me felt as pure and golden as my healing powers.