Folk hummed, and a few more miles ticked by. The landscape grew more familiar. “You hungry?”
Not really. The road diet had got to me as much as it had everyone else. I couldn’t face any more junk, and I needed to ease back in to the kind of food Folk liked to eat. “Are you?”
Folk shook his head. “Honestly, I just want to go to bed with you.”
To sleep, probably. I knew the dreams were better in daylight, especially if I was there. Or maybe he meant something else. Ivy spent at least two nights a week sleeping over with Liliana at whatever house they chose, but we’d got in the habit of doing most of our fucking during school hours, and I’d begun to wonder if that was deliberate on Folk’s part. Like... maybe he wanted to keep it separate from the nightmares he couldn’t seem to shake.
He’d tell me if I asked. Or go away and think about it until he knew the answer. But I didn’t ask. Instead, I watched the scenery pass until we pulled up at the house and a wave of relief almost swept me under.
Folk shut off the car and rotated his wrists, easing the kinks from shoulders bound to be sore. Winter was hard on him sometimes, the damp and the cold. Made me wish we lived somewhere else—somewhere like the island paradise Ranger had told me about in the rare moments he hadn’t spent bickering with Rubi. But then we’d be without the people who made us whole, and I couldn’t imagine that. It hurt to even think about.
“Are you coming inside?”
I blinked. Folk was out of the car and at the open passenger door.
He held out his hand.
I took it and let him tug me to my feet. The security camera on the house detected the motion and whirred to face us, but I didn’t care who saw as I kissed Folk on the driveway, finding my home in his warm lips and soft sigh.
He kissed me back, only breaking away to grin. “Come inside? Please?”
As if he had to beg.
We went inside. The house smelled of Cam, of smoke and leather, and home cooking. His jacket hung on the stair post, and I knew if I opened the fridge, I’d see all the signs that he’d taken control of feeding my family while I’d been gone.
I found so much solace in that, but I filed it away to think about later and focused on Folk untying his boots and shrugging out of the hoodie he’d worn to make the long drive north.
It left him in my shirt, and that primal rush stole over me again. “I need a shower.”
Folk leaned against the same counter he’d fucked me over that first summer. “Okay.”
Okay.
I left him and retreated to wash the road grime from my hair and skin. I didn’t hear him come upstairs, but that meant nothing. Folk was quiet in most things he did—it’s how I knew when a bad dream had crept up on him. The goosebumps on his skin, his harsh gasp, the violence in how he reached for a weapon from the past before he remembered I was right there.
Water streamed into my face, into my eyes, as if I could wash those bittersweet nights away. But I didn’t want to. Not for my sake, anyway.
I shut off the shower and left the bathroom in time to catch Folk at the top of the stairs. His hair was damp at the edges, like he’d dunked his face under the kitchen tap, and he still wore my fucking shirt.
Words weren’t my thing, in this context or any other.
I tossed my towel and pushed him into our bedroom. Onto our bed. Folk was so strong, but he liked it when I used my bigger frame to hold him down. And I’d grown to like it too—to believe in it, a reality where a man as beautiful as Folk got off on a man like me.
He wants me—he wantedsex, something I didn’t take for granted when some days he could only stare at me in the dark.
Reaching for him, I peeled his clothes away and rolled him into bed, reaching for a condom so he wouldn’t have to get up again when this was over.
Folk smiled, saying nothing and everything, and I claimed that smile as my own, kissing him as I eased him onto his side and pressed inside him, knowing his body—knowinghimand what he needed.
Give him more.
All the way in, I pushed a little harder, a littledeeper, and got my reward in his ground out moan. In the hand he clamped over my hip and my name on his lips.
Seth.
I wrapped my hand around his cock and fucked him slowly, following his subtle cues, revelling in the more obvious ones, every sound and flex he made amping up the heat stampeding through every nerve in my body.
My breathing began to heavy, sweat coating my skin, my chest flush to his back as I pumped into him, lips at his throat. The bed rocked with the rhythm spinning my head. Still slow but climbing. Faster,harder,Folk’s dick sliding in my palm, pulsing with the raw energy binding my muscles. I drove into him with the same force we’d started with and a guttural moan tore from my chest, curving my whole body closer around him as he began to tremble from the impact of the release bearing down on him, my own just a heartbeat behind.