Page 40 of Bound and Tide

She did not relent.

“I had help,” he finally admitted. The pain of her coercion was overcome by her thumb working a particularly responsive if small patch of flesh, and he chuckled in relief. “Help from my brother and sister, of all people.”

Red released him, and he would have been sorely disappointed if he weren’t so suddenly overcome by another odd sensation. He’d not said the words aloud before, brother, sister, and the truth crashed down on him like a tidal wave. Fuck, he’d not meant to say any of that.

“Your family?” Red’s eyes sparkled with an excitability he couldn’t fathom. “You found them? You found your father?”

Xander took her by the waist again, fingers digging in. “No, just two of his bastards.” He frowned at the immediacy of the guilt that hit him, as if Maia and Costa weren’t already burdened by Stavros’s other terrible choices.

Her arms came back around his neck, and her head tipped. “But they are your brother and sister.” The titles were perhaps even stranger from her mouth.

He nodded, swallowing, the look painting her features making his heart thump oddly. “You’re…upset?”

“No, I think it’s wonderful!” she said with a sincerity that struck him. “I just sort of wish you’d told me…”

“Why on earth would you care?”

She clicked her tongue and gave the hair at the base of his skull a painful tug. “Because it would have been nice to know the information I gave you about the mushrooms helped.”

“Ah, right.” The tightness in his chest loosened.

“But it is wonderful.” She grinned wide then. “You have siblings!”

Xander’s brow pinched. “Is it?”

“Yes, of course! Tell me all about them. What are they like? What are they called? Do they look just like you?”

Xander blinked, taken aback, and he floated there a moment just holding onto her. “Well, there are two of them, the older one, and the littler one. Though she’s not that little, I guess? Too big to dropkick, but not so big that I can’t hold her at arm’s length and avoid her kicking me, you know?”

Red snickered. “So they’re young?”

“The boy could be as old as sixteen but yes, they’re still children by most accounts, if already rotten to the core.” He sighed. “Well, no, not really. Not yet. And they have a different mother—a dead one—so we’re not, you know, exactly the same.”

Her fingers were twirling in his hair, her grin wistful. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like, having a sibling.”

“Oh, yes, I can imagine that you would adore a little brother to push around.”

She shook her head. “If I could choose, I’d pick an older sister, I think. Someone who could have taught me how to handle men and give me tips for grinding muscavale seeds, though I suppose those are rather similar things. But really, I’d just like someone to share memories of mother with.”

Xander said nothing for a long moment, watching her lips as they continued to tip up, her eyes looking off into the sky with a different kind of longing. He wanted her to go on—almost needed her to. You can tell me about Maisie, he thought, but the words wouldn’t come.

She pulled herself a little closer to him. “But it is a little selfish, dreaming someone into existence just so I’d have a confidant and protector.”

“You, needing protection? I can’t imagine that.”

“Oh, everybody does now and then.” She pressed her nose to his and snickered like it might not be true. “Anyway, it must be nice to know you’re not alone.”

He wanted to retort that there was nothing wrong with being alone in defense of them both, but instead he wrapped his arms tighter around her middle so that as much of Red’s body was pressed to his as possible. “Perhaps, if I have to say, it is…nice.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” She arched a brow, and her hand slipped below the water wiggling against his belly to wrap around his length once more. “And you also don’t have to apologize for keeping all of this from me.”

Xander sucked in a deep inhale as he felt himself swell in her grip. “Good, because I wasn’t intending to.”

She grunted but smiled, using his cock like a rudder to guide him backward rather aggressively, though when one were guiding via cock, there was likely no other way to do it.

“But perhaps I ought to,” he coughed when she pushed him so far up into the shallows that they rose out of the water and the breeze bit at their naked, soaking flesh.

“Too late.” She gave him another tug, downward this time, and he found himself laid out on the shore as the tide licked at his skin. Against his back, the sand bit in, but it hardly mattered when she was climbing astride him. “You don’t deserve this,” she said as she lowered herself onto him and tipped her head back once again, “but I don’t deserve to wait any longer.”

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