Page 53 of Scythe & Sparrow
Fionn slides his tongue from my entrance to my clit, circling the bundle of nerves. He moans into my flesh, his eyes driftingclosed. If he said my pussy was the best meal he ever had, I would believe him. He presses harder, rolls his tongue over me, hums his satisfaction right into me. And then he glides his tongue back down to my entrance to thrust it inside, pulsing it in my cunt. When he licks his way back to the top of my folds, he pushes a finger into my pussy, followed by a second, curling them with every stroke. The pressure doesn’t let up on my clit.
“More,” I beg, my head tilting back as he works me closer to a blinding orgasm. “Make me come on your beautiful fucking face. I want to see it smeared all over your skin.”
When I look down the length of my body, it’s pure predator staring back at me. Fionn’s eyes darken. He growls against my pussy, a shock of pleasure. And then he catapults me into oblivion.
Fionn raises on his knees. He takes me with him, never breaking his mouth away. My legs are braced over his shoulders as he raises my ass off the bed. The sounds he makes are wild, animalistic. He fuckingdevoursme.
I don’t just moan. I don’t just come. I scream his name and split apart.
My fists curl around damp sheets. Every breath I take is desperate, as though there’s not enough oxygen in the room. The scent of sex and his citrus and sage cologne are heavy in the air. I’m sure I lose hearing, every sound dampened, even my own unraveling moans. Fionn doesn’t let up, still chasing every last moment of my orgasm until I tap him to stop. The instant I do, he comes back to himself and lets go, as though he was in that other dimension with me. One where no other world existed beyond this moment together.
“Are you okay?” he asks, breathless. His lips and chin and cheeks glisten with my arousal. I feel the first burn from his stubble on my inner thighs, a delicious pain that I savor.
“I’m fucking fantastic.” When I smile, relief and maybe a bit of pride find their way into his expression. I’m a sweaty, boneless mess when Fionn lowers my hips to the bed and backs off the mattress to retrieve my sleep shorts from the floor. He puts them on for me, gently sliding them up my legs, lifting my hips to center them. And when he’s done, he brings me things I can’t easily reach. Water. My robe. The crutches that I left just out of reach from this side of the bed. And when I’m eventually ready to go to the bathroom, he has the bed ready when I get back, the covers smoothed and turned down.
When we’re finally both settled in bed, we don’t stick to our sides. Just like we didn’t last night. Same with the night before. We meet in the middle. I lay my head on Fionn’s chest. He wraps an arm across my back.
“Part of me doesn’t want to go home,” I confess into the dark.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Me too.”
But as a close my eyes, I realize, I’m not sure which home I mean anymore.
I’m not sure where I belong.
STROKE OF LUCK
Rose
I’m sitting in the chairs that line the corridor outside the orthopedic clinic within the hospital, waiting for Fionn. We haven’t talked about this day. Not aside from my immediate appointment, at least. We haven’t discussed me calling José, or going back to Dorothy, or how I should be getting ready to pull up stakes and leave for someplace new.
It’s as though the aftermath won’t exist if we don’t talk about it. And I want to. I’m desperate to test those waters, but I’m unsure what will happen if I do. At first, I thought it was just me who was avoiding the topic of my departure. But Fionn doesn’t bring it up either, and though my first instinct was that he didn’t want to be impolite and kick me out, I’m not sure that’s it.
Ever since we returned from Boston a few days ago, we’ve mutually gone back to our friends-with-benefits rules. Just like slipping into a familiar costume. But it feels like that suit doesn’t fit like it should. When we had sex in the shower the other day, we both paused in the hallway when we left the bathroom as thoughtrying to figure out how to go our separate ways. It’s suddenly unnatural to sleep without Fionn’s heart beating beneath my ear. And when we fucked on the kitchen table, it didn’t feel like fucking. Not with the way Fionn trailed a path of lingering kisses up my neck and across my jaw. Onto my cheek. At the corner of my mouth. That was the kiss that lasted the longest. I fought myself to not turn into it. And I think he did too. It felt like he wanted to takeeverything.
It felt like making love.
Ever since that realization, anxiety has churned in my belly, winding ever tighter, threatening to unleash confessions that I’ll never be able to put back. I think I won’t be able to keep them locked down for much longer. And my tarot deck isn’t much help either. I shuffle. I draw cards. I read their meaning and decide I don’t like it. So I try again. But every time, the result is the same. Cards like the Moon. Or the Fool. The Ten of Wands. Every time I draw cards, the messages come back the same. Uncertainty. Fear. A decision that looms ahead, and one I feel ill-prepared to make.
“Christ, Gransie,” I say as I slide the Moon back into the deck a second time. “I already know I don’t know. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Good things not in your future?”
My heart seizes beneath my bones.
I look up. Matt Cranwell stands in front of me, a small bouquet of flowers clutched in one hand, a slow grin creeping across his face.
“Maybe that’s true. Good things probably aren’t,” he says as he leans closer, pinning me with his single eye. The other is hiddenby a black patch, the strap biting into his skin. “Especially seeing as how Eric Donovan’s truck was just pulled from the Platte River.”
Ice crystallizes beneath my skin. I try not to look away, or let my skin flush, but how do you control your body when it begs to release your secrets to the world? I’m not a sociopath. I’m not cold and remote, emotionless about the world around me. I harbor anger. I want vengeance.
And I feel fear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? You haven’t heard the news?” Cranwell takes a seat one down from mine, tapping his knee as he gives a thoughtful nod. “It seems poor Mr. Donovan’s truck went ass-over-teakettle into the river,” he says on the heels of a deep sigh. “They’re still lookin’ for his body. I’m sure something will turn up soon.”
“Perhaps he’s gone on a mission to spread the word of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to faraway lands,” I say, crossing myself, though I have no idea if I’m even doing it right. “But if he found himself pissed drunk and died in a moment of stupidity, may he rest in peace. I bet he was a fine, upstanding citizen. Amen.”
