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The backcountry Solarian night is pitch-black, the campfire the only feature in her field of view, seemingly adrift in a lake of darkness. She fixes her eyes on it and strides forward, not stopping until she feels the fire’s warmth through her Battalion jacket, and that’s when she sees the empty bottles.
She knows they deserve it; that how they cope with their orders—their death sentence—is their own business, but what hurts the most is seeing Saul’s lined jaw and furrowed brow there with them with another bottle in his hands.
It’s not just sorrow, it’s anger. He’s better than this. Especially because they both know it’ll make tomorrow morning worse, not better. She can’t stop the razor’s edge from cutting into her voice.
“How drunk are you?”
They each look up in various states of surprise; she must be getting better at masking her footsteps if they didn’t hear her approach. Saul’s face, however, wars between guilty and defiant before settling on the latter.
“Enough,” he says tersely.
The bitterness, she knows, is not meant for her but it still stings, and in fact worsens because in the split second their gazes meet she knows he can read her failure. She wouldn’t be asking if she had better news, if she had any sway over Rosalind’s edict. Her own frustration builds on itself and she bends down to grasp two hands against his shoulder and pull.
“Farah—”
“Come with me.”
He allows her to haul him upright and take a few steps away from the fire, but that’s as far as his soft spot for her allows. He pulls away from her, one hand still clutched around the neck of the glass. “What the hell, Farah? We’re just drinking, and I think we deserve it given—”
“Saul, we’re leaving.”
“What?” He stares blankly, the light from the fire dancing off his right cheek as he tilts his head to look at her. The bottle is still tight in his hand.
“Leaving where?”
She levels him with a look of exasperation, conscious of not speaking too loudly in front of the rest of the team in case they overhear. He knows her; despite the alcohol and the darkness he knows the way her brow creases and the way her frustration borders on a plea.
“No,” he says and takes a half-step away from her, the amber liquid swishing loud enough for her to hear. “No. I’m not leaving, Farah. My place is here.”
“Saul.” She has to fight to keep the anxiety inside instead of coming out in a hiss. “She won’t call it off.”
“She won’t because there’s civilians.”
Somehow, staggeringly, Saul is taking Rosalind’s side.
She knows that on a grander scale there’s some truth to his urgency; the team currently ringed around the campfire is the last hope for the town of Maravet Falls and the coven of Blood Witches bearing down on them.
But the Team of Last Hope has also been in the backwoods for weeks, chasing down Burned Ones as well as other Blood Witches, and the last of the antidote is somewhere at the bottom of the Maravet River along with Geordie Peregrin—
Or rather, what’s left of him.
When Farah pauses, though, she already knows his logic. She’s been his partner long enough to learn the patterns of his soldier’s mind, even if it infuriates her: If they all fight together, there’s a chance they can still overpower the Blood Witches. If even one of them bends, then they’ll all fall.
All the Specialists at least.
It burns Farah that Rosalind considers them expendable, mere fodder to distract the witches before her proteges finish the job.
So she can’t judge him for how he reacts to his death sentence. They’ve been partners for too long; he’s saved her ass too many times to count and she owes him. That time in Black Woods. The Burned Ones in Adquistes. Hell, even much lower stakes, like the time he took the fall for her forgetting guard duty the morning after the debut of Ben Harvey’s homemade gin.
Looking into his countenance, determined despite the whiskey he’s still holding, she knows her ploy to convince him to leave is weak. He’s right; he belongs here, and so does she.
And that means she has to do whatever she needs to make sure they’re standing next to each other this same time tomorrow.
And that means…
Swallowing as she makes her decision, she shakes her head to admit defeat. “Please. Can we talk about it in the tent? Just—just the tent, please.” She inclines her chin over his shoulder. “I’m not saying we have to leave.”
He finally looks past the alcohol to read the now-obvious pleading in her tone. He hesitates, gaze flicking between the rest of the Specialists grouped around the campfire and Farah. His fairy.
“Fine,” he begrudges, and when his irritable tone affixes her feet to the ground he rolls his eyes and gestures past him into the darkness to usher her to walk before him.
She conjures one of her trademark baubles of light to float ahead of them, guiding their path to the two-man tent they share. She can hear the huffy stomps of his feet after her, halting once they reach the door of their tent. She unzips the door and crawls inside, easing off her boots while Saul sets down the mostly-empty whiskey down firmly on the tent floor before following her.
Well. Now it’s time.
Farah clasps her hands together to stop them from trembling while Saul makes a grand show of fussing with the door’s zipper. He’s stalling for time, no doubt, making her wait as punishment for taking him away from the literal pity party back around the campfire, but it’s also clear she’s praying for the extra seconds too, for her to gather her thoughts and steel herself for what she’s about to ask.
She issues a noise-concealing spell, partly for the safety of allowing sounds to enter the tent and none to leave, and partly to do something with her idle hands. She then turns to her boots and unties them, putting them neatly beside the door, next to where Saul’s would go if he wasn’t determined to appear disinterested. Finally satisfied with the zipper he spins on his ass to face her, legs crossed and tucking the bottle back into his lap.
“What?”
He’s short; brusque; it’s not objectively rude but it feels like it because it’s not Saul. It’s not them.
They don’t fight, they’re a team—they’ve argued, disagreed, yes—but this is the closest they’ve ever come to a row. The need to justify herself overcomes the amount that she’s braced herself for her request. “I’m just—”
Hot pinpricks scorch behind her eyes, fueled by frustration. Helplessness. Blind rage. She can still see the headmistress’s brittle smile as she rejects Farah’s entreaty. It was fruitless; her mind was made up. It’s not often that Farah lowers her pride to plead her case in front of the headmistress, and that Rosalind seemingly delights in her decision to send the Specialists to their death as a personal insult to Farah for the cheek of asking.
“She wouldn’t listen,” she says finally.
Some of the rigidity in his shoulders wilts as he studies her face and the smallest corner of her heart swells at the concern in his expression. While she prides herself on remaining stoic in the milieu of other people’s emotions, Saul is nevertheless adept at reading hers. He’s one of the good ones, a Specialist that’s just as good at listening as he is at doing.
But even a moment of weakness isn’t enough to banish the bitterness clouding his mind. “I’m no happier about it than you are.”
Again, not objectively rude but utterly unhelpful and it only increases the acidity burning her tongue. “I’m just—I’m so fucking furious. She didn’t train you to fucking die.”
“Yes, she did,” he says sharply and he turns back to the tent flap to toe off his boots; even if his tone is harsh he’s evidently decided their conversation is worth having enough for him to admit he’s not returning to the campfire anytime soon.
“Farah, it’s quite literally what we trained for.”
She shakes her head, watching while he lines up his boots carefully next to hers, the way his back stretches to reach across her in the contained tent. She blinks to pull her gaze back inward, back to somewhere safer.
“No, she trained you to survive.”
“What are you suggesting, then?”
He shifts himself back to his own side of the tent, the sleeping bag tousled beneath him as he draws his knees to his chest and wraps both arms around them. Strong arms, she knows, arms that have wielded everything from broadswords to sewing needles and everything in between. He’s self-sufficient to a fault, repairing his own armor, sharpening his own weapons, stocking his own potions. The fact that he has nothing to turn to on the morrow, in the face of the Blood Witches, gnaws at him as much as her. She already knows that.
“Because I’m not going to let the people of Maravet Falls go undefended, Farah. At least with more of us there’s a fucking chance.”
She swallows again at the stark choice they’re forced to make. Defend Maravet Falls tomorrow without the antidote, or let all those civilians die in their stead.
It’s an impossible choice: die or let die.
Well, she thinks it’s impossible. Saul, so determined in his convictions, doesn’t see it as a choice at all.
And that makes her own choice somewhat easier when she shifts her gaze from her hands back up into his eyes. His brows are still knitted but there’s a softness in his eyes that betrays his regard. It doesn’t matter how many times they bicker; there’s never animosity or meanness in it—unlike with her and Rosalind, unlike with him and Andreas. He’s her Specialist, and a damned good one at that, but before that he’s her best friend. When she frames it like that, with the knowledge that it’s not a choice but mere fact of life to protect Saul, she doesn’t even have to brace herself.
It’s easy. Easy as taking in his taut shoulders, his furrowed brow, his stolid determination to due diligence when confronted with a difficult decision.
So Farah plants both hands on the tent floor, leans forward until she can see the flecks of darkness in his irises, and presses her lips against his.
Shocked, Saul starts but doesn’t pull away, his mouth timid and frozen at first but then he relents, his low levels of bitterness and confusion cresting into a wave until he shoves it aside in favor of the physical feeling of the kiss.
She’s never kissed him before; it’s twin sensations of surprisingly soft lips and unexpectedly prickly scruff, juxtaposed but delightfully so. His lips part, making more room for hers, until he draws in a long-overdue breath and she finally pulls away.
Her own mind is curiously blank when she straightens back up on her side of the tent, fighting the urge to wipe her mouth while she takes in Saul’s reaction. He feels, strangely, more drunk than before: his heartbeat pounding, his excitement heightened, and an unmistakably dazed look in his eye.
“Fuck,” he says slowly and with excessive deliberation. “You really do think we’re going to die.”
She catches his amused smile before it widens into a full grin, grateful he knows how to break the tension. He still hasn’t moved, his arms still clasped around his knees. She can read the bewilderment mixed with disbelief, like he can’t quite process what just happened, and she knows that maybe actions speak louder than words but Saul’s not about to jump off a cliff without hearing the explanation for hers.
And the question is audible without him speaking it: why now?
Farah knows the depth of his feelings. He isn’t the first man to look at her that way, but he is the first not to only look at her that way and as such, he’s the first she doesn’t push away for it. From Day One, he’s respected her as a fairy, a partner, and a person all equally—a refreshing change from Rosalind who sees only power and the rest of her class who see only a mindreader or a piece of ass, depending on their persuasion.
Being Saul’s fairy means the warm glow of his affection accompanies her everywhere, but he doesn’t ever try to stoke it, and that’s what keeps her sane. He keeps it close to his chest, where she can read it, and he knows that she knows it’s there, but that’s where he keeps it. She suspects that’s what’s natural for each of them. If he doesn’t bring up his secrets, he doesn’t have to be ashamed of them. If she knows they’re there, she doesn’t have to take the obvious risk.
And up until now they had each been fine to maintain the truce. But up until now, they’d been a team and they’d known their battles before they fought them. They hadn’t been convinced the next battle would be their last.
“I’m not… I’m not good at confessions, Saul, but… I know you like me and I won’t lie, I care about you too.” She doesn’t justify; they’ve said it a million silent ways in this ceaseless war that’s marked their adolescence. Saving his life. Waking up curled against his chest. Helping her untangle her hairstyle after marching for days, his broad hands made gentle in the tendrils of her hair.
“And I wish to the shadow realm and back I could ask you this in a different setting.”
The dazed look morphs into mild concern. “Farah… what?”
She swallows, her eyes darting downward to the rumpled sleeping bag as she casts about for how to explain. “When I was helping Ben with the antidote, I read something.”
Even without searching she can feel the spike of interest; his brows arch up at the mention of the neutralizer. She makes a conscious effort to pull her powers in. She doesn’t want to proceed on this with the advantages he was born without. She wants to go off of what he says, what he does—not what feelings she’s privy to when she doesn’t have the right.
It’s an effort, closing off her mind to the steady candle he usually is, but she swallows again and pushes past the sudden blankness to focus on Saul’s appearance. On the way his head tilts, on the way he rests his chin on his knees, inquisitive but not demanding, on the way his hair falls forward above his eyebrows, almost begging her to straighten it for him.
She takes another breath. “Something about how although all fairies are immune to Blood Witches, mind fairies are the only ones whose magic works counter enough to them to stop them entirely.”
He’s studying her, waiting patiently for her to reach her conclusion despite the dozens of questions she knows he has; the intensity of his gaze means she can already feel the color rising to her face, and she hasn’t even said the damn thing yet.
“The book implied that mind fairies can disseminate this protection by a physical transfer of their magic-containing essence.”
Saul’s look of concentration drops into a grimace of disgust, shaking his head in sharp refusal. “What, blood? You want me to cut—”
“Not blood.”
Farah waits, her heart pounding in her throat, as Saul falls into a rigid silence. Even with her powers suppressed she can tangibly feel the air in the tent thicken with tension. She has to concentrate to keep her powers stifled, taking deep breaths and watching the wheels churn in his head, and the silence goes on long enough that Farah’s brain winds to a disquieting halt. He’s disgusted, he’s appalled, he’s dumbfounded she would propose something so outlandish—
“You want…to fuck me?”
Saul cocks his head, voice deadened with incredulity, and Farah doesn’t know what to make of it except that she’s suddenly realized this sounds like a proposition for a pity fuck.
“Please, believe me when I say I’ve wanted to for a while,” she hurries, worried her thumbs with her index fingers. “It’s just… tonight, we need to—archaic magical exchanges typically last from moonrise to moonrise—”
He blinks.
“You need…me to fuck you,” he repeats.
Farah presses her fingertips together to hide their shaking. He’s still in the shock absorption phase; perhaps that’s a good thing, perhaps that means it’s not a “what the hell, fuck no.”
“Is…that okay?” she asks.
His jaw works, digesting what she’s said, what she’s saying, what she’s asking. She drops her hands into her lap, wondering if he can still feel the tingle on his lips the way she still can on his, and wondering if she’s managed to make her first kiss with Saul also her last, wondering if her final night with Saul will be her worst not because of what happens tomorrow but because of what she’s just imposed for tonight.
Then he blinks again. His face clears, his shoulders straighten, and a smile curves up the corners of his mouth.
“I think… we should have run out of antidote months ago.”
It takes a second for his words to register, and then she grins, relief overwhelming her, mingled with gratitude at his ability to break the tension she imposes on them.
This time when she leans forward he meets her halfway, his lips closing over hers and doesn’t even dare breathe for her reprieve and her slowly stirring elation.
There’s no doubt this time, no confusion—only hunger, only a lust for more as he cradles her chin in both strong hands. Instead of contenting herself to leaning across the tent she scoots forward on her knees until her legs bump against his. Warm hands lower to clutch against her sides while she arranges her legs blindly, with a smiling chuckle that doesn’t break the kiss, until she’s seated firmly in his lap with her legs on either side of his hips and his legs straight out in front of him.
Beneath her kiss his breath quickens, and the reasoning makes itself apparent within the space of a minute—when Farah sinks herself further into his lap she can already feel the hard bump beneath his trousers.
The sensation draws a sharp inhale from her lungs. Saul had always been respectful on cold mornings when they’d woken up inside his sleeping bag, but he’d also been a man—and Farah had always tactfully ignored his morning stiffness.
It’s a leap to go from ignoring his erection to straddling it, but it’s not as foreign of a feeling as she thought it would be—not in the least. Almost instinctively she grinds down on it, chasing the sparks of pleasure the motion shoots upward from her core—it feels natural. It feels right.
And the action instantly earns a hiss of pleasure from his nose to hers, whiskey and campfire smoke on his breath but she doesn’t mind, it’s proof he’s here, proof he’s not going anywhere, proof he wants this to be more than just a mechanism of exchange. She leans deeper into the kiss, tugging at the chest harness more to show what she wants than an effort to actually remove it. It’s complicated, for fuck’s sake, and she’s already blind by the kiss.
He reads her instantly and pulls back to yank it over his head; Farah uses the pause for her own pursuits. It feels strange—embarrassing to undress before him, like it’s a performance—and then doubly so because by this point he’s probably seen more of her skin than her own mother. But it’s never been deliberate before, not like this, not with the intention of admiration. This time she doesn’t avert her gaze when his biceps flex as he pulls off his trousers; this time he doesn’t look away when she unclasps the back of her sports bra and pulls it over her head.
“Fuck,” he says once he takes her in, one hand reaching for her side as if to prove to himself that she’s real, that she’s naked in front of him, that after literal years this is finally happening. Again she tries not to blush. She blames the cold and not her bashfulness for easing her sleeping bag out from beneath her and draping it over her shoulders.
His gaze doesn’t stop raking up her body, mouth slightly open like he still can’t quite believe his eyes, and then a smile cracks one side of his lips.
“That’s a good look for you,” he deadpans.
She grins again, another huff of laughter tugged from her throat and she shushes him with another deep kiss and returns to his lap.
She wasn’t lying when she told him she’d thought about this. The frigid mornings in which he was her only source of warmth; more than once back in Alfea as well when she’d fallen asleep studying and awoken in his bed with him nodding off beside her. She’d thought about this.
She can hardly remember those thoughts now but she had always managed to skip this part, the clothes coming off and the tangled fumbling of limbs, but somehow it’s not awkward at all. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s beautiful, and she can’t get enough of the warmth where his skin mets hers. He eases backward, more or less aligned with his sleeping pad but it’s clear he’s much more concerned with the woman above him than the padding below. His hands reach up to pull her down to him and close around her hips, tracing lines of heat warmer than the blanket around her shoulders.
She’s felt his grip before, helping her up, even cradling her to him at night, but not like this. His hands trawl up and down her back and settle at the nape of her neck, calloused fingertips lighting little exclamation marks all over her flesh. She rests her thighs on his hips, his erection flat against his pelvic bone beneath him and sending small whorls of pleasure up Farah’s core. Again, it’s astonishing how perfect it feels and without thinking she rocks against it, earning a matching sigh from Saul at the motion.
Fuck. Despite the novelty of sex with Saul, it’s not going to take long for her to be ready. She can already feel the slickness gathering at her notch and she focuses on the shooting tendrils of pleasure from each roll of her hips. His eyes, glued to hers, widen in surprise when he lowers a hand between them and palms the amount of wetness gathered there.
“Fuck, you’re—”
“I’m ready,” she swallows, shifting her weight on her knees.
“Fuck,” Saul murmurs again, one hand around his shaft.
She’s already aching with the absence of pressure. They lock eyes, ice blue to hazel brown and she could almost feel his anticipation if it weren’t for the eminence of her own, threatening to consume her, driving her hand eagerly forward to wrap around his with uncharacteristic need and impatience. His chest heaves below her. With one shared breath, they guide his length inside.
“Oh,” Farah breathes the same time Saul hisses another oath. He’s not fully in yet; it takes three more strokes before she can fully sheath him inside her. He’s warm and stiff and nearly overwhelming with the sensation of fullness—completeness.
When she takes a breath and opens her eyes, the look on his face is nothing short of rapturous.
His hands trace languid circles up her thighs until he kneads her breast. “Farah,” his voice shakes with withheld desire. “ Fuck , I’ve wanted this for so long.”
And then he flexes within her and her mind wipes blank, every thought and worry and concern displaced by glorious, resounding good. Right. Yes.
The line between her mind and her mouth seems to have been dislocated in the new sensation of Saul inside her. She just manages to grasp the one thought ricocheting around her head.
“Fuck, Saul, you feel—so good—”
His hands close around her thighs, grip strong enough she’ll probably see the evidence tomorrow morning and she finds herself wanting that, wanting to see proof, wanting to know that he’s hers and she’s his. She shifts her weight again, Saul already anticipating the action and driving his hips upward to compensate.
“Oh, fuck.”
It’s happening. It’s fucking happening. Eighteen months of tiptoeing around the mutual feelings and they’re finally joined as one, each upward thrust and downward grind another step to their year-long dance. Her hips feel like they have a mind of their own, rolling forward to rock his erection deeper inside her. It’s incredible how good he feels, tight and hard inside her and she immerses herself in the spirals of pleasure curling upward from the pressure of his cock.
It’s so good. It’s so fucking good, she nearly forgets their ulterior purpose until she registers Saul’s throat catches on another moan. His hands reach upward to cradle her right breast, the feel of his palm on her nipple enough to make her eyes fly open. It’s Saul; it’s Saul granting her this, it’s because of Saul she’s losing herself in the twin pleasures in her breasts and between her thighs.
Saul. The monsoon of ecstasy slips slightly, allowing a wedge of her mind to return. Saul Silva, her Specialist. They’re doing this because they want to, yes—but also because they need to. Much as she wants to right now can’t fully lose herself in the moment; she owes it to Saul to use her powers however she can to protect him.
Lowering her hands to his chest, she feels the mat of chest hair and flexing pecs as he thrusts and closes her eyes to open her mind back to her magic.
Her powers build slowly, creeping like smoke along her veins. She can’t engage her powers while still shutting Saul out and so she lets his feelings in too, a crescendoing discord that builds her usual aura into a roar. It’s not only the Saul she knows—the stoic warrior—but astride the warrior’s mind there’s a ravenous tide of long-awaited satisfaction as well as a hunger for more.
It’s here. Her magic is here; she needs to transfer it to him. Not trusting her own voice she closes her eyes again and focuses on the familiar hum of her magic fighting for dominance with the unfamiliar pleasure from Saul’s cock both coursing through her veins. Concentrating, she images forcing it downward.
“Fuck-ing-hell,” he grits each syllable at a time. “Don’t stop—whatever you’re doing—”
Her magic trills along her body and Farah can hardly keep her shoulders upright between the whirling pleasure and the tiny vibrations of her powers. She draws haphazard pants as she concentrates on directing the magic downward through her core from her form to his, gathering at the notch where their bodies are joined.
It’s a fucking typhoon, between her magic and Saul; it’s like her inner ear fails beneath the onslaught and she loses which way is up. Her breathing quickens to sharp gasps, focusing on burrowing her magic into Saul with every thrust, and her hands tighten against his chest to ground herself so she doesn’t fall over—but it doesn’t seem to work, because the tent is spinning—
No, it’s not spinning, she is. Dimly she senses Saul’s firm grip on her back and her side, cradling her to his chest. It’s like she only notices because he’s stopped thrusting—he slides out of her and she releases a needy whine at the loss of sensation until she finally, finally realizes what he’s doing: rolling them both over. The hand on her back slides upward to cup her head in his hand until it hits the pillow, his other hand beneath her knee so her hips don’t strike the hard ground.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs as he leans over her. “I’ll do it, you focus on magic.”
He’s a fucking vision, his broad shoulders and his expression somehow both tender and determined, his arms framing her vision as he leans down and his hips bump against hers. She’s wet enough that when he lifts one hand to guide himself back inside her, he sinks to the hilt in one stroke and again Farah gasps.
Her eyes flare open at the different angle but the onrush of pleasure nearly blinds her. “Oh fuck, yes—”
“Keep going,” Saul says, his lips at her ear sending tendrils of warm pleasure along her neck. “I won’t stop. Not ‘til you’re done.”
Farah raises her hands to his chest, the coarse hair refocusing her. She again catches hold of the streams of magic originating from her mind, imagining them flooding along her spine, down her core, and flowing outward with each thrust Saul makes into her.
He’d started slow but his hips are faster now, rocking into Farah with enough force that she shifts her hands to dig her nails into his back, seeking his muscled flesh to ground herself while her mind reaches out for as much magic as she can corral. His elbow slips and so does her name, eked from his mouth with desperation. “Farah—”
It’s so harsh, so cut off that she can’t help herself; old habits take over and she allows a slice of her empathy to invade the outflow of magic, freeing up space to sample his thoughts.
He’s never been hard to read, not for her, but Saul’s mind right now is nothing short of an oncoming train. Pleasure, desire, need all battle for precedence, all laced with underlying… something; something missing from their lives so long she can barely recognize the soft edges and high planes: joy.
And he’s so close. If she couldn’t hear it in his tone, it’s made plain by the torrent in his mind, echoing through his body, emerging from the hips he continues to thrust with increasing rapidity.
“Farah—”
If her magic hasn’t worked by now, it’s not going to work. She feels so good; she knows Saul feels so good—it would be unfair to both of them to do anything else but allow what they’ve started to reach its natural conclusion. So Farah does what she never does: she allows herself to lose control.
It’s not difficult, not with her thighs wrapped around Saul’s waist, not with the hard member with which he pierces her, grinds against her. She closes her eyes and drops her shoulders, focusing on the far-off flower at her notch. When she draws a deep breath and clings tighter to Saul’s arms, it begins to bloom.
“Oh fuck, Saul.”
Again his voice is staccato, braced by the deluge he’s trying to hold back. “Oh fuck I’m gonna—”
She curls her shoulders upward, her head beneath his lips and he’s kissing her even as his thrusts turn reckless. “Farah—”
The flower bursts and Farah reels backward against the sleeping pad, eyes flying open as a million sparks shoot across her vision, a flood of warmth spooling through every vein and vessel, every finger and follicle—pure, overwhelming ecstasy. The blankness wraps around every part of her, hot and tingling and divine in its deliverance: emptiness in her overcramped mind, perfectness in her slackened body, both exactly what she wants and needs without ever being able to articulate as such.
All from Saul, all from the man she loves and the completeness that comes from their union.
When her vision returns Saul’s still thrusting above her, his face wracked by stifled pleasure and she knows she has to grant him a fraction of the bliss he’s given her. She reaches up to cup both palms against his scuff.
“Come, Saul.”
His eyes lock onto hers, oceans of blue and gray and hopeful anguish. “Where—”
“Come inside me.”
“Farah,” he grits out, tilting his chin as if to pull away from her but she holds him in place, leans forward so their foreheads press against each other.
“Come inside me, Saul.”
He doesn’t need convincing. At her assertion he loosens the reins, the controls in which he fastens himself, and within two more thrusts his back is arching, his arms are trembling, one hand holding himself up while the other clutches harshly her hip against his.
“Farah!” he moans as he thrusts once, twice—a final, third time until he’s gasping for breath above her. Her hands on his biceps, his chest heaving in ragged gasps, his eyes fixed on hers like he’s just returned from a thousand miles away.
She gazes up at him, lifting one hand to stroke the fringe that falls forward between them, smiling gently as it returns to its position as if she hadn’t touched it at all.
Astonishing, really. He looks the same, and yet something’s different. Something warm and affective and complete tangible in the air between them.
It makes sense, honestly. Their closeness from the start came from the trials and pressure of war. It was only poetic—and cruel—that the next phase of their relationship is also borne from war.
Borne from, perhaps, but it doesn’t need to remain that way. Farah leans up to kiss him and he meets her again, easing his body to the side so he’s no longer on top of her, no longer inside but still linked to her with his lips and the fingertips he trails up and down her bare stomach.
When he pulls back she’s afraid of what to say. What if she says the wrong thing? What if everything’s changed? What if she was so distracted by the magical exchange that she was— bad?
She takes a deep breath and tightens her hands around fistfuls of the sleeping bag, too fearful of reaching forward with her mind for what she may find. But right when she parts her lips to ask, Saul tilts his chin, his scruff brushing startlingly along her bare shoulder, and speaks first.
“Farah, that was incredible.”
Her relief whooshes out in a long exhale, unable to hide the smile at the earnestness in his tone, in the grave lines of his brow, in the steady path of his fingers along her thigh.
Before she can return the compliment he speaks again.
“Do you think it worked?”
She buys herself time to assuage his worry by rolling onto her side to face him, arms crossed over her chest although she traces one fingernail along the neckline of his beard. “I mean,” she says with a small smile. “We could always try again.”