I come. It's intense and fast, almost surprising as the waves of it roll over me, through me, coalescing between my legs with a wild sweetness. She rides me still, her hips moving more languidly as she coaxes the orgasm slower, with a tenderness that is sublime.
My legs are quivering as she releases them, letting my feet drift back down to the mattress. All of me is quivering as I lie there, as she lies down beside me, pressing her slick belly against my side, her breasts to my upper arm, letting a leg drift over my thighs.
I turn. I don't trust my voice not to shake.
So I don't say anything.
I kiss her mouth. I am weak, at the start...I still feel the orgasm moving through me, but there is a well of strength there, too, deep in my belly, and I draw from it. She smiles against me, wraps her strong arms about my shoulders, and I feel her smile as I kiss her.
“Ella...” she groans as I trail my kisses down her neck, over her collarbones. “You should...you should rest now.”
I snort against her, and I'm smiling, too.
“I'm not tired,” I promise.
And for the first time in a very long time, I know that to be true.
I am not tired.
There is something awake inside of me, awake and rising.
She woke this inside of me.
She woke the wildness.
Chapter 17: In the Whole World
Sunlight filtering through tree branches outside the window pours over Silver's belly. The branches build stark shadows over her skin, but it's not the darkness my eyes concentrate on.
I see only light.
We're on our sides facing each other, legs entwined, Silver's arm draped over my naked torso. I woke a few moments ago, but I have no desire to move.
I have no desire to think or worry or wonder.
My only desire is to remain here.
With her.
She must sense my gaze on her, even in sleep, for Silver's lashes flutter, and then her eyes open. The light from last night is gone, her eyes are their normal ice blue color, and there is great warmth to them as she glances at me. The warmth unfurls into a smile, and then she's rolling languidly on top of me, pressing my mouth to hers.
There's something so easy in the way my body moves around Silver. I would never say I was an awkward person, but I never moved through the world before like I do now.
Around her, I move with surety.
I've never been sure about a lot.
I'm sure now.
“Hello,” Silver growls against my neck. She's pressed a line of kisses on my mouth, over my cheek and jaw, and now she's drifting down toward my collarbones again...
My collarbones and all things south.
Everything that she touches is delicious and sore and tender and golden.
Because of her.
I chuckle as she murmurs the greeting, chuckle as I tangle my fingers in her white curls, drawing her face up to gaze at mine again.
Her head is a little to the side as she crouches over me.
Her smile is unmistakable.
She is all light.
I want to talk about last night. I want to talk about how I feel so...so different, now. I want to understand it, but I don't know if I can even put it into words...
She senses my hesitation, and she presses a close-mouthed kiss over my heart. “How are you feeling?” she asks me, questioning.
I breathe in, and I let it out in a long exhale, searching for a word, any word, that would fully encapsulate what's happening inside of me.
I breathe in again.
How are you feeling? She asked.
So I answer:
“Wild,” I whisper.
Her smile is as bright as the sun. Her mouth drifts down to my skin again, but her eyes do not leave mine.
“That's how I knew you, you know. One wild heart recognizes another,” she murmurs.
I move my fingers through her hair, close my eyes, let the surety of those words sink into me.
It is with my eyes closed, with her mouth over my heart, that she whispers:
“I would always have found you. Your wild heart called to mine. Through all the noise of...of everything. I heard you.”
My heart flutters inside of me. I open my eyes, I train them on Silver.
She's gazing at me with an intensity that I understand.
For that same intensity is rising in me, too.
I push up and off of the mattress. I'd opened my legs to her and she'd fallen between them with an easy grace, so when I sit up, my center presses against her right thigh. She wraps her arms about my waist, hoisting me effortlessly into her lap.
“What did you say?” I whisper, searching her face.
She doesn't hesitate.
Her eyes glitter.
“I heard you,” she murmurs to me. “From the beginning. From the very beginning. I heard you and I knew you. My heart called to you.”
I wrap my arms about her shoulders, twining them about her neck.
But my own heart falters inside of me.
For the first time since last night...
Worry enters me.
“Is it really so easy?” I ask her.
Silver pauses, lips pursed.
She doesn't even have to think about it.
She whispers: “Yes.”
I watch her.
Silver's warm fingers drift over my thighs, tracing indistinguishable, soft patterns. “There are some things in this world...very few things, but some things that are so simple,” she murmurs to me. “Light and dark. Good and evil. Something being one or the other. But most things, Ella...most things are not so easy.”
Silver's fingers move up to my waist: she tightens her grip on me.
She's holding me up.
“This,” she whispers, cocking her head just a little, glancing from my right eye to my left, searching. “This is easy.”
The worry that was unfolding inside of me...
It wavers.
I press my palms to her shoulders. “Nothing...nothing like this has ever happened to me.” I curl my fingertips into her muscle, wince when I peer at the crescent shapes my nails made last night, the red standing out against her paleness. “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry?” She frowns, then peers over her own shoulder at the marks and chuckles a little, her voice low and throaty and warm.
I love her laugh, I realize with a start.
I love it.
When she glances back to me, she sees it. She must see it. For when she gazes into my eyes, her face softens, by degrees.
“Is this...this thing between us...is it something that's...science-y?” I ask her, and when she chuckles again, I return her smile, shake my head. “No, I mean...does the fact that you're a wolf and I'm a wolf...does that mean that it's...easier for us to connect together, that we're more attracted to each other, that...I don't know...” I trail off, swallow a little.
The question makes me nervous.
But Silver snorts and shakes her head. “I can tell you right now,” she rumbles, raising one brow, “there are many, many wolves you will meet that you don't like on sight. No, Ella. Just because we're both wolves doesn't mean we're instantly going to fall in love...more like the opposite.” She's laughing again, but my breath catches in my throat, my cheeks deepen in color.
Fall in love...
She said it. She said the words.
Silver gazes at me perceptibly. “When we get to the pack compound, you'll see. Being a wolf around other wolves...there are...complications. It's not always so easy.” She cocks her head, narrows her eyes. “When you're around other wolves, you have this...this constant knowing in the back of your head, a knowing of whether that person is more submissive to you, or more powerful than you. The pack hierarchy is very important, where everyone stands in the pecking order, and it's omnipresent, the weight of that. You'll see it when we get there. It's never-ending, and it makes you very aware of how you feel about someone else.”
I
wrinkle my nose, wrap my arms a little tighter about her neck. “You feel the hierarchy? Like, who's more powerful than you? What does it feel like?” And then, quieter: “I don't think I have it toward you.”
Silver raises her chin to me, and I see the wolf in her eyes.
The wildness is there.
It...does something to me.
Before now, was my own wolf asleep, curled up tight in my belly? I don't know. But when she looks up at me with her eyes on fire, I feel it, feel it rising, waking up, deep inside of me.
“The only thing I feel...when I look at you...is something that has nothing to do with power,” Silver tells me quietly, searching my face. There is no shame or hesitation or embarrassment as she tells me, simply: “I feel it with my heart.”
I nod, breathless. “Yes. I do, too.” I pause. “That...that means something, doesn't it?”
Silver holds my gaze. “I think so.”
I feel the heat of her emanating into my palms, feel the solidity of her beneath my hands.
Her eyes glitter as she lifts her chin.
She wraps her fingers tighter over my curves, and I feel the strength of her own, short nails embedding crescent shapes into my skin. Her nails aren't sharp enough for more, but I feel that she is marking me somehow.
Marking me as hers.
She draws me closer to her. Somehow, we come closer. Heart to heart, mouth to mouth, she draws me in and kisses me.
We come together, and it's this gravity that calls me back to myself, that calls the wolf inside of me. It's the lines and curves of her that press against my own.
There's that beautiful wildness to her.
She always draws me back from the darkness.
Back toward the light...
And there is light now, light as she wraps her arms tightly about me, like she alone can keep me from the dark. I close my eyes, turn, lean my cheek against her shoulder as she wraps me up. I'm safe here, in her arms.
I close my eyes, but I can still see the light rising from her, just behind my lids.
All she is is light.
“I don't understand what's happening,” I whisper to her. The truth. “But...I like it. I like you, Silver.”
I can hear her heartbeat beneath my ear, can feel the heat of her pulsing into me.
She wraps her arms tighter about me.
“I like you,” she rumbles.
I close my eyes tighter.
Now that the night is over, we have to move on. We have to go. I'm going to meet my grandmother. She's going to change me into a wolf permanently, I suppose. She'll remove the lock, and nothing is ever going to be the same.
I wish this moment could last forever.
I don't think I'm prepared for what's going to happen next.
And I think Silver knows this.
“Hey,” she murmurs to me, and I straighten a little, meet her gaze. Her smile is warm, her eyes bright, but there is worry there.
She's worried, too.
“What's going to happen...today?” I ask her. “Is...is everything going to change?”
Silver shakes her head. She doesn't answer for a long moment. “I don't know,” she finally says.
I close my eyes.
Her mouth finds mine. And after a sweet, small kiss, she pulls back. She presses her mouth to my ear.
She says:
“I don't know what's going to happen today. No one does. But, I can tell you that I know...smaller things, I suppose.”
I lean my face against hers, my cheek to her cheek, my ear to her mouth, reveling in the heat of her breath, the heat of her.
I listen.
She whispers to me: “I know that the sun will keep rising and setting. I can feel the moon in my bones, and I know it will always grow bigger. Brighter. New moons don't last forever. They never will. There is a rhythm, Ella. A rhythm to everything. You can see it...you can always see it. Trees lose their leaves, become dormant. But...in the spring...” Her voice is almost breathless, and here, leaning against her, I can feel her heartbeat surging through her, that great, strong muscle moving blood through every limb. Through her great heart.
I can hear it.
“In the spring, everything rises,” she murmurs to me, hushed. Quiet. “The buds unfurl, the branches grow, all the creatures...they know to come together. To make new creatures. They come together. They've always come together. They'll...they'll never stop coming together. Not until the end of time.”
She's quiet for a long moment, but then she gently pulls me away from her so that she can gaze into my face. I'm surprised to see her eyes shining. I'm surprised that there's a wetness to them, though no tears spill down her face. Emotion, raw, potent, stands clear in every line of her as she leans forward, as she stares deeply into me.
I am naked, physically, but beneath her gaze, my whole heart is bared because hers is, too. I can feel it. I could reach out, press my palm against her heart, and it would be like I reached into the deepest depths of who Silver is.
I'd be reaching into her soul.
The moment is crystalline and unsteady...so fragile. One of those times that feels like it exists outside of us, somehow.
And Silver says, with conviction:
“We came together. Out of the whole world, you and I...we met. And there's something...there's something inside of you that calls to me. I heard it. I heard it the first moment I glimpsed you. I guess...I guess that's ridiculous, right? From the first moment. But it doesn't matter if it's ridiculous, because your heart called to me, and I heard it. That's all that matters.”
I watch her.
My heart rises inside of me as she tells me, voice quiet, like a prayer: “And like blossoms and trees and everything alive and growing, we were inevitable, I think. And if something like that is inevitable, if something so good is inevitable...” She trails off.
I stare at her. My breathing is coming hard, ragged. If I was paying attention, I'd probably find out that my heart is racing, that my palms are hot, that I, too, am hot, too hot, but that's somewhere distant.
It's just me and her.
And that's all that's necessary.
“No matter what happens, Ella, this has happened. We happened,” Silver tells me. Her eyes are bright. There's a fire inside of her, and I can see it, hear it. It's all around me, this brightness, and it's part of me now, too.
It's part of me because she is part of me.
She takes my hands in hers. My sweaty palms, my too-hot hands. She brings them up to her mouth slowly, with reverence. Her gaze diverts from mine, looks down to my hands, and she smiles...she smiles as if she's touching a treasure, as if she's drawing something delicious and lovely and good up to her own lovely mouth.
And then she's kissing my fingers, my knuckles. Her lips press against my palms, the lines there. They call them “life lines,” don't they? She presses kisses to them, so I suppose that yes, they are life lines. Love lines.
“We were inevitable,” she murmurs against me.
I watch her.
I can feel my heart, growing quiet inside of me.
I believe her.
Chapter 18: Connections
The cold is piercing.
I shut the car door and wrap my arms about myself, glancing up at the pine trees towering above us. There are only a few of them close to the road, the rest are trees that lost their leaves in fall, stark branches clawing at the too-blue sky.
Everything is sharp out here. The temperature has dipped below zero, the snowplows haven't come by on such a lonely stretch of road and on the edges of the horizon, heavy gray clouds labor away at producing snow, drifting every closer.
It is beautiful, though.
When you grow up outside of Pittsburgh, it's common to head to the “mountains” on vacation. So I've been here with my mother quite a lot. We used to hike up here in the winter, in the snow.
The memories of those long ago mornings fill my head as I wrap my arms tighter about myself, staring up at the sky, lips
pursed.
Silver shuts her own car door with a finality that echoes off the trees.
She casts a worried glance my way, then gives me a small smile.
“Okay?” she asks.
I nod, but it's not a hearty one.
“Yeah...just thinking about Ma,” I murmur to her. Sympathy flashes over Silver's face, and I almost wish it hadn't. Because instantly tears poke at the corners of my eyes.
I close them, shutting out the bright sunshine on the snow, the stark trees all around us.
Everything is hushed and still.
Everything.
Until...
Somewhere far distant I hear it.
The hair on the back of my neck rises, and I open my eyes, my mouth open as I stare out into the woods.
It's unmistakable. Powerful. Vital.
A wolf's howl.
It echoes among the trees, then drifts off into stillness, like the sound of a bell. Silver lifts her nose to the air and nods once, twice.
“They're waiting for us,” she murmurs to me, and—again—there's sympathy in her gaze as she glances my way.
I nod again. “I'm...I think I'm as ready as I can be.”
Which just means that I'm not ready at all.
But...I guess this is something that impossible to prepare for.
Can anyone prepare for their entire life to change in an instant?
It's not something you can brace for.
It's just something that happens.
And you deal with the aftermath.
Silver nods, too, and she opens one of the back doors of her car, shouldering the backpack inside.
We'd been driving for a few hours. The mountains aren't that far outside of Pittsburgh, but once the car's nose started inching upward, the roads became less and less manageable. Silver's a great driver, but despite her steady hands on the wheel, we fishtailed all over the asphalt, and at one point, I thought we were ditch-bound.
On the final stretch, I wondered if the road had even seen a plow these last few days. The snow lay thick on the ground, not a tire rut in sight. Silver had made a few aggravated noises, and after the car got stuck in a particularly deep patch twice, she pulled off to the side of the road and announced that this was where we were parking. She stuck a plastic bag in the window, the universal sign for “stranded, please don't tow away my car,” though she made some other noises that they just might.
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