Sunbeams - Part Eighteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here. The middle section of this episode contains mature content.
Aiden stays staring after Ralph for a long, motionless moment after he’s gone. Then he looks down at me, and our wide eyes meet. Both of us are silent, blinking hard.
Aiden gives his head a slow, incredulous shake, then falls back against the pillows, his eyes dark with exhaustion. He looks like he’s simply too tired to put any real thought into anything else tonight.
I wordlessly get up and climb into the bed beside him. We can talk about it tomorrow.
He smiles as I fit myself up against his side, folds an arm around me.
“Mmm,” he purrs softly, drawing me as close to him as possible. “Just my size.”
I breathe out a quiet, sleepy laugh, then untangle myself from his arms so that I can sit up and pull off his socks for him. “I’ve got the stove nice and warm, so don’t worry about putting off any heat. Where’d all the wood come from, by the way?”
“Found a downed tree near the Haunted House,” Aiden murmurs, too tired to open his eyes. “Borrowed Raj’s ax so I could chop it.”
“What-?” I pause in surprise, staring down at Aiden. “You just know how to do that? That’s a random skill to have.”
“Picked it up while I was traveling.” Aiden runs a tired hand over his stubble, his deep voice slowed to a sleepy, mumbled lilt. “Sometimes people ‘round the middle of this country will let you crash in their barn for the night if you offer to chop up some firewood for them. Got pretty fast at it. I can still get it done, I guess. Will was watching when I did it. Definitely helped to get some tips from our resident lumberjack, but - having him there made me self-conscious about it.”
I let out an affectionate laugh, nestling down beside Aiden. I cherish any moment when Aiden is willing to tell me something about the time he spent away. I know that he must be exhausted, to be talking like this. Without taking the time to worry about what he’s saying, first.
I love to see him this way. It means he’s deeply worn out, but it also means he feels safe and cozy. Or he wouldn’t be saying anything at all.
He rolls onto his side, so he can look at my face from under the dark curves of his eyelashes. But he can’t even keep his eyes open, despite how hard he’s trying. He must be running on the last fumes of the energy I gave him.
I feel the same way. I’m barely even awake anymore. I can’t keep my eyes open as I reach over Aiden and rummage around in the drawer of his night table. Searching by feel for what I’m looking for.
It’s a little tin of toothpaste tabs, which I found in Aiden’s backpack during the post-move unpacking. It was one of those things he’d left forgotten in there from his wandering days. He explained that he’d use them when he was camped out far away from the nearest town, and when it would be a bad idea to waste any bottled water before getting to the next location.
He’d forgotten that he had them, and bought different ones for our camping trip. But I saved these, for some reason. I don’t know why. It’s just - he’s kept so few tokens of his time away. I didn’t want to throw this one out.
He slowly opens his eyes when he hears the tin rattling, then huffs out a very soft laugh, unwound with drowsiness.
“Haven’t used one of these in a long time,” he murmurs, as I press one of the tablets into his hand.
“Unless you’ve got the energy to walk all the way to the bathroom,” I mumble, hearing my own sleep-slurred words melting together.
Aiden pops the tablet into his mouth and starts to chew it up, looking like even that is costing him too much effort. “Literally - don’t - think I could.”
I actually don’t think that I can, either, so I pop open the tin case again and take a tab for myself. It breaks apart with a quiet crunch when I crush it between my teeth. It’s a little chalky, but I’m surprised at how my mouth feels once it’s all gone. I didn’t expect it to work so well. My breath tastes like mint, with an underlying dry taste of cinnamon.
I look at Aiden thoughtfully, twisting a strand of chestnut softness between my fingers. “So this is what you would’ve tasted like, if I’d kissed you back then?”
“Huh?” he mumbles, his deep voice barely more than a little sigh of breath. “Back…?”
I shake my head to tell him to forget it, then press a soft kiss onto his mouth. I want to get that in before he falls asleep.
And he has, by the time I draw back.
I sit up just long enough to take off my belt and my flannel, then collapse back down beside him. In his sleep, he folds an arm around me and pulls me up against him. I let out a deep breath, snuggling my face into his chest.
We need to talk about what happened tonight, but not now. Right now, my mind is too tired to comprehend anything besides the sweet, heavy pressure of Aiden’s arm wrapped around me. His slow and sleepy breaths breaking on the top of my head.
I fall backwards into deep, deep sleep as soon as I close my eyes. I dream of wandering down dark, starlit roads. Finding a familiar, big, beardy man asleep in a barn.
Blue eyes opening to look up at me in the intimate half-light. Tired and calloused hands touching mine, drawing me down to him.
Soft, stolen kisses.
They taste like cinnamon, and like mint.
~~~~
I wake up with Aiden’s fingertips resting on the back of my neck. On my new tattoo, which I still haven’t seen yet.
“I really like it on you,” he said to me last night, on the drive to Port Sitka. “Suits you.”
He’s always saying simple, little things like that, but looking at me with eyes saying a lot more.
I reach back and feel the tattoo softly with my fingertips, gently nudging Aiden’s away. The lines are still raised, not healed up completely just yet. But not swollen, either.
I lay in bed fighting with myself for a minute, then gently work my way out from under Aiden’s arm and go to the mirror on the far wall.
I slip off my rumpled t-shirt, toss it in the hamper, and put my back to the mirror. Then I take a deep, nervous breath.
It’s not my birthday just yet, but whatever. I’m done waiting. I need to see what Noah permanently put on me. If it really does say Noah Raunier can do a backflip, I might actually have to kill him. He promised it wasn’t that, but Ripley also threw out Ripley McKay can do a kickflip as an alternative. If Noah put that on me, I might actually have to kill both of them, so. Better to know now.
I turn my head slowly, anxiously, and look in the mirror. My breath catches in my throat when my eyes focus on the new, dark ink on my skin.
I had secretly hoped that Noah would do something with plants and flowers. Turns out he did, but - not in a way I’d expected.
It’s a soft, flowing, leafy vine of ink. Winding down the back of my neck, spilling down onto my shoulder, my upper back. Flowers and buds sprout from the vine amidst all the leaves, but when I lean closer to the mirror, I realize that they’re actually not flowers. They’re stars, and planets. It’s like… if someone was growing a galaxy. As if someone had planted one.
The center of the biggest, most detailed flower at the end of the vine is a sun.
It’s all in Noah’s homegrown style, not aimed to look too realistic. But somehow I love it all the more, for that.
If I tilt my head to the side, the vine seems to move, like a breath of breeze is flowing through the cosmic leaves.
I stare at it for a long, long time, then stumble to the dresser for my phone. I try to compose a text to Noah that communicates even a fraction of how I feel about his birthday gift to me, but what I end up coming up with is: DUDE!!!!!!😊😊😊😊😊😊 HOLY SHIT!!!
It’s fine. I think he’ll know what I mean. And I know what he means, too. I know that Noah doesn’t put tattoos on just anyone. They’re all full of meaning, for him. He inked his own wedding vows into his wrist, after all. He left one on Ralph, and even a tiny one on Aiden.
And now he’s put this one on me.
I head to the shower with a giant, goofy smile on my face, my fingers clasped around my tattoo. I’m still beaming at nothing when I come back into the bedroom, stumble into some boxers and a t-shirt, and add some seeds to Jumble’s box.
Aiden stirs in our bed, slowly starting to wake up. He runs a hand over his stubble in his sleep. It’s so temptingly rich and dark right now, I can’t resist. I get back in the bed and drag my nose over it, until Aiden wakes up laughing.
“Dude, what are you d-?”
“Nothing!” I answer happily, without stopping. “Don’t worry about it! And hold still!”
“What the f-? You hold still!” Aiden catches me by my jaw, then draws back to look up at me, his sleepy blue eyes full of laughter, and - something else. “You’re such a fucking little demon, I swear to god. You know exactly what you’re doing, waking me up like that.”
“Whatever,” I sigh happily, closing my eyes. “Worth it.”
Aiden huffs out another deep laugh as he rolls onto his back, stretching out in the bedding. The movement pulls his soft shirt tight across his pecs, the rounded curves of his biceps. Morning sunlight is streaming into the bedroom is golden bars through all the different windows. It flows softly over him, lighting up his sleep-tousled hair. Glowing on the bronze of his skin. Illuminating the fine, soft hair on his arms.
I watch him with adoring eyes, blushing a little when he lazily reaches over to ruffle my wet hair.
A cool breeze blows in through the branch window, stirring Aiden’s hair. I place my cheek on his chest and curl up close to him, savoring the firm heat of his body.
My peaceful, half-awake eyes land on the branch window, not really looking at anything.
Then I blink hard, focusing in on a flash of blue fluttering around near the leaf-heavy branch reaching into our room.
“Aiden,” I say slowly, after a minute or so. “Malachite’s meaning was protection, wasn’t it? The stone, it means protection.”
“Mhm,” he sighs, slowly starting to wake up. He works his way out of his jeans and tosses them to the floor without opening his eyes, then falls flat on his back again. “Why?”
“Because… what do you think would happen if bugs and birds and animals nest in the malachite tree, or eat what it produces? It was grown with your Guardian magic, filtered through a protection stone…”
“We talked about this, man. I have no idea.” Aiden opens one eye, looks down at me drowsily. “Why?”
I watch the blue butterfly fluttering around near our window, thinking about what Luca said to me last night. How he found his way through the woods last night, when Aiden couldn’t be there to take him any further.
I know that the blue butterfly is only pausing in this tree that grows up into our window. When it comes back, it always ultimately returns to the malachite tree.
My mind drifts to the other wildlife I’ve seen around our malachite tree. There have been birds, and at least one rabbit. Who knows how many bugs? There was also the slender young whitetail that wandered into the garden, and was softly nibbling at the malachite leaves when I came outside and accidentally startled it away.
Not all of these critters have returned the way the butterfly has. They’ve probably wandered far away from here by now, and some of them will go even further when their migration instincts kick in at the end of the season.
They’re all just… out there, in the world. Touched by the malachite tree. Does that mean something? Anything?
The butterfly showed up for Luca, and consequently for Tom, right when it was needed. Right when someone needed protecting.
“I’m… not sure,” I finally answer, still deep in my thoughts. “Guess there’s a real chance it wasn’t even the same butterfly, and I’m reading way too much into this… but it does seem like a pretty crazy coincidence…”
“Mkay,” Aiden rumbles, his deep voice vibrating through me. “I must not be awake enough to understand shit, right now. I’m lost. What are we talking about?”
“Mmm. Nothing. Let’s - not worry about that right now.” I sit up on my elbow to look at Aiden, and he turns his head to meet my gaze. “Are you charged back up?”
“Mostly, yeah. Think so.” He yawns deeply, the rosy sunlight slanting across his face. “Still sleepy, but now it doesn’t feel, like - mandatory.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I laugh softly, trailing my fingertips in a circle on his chest. I bite my lip, then add, all in a rush - “Is there any possibility of some sleepy sex, though?”
Aiden huffs out a startled little laugh, breaking into a grin that deepens the lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Little demon.” He rolls onto his side to face me, trails a fingertip along my jawline. “Don’t we have some stuff we need to talk about?”
“Yes, but - that can be later, right?”
I can hear the begging undercurrent in my own voice, but I can’t help it. And I can’t explain it. I just love him so much right now that I want to bite him.
Aiden smiles, gazing at me through half-open blue eyes. Little flames have kindled in them, filling them with glassy, shimmering heat. Answering fire sparks in my chest and spreads out until it saturates my whole body, putting scorching heat in my cheeks.
Aiden cups my hips in his huge hands, draws me in closer to him. And even the way he does that - with his thumbs on my hip bones and all his other fingers spread on my back, guiding me to him - does something to make my breath catch in my throat.
He lifts his head, bends over me, and slowly begins to feather very, very light kisses up the side of my neck. The tip of his nose grazes my skin as he does it, so that with every infinitely soft, light brush of his lips, there’s the warmth of his breath, seeping into me.
And for all the subtle gentleness of what he’s doing to my neck, the hand Aiden has tangled in my hair is holding me in place with a tight, fierce grip.
I swallow hard, my breath picking up into a soft panting sound, my toes curling.
In one swift movement, Aiden gently pushes me onto my back and gets himself up onto his knees beside me. He stays like that for a moment, his eyes doing a slow, hungry lap up and down my body.
He slowly pushes up my shirt, using his curled knuckles, so that his palm can drag up my torso the whole way. At the same time, with his other hand, he starts slowly dragging my boxers down.
He stops and puts his mouth to the stretch of my bare lower stomach. He starts painting slow, open-mouthed kisses onto it. He drags the tip of his nose along the arches of my hip bones, stealing the breath from my lungs. Lingeringly strokes his fingers over the red-gold line of body hair leading down to my boxers, then suddenly buries his face into it for a moment before the kisses start up again.
I arch into his touch, gripping two tight handfuls of the bedding.
I’m so lost in what he’s doing with his mouth that I don’t realize he’s taking my clothes the rest of the way off until they’re pretty much gone. He did that in seconds, and he’s already busy giving my inner thigh a hickey.
I reach down, panting hard, and tangle my hands in his hair.
“Oh, okay,” I stammer, my voice coming out fractured and breathless. “I was just about to say that it’s fine if the sex is sloppy, as a result of being sleepy. Silly me.”
Aiden’s huffing laughter breaks against the softest part of my thigh, sending a delicious shiver up my body like a snap of electricity. He straightens up, then goes down on his elbows over me, sinking down between my legs. He puts our noses together, keeps us suspended like that for a long moment before he’ll let our mouths touch.
I melt back into the bedding, panting harder as Aiden holds my lips apart with his, his tongue on my tongue, his biceps flexed on either side of my head. He’s taking his time, toying with me, working his body against mine in that subtle, teasing way that he knows breaks my brain and leaves me senseless, panting for more. Tormenting me into a state of desperation. Perfect, perfect torture.
Then, all of a sudden, the hand resting gently in my hair turns to a tight, grasping fist, and he kisses me so deeply and roughly that my whole body jolts in answer.
My panted breaths grow deeper and faster, and I urgently start dragging up Aiden’s shirt. It’s loose-fitting on him, but it gets stuck on the muscles of his arms. I let out a strained, desperate, whiny little sound of unbearable frustration before I can stop myself.
Aiden draws back and stares down at me, his blazing blue eyes very wide. The deep crimson blush in his cheeks is a close match to mine.
“Oh, man,” he pants, breaking into an eager, smirky grin. “I - I liked that, not gonna lie.”
“I can’t help it, man!” I let out an agonized groan, running my hands through my hair, then clasping them on the slopes of my shoulders. “You make me so impatient.”
I blush even deeper as he goes up on his knees to hastily pull his shirt off, then his boxers. The sight of his bare, sculpted body in the glowing morning sunlight is dizzying. I catch my lip between my teeth, staring openly, helplessly. Fuck, he looks so good.
“It’s like even waiting while you take that stuff off is gonna kill me,” I blurt out.
Aiden’s rumble of laughter comes from deep in his throat, like soft, distant thunder.
“I think you’ve just been patient for a real long time, already,” he says, his voice hoarse and husky. “Long enough.”
He goes back down on one elbow over me, and I curl my fingers around his bicep, staring up at him with hazy, dilated eyes. Losing myself in his voice, his vetiver scent, his fiery gaze as one of his hands slowly glides down my body again, keeping me panting.
His other hand is in the sheets near my face. I turn my head, nuzzle my nose into his palm, then start slowly kissing and licking his fingers. My hands start to roam over his body at the same time, breathlessly feeling him, diving and kneading and stroking, taking their time getting to where they really want to go.
When they get there, Aiden lets out a sharp, stuttering exhale.
I look up at him. His head is cocked slightly back so he can gaze down at me. He’s staring at me with smoky, hazy blue eyes that say don’t stop.
Just like that, my body is on fire. I could swear I hear it crackling around me as we melt together like flames.
Everything becomes a blur of sensation. Broken, gasping laughter of pure pleasure, rising to the ceiling. My fingernails sinking into his skin, his teeth sinking into mine. His head thrown back as he lets out a deep, shuddering groan. Pulses of Heliomancer lightning racing up our bodies. Our panted, heavy breaths, sometimes carrying inarticulate bursts of our voices. Our legs twisting together in the sheets.
Whimpered, gasped words in his voice and mine. Low, raw, rough-edged moans that rise in mounting volume and intensity, starting to break apart into sharp, breathless cries. His body twitching and jolting and tensing as every movement grows more urgent, more desperate. The look on his face, in his glimmering, heat-filled blue eyes. The way they stay locked on mine, and how his mouth stays half-open with his heaving breaths.
My name bursting from Aiden’s mouth in a sharp, tight, choking gasp, followed by a stream of moaned curses. His deep voice haloed in ecstasy, roughened and hoarse.
I wish I could swim in it forever.
~~~~
When I finally collapse forward onto Aiden’s chest, panting and reeling from my taste of heaven, he lets go of my waist and locks his arms around me, keeping me where I am on his lap. His back is pressed to the backboard, his heels dug deep into the bedding. He’s breathing hard, with his whole body, shivering everywhere. His pupils are blown all the way out, leaving only the thinnest circles of blue in his intoxicated eyes.
He drops his forehead onto the slope between my neck and my shoulder, then exhales a deep, dazed burst of breathless laughter.
I join in, struggling to pull together any form of conscious thought. My mind has whited out completely. The white-hot pleasure still burning through my veins makes it hard to consider pretty much anything else.
Aiden lifts his head, takes my jaw in his hand, and puts his nose to mine, so that our panting, smiling, half-open mouths are almost touching. We lean our foreheads together. Aiden’s muscled forearm is pressed straight up my chest, and I hug it tightly to stay upright.
When I can sort of think a tiny bit again, Aiden has his fingertips pressed into the two dimples at the base of my spine. He lets them linger there for a long moment, then slowly, slowly grazes his fingertips up my spine, until they reach my tattoo.
“I like this on you,” he says again, in a soft, subtle voice, hazy with pleasure. “No Keane in my dreams or imagination ever had a tattoo.”
I’m not sure why that would make Aiden like it so much, but I blush all over again, then shrug my shoulders, trying to act casual.
“Yeah, what can I say? I’m a badass now.” I twist to glance at the tattoo over my shoulder again, then flash a beaming smile at Aiden, still out of breath. “Aren’t the - flowers - pretty? Oh, god, Aiden, that - that was - fuck. Do I really need my inhaler, right now?”
Aiden huffs out another rumbling laugh, and I bite back a gasp as he shifts slightly on the bed, stirring our oversensitive, entangled bodies. He reaches over to the night table and presses my inhaler into my hands.
“There you go, you badass,” he murmurs, leaning forward to nip the side of my throat softly.
“Shut up,” I laugh helplessly, giving the canister a shake.
Aiden waits until I’m done, watching me affectionately, then tips forward, sending me flat onto my back. Easing our bodies apart, although he doesn’t leave his place between my thighs. Both of us give out one last shudder of pleasure with the movement.
We lay still for a long time, on the slow, blissful comedown from where we were floating together.
When I open my eyes again, golden Heliomancer light is flowing in a soft haze around us, adding to the growing sunlight.
“The morning after a rescue feels real different, these days,” Aiden murmurs happily, before I can even ask.
“Mmm. Good.” I push Aiden back a little, rub my palms over his thick stubble, and smile up into his sweet blue eyes. “Coffee?”
“Yes, coffee.” He presses a kiss onto the center of my forehead, takes my waist in his hand, and draws back upright with him. “We need to feed Luna and Jumble.”
“Fed Jumble, but Luna, yes. And I’m hungry too, aren’t you?”
“Okay, coffee, breakfast for everyone, and then we’ll talk about everything that went down yesterday? Not just about Ralph, I mean - I didn’t even hear what happened from Luca, so I feel like we’ve got a lot to cover.”
A flutter of blue moves on the edge of my peripheral vision. The butterfly, taking off from the tree, climbing into flight.
“Mhm,” I answer slowly. “I think we do.”
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