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They’re at another gas station on another near-deserted stretch of road, filling up and collecting snacks for the rest of the day's drive. Seth is at the coffee machines filling the novelty travel mug covered with pictures of kittens that Kate had gotten for him as a joke a few days before while she looks at the candy aisle. A couple come in, around Seth’s age, bickering in English. Kate tries not to eavesdrop as they both stand at the ATM and it is mostly unintelligible whispering until the man elbows the woman, making her stumble into a rack of calendars, hissing, “get the fuck off me, little bitch.”
Kate’s hand goes to the pistol tucked into the waistband of her cutoff shorts, concealed by a loose t-shirt she and Seth have been accidentally trading back and forth after Kate ended up with a similar plain black one to his and they resolved to start visiting laundromats when possible instead of just buying new clothes when they needed to change. She catches Seth’s eye over the shelves and shakes her head slightly when he looks like he’s going to come over, then looks back at the woman now trying to right the calendar rack while the man punches buttons on the ATM. She makes eye contact with Kate briefly, a desperate look in her eyes, and Kate frowns, watches the oblivious man closely. A cellphone rings and he curses as he fishes in his pockets for it, juggling his wallet in one hand and the phone between his ear and shoulder as he snatches a few bills from the dispenser.
He turns and Kate quickly looks back to the rows of candy bars in front of her, slipping her hand away from her waistband as the man walks by, brushing too close to her back. Kate glances at Seth again, halfway across the store and bristling when he sees the grimace on her face but then the woman walks by Kate too, trailing behind the man far enough that he’s reached the counter by the time she reaches Kate.
“The card is on the floor, seven three six zero, clean him out,” she whispers.
Kate stares after the woman, rooted to her spot on the floor as she watches the two of them at the counter, the man arguing with the cashier as the woman stands just behind him, shoulders hunched and arms folded around her middle.
“You okay?” Seth asks quietly, appearing silently at Kate’s back.
“Fine,” she answers distractedly. She watches the woman throw them one last look before the pair leave.
“Fuckin’ prick,” Seth mutters. “You ready?”
“Hang on,” Kate answers, and she goes over to the ATM and sure enough, there’s a bank card on the floor, half-hidden where it had slid under the calendar display.
Kate picks it up, punches in the pin the woman told her, and selects Check Balance. After she estimates the conversion in her head, waving Seth off when he appears at her side to ask what the hell she’s doing, she thinks for a moment longer before punching in a withdrawal amount that’s two hundred pesos less than the maximum daily limit. The machine whirrs for a moment and then spits out the money and Kate grins when Seth stares at her in disbelief.
“You wanna explain something to me about your little pow-wow over here with Asshole and Blonde while I was getting my coffee, and how it might relate to this paper trail you’re starting?”
“It’s only a paper trail if the paper has our names on it, right? Did you already get gas?”
“No, there’s like an eighth of a tank, I’m gonna fill up before we go. Like we do every single time, Fuller, tell me what the hell-”
“Okay,” Kate glances over Seth’s shoulder out the window to see the beat up silver pick up truck the woman stands beside as she fills the tank while the man sits inside, still on the phone. “We need to go right now and stop at another gas station.”
“What-”
“Seth, right now, just trust me.”
They pay for their snacks hastily and get in the car just as the pick up is pulling back out onto the main road.
“I think she was in trouble,” Kate says, leaning in her seat to tuck the money in her pocket with the bank card and pull her pistol out of her waistband. She doesn’t know how Seth can stand to sit and drive with his against his spine.
“Well somethin’ was wrong with her if she was with that turd.”
“No, I think it was more than that. I think she might not have been able to get away from him. She told me he dropped his card and gave me the PIN. She told me to clean him out.”
“Smart girl,” Seth mutters, glancing over at Kate’s puzzled look. “If he’s trying to cover ground and she’s trying to find a way out that’ll get them stuck somewhere when he runs out of money, maybe give her a chance to get out or get somebody on his tail.”
“So we should do it right? Keep taking out money? You don’t think it’s a trap?”
“Nobody who’s after me is gonna go to that much trouble, they’re just gonna put a bullet in me.”
Kate swallows and flexes her hands over her bare knees.
“You don’t know any way around withdrawal limits do you?” she asks. “It just seems like faster would be better. I mean it’s not like we can’t use the money too.”
Seth grins then, slow and sly. “Honey, do you really have to ask?”
As it turns out, the summer before Seth went to prison, Richie had found the operator codes for two brands of ATMs online, which allowed the machines to be reprogrammed to think they were dispensing one dollar bills instead of twenties, which further allowed the Gecko brothers to successfully bilk several banks out of several thousand dollars anytime they found a universal ATM not accompanied by a surveillance camera. Since Richie had found the codes online the scam had an expiration date once most of the machines had been altered or decommissioned in the U.S. to fix the security weak point, but Mexico either wasn’t as fast or wasn’t concerned with the scam crossing the border.
The next day they chance it, finding an un-surveilled ATM from the right manufacturer in a liquor store where Seth punches the sequence of numbers into the keypad while Kate watches from the car, in the driver’s seat just in case. Seth emerges from the store with a small bottle of whiskey and a smile a few minutes later.
“Well I’ll be damned, Maid Marian, it worked.”
Kate grins over at him before looking back to the road as she peels out of the parking lot.
“I got the card, I think I get to be Robin Hood.”
_
They drive for three more days on a meandering route towards the coast, hitting ATMs whenever possible and eventually landing near Acapulco. The hotel they end up choosing is much nicer than anywhere else they’ve stayed, only a mile from the beach and nice enough to have a salon and spa as well as a restaurant off the large airy lobby.
Seth belly flops in the middle of the king size bed as soon as they walk into their room that’s decorated in soft golds and creams.
“You gonna sleep?” Seth mumbles, face still buried in the pillow.
“Hm? Oh, I thought I might go to the salon. If they have any openings.”
Seth lifts one arm and raises a thumbs up to the room.
“Go for it. Tell ‘em Big Papi Seth sent you.”
“Oh my god.”
Kate kneels on the bed and grabs a key card out of Seth’s jacket pocket, hopping away when he flails an arm out towards her.
The salon isn’t busy and Kate only waits a few minutes before sitting down with a stylist named Cristina who she thanks her lucky stars is fluent in English and understands when Kate asks for a trim and blowout and, on a whim, a few natural red highlights.
She’s not sure what possesses her, when she thinks later about how she chatted with the hairdresser, to spin out a pile of lies bigger and less consequential than she ever has in her life, but they just keep coming. She says she just turned twenty and had been taking classes at a junior college in Lubbock. She was a waitress when Seth was at one of her tables and they’d started dating. Now they were eloping; her daddy didn’t approve but they just couldn’t wait any longer so they had gotten a license and were going on a cruise from Acapulco to make it official, but she’d wanted to see the country so they were driving and stopping along the way.
The story delights Cristina to no end and Kate feels like she’s outside of her body listening to this bubbly girl talk about being swept off her feet by an older man, spirited away from her ho-hum Texas life to elope and honeymoon on the beach. It feels beyond weird saying it all while knowing secretly that she’s talking about Seth. But she finds herself wishing she could believe it. Wishing desperately that her daddy and Scott and Mama were back home, safe, angry and worried about her running off with a shady character like Seth.
When they’re finished Kate looks at herself in the mirror. It’s a subtle change, but noticable when she runs her fingers through her hair, blown out in silky waves and threaded through with glimmering strands of coppery red here and there.
“Your hubby will love it,” Cristina says, grinning and squeezing Kate’s shoulders.
Kate smiles back and swallows down the lump in her throat. She has them charge the bill to their room and leaves Cristina a generous tip in cash. When she gets back to the room Seth is exactly where he was when she left and she finds herself tired too. She toes off her shoes before crawling onto the bed, nudging at Seth’s arm until he mumbles in his sleep and rolls over, making enough room for her to lie down. She lies on her side for a long time, facing Seth and looking at his sleep-mussed face, the loose curl of his arms under the pillow, the deep rhythmic rise and fall of his back with his breath. Eventually she rolls over and falls asleep, heedless of her hair getting flattened. Cristina’s voice keeps repeating in her mind and Kate just wants to put all those thoughts away for a while.
Kate wakes up from a light drifting sleep later to something tugging on her hair and flails an arm back. She’s half-asleep, and she hears something like soft laughter. The tugging stops and she burrows back down into the deep pillows. A moment later it starts again, soft rhythmic tugging. She rolls over halfway and pries her eyes open to see Seth with his head resting on one hand facing her. He holds up a few strands of her hair between his fingers.
“You really went for it huh? Big change, Fuller. Way to spend that free money.”
“It’s not free,” she grumbles, flopping over on her back. She reaches up and points to some of the highlights around her face. “I got highlights too, see?”
Seth leans closer and squints. The sunlight coming in the room is waning and the lights are off so it’s dim, and Seth reaches out and picks at a few strands of her hair again, ignoring it when she tries to shake him off.
“‘S good,” he murmurs sleepily, even though he’s apparently been awake longer than she has.
“What time is it?” Kate yawns, reaching up for Seth’s hand and pulling his arm down to look at his watch. It’s a quarter to six and as if on cue her stomach rumbles. Seth laughs.
“Get up, we’ll go get dinner.”
“Mm, five more minutes,” she whines, batting his hand away from her face and rolling over to her stomach.
Seth snorts. “Fuckin’ teenagers, all you do is sleep.”
Kate sighs and shoves at him with her foot again and Seth rolls away and upright. She cracks an eye open and watches as he shrugs out of his shirt and pulls a clean one from his bag, then sits down to put his boots back on.
At dinner in the restaurant downstairs, they drink.
Seth orders a bottle of wine and the crisp almost sparkling white slips down Kate’s throat too easily, glass after glass. It doesn’t take much until she starts to feel it but the waiter keeps filling her glass a little at a time and she keeps sipping in between bites. She hasn’t had much to drink since the night with the tequila shots, just a sip of beer here and there to try different brands Seth would have after a long day of driving. Seth had started with a glass of wine and then moved on to scotch once their entrees arrived and he’s been drinking as steadily as she has. He sips before setting his glass down and squints at Kate across the small table. She can see he’s already more than buzzed.
“Why did you wanna come with me?”
Kate looks back down to her plate and picks at her food with her fork for a moment before shrugging.
“I didn’t have anyone else. And I felt . . . I feel safe with you.”
“That's fucked up.”
“No it isn't,” Kate shakes her head and looks back up at him. “Daddy said I should stay with Scott, try to help him-”
“He wanted you surrounded by bloodsuckers?” Seth’s voice raises slightly, he sits up a little in his seat.
Kate tries not to smile at his automatic response.
“Ranger Gonzalez . . . I don’t know. I couldn’t have gone back to Bethel but I really didn’t know what I was going to do at first when I was alone out there after he left.”
“Prick,” Seth mutters.
She doesn't argue with him. It's something she's been mulling over, something that's been nagging at her, even though she’s found she doesn’t hold any animosity for the Ranger. She takes a breath, not entirely sure she’s ready to relive the last thing, even briefly, but the words are coming out from her wine-loose lips before she can stop herself.
“And that . . . professor, Sex Machine? He tried to sacrifice me. To the Nine Lords, to take Santanico's place.”
“Okay,” Seth sighs, leaning back in his seat and taking another sip of his drink, “so what you mean is, I just hadn't tried to get you killed most recently.”
“You never did,” she says softly.
“Got you in a couple of firefights. Got your family into that whole mess.”
“You protected me. Every time you could.”
“Except when it would have made a difference.”
“I don't know if we had a choice," she protests. “When he had me on that altar, he told me I was fulfilling my purpose, that I was playing my part in this master plan-”
“Fuck him,” Seth spits out, barely at a polite volume.
Kate’s mouth lifts at the corners even though she feels like she’s overflowing, struck by the starkness of everything that happened all over again now that she’s explaining it to Seth. She lets herself smile a little, even though it almost feels wrong in the moment. If she likes that a little of Seth's rage has her name on it, then it's not like there's anyone around to disapprove. She straightens in her chair and squares her shoulders as if she could say this matter-of-factly.
“What if this was how it was supposed to be? Don't get me wrong, I hate that my mama and daddy are- gone. I hate what happened to Scott. I'm sorry about Richie. But I think . . .”
It's not that she believed Sex Machine's narrative of worthiness in purity and sacrifice. Evil had stolen her family and gotten its hands around her throat and this was nothing church had ever remotely prepared her for, but it didn't mean that everything she'd believed before didn’t matter now. Maybe it all existed, all at once, and maybe trying to outrun it with Seth is stupid and they’ll be swallowed whole by it sooner or later but something in her is beginning to believe more and more firmly everyday that she is where she's supposed to be.
“Katie?”
Seth’s leaning forward, elbows on the table, and she feels like she can’t breathe for a second, like suddenly the temperature has gone up ten degrees and his voice when he says her name - she doesn’t miss that he didn’t call her Kate. Didn’t call her one of the many pet names he tosses around so often. Katie. It should chafe at her, and from anyone else, any other time, it always has. She barely tolerated Katie-cakes from her daddy but had resigned herself to it. But no one calls her that now. No one calls her anything because no one knows her anymore.
“Don't you think we need each other?” she finishes quietly.
Seth holds her gaze for a long time before he blinks and sets his glass back down with a thump that startles her.
“Yeah, kid, like a hole in the head,” he mutters.
Kate shakes her head slowly, but lets the pause stretch without protest. She’s ready to force down the rest of her food and wait for Seth to be ready to leave, ready to write it all off as Seth being Seth and both of them being a little bit drunk. Then he continues, squinting down at his plate.
“Why the fuck do you defend me?” he asks, his voice low and hoarse.
Kate watches him for a moment, something welling up from so deep inside her it feels like an ocean pouring out.
“Maybe that's how I protect you. Maybe I don't want anyone to hurt you either,” she says softly, reaching over and setting her hand over his.
He breathes out a dry laugh and throws back the rest of his scotch with his free hand. His eyes snag on hers and hold, and he sweeps his thumb over her hand. Silence settles over them again until the waiter comes back and offers a dessert menu which they both refuse so he brings the check instead and Seth charges it to their room, digging a thin pile of bills from his wallet to leave on the table. They’re still quiet but much of the tension has drained out of it and Kate’s head swims languidly as they leave hand in hand. She stumbles over the threshold of the elevator and Seth pulls her in and pushes her gently to lean against the wall with a hand on her stomach.
“Gotta stay light on those feet, kid.”
“Don’t call me that,” she mumbles, blushing, and grabs a handful of his shirt like a warning.
But she just ends up pulling him closer. He doesn’t seem to mind. The doors close and he leans on one elbow against the wall over her, head bowed to look down at her searchingly. Kate flicks her eyes up to his before staring back down at his shirt clutched in her hand and taking a deep breath. It’s starting to hit her, how much they’d just said, and how much they hadn’t before. It’s hitting her too, like a slow-motion blow to the chest, how much Seth is in her space, how much he’s leaning into her, how his hand on her stomach has slipped around to her side and he’s petting at her, fingers scratching against the filmy material of her sundress, palm warming the dip of her waist. This isn’t how he touches her normally, even though he touches her a lot; it’s usually a hand brushing along her back to usher her through a doorway, a quick clasp around her wrist or her palm when she’s skipping to keep up with his long hurried strides, a nudge of his knuckles or his foot when he’s teasing her about something. It’s all casual, like conversational fillers.
Now he’s touching her seemingly just to touch, unhurried and exploratory and she doesn’t know what it means or if it means anything at all other than his normal handsiness getting more intense when he’s reached a certain blood alcohol content. She hasn’t seen him properly drunk since the tequila shots at the second hotel, just slightly buzzed from a beer or two before going to sleep. She meets his gaze briefly and he looks just as unmoored as she feels, lost and carried high and fast on a wave of something she hadn’t realized was bubbling between them already and is now crashing loud all around them. She wants to crawl inside him and hide from him at the same time, as if being held in his chest would be less unnerving than being pinned here against the wall under his eyes dazedly searching her face.
The elevator dings for their floor and there are people outside waiting to get on. Kate drags Seth out behind her quickly by the handful of his shirt still in her fist, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the couple getting on after them. Seth pries her fingers loose and slides his between them, linking their hands and letting himself be pulled along for a few steps. She’s half-blinded by distraction and when she starts down a wrong hallway and he tugs her back against another wall and stands looming over her again, this time searching intently though she can still see that haziness in his eyes through her own. His hand is at her waist again, maddeningly warm, heavy, and slow.
“What should I call you, hm?”
She’s not sure if he’s trying to be cruel, trying to goad her, if he knows what a mess her head is and he’s poking at her like he does sometimes. She’s not sure and she’s desperate to reveal everything just to make him shut up but she can’t even put words to it for herself, much less for him.
“Think I called you princess once, you want me to call you that?”
She shakes her head helplessly and then he’s tracing the chain of her cross on her neck. She closes her eyes tightly in a slow blink, reaches up and touches his hips to steady herself. She can feel his hand at her collarbone shake slightly.
“Called you sis. But that’s not right, is it?”
She can’t meet his eyes, can’t make herself do it while her hands rest on his sides, all heat and muscle through his shirt. He leans down and he’s tipping her face up with a finger under her chin as her heart thuds behind her ribs painfully and she inhales sharply when his mouth brushes along her jaw. He draws back just slightly, just enough to look at her and his thumb nudges gently at her chin in something like reassurance.
“Relax,” he whispers.
She huffs out an incredulous breath.
“Just don’t call me kid,” she mutters, raising her eyebrows teasingly even though she still can’t even look him in the eye.
He laughs under his breath and then he’s falling against her and pulling her up at the same time, bringing her into his arms. They hold there, wrapped up in each other and still, and eventually his hands almost frame her breasts when he holds her ribs to push her gently away until her arms fall from around his neck. There’s a flare of want in her chest pulling her forward again and raising her eyes to his and she brings him back, noses at his chin and lets her lips brush his throat. She digs her fingers into his sides when he rests his elbows on the wall at either side of her head and leans into her.
“I wanna go to bed,” she murmurs against his skin. “I’m tired.”
He smirks softly down at her, knowing and affectionate and helpless all at once, and nods. Suddenly he’s pliant, letting her lead him down the hall, close enough to be draped along her back as she keys into their room and then they’re stumbling together towards the bed. They stop at the side, both stilled facing each other and it’s like all the momentum suddenly dies. Kate gets a wave of cold acheyness that feels suspiciously like sobriety and everything that just happened - all the nothing of it, that is; they didn’t kiss, they didn’t quite say anything, he didn’t touch her anywhere he hasn’t before - seems almost hilariously overblown and dramatic as she stands looking at Seth in his rumpled clothes.
But she still wants, wants with a deep sorrowful cutting sensation in her chest, to dig herself a place inside him where she can blot out the rest of her world for a while. She feels like she could, if she tried, get close enough to him that it would feel like the same thing. She stares at him, barely seeing through the dark of the room since neither of them had fumbled the light switch on when they passed by it.
“You’re tired,” he murmurs, reaching or motioning toward her but not touching her, and Kate takes the opportunity to catch his hand and pull him closer, against her so she can feel the heat of him through his clothes and then push him down to the bed.
“I’m tired,” she repeats as she crawls in after him, and they move together, Seth crawling back to the pillows and Kate following, not stopping until she’s laid out next to him and pulls him onto his side from his back.
They’ve done this part before, almost, and it’s not until his body is curling over and around hers that it feels new. She slides one leg between his and tugs his arms around her, gasping lightly against his neck when his hands grip and then stroke down her back. That’s all there is though, his hands and a low rumble in his chest against her ear and he lets her squirm closer and tuck her nose under his jaw and breathe in deep and shaking. Her head swims, and she’s not entirely sure if she’s moving against Seth or just feeling their breathing rocking them against each other, like dancing but slower, so much slower. It isn’t like when he’d held her before when they’d only been touching from their chests up - she’s pressed and twined with him, his heat bleeding into her and taking over.
Kate runs a hand around to his back and finds the deep ridge of his spine and traces up from the small of his back, smiling when he shivers. She nudges herself closer, tucks her leg a little higher between his and presses her mouth to his neck, lets her lips part and drag over his skin and feels his short exhale against her own chest as he smoothes with slow hot strokes down her back again, over one hip to palm at the curve like he’s measuring her in his hands.
Kate whimpers, pleased and overwhelmed and Seth pants out a breath into her hair and suddenly this doesn’t feel like some slow exploration. Suddenly there’s fire slithering in her belly and she arches her back, mouths at his neck and slips the tip of her tongue out against the prickle of his stubble. She throws a leg over his waist, hooking him closer, and the dress she had changed into for dinner is flowy and short and rucked up around her hips at this point and she knows, knows this is more than she wants right now, knows this is tipping them over a line she’s not ready to leave behind but for several frantic seconds she doesn’t care, she just wants and feels the drop and over-turn of her stomach at the realization that she can have.
Seth growls, groping at her bare thigh and bowing his head to spread a wet open-mouthed kiss down her throat, scraping his teeth across her collarbone when she lets out a shocked moan. The memory falls through her, tingling on her skin in the wake of his mouth, of getting sloppy drunk with him in a different motel room, tongues on skin licking up salt, watching Seth’s lips pucker around a slice of lime, and then his mouth messy and wet on her neck after she’d poured the salt on herself. Seth had never said anything about it afterwards and things seemed to go back to whatever they’d decided was normal between them but suddenly everything feels very different from that night and very very real.
“Seth,” she murmurs, tipping her head back when he keeps his mouth at her neck.
He grunts back unintelligibly, grips her hip and crushes her closer, the flat of his stomach forcing her thighs wide and she jolts and gasps his name again, hips rolling her body against him as he grips at her waist and rolls over her, pressing her back into the mattress.
“Oh my god, wait, wait I can’t-” she whimpers, pushing back on his shoulders even as she’s clutching at his waist with her thighs.
Seth groans and locks a hand at her hip, his arm barring her leg against him and stilling her movements. They’re both frozen for a long beat, his heavy breaths rushing hot and tickling over her neck and she curls a hand around the back of Seth’s neck, her other clutching his shoulder, both tugging him to stay close even as she trembles in his arms. She can’t keep going like this but she doesn’t want him away from her, can’t stand the thought of sleeping with a polite foot of space between them and passing it all off as drunken confusion in the morning.
“Don’t go,” she manages, and her voice sounds weak and young and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel but she never thought it would be this scary to stop.
Not for shame or fear for her safety or of how Seth might react, but fear of herself, of realizing she’d collided headlong into a brick wall of her own making having run miles along uncharted territory with no map of the way back.
Seth raises his head and noses at her cheek, nodding quickly in acknowledgement and pushing her leg down off his hip, rolling back so his lower body isn’t pinning hers to the mattress anymore. He braces himself on an elbow above her, one hand stroking gently over her stomach and the other trailing his fingers through her hair. She holds on, closes her eyes and tries to steady her breathing and slow down the rapid beat of her pulse in her ears.
“Shouldn’t be playing with fire like this,” he murmurs.
“Seth,” she sighs again, this time aggravated.
“We shouldn’t be screwing around like this if you’re not sure,” he cuts in, voice gentle even around the harsh words. “You’re drunk-”
“So are you-”
“I know. It’s too easy to fuck things up.”
She grips at his shoulders, and she tries to reel it in but she’s so frustrated, feels so needy for something she doesn’t have within herself and doesn’t want from anyone other than him, and part of her doesn’t want him to be right just on principle but the rest of her is crying in relief. She opens her eyes and looks up at him through the dark, lets her eyes trail over his face, familiar and foreign both at once.
“I didn’t want to stop because . . . I want- I want more. Later.”
Seth “mm’s” in acknowledgement and touches his forehead to hers, letting his long slow exhale answer for him. He leans in and plants a kiss on her forehead, and she reaches up and holds him there a moment, eyes closed.
“We should sleep, it’s late,” he whispers.
She ducks her head and knocks into his chin and she can feel his little huffing sigh and then his hands cupping her cheeks. She reaches up and holds onto his wrist for a moment before she lets him go and he rolls away and gets up. When he closes the bathroom door behind him Kate sits up slowly, arms wrapped loosely around her middle. She’s not as drunk as she was immediately after dinner but she still feels that woozy tingle. She peels her dress off slowly and runs her fingers through her mussed hair, manages to find a t-shirt in her bag by the bed and pulls it on over her head. Seth comes back to bed after she’s laid down under the sheets and curls up behind Kate, scooting slowly closer and wrapping an arm around her middle.
“Okay?” he whispers, tucking his nose into her hair.
She rolls over and worms an arm under his to wrap around his back, feels the sleepy rasping mumble in his chest slip inside her and move, stirring up pleasure and want, and she hums back and lets herself drift under with him.
_
When they wake in the morning it’s slow and lazy, Seth stroking Kate’s back and hip over her shirt aimlessly until she shifts closer, murmuring wordlessly and reaching back to tug her shirt up a little so his hand slips underneath. Seth pauses, fingertips feather-light at the base of her spine. She looks up but they’re too close to really focus on each other so she just nods, temple against his jaw, and then he’s tickling up her back and she’s arching and gasping, lightning flickering out from his touch.
He reaches the back of her neck, scratching with blunt nails up into her hair, and then trails back down and she can’t stop the shudder that wracks her, doesn’t even try not to sigh when he splays his hand wide on the middle of her back and presses her closer. Seth laughs quietly and hums in satisfaction, nuzzling along her hairline. She feels wrung out and achey all over with a headache settled and pulsing behind her eyes as they lay still again, starting to wake up more fully.
When she starts to really think about it Kate’s not even sure what they did the night before. She remembers it all even though some of it feels like a hazy soundless dream, but she’s not sure how to quantify it or if she even should. She wonders why things like this aren’t defined in sex ed along with everything else. She knows what is supposed to make her a virgin or not, knows there are a lot of things she doesn’t know from experience that Seth certainly does, but this; waking up with his body pressed to hers, sharing a small space of rest and making something theirs across different rooms and towns and weeks together . . . it has to mean something too.
“Hungry?” Seth asks, interrupting her thoughts.
Kate nods distractedly and sighs.
“I don’t feel like going out.”
“Room service, baby,” Seth answers, rolling away from her and grabbing the menu from the bedside table. He tosses it to her and rolls over onto his stomach next to her. “We got fancy digs now, remember?”
Kate picks up the menu and pages through it for a moment before calling to order, not even asking Seth before she orders him his usual breakfast along with her own pancakes, fruit, and tea. Just as she’s hanging up the phone Seth reaches over and pokes at the little patch of her thigh that’s exposed where her shirt has ridden up and the blanket as fallen down around her hips and she squirms away but scoots down to lay her head on her pillow and face him.
“Twenty minutes,” she says, repeating the time the front desk had quoted for their order to be delivered to their room.
“You ordered for me.”
Kate smiles softly. “Yeah, you always get the same thing.”
“How do you even remember that?”
Kate rolls her eyes. “You always get the same thing,” she repeats slowly. “Do you want something else?”
Seth shrugs. “No.”
They watch each other quietly for several moments, eyes roaming faces and meeting occasionally, nervous smiles appearing and receding.
“Do you have to go out today?” Kate asks finally.
Seth shakes his head. “Tonight. Might just be casing, might be able to make something happen.”
Kate nods and takes a breath, opens her mouth to speak and then closes it. Seth’s eyes drift closed and she lets herself sit with the cacophony in her head for a while longer before shifting closer, reaching out to lift Seth’s arm and duck under it as she rolls to her other side to face away from him with his arm barred across her shoulders, her chin tucked down against his forearm.
“Gonna sleep all day?” he asks mildly.
Kate turns back, twisting to look up at him and shake her head slowly.
“Not sleep,” she answers softly.
She reaches up and traces along his lower lip with her thumb, watching the amusement in his eyes grow along with an edge of heat. She feels the inclination to move forward, to press her mouth to that full lower lip, taste him and feel his groans breathe down into her lungs, but something draws her back before she ever moves. She turns back, tucks her hands around his forearm and exhales, trying to catch her bearings.
She’s not sure what steered her away, what’s making her toe this line without crossing it now with a clearer head and the room lit softly with sunshine filtered through the curtains. Maybe she’s making sure he’ll let her, that he won’t take them charging forward before she’s ready, and that seems smart and reasonable and utterly insane when she thinks about it. If last night showed her anything it’s that she wants him, yes, but she wants just bits and pieces of him at a time, wants her run of him, wants him to like it and participate but not direct her, not take steps ahead of her. She wants control, and to find a complete lack of it that she can feel safe and mindless in. Maybe it’s selfish but she finds she doesn’t really care. She’s here with him because she asked and he wanted her to come and he’s reached for her just as many times as she has for him, each in their own ways.
She takes a breath and squeezes at his arm, tucks her face down a little further to press her lips to his forearm and then rest her chin there and close her eyes. She wants him to know all this, and she doesn’t know how to tell him, and something in her is both desperately hoping and completely terrified that he already does.
“Seth,” she murmurs, aimlessly demanding.
He “hm?”s back with rasp and then he’s moving, leaning up on his elbow and waiting a moment for an answer. Kate hums and squirms back against him, a little prickle of embarrassment alongside satisfaction in her chest when he huffs out a smirk of a laugh.
Seth’s fingers brush over her neck and move her hair away, stroke up behind her ear and down to her chin to turn it down and away, just slightly, exposing a swath of skin that he runs his hand over again, bare and soft and warm. His breath tickles as he leans in and she shies away slightly but he moves the arm around her shoulders, brings his hand up and cups her jaw gently, holding her still. Everything in her inhales - not fear but anticipation - and then his lips and his stubble land on her throat softly and then his tongue, swirling out as he kisses her. He’s still holding her jaw and now her shoulder too with his other hand, starting slowly to gather the fabric of her t-shirt and tug it away to lay down a blanket of hot-cold-wet-scrape over all her exposed skin.
She’s clinging to his arm, not pulling him away, breathing deeper and faster with every moment, not telling him no, and everything he’s doing is pouring down into her from her throat and her jaw and her ear when he reaches it and closes his teeth on the lobe, pulls and makes it hurt before releasing to flick with his tongue and suck. Some kind of sound comes out of her, something strangled and almost frantic and she’s reaching up and digging her nails into his hair, arching her back, pushing back into him and holding him at her neck and she wants to scream when he releases her shoulder to run his fingertips up her arm and over her wrist to wrap around her hand in his hair gently. He moves to her ear again and noses along the shell of cartilage lightly.
“You’re loud,” he whispers, practically purring. “All wound up already . . . what’s it gonna be like when you come?”
Kate squeezes her eyes shut tight and grits her teeth against the groan working its way up her throat because this can’t be happening, she can’t be feeling this much just at words and his mouth on her neck, this can’t be normal, can’t be how this feels. A shiver works its way up through her when Seth lets out a murmuring laugh against her skin, then groans when there’s a knock at the door.
“Fuck,” he mutters, starting to shift away. “Can you-” he stops and eyes Kate collapsed on her side, reaching up to run a slightly trembling hand through her hair, and he grins and shakes his head. “Nevermind.”
He wheels the cart over to the bed as Kate is sitting up, and she feels messy and jittery, thrown too quickly out of the moment and the strange reeling safety of being locked in Seth’s arms. He parks the cart at the end of the bed, and he’s saying something about having no idea how much he just tipped the bellhop as she goes up on her knees and crawls across the bed toward him, ignoring the sheet falling away and getting tangled beneath her, ignoring everything but Seth’s face as he watches her, his eyes widening and his mouth parted. She reaches him, kneels in front of him and curls her hands around his arms, the corners of her mouth twitching up when his hands fall to her waist immediately.
“Kiss me,” she whispers.
He starts to lean in, starts and then pauses, and she hasn’t closed her eyes so she sees it when he veers away and pulls the neckline of her t-shirt aside and kisses her shoulder. He moves, barely, an inch to one side and kisses her again, making a meandering trail that he lingers and double-backs on occasionally as he makes his way across her collarbone to her throat. He’s got an arm hooked around her waist now and he dips her back, brushes his palm back over her hair so her head hangs and then he tugs down on the front of her shirt until he can plant his lips on her sternum and then he’s moving up in a slow march, pausing to lick at the thin gold cross laying against her skin, up and over her chin to the corner of her mouth.
He stops again, cups the back of her head and watches her eyes open and blink slowly. She kind of wants to kill him, kind of wants to just let herself fall entirely apart, wants to stay lucid and present enough to see if she can make him do the same. She slings an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, their mouths crash together, and she feels like she’s slammed awake after being asleep for a week.
Their food goes cold, thirty minutes slipping away like nothing with Kate’s back against the mattress and Seth stretched out beside her.
It had felt like her heart stopped as he lowered her to lay back and crawled over her, felt like she was going to be devoured and maybe that’s what’s happening. Maybe he’s gnawing away and swallowing bites of her to hold in himself. He feels hungry, almost forceful at first, holding her in place and quickly sliding his tongue past her lips, breathing in her moans. He slows once they’re laying down, seems to catch himself and hovers above her staring with hazy blackened eyes until Kate reaches up and cradles the back of his head, crooks her fingers and draws him in to kiss her again slow and soft.
She’s stared at his lower lip before distractedly, not even with conscious desire, just noticing and retaining without fully knowing why and now she sucks and bites at it, testing the feeling and deciding quickly she likes it. He breaks the kiss and looks down at her a little bit shocked and a little bit impressed and she feels herself smiling, reaching up to run her fingertip over his reddened spit-slicked lip where her teeth had just sunken in and tugged. He runs a hand over her hair and she can feel his smile when he fairly dives back to her, eager and looser and harder and she wraps her arms around his neck, giddy laughter bubbling low in her belly just below where his hand rests.
She shivers and twitches as his breath tickles her neck, the little pain and soothing brush of his teeth and then his lips along her cartilage, and she pulls her knees up to rest her feet on the mattress. She’s still in only a t-shirt and her underwear and she hasn’t felt naked yet, hasn’t felt exposed or uncomfortable even though just being in the same room as Seth has made her feel stripped bare before. Now he reaches back without looking and runs a hand down from her knee, fingertips gliding through the slight gap between her thighs and she feels her knees fall open a bit for him on instinct, her eyes flying to his as he pulls back to watch her face, suddenly alert. He doesn’t ask, doesn’t take, just keeps on a slow swirling trail along the insides of her thighs and sees the small quick shake of her head before he reaches the apex and glides his hand easily up her stomach instead.
“Breathe,” he whispers, hand flat and grounding on her sternum over her shirt.
She hadn't realized she stopped. She lays still, half under him, breathing, training her body back into calm. She reaches up and lays a hand over his on her chest, looks drowsily up at him and it starts to come to her slowly how deep she’s fallen into this world, this bed, with him. His fingertips trail and rub over her necklace and he watches the motion with a contemplative look.
“You still believe in God, Kate?”
“Mm,” she answers, nodding. “I don’t know if it’s the same now. But I do.”
He hums under his breath consideringly and she finds his elbow and then his bicep with her nails, trailing up lightly to his shoulder to make him shiver.
“Why?” she wonders back.
He shrugs over her, his motions slow and almost considering as he leans in again. There’s no two sides to him and she knows that. The man pressing featherlight kisses along her jaw is the same one who’s murdered people who got in his way. She doesn’t know how she fits into the moral code he seems to adhere to. She knows he is part of the process of dismantling her own beliefs. Not to toss them all away, but to pick up the pieces and see how they fit back together after such a thorough shaking.
He kisses up her temple and then the corner of her eye and then he’s rolling to his back with a rasping sigh.
Kate closes her eyes and presses her fingertips against her brows. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”
“Don’t apologize,” he cuts her off, reaching up himself to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Don’t fucking apologize to me.”
Kate pulls her hands from her face, opens her eyes and watches Seth when he turns his head to look back at her.
“Don’t,” he repeats quietly, shaking his head.
She reaches out tentatively and trails her fingertips over his shoulder again.
“You’re . . . frustrated.”
Seth looks back at the ceiling and laughs, then rolls back to his stomach and props himself up on his elbows and leans over her slightly.
“Yeah, so?”
Kate smiles a little nervously and rolls her eyes, unsure how to take his nonchalance. She starts tracing along the lines of his tattoo lightly.
“So . . . aren’t we both supposed to be . . . getting something out of-” she waves her hand between them and then goes back to tracing on his skin. Seth squints at her a moment, appraising.
“Did you ever steal anything before?”
“No.”
“Never even just took something, just because you wanted it? Just, take. And not think about the consequences?”
She can’t tear her eyes away from Seth’s, can’t find her voice to answer so she just shakes her head. He leans a little closer, his smile slipping away.
“I took you,” he whispers, mouth almost at her ear. “I took you, Kate. I took you away from everything, everyone.”
“What are you saying,” she whispers back, eyes falling closed.
Her heart is pounding, hammering in her chest and her ears like it’s going to punch out of her chest.
“Take me.”
She feels goosebumps break out all over her neck and down, her eyes slip closed again and everything is Seth’s voice, soft and final, filling her head and lighting everything inside her on fire. She turns and opens her eyes and Seth’s face is all she can see, his irises bottomless black and his mouth firm and full. She’s traced his tattoo up to his shoulder and she stops now, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck to pull him in. She tips her chin up just slightly until their noses brush, and then Seth’s leaning in further but she grips at his neck and shakes her head just slightly.
“Not yet.”
He lets out a breath and hangs there a moment, eyes closed, lips parted, before he tips his forehead down to rest against Kate’s.
“Did I mention you could take me?” he asks weakly.
A laugh bubbles up in Kate’s throat suddenly, loud and full, and she rubs at Seth’s neck comfortingly. He reaches up and grasps her chin gently, gives her a searing look before turning her face and planting a kiss on her cheek. He starts to pull away but she reaches up and cups his jaw in her hands, pulls him down and kisses him on the mouth.
Because she can. He’ll let her, and she can let herself. She runs her thumb over his bottom lip again when she pulls back and something low in her chest whispers mine.
“Gonna kill me, Fuller,” he mutters as he rolls away and sits up.
“You volunteered,” Kate calls after him before the bathroom door slams behind him.
She stretches under the sheets then curls in on herself and lets out a long shaky exhale. She hears the shower turn on a minute later and she knows, knows what he’ll do. It’s not like she’s entirely naive, but it feels more polite to leave the thought alone, at least for now, and so she does, carefully. By the time Seth emerges, dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt, she’s mostly smoothed out the bed and is sitting up against the headboard flipping channels on the TV.
Eventually they eat breakfast. Seth piles his plate and silverware on the cart when he’s done and flops back on the pillows, on arm slung over his head and the other resting on his stomach. There’s a black and white western on TV and Kate half-watches it while she finishes the last few bites of her pancakes. She leans up onto her knees and crawls to the end of the bed to set her plate on the cart when she’s done and something makes her glance back over her shoulder as she’s moving back and she finds Seth’s eyes on her. His gaze flicks to hers quickly and she sits up, feeling the blush crawl up her cheeks.
“I’m gonna go take a shower,” she says quickly, trying to keep from smiling nervously and failing.
She climbs off the bed and hurries to the bathroom before she can change her mind, trying not to picture him as she turns on the shower and strips off her clothes.
_
The world outside their hotel room still exists, and as more than a thing that delivers food and collects the dishes again later, so though he protests Kate convinces Seth to come out with her.
Her hair is still wet from her shower but she feels refreshed and alert, her slight hangover now gone. There’s a little open-air mall not far from the hotel and they wander the courtyards and shops, stopping in a drug store first. Kate finds some hair cream and sunscreen and then goes looking for Seth through the aisles, not paying much attention to where she finds him until she looks and realizes they’re standing in front of shelves of condoms.
Part of her wants to laugh nervously and find a way to avoid the entire thought of needing them but she can’t. Maybe it all just started last night or that same morning, maybe she would figure out soon that whatever they were doing wasn’t what she wanted and put a stop to it and she knows Seth would never press for more, but maybe they would keep slipping down this path and she would be glad of it then, that they’re standing here now.
She’s glad of it now too, she realizes, even as heady and overwhelming the tip of that iceberg has been already she’s glad Seth has more experience than she does and that if he can he won’t let them be caught unprepared. At least physically. She’s not quite sure what emotional warning signs she’s supposed to be watching herself for, not when the sensation of having Seth’s mouth and hands on her when they’re both still clothed is enough to make her want to scream in half-terror and half-agony and still not want him to stop. And there’s something, something in just thinking back over the last day and realizing how readily he’d stopped every time she needed him to that makes her want to keep pushing her own boundaries as far as she can, see how much she really wants before it goes too far. She doesn’t know what it would feel like to want to take back something she’s let someone do to her like that, doesn’t know if she would feel regret or if she would even care at this point given all that she’s just been through. Given that she went through so much of it with Seth anyway.
She looks up at Seth when he glances over at her and gives him a slight nod, dipping her head and leaning her temple on his shoulder for a moment. Seth grabs a box and tosses them in the plastic basket she has hooked over one arm and she stares at them for a second while Seth is turning to go. He turns back and tilts his head at her.
“They don’t expire for a year, chill out.”
She blushes and huffs out a breath. She should feel less about this, she thinks briefly, should feel more like her idea of what mature would look like. But that would mean acting like she doesn’t care, like it doesn’t phase her to think about having sex with Seth and that would be a lie. But she realizes she can, for the moment, chill out; let the box of condoms disappear into the plastic bag Seth carries out after they’ve paid and not let her entire mind be consumed with a panic-tinged highlight reel of every PG-13 movie sex scene she’s ever seen. She walks alongside Seth, their arms bumping together, and she lets go of all the anxiety and just lets herself be for a little while.
They wander in and out of various shops, stopping for agua fresca and arepas after an hour or so, and as they’re starting to wind toward the exit near where they’d parked Kate pulls Seth into one more store to look for a new bathing suit. She knows they won’t stay at this hotel for long the but the pool is beautiful and she wants to go in at least once before they leave. While Kate browses Seth sits in one of the arm chairs in the center of the store, slouched down with a fist jammed against his cheek. He looks miserable but she ignores him, flipping slowly through the racks until she finds something that makes her smile. She takes the two hangers over and holds them up over her t-shirt and jeans, giving Seth a raised-brow grin.
The suit is a two piece with white high-waisted bottoms with vertical rows of little red bows along the hips and the top is printed with pairs of red cherries.
Seth raises an eyebrow. “Subtle.”
Kate shrugs, “I like it,” and goes back to shopping.
She ends up with that suit plus another one, a skimpy yellow halter with ruffled hems and matching bottoms that cut high in the back. It’s not a thong but it’s nothing her parents would ever have allowed her to wear considering the fit her daddy had pitched the first time he saw the suit she would eventually leave behind in the RV when she left the Twister with Seth. The speech her father had given her about modesty had seemed quaint even at the time.
She grabs a sarong and a pair of flip flops before she picks up Seth still parked in his chair and doesn’t pretend to fish in her purse for the money when the cashier rings everything up even though she could pay for it herself. She leans on the counter and watches Seth, watches his eyes roam over her as he hands over several bills.
“Find something you like?” he asks.
“Mm-hm,” she nods and leans in, goes up on her tip toes, her hands on his sides to steady herself, and kisses him lightly.
As they’re walking out of the store they pass by a woman with a young girl sleeping in her arms and Kate realizes when they make eye contact briefly that it’s Cristina from the hotel salon. Cristina recognizes her too and smiles in greeting before her eyes flick over to Seth. She turns around as she and Kate pass each other in the doorway, raises her eyebrows towards Seth’s back and mouths “wow!” Kate grins, blushing, and waves before turning to catch up with him. She realizes Cristina might still be watching and reaches out to loop her hand around Seth’s elbow as she falls into step next to him. He doesn’t glance over, just angles his arm up to rest around her shoulders instead, and Kate bites her lip and leans into his side as they head for the car.
_
Seth leaves later that night, this time cupping Kate’s jaw and kissing her slowly, almost cautiously, like he’s not quite sure he’s allowed to. Kate holds his wrist and leans in deep, tilting her head back for him and taking hold of a handful of his shirt to tug him in closer. Something blooms through her chest, affection and shock and something like terror because it feels so gentle, almost non-sexual and she doesn’t know what to make of that compared with the obscene things he’d done to just her neck with those same lips earlier that day. He breaks the kiss and she lets him, just tugs lightly on his jacket and whispers, “later.”
She feels his smile and exhale against her temple and then he’s out the door.
The room seems to close in on her when she sits in it alone, Seth and the playground of his body not there to distract her.
It's just after sunset and when she looks out the window the pool in the courtyard below is empty but she knows from the signs it'll be open to guests for another hour. She slips into one of her new swim suits - the one with the cherries - and ties her sarong around her waist. She thinks for a moment before tucking her pistol in her tote bag just under her towel and then heads down into the still-warm night.
No one is on the patio surrounding the pool itself, and there are only a few people sitting outside at the restaurant bar and patio that backs up to it, separated by an iron fence. Kate drops her stuff on a lounge chair, slips off her flip flops and sarong and steps into the water at the shallow end, walking slowly deeper and deeper until she can roll to her back and float.
The pool is heated and glows gently with underwater lights. Water laps at and then fills her ears and she gazes up at the stars. Forever away, burning perhaps violently but only reaching to Earth in tiny pinpricks of winking light. She lets her mind float too, in and out of dreamy trails of thought that ignore her careful script of avoidance. She's been running hard from thoughts of her family since the Twister and the first days afterwards with Seth, diving in just as hard once or twice only to stumble away again overwhelmed and harrowed. But here there’s something gentle about it now when her family’s faces appear, as she knew them first before morphing into how she'd last seen them. She thinks of her mama and daddy, together somewhere peaceful and safe. Thinks of them getting to be there while she's here watching stars burn from the face of a planet infested with monsters she'd been taught were make-believe. She wonders about Scott, if he'll ever get to be with their parents again or if his soul's been altered somehow, or maybe just sent further than God will follow. She wonders if souls are alterable, if there's anywhere that's far enough to go. She wonders almost idly, not for the first time, why she was spared. If it’s really a privilege to still be alive and human at all. She's seen a breadth and depth of death and suffering that had only been in Job and Revelations or on the news of foreign countries before and yet she's floating in a warm pool under a clear sky and she has food in her belly and a place to sleep later.
Someone to sleep there with her.
Kate rolls over and swims a few strokes until her feet reach the bottom and looks around the empty patio, sounds of people talking and clinking silverware nearby, cars on the road more distant. She climbs from the pool and shivers in the breeze as she hurries to wrap in a towel and grab her things, curling one hand around the heavy solid lump of the gun in her bag. When she's back in their room she rinses off the chlorine in the shower before hanging up her suit to dry and sliding on underwear - soft green with little white flowers, ones that Seth got her, and she still wonders if he looked before he picked them and if she can ask him that now and what any of his various answers might mean - and a white stretchy spaghetti strap tank.
She dries her hair - nicer hotels come with hair driers in Mexico too, she'd been pleased to discover - and crawls into the bed. It's early still but she wants the blankets around her and the excuse to sleep to pass the time. She trains her mind on an image of Seth wrapped around her, hot and solid and breathing at her back, his voice murmuring low while his hands settle on her. It works; it keeps away, for the most part, everything else that she wants to leave outside under the black sky for now. She tucks her nose into Seth’s pillow, feeling a little dramatic but she likes filling her head with the smell of him. Walking herself into the fresh potent memories of his hands and mouth and his whole body is a welcome place to go to distract herself from everything else. Part of her wonders idly if this is dangerous, if she’s going to delude herself with some overblown romantic version of Seth and whatever it is they’re doing that real life, the real person he is, will never equal. But, it is real, what she’s thinking about. She’s not lying there imagining scenarios where he would touch or kiss her, it’s happened and letting the images and sensations of it fall over her like another blanket is something she has a right to now, something he can’t take back.
Eventually she leans over and turns off the lamp, curls back up under the covers, and lets herself drift again. At some point there’s a scraping at the door and then it’s opening, light from the hallway blinding around Seth’s silhouette when she opens her eyes. He comes to the edge of the bed like he had last time he came back like this, kneeling beside it and whispering her name.
“Kate?”
“Mm?” She crawls a hand across the sheets and over a vinyl zippered pouch that won’t close around the stack of bills inside. “Are you okay?” she asks groggily.
“It was fuckin’ perfect,” he whispers back, and his voice is intense even at low volume, matching the sweep of fabric as he tugs off his clothes.
Kate smiles, her eyes still closed, at his enthusiasm, and his words blur together a bit with the sound of his belt buckle clinking, more fabric and his shoes hitting the floor. She barely scoots back as he climbs into bed, letting him jostle her a little as he settles propped up on one elbow with a hand on her hip over the blankets. She reaches out and stumbles her fingers against his chest, finding the neckline of the tank he wears for an undershirt and running back and forth along it. She can almost feel his heart pounding through the muscles of his chest, and in the blackness of the room in her mind’s eye she sees energy radiating off him like an aura.
“Tell me what it’s like,” she asks softly.
“It’s like clockwork. Everything just falls together and I was there in the middle of it, like the energy just . . . you know what that’s like, when it’s like there’s a fuckin’ soundtrack playing in the background, everything’s so perfect? We’re talkin’ Willem Dafoe in Boondock Saints, just not crazy.”
“I haven’t seen that,” she murmurs, trying to roll closer and catching the edge of the pouch of money in the cheek. It jars her more awake and she huffs and lifts her head to rub at her face. “Can that go somewhere else?”
“Huh? Oh.”
He sounds vaguely disappointed but she can hear him picking up the pouch and then the bedside table drawer opening and closing.
“I’m here,” she adds at his tone, feeling a little ridiculous, but she hears Seth’s quiet laugh and then his hand on her hip is slipping around her back and tugging her closer.
“Yeah,” he whispers, lips at her temple and trailing down her cheek, her jaw, his hand slipping up her arm to thumb softly at her earlobe and tickle into her hair so he can chase the goosebumps he raises on her neck with his tongue.
She lifts her chin for him with a little sigh of contentment and they turn together, Kate rolled under him as she turns to her back and he leans over her. His hand falls to her shoulder and lays there warm and half-clasped, thumb rubbing at her deltoid while he kisses her throat and the motion feels restless, feels like he’s doing it to remind himself not to let that hand wander elsewhere.
He moves slowly, very slowly, but she can still track it, can still tell when his kisses are heading carefully toward where her tanktop hugs a line across the tops of her breasts. She’s braless underneath the stretchy snug material and she knows they both feel it when he starts grazing one of her nipples with his chin and neither of them shy away as it pebbles up round and hard. She’s starting to recognize how he advances with her; slow and measured, not quite holding his breath but attuned and alert to whatever her reaction might be. Part of her wants to test him, to see what he’ll do if she just doesn’t react to tell him one way or another if she wants him to stay on his chosen path along her bare skin, and she takes the sudden flash of hyper-awareness at that idea and holds it in her chest quietly. She lets his kisses spread lower and lower until he’s mouthing the hem of her top and then nosing at it, his lips brushing through the fabric where his chin had before.
He pauses there and lifts his head slightly so she can almost feel his warm breath on her through her top, and he slides that hand down from her shoulder, following the line of her arm and then tucking around her waist over her tank and sliding back up, cupping her ribcage with his thumb pointing toward her chin and his index finger just low enough that it’s echoing the lower curve of her breast.
“Katie,” he murmurs, prompting.
Always soft, always intimate, the way he uses her nickname like that, like he’s trying to tell her something with that one extra syllable. She wonders if he’s really not sure if she’s paralyzed beneath him, if part of him somehow doubts that she would feel safe telling him no. Or maybe, the thought steals into her, maybe he likes this, maybe it excites him to constantly approach gates and ask for entrance, maybe being told yes five times and no once makes it better for him along the way. She wants to ask him all this, wants to pick at these secret places in his head and find out how she dismantles him while he does her, and more than that she wants his hands on her where no one else’s have been. A brief vision of whipping off her top and flinging it across the room skitters through her mind but she doesn’t do that. She lets her eyes drift open to the dark of the room, barely illuminated by light from the hallway coming in under the door and a distant street lamp shining tiny through the window where the curtains gap. He’s there, eyes level with her mouth but turned up to find her own looking down at him under her lashes. She scratches lightly, encouragingly she thinks, at the back of his neck and takes a breath.
“I wanna feel,” she says softly, and at his pause she lifts her head, mouth to his temple. “Show me. The energy, when it’s like clockwork.”
There’s a soft aborted groan in his throat as his hand on her ribcage shifts upwards, a warm searching weight that pushes up and over her breast as his mouth comes down on the other. His hands are big and feel bigger than they are, covering half of her chest, the soft weight of her filling his palm and not much more when he presses gently and cups her. His lips against her other side open and she gasps when he prods at her nipple with his tongue, still through the material of her top, and her hips twitch down searchingly at the tickling little spark of sensation that jumps down through her. He rolls with his thumb and flicks and brushes and she has no idea what kinds of sounds she’s making, just that she can feel her throat buzzing with every breath and her spine curving convex off the bed to lift herself up to him for more.
Seth lifts his mouth just to run a fingertip under the hem of her top, tugging it away from her skin and down, moving slow and easy as he works first one strap down and then the other and leaning up to plant a kiss on each of her shoulders. He bares her unhurriedly, tugging the tank down to her waist before she reaches up with shaking hands and arches her back deeply until just her shoulders and hips touch the bed so she can cross her arms and tug the tank off over her head. Seth wraps an arm under her waist and keeps her bowed up like that, murmuring curses against her ribs and nosing along the underside of one breast before he kisses a circle around her nipple and then takes it in his mouth. She spasms and shrinks from it at first, squirming away even as she’s trying to hold his head against her with her nails against his scalp.
“Say no,” he mumbles, mouth still full of her, and she groans and whimpers, “don’t stop,” and then he’s grasping her hands gently and guiding her arms above her head, tucking her hands under the pillow to twine and clasp together.
She’s almost frozen, thrown out of her mind so fully that she feels drunk, twitching and shivering at the heat sparking out from her chest like fireworks. She doesn’t want that sensation of lifting up out of her own body to watch what’s happening to her but it comes on its own without warning and the arch of her back, the way Seth hovers above her, looking like he’s devouring her . . . she can’t escape the memory of squirming and struggling on the altars in the labyrinth, tied down first by monsters and then by a man who worshipped them and the images all morph and melt together until she’s back on the altar with Seth draped over her, cold stone at her bare back, hands tied, his body covering hers and his mouth everywhere, branding her against the wishes of some monster-gods who would steal the idea of her body as a symbol and destroy it in the process. Maybe Seth wants her to belong to him in some way too but he wants her whole; mind, soul, body, and beating heart.
Seth kisses across from one breast to the other and his mouth presses to her chest in the same spot where she’d sunk the stake into her daddy’s and it feels like something breaks in her head, cracks and crumbles and she wants to scream with the pain of it, like past and present, pain and pleasure, fear and desire, are going to rip her apart down the middle.
She runs one foot up his calf, her head turning back and forth restlessly as he cups her breasts in his palms like bowls of milk to his mouth and she gets out one frantic exhalation of his name and then he’s pulling away with an obscene wet pop, panting and gasping, “fuck, fuck,” and rolling back, hands leaving her breasts to grasp her hip and flip her to her side almost roughly. They’re both only in underwear and him in a thin tank and he’s sealed along her back, dwarfing her and pulling her back against him, one hand moving up between her neck and the mattress and covering her breast again, holding her there with a hand spread over her heart. His other hand wraps down so his fingers are nudged into the crease of her thigh, leading her back until the hard jutting length of him nestles between the halves of her ass.
She yelps, shocked, and she can feel a startled rattle go through him, hands stuttering on her for a moment before her mind flies through something like an inventory and realizes she’s not afraid, not uncomfortable and grasps the hand at her hip. She’s overwhelmed, yes, but she needs to tear out of this headspace that’s half-in and half-out of the Twister, needs to find a way to break this part of its spell still hanging on and moreover she wants this to be what does it, wants Seth’s body to overtake hers and push the memories out of her and with a desperate certainty she knows caution and gentleness won’t do it.
“Yes,” she manages, and tips her head back to nod as well, anything to get him unfrozen behind her.
“Sure?” he breathes, hand at her hip rocking her back questioningly, as if she might not be aware of how their thin cotton clothes are moulding around their every shape and swell, doing practically nothing to mitigate how she can feel it when the thick hard length of him pulses against where she’s never even touched herself.
“Seth-” and he’s moving.
Wrapped around her, breath rushing past her ear and deafening her, hand a vice around her hip grinding her back into his thrusts, fingers pressing and rubbing at one breast and then the other. Her head is a mess, voices and faces flashing before disappearing, something briefly snickering that she’s not so holy really, even if technicalities do still count, and she wants to grab the voice by its throat, shake it and scream, “good,” but she arches her back into Seth’s thrusts instead and his body forces fire across her skin and pushes her down into the mattress, both of them trembling when he falls apart against her. He groans and whimpers at her ear, thrusts losing rhythm and eventually slowing.
She lays completely still, disbelieving, as a strange liquid heat soaks through her underwear. It’s a theme now that she has no idea how to define or categorize what they’re doing but she doesn’t even have words for this. It felt animal and rough and like nothing she should have ever done or wanted to have done to her. But the immediacy, the foreignness and desperate simplicity let her disappear into her body and it broke the chaos in her head and flung the pieces aside and she doesn’t even know if Seth realizes what was happening inside her as he’d fit her body against his and rutted and spilled on her.
His fingers whisper against her belly now, his other hand cradling her breast like it’s something precious. Maybe it is, she thinks drowsily. Maybe this is the flipside of being a candidate for virgin sacrifice and supposed “purity” just means never letting your body be an escape from instead of a vessel for pain and despair and terror.
Kate rolls her hips back a little and her underwear slide messily against Seth, softening now but still tucked against her butt and she almost smiles. Can’t quite, but almost. It feels strangely innocent, intimate in a different way, to feel him overtaken, shaking and clutching her body to his almost weakly, like he needs her. He rouses at her movement and murmurs hoarsely with his lips against her ear and then his fingertips resting loose on her stomach flex and start to swirl downward with intent. She reaches up and stops him gently, tangles her fingers through his and holds them in a bundle just below her belly button.
“No,” she says softly, and her voice is half-gone into a whispering rasp.
He’s shifting slowly behind her, mouth against her shoulder now.
“Not really fair,” he mumbles, but he sounds sleepy, lazy, and she does smile at that.
“I don’t . . . I don’t want to right now. It would be too much pressure after- I mean I haven’t . . .” she trails off, not starting again until she feels him shift again behind her. She clears her throat. “I’ve only . . . finished a couple of times. And not with anyone else, ever.”
It hangs there, quiet with their breathing.
“Churchboy Kyle never got you there?” Seth asks finally, his voice a low sweet rumble.
He’s not teasing now, except that he almost is, but there’s nothing cocky in how he says it and it doesn’t annoy her.
“No,” she confirms, tucking her chin down to look at their fingers twined together.
She takes a shaky breath.
“Okay,” he murmurs back easily, nuzzling at her shoulder with his nose and then his mouth. “When you want to, I’m pretty sure I can figure you out,” he adds, voice a whisper that drifts down inside her.
“I know you can,” she whispers back, closing her eyes tight and squeezing his fingers.
Eventually Kate slips from Seth’s arms and gathers up her discarded tank top and a clean pair of underwear from her bag. She shuts the door behind her and turns on the light, waiting until she isn’t blinded anymore, uncovered before her reflection and lit brightly and completely as she peels off her one remaining article of clothing and stares at the wet stain on the back. She puts her fresh clothes on quickly but still feels naked, still feels Seth’s body on hers and the sensation is almost suffocating in its intensity. She leans on her hands on the counter to steady herself and hangs her head, takes several deep breaths and then stands up again, shakes her hair back, and flips off the light on her way out.
She crawls back into bed next to Seth flopped out on his stomach with the sheets carelessly strewn across the backs of his legs. He stirs and lifts his head, turning to look her way in the dark.
“Sorry,” he murmurs sleepily.
“What for?”
“That I, uh, came in my pants . . . on you?”
Kate can feel the blush burning so hot on her cheeks it’s like she’s sunburned.
“Oh, I . . . I didn’t mind. I said it was okay.”
Seth sighs out a laugh and it sounds embarrassed too. There’s a long pause, quiet in the dark, and then Seth mutters, “alright, c’mere,” and rolling on his side. His arm falls across her back, hand hooking around her waist and dragging her across the small space between them and Kate lets out a surprised giggle before scooting herself close enough for her nose to brush against his chest.
“I’ll need more underwear if we do that again,” she adds, smiling, as they both settle in and Seth groans.
“Yeah mine are a loss. I’ll buy you more.”
“With little flowers?” Kate asks, feeling suddenly bold and dirty, playing at innocence like she’s never had to before.
“Jesus, don’t make it worse.”
“But I like the flo-”
Seth wraps his arm around her neck and covers her mouth with his hand, muffling her shocked laugh.
“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers, laughing.
Kate pokes his side hard and it turns into a giddy struggle, Kate squirming out of his hold every time he goes to subdue one of her hands until he’s rolled her underneath him and straddles her thighs, holding both her arms above her head against the mattress. She gives, falling limp under him and shaking with the dregs of her laughter and sudden realization that she can’t move. She twists her wrists a little in his grasp and Seth shifts so he’s holding her hands instead.
“You like it kinky, Fuller?” Seth asks teasingly, leaning in a little, and she can hear the smile in his voice, a soft rasp like velvet running over her skin.
“I don’t know,” she answers breathlessly, head buzzing and her chest full of helium.
Seth laughs softly and lowers his head to nose against her cheek, slipping down to her neck to press his lips to her jumping pulse and then back up.
“Guess we’ll find out.”
His thumbs press against her palms and her hands curl around them and grip and she feels very, very small beneath him. She noses back at his jaw and feels his smile, lets her eyes flutter closed and shifts under him, nodding before he rolls off her. They curl back together slowly and fall asleep.
_
They’re leaving breakfast at the hotel restaurant the next morning when Cristina flags Kate down in the lobby.
“Mami, wait, wait! Listen, there was a man here looking for you, early this morning.”
“What?” Kate asks, disbelieving, feeling Seth slowing beside her. She reaches out blindly and grasps at his arm, tugging him closer.
“I was covering the front desk for Alejandra while she was on break and this guy comes up asking if I’d seen you anywhere around. He had a picture of you,” Cristina says, her voice low and apologetic as she addresses Seth.
Kate freezes and turns to Seth, sees the confusion and panic growing on his face as he glances from Cristina back to Kate.
“It, um. It must be someone my family sent to look for me,” Kate covers quickly, squeezing Seth’s arm as she looks Cristina in the eye. “I didn’t tell them where we were going but they must have found out somehow and they’re trying to make me come back. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” Cristina assures her, glancing between Kate and Seth. She smiles a little. “I told him I never saw that face in my life. I couldn’t stand to break you two up.”
Kate’s mouth goes dry and she stumbles through a hasty thank you, Seth already starting to tug her away.
“Hey listen, thank you, we gotta go though,” Seth adds to Cristina, and she winks at him.
“Go take your girl and put a ring on it, guapo.”
Seth’s eyes bug out and Kate allows herself a moment of deep, deep embarrassment before she gives Cristina another thankful smile and hurries with Seth across the lobby toward the elevators. Seth’s pacing before the doors close all the way and Kate leans against one wall with her head in her hands.
“Fucking fucking fucking hell,” he mutters.
“Do you have any idea who it could have been?”
“Oh I don’t know Kate, let’s see,” Seth starts, counting off on his fingers: “Ranger Dick, Narcisco’s guys, one of our fucking snake brothers and their new fucking snake buddies, fucking Interpol, take your pick.”
He slams one hand into the wall as she doors shudder open and Kate grabs his arm, hissing, “stop it,” as they leave the elevator and jog down the hallway toward their room. Kate throws both their strewn clothes and toiletries into their duffles while Seth checks their guns are loaded and divides up ammo for each of them.
“Where are we gonna go?” she asks quietly when he hands over her gun.
She slides it into her waistband and tries to re-acclimate herself to the feeling of it after not wearing it for a few days in a row.
“Away, as fast as we can,” he mutters turning away and grabbing his bag from the bed. “Vacation’s over.”
_____