Archive of Our Own

They drive for twenty hours straight.

Seth has Kate collect what little they left in the car in the hotel parking lot and wait for him and when he pulls up in a maroon Buick Kate doesn’t question it, just throws their things in the back and gets in.  He white knuckles the steering wheel, flying along dusty two lane highways.  It’s sunny like always, arid, and the temperature is so high the horizon shimmers and makes Kate’s head swim after so long staring blankly ahead, her mind running circles with every mile.  Cristina seemed to have bought Kate’s explanation about who was looking for Seth, though if she thinks too much more about it Kate is sure she’ll realize anyone looking for that reason would have also had a picture of Kate and be more interested in her whereabouts than Seth’s.  Still, the miles between them and the hotel stretch on and on.  

She goes into the small store with Seth when they stop for gas and when she sees they have an ATM and no cameras she starts toward it out of habit, reaching for the bank card still in her pocket and trying to remember what the balance had been last time she’d made a withdrawal.  Seth’s hacking trick to change the bill values in the ATM’s computers had been working so the withdrawals appeared smaller than they were but they never really knew what they’d see when one of them tried the card.

Seth’s hand closes around her wrist and he yanks her back, whispering at her ear, “what the fuck are you thinking?”

Kate shakes out of his hold and whirls around, glaring.  

“There’s no camera,” she whispers back.

“He could have reported the card stolen, Kate,” he grits out, emphasizing her name like a curse.

“Do you really think the clerk at that store would even remember you by the time he did?  You don’t have to be an asshole about it, Seth.”

She watches his jaw clench and release several times before he holds his hand out for the card and she gives it to him.

“We’re not using this anymore,” he says flatly before shoving it in his own pocket.

Kate folds her arms but he turns and stalks back to the counter to pay for their gas.  She digs her nails into her skin and forces a few breaths in and out before blindly grabbing two candy bars, two bags of chips, and then two bottles of water from the wall coolers.  She pays, forcing a smile at the clerk, and follows Seth out.

They don’t speak for the rest of the afternoon until Kate grabs the wheel when Seth starts to glaze over and drifts to one side of the road, running through the gravel shoulder and shocking them both back into awareness.  He pulls over fully and slams the gearshift into park, leaning forward to press his forehead to the steering wheel.  Kate reaches out tentatively and lays a hand on his shoulder, moving to rub his back when he doesn’t shrug her off immediately.  His t-shirt is stuck to his skin with a thin sheen of sweat, the car’s air conditioning offering only weak relief from the boiling heat outside.

“I’m not getting locked up again,” he says finally, his voice low.

Kate starts to answer, though she’s not sure what she can even say, but Seth sits up abruptly and leans into her space, holding a finger up in her face almost accusingly.

“I’m not fucking going back.”

Kate barely nods before he’s grabbing the back of her neck and kissing her harshly, teeth pulling at her bottom lip and then his tongue heavy over hers.  Her hands scrabble for him distractedly, catching on the front of his shirt and holding on and she whimpers softly when he bites her lip again as he pulls away.  He sits back in his seat and Kate touches her reddened mouth lightly, swallowing and blinking after a moment.  She drops her hand away and licks her lips, then clears her throat.

“I’ll drive.”

They don’t speak again until the fuel gauge is on E and a truck stop is the only thing on the horizon.  Kate pulls in and Seth wants to just gas up and leave but the sign outside the building says there’s a twenty-four hour diner and Kate’s stomach is growling loud enough for both of them to hear.  Seth grumbles all the way in and for a moment when they walk in Kate wavers at the stares of a few of the men strewn along the counter and throughout the booths.  She can feel the heat of Seth’s glare at her side and she forces the tension off her shoulders before asking one of the harried waitresses for a table.

They fill up the car after they eat and Seth drives through the night, sucking down coffee while Kate dozes restlessly.  When she wakes fully morning is just starting to fill the sky and she aches all over.  Seth doesn’t look much better than she feels and she murmurs that he should pull over soon so she can drive again.  They switch wordlessly at the next gas station and Kate drives on toward the sunrise.

_

They finally stop at a rundown six-room motel ten minutes outside the nearest tiny town with only a smattering of shacks with junkyards that serve as lawns surrounding it.  The suites are in separate tiny buildings like a row of identical shabby houses and Kate pulls the car around the back of theirs to park.  The room is small and dark, everything musty, and it makes her skin crawl like no other place they’ve stayed has done, but she fishes a change of clothes from her bag and shuts herself in the bathroom, thankful that there’s at least running water in the stall shower even if it is tepid at best.

When she comes out Seth is standing next to the bed, a bottle of tequila in his hand and several small stacks of cash laid out on the ratty blanket in front of him.

“How much do we have left?” she asks, rubbing one of the threadbare towels over her hair.

He finishes taking a long drink from the bottle, shakes his head and sighs.

“Enough for a little while.  A week, maybe, if we don’t move around too much.”

Kate winces at the thought of staying where they are any longer than absolutely necessary but she bites her tongue and nods, looking down at the row of thin stacks of bills organized by denomination.  She takes the bottle from Seth’s hand and has a sip, wincing at how warm it is from sitting in the car; she realizes it must be the bottle Seth had bought from the bar when they’d done shots weeks ago.  Seth takes the bottle back and drinks again, swallowing twice and still going when she reaches up to stop him.

“Hey, slow down,” she murmurs.  

He shrugs her off but recaps and drops the bottle on the floor at his feet to roll across the crusty green carpeting and then flops himself down onto the bed.  The motion disturbs a few of the stacks of money and bills slide across the blanket while Seth scrubs a hand over his face.  Kate watches for a moment before stepping closer.  She reaches for a few bills before pausing and dragging a hand through the messy piles, spreading them out further along Seth’s side.  She climbs up and straddles his thighs, rests her hands on her own knees and looks down at his still-closed eyes and how his brow furrows as she settles over him.  

“What’re you doing,” Seth mutters, not opening his eyes.

She traces her fingertips down his arms and over his wrists, across his palms and through his fingers.  He catches her hands before she can trail them away, opens his eyes as he grasps and pulls her down to lean over him.

“Isn’t this what the robbers do in movies?” she asks softly.

“Fuck on a bed of cash?”

He watches her, eyes dull and dark and challenging.  She stares back at him for a moment, struggling slightly to support herself at the angle he’s pulled her into above him.  She can feel his unrest, like something’s nagging him still even though it seems they must have gotten far enough fast enough to be out of danger of anyone finding them.  But Seth is still restless and weighed down both at once, jumpy and weary, and she wants to push the worry off his shoulders for a little while as much as she wants the same for herself.  She licks her lips.

“Not that.  But something,” she adds.

Seth lets his head drop back to the thin pillow.  She leans in and Seth stares up at her for a moment before he sits up from beneath her in one smooth movement.  He slides a hand into her hair and the way he cups and cradles the back of her head makes her want to fall into him, roll under him, tell him she wants everything and not to stop until he’s given her all of it.

“Not what?” he asks.  

He pulls her in and meets her mouth with his, one hand still in her hair and the other arm wrapping around her hips and tugging her forward.  Kate replies with a broken moan, slicking her tongue against his and wrapping her arms around his neck, inching forward along his thighs, her head buzzing even though she’d only had a sip to drink.

“Hm?” he prompts when he breaks away.

“Fuck,” she finishes breathlessly.

He groans and combs his fingers through her hair again, digging in to wrap into a fist around the wet strands and tug slightly, leading Kate’s head back and exposing her neck to him.  She moans, nails clenching and digging into his shoulders, and she doesn’t stop, panting out desperate throaty sounds with each breath as he works over her neck with his mouth.  She whimpers and clutches him closer for a moment, her grip easing with the intensity of his kisses as he slows and softens until he’s just brushing his lips along her ear.  He lets go of her hair to grip her hips with both hands, holding but not making her move even as she’s barely starting to rock against him, then he drops his hands to Kate’s thighs, splays them out and rubs softly up and down before leaning his head back to look at her.  He looks drowsy and mussed and Kate smiles.

She leans in, taking his face in her hands and tilting his head down to kiss his forehead and tip hers against it for a moment before starting to pull away.

“Where you going?”

“Get something to eat,” she murmurs back, tapping her fingertips lightly on his temples.  

“Mm-mm,” he protests.

Seth scoots down and lays back again, pulling her with in one motion so she falls over him with a soft laugh of surprise.  He runs his hands down her back, planting on the small of it and dragging her up slightly until she's sitting over his crotch.  She lets him and leans down, hips raising slightly so she can nuzzle at his jaw.  He responds by sliding his hands down to her butt, spanning out, palming roughly and gripping and she gasps even as she's leaning into it involuntarily.  He huffs out a dark laugh and she sees his smirk.

"Don't laugh at me," she murmurs, cheeks coloring even more than they had already.

“‘M not,” he murmurs back softly.

He squeezes again and she bites her lip, willing herself not to respond the way her body wants to; groaning and eagerly pushing back into his grip for more.  He watches her face as he lets his hands wander to the backs of her thighs, then the insides, his large hands curving around and stroking softly at her skin below the tattered hemlines of her cutoff shorts.  She shivers almost violently and closes her eyes, gritting her teeth.

“So fucking sensitive,” he whispers.  “Why d’you shake like that?”

“It feels,” she wills herself to hold still, to not shy away from the tickling of his fingertips, “it’s just so much sometimes.  When you touch me.”

She can feel Seth’s looseness nearing clumsiness she can smell the tequila on his breath and even though she’s had next to nothing to drink herself the exhaustion of the last day is catching up with her hard and making her feel woozy, drifting on her hands and knees on top of him.

“‘M I too much for you darlin'?” he asks, soft and almost slurred.

“Maybe,” she whispers, but she’s arching her back and leaning into his hands shamelessly now, silently begging for the teasing faint slips of his fingertips to turn into more before catching herself, straightening her back again and sighing.  “Food,” she reminds him, and herself.

He exhales and keeps his hands light, tucking his index fingers under the hems of her shorts and following them around her legs slowly.  

“If I were an asshole I’d call you a tease.”

“Am I?”

He hums in thought and wiggles his fingertips where they’re nudged just barely against the elastic of her underwear, making her twitch.  His gaze on her feels heavy and thick like honey.

“Think you just want more than you know how to have.”

“Mm,” she sits back, resting on his lap when he rests his hands flat on her thighs again.  “You know what that feels like?”

She sets her hands over his and he angles his up so his fingers thread easily through hers, lifting their hands together.

“Everyday of my life.”

Kate leans over him again, bringing their hands up so Seth’s are pressed against the mattress with their fingers still threaded together as she lays against his chest and tucks her nose against his throat.

“I don’t think you are,” she whispers at his skin.  “Not really.”

“An asshole?”

“Yeah.  Except when you’re trying to keep me from getting food.”

She squeezes his hands, going for a laugh, but he just shrugs beneath her.

“No, sweetheart, I’m worse.  At least calling a girl like you a tease would get you to leave.”  

He turns and presses his mouth to her cheek, closing his fingers tightly around hers at the same time he lifts his hips beneath her.  Kate groans softly and burrows against him, nails digging into the backs of his hands now and tightening her thighs at his hips.

“I’m only gonna leave to get food,” she whines.

“But I’m gonna let you stay,” he continues, ignoring her, “and I’m gonna do whatever the fuck you want me to do to you as much and as many times as you want it,” he bucks up under her again slowly and she whimpers and drags their hands across the sheets so she can get more leverage to bear down into him and let her hips roll once, twice, cut off by both of them panting out a breath.

“No, no, not right now I have to go, we need some real food not from a gas station.”

“Now?”

“I was going to go ten minutes ago, but then you did this,” she murmurs, nudging her hips back once more.

“Wasn’t all me,” he counters, leaning up to nose at her cheek.

Kate exhales and tilts her head to kiss him lightly before pulling away and crawling back off of him.  She grabs a few crumpled bills from the bed and holds them up with a little smile before sticking them into her pocket and going to pick up her gun and tuck it into her waistband.

“Take a shower or something, you smell like Doritos.  And don’t forget to lock the door behind me,” she adds with a little smile.

Seth groans from the bed and she laughs as she closes the door behind her.

_

They leave the next morning both sluggish from exhaustion, the heavy meal they’d inhaled once Kate had come back with takeout the night before, and Seth from a hangover.  They drive for a few hours before stopping for a light breakfast and then at small shopping center where they split up, Kate going to get razors and body wash, finally fed up of hotel soaps and willing to spend a little on the small luxury.  When she gets back to the car Seth’s waiting for her with his own bag from which he pulls two pre-paid cell phones.  He plugs them into the split car charger he produces from the same bag and hands one to her.  When Kate eyes him and the phones questioningly he shrugs.

“Should have a way to keep in touch, in case.”

“In case what?”

“Just.  In case.”

Kate wonders at that but doesn’t push, and they drive on, heading east for a few more hours before they’re both resigned to stopping again rather than spend any more time in the car after such a long frantic stretch the previous day.  The next hotel looks eerily like the Dew Drop Inn, down to the paneling on the walls and the pool Kate can see from their first floor room’s window.

They both drop their bags on the floor as soon as they walk in the room and immediately crawl into bed, blindly reaching for each other and tangling together, his hand sliding just under her pillow and hers tucking under and curling around his bicep.  They fall quickly into a hard dreamless sleep and Kate doesn’t wake until the late afternoon sun starts coming in through the crack in the curtains and hitting her eyes with a glowing bar of blinding orange.  They’ve shifted in their sleep and her head has slid from the pillow to rest with her brow pressed to Seth’s wrist and one of her legs is stretched out and thrown over one of his.  

She groans as she sits up and pulls off her boots and socks, shimmies out of her jeans, and tugs her bra off through the sleeve of her t-shirt before peeling back the sheets and worming her way underneath through the small opening she can make with Seth still unmoved on his half of the bed.  Kate jostles the mattress just enough as she’s getting comfortable to rouse Seth and he mumbles unintelligibly as he rolls over to toe off his own shoes and clumsily shed a layer of clothes until he’s down to boxers and his t-shirt and moving to half-cover Kate with his body, stomach down on top of the sheet with his chin nudged into her shoulder and one arm and leg laid across her.  Kate sighs and lets his weight press her into the mattress even though she feels restless through the groggy fog of their odd schedule over the last two days.  She untucks one arm from the sheet and runs her nails up and down Seth’s forearm, curling into him a little and craning her neck to nose against his temple.

“Are you still sleeping?”

He hmpfs back.  

She exhales impatiently and scratches lightly at his arm again and then he’s moving, rolling to his side with his eyes still closed, arm drawing back to let his hand fall warm over her belly through the sheet.  He palms up and down a few times before sweeping a thumb up over the soft swell of her breast.  She feels her awareness of the moment shift with the touch, the pad of his thumb searching and circling around a pebbling nipple through two thin layers of fabric, then one when he brushes the sheet away and palms her more firmly.  She feels it in her stomach when he “hm?”s questioningly.  

She doesn’t know what to ask for, doesn’t know what comes next in whatever the progression is supposed to be from base to base, or if those valuations even make any sense at all for her anymore.  She’d thrown around terms like “got to second” in idle gossip sessions with friends before but none of the vocabulary she’d had before remotely encompasses what she’s done with Seth thus far and she never was clear on what constituted third base before anyway.  She turns her head to glance at him and finds his eyes still closed and his mouth curved in a warm close-lipped smile.  She doesn’t lean forward and kiss it even though she could, just hums back with a shrug that makes him laugh under his breath.  She lets her eyes slip closed and a little bubble of anticipation follows his hand’s warm path back down, sliding over her bellybutton and down one thigh almost to her knee.  He trails one fingertip back up over the wrinkles of the sheet and veers inward to draw a loop-de-loop across to her other thigh and down again, circle around her kneecap and back up, slowing and flattening until his fingers mold to her curve when he slides them between her thighs over the sheet.  He noses at her cheek and she opens her eyes, lost in the heat and soft weight of his hand on her, barely moving, just there.  When her eyes catch on his he rubs at her just a little and her hips tip, knees bending and falling a little further apart.  

She doesn’t answer his pause any more than that and he doesn’t ask any further, just curls one finger in and up searchingly before pulling his hand away and fishing for the edge of the sheets tangled between them.  He tugs her legs open, one folded in half and resting against his hips so she’s spread when he lays his hand over her again, fingers curving and cupping in, barely pressing at her entrance through her underwear.  The heat that clouds her head is becoming familiar and she chases it, away from distant approaching anxiety, tips her hips up searchingly for more of Seth’s touch.  He hooks his fingers in underneath her underwear and pulls them away, letting out a pained breath against her neck when Kate reaches to help push them down until she can tug one foot out and leave them dangling at her other knee when he touches her again, finally bare.  She’s aware but almost distant, not fully awake and lagging just behind what’s happening in the moment, realizing it’s Seth's bare skin on hers, Seth's familiar fingertips searching her, Seth finding sensations she’s barely discovered herself.  She’s touched herself like this but it’s never been like this, never been this contrast of rough blunt fingertips moving in ways she can’t anticipate, never the low rasping murmurs of reassurance and appreciation at her ear.   

Her eyes might be closed again or she might just not be seeing through the haze in her head while Seth’s fingers rub and part and delve, his breath at her ear heavy but slow.  His touch vanishes for a moment and she turns her face to his with a little mew of disapproval that she wants to be words, her mouth falling further open when he grins at her and licks the pads of his fingers before returning, sliding more easily now and making her squirm.  He shifts, curling an arm under her shoulders and cradling her closer, tracing circles low and barely pressing inward before moving back up to keep exploring.  She’s starting to lose her mind with his teasing glancing touches, not even sure if she’s more turned on or nervous or impatient, holding onto his forearm with her nails digging in now, Seth’s mouth at her throat and his exhale sounding like a chuckle when she finally groans through gritted teeth and tugs jerkily at his arm.

“Try to relax,” he whispers.  He swipes at the fluttering pulse in her neck with his tongue.  “If you’re tense it might hurt.”

She makes a token effort but it’s a lost cause, everything in her body full awake now and jumping with every pass of his fingertips, the muscles in her thighs twitching around his wrist, breath caught in her lungs and burning.

“Can’t,” she manages, “I don’t care, I want-”

There’s a low rumble from his chest like a growl and then his fingers are sliding down again, inward again like he had been but not stopping, pressing one inside her in a slow smooth motion.  It burns a little and feels mostly strange, and for a few seconds Kate lays there thinking really? and then Seth twists, withdrawing one finger and sliding in deeper with another and curling it inside her, stroking and withdrawing again to press upward with the pad of his thumb and she thinks she gets it a little.  He changes his touch again, rubs at her gently with three fingertips up and down light and teasing for a second before moving inside again, two fingers probing at her at first shallow and then deeper and it pinches this time, the burn more intense and she whimpers and squirms.

“Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs, fingers immediately gone and his hand resting on her thigh.  “That hurt?”

She nods and breathes slow and deep.  “A little.”

“Feel so fucking tight,” he sighs, and she can only respond with a shaky moan at how wrecked his voice sounds.

He nuzzles in against her throat, and when his hand slides on her thigh she feels the wetness on his fingers and shivers, moaning again when he opens his mouth to lick and suck along her skin.  He’s working his way lower, down past her collarbones, still palming at her inner thigh and starting to inch his fingers back to her center when he pauses slightly.

“No cross?” he murmurs, words half-muffled with his lips against her skin.

“Hm?”

“Your necklace,” he says, nosing at the scoop neckline of her t-shirt.

It hits her all at once, the memory of taking her necklace off to shower days ago, in the hotel in Acapulco.  Setting it on the wide stone counter far away from the sink so it couldn’t accidentally fall down the drain.  Never remembering to put it on again.

“Kate?”

She’s touching the bare skin where the chain should lay and Seth is leaning up on one elbow as she sits up and pushes her hands through her hair.

“I left- I left it.”

“Where?”

She can see it sitting there as she’d gotten dressed, when she and Seth had gone out to shop, when she’d come back later and rinsed off after going to the pool while Seth was out.  She hadn’t bothered to put it back on just to sleep and after Seth got back it was far from the front of her mind.  The next morning was a blur of panic once Cristina had tipped them off and Kate knows, knows she never picked her necklace up from the bathroom counter as she’d frantically packed while Seth loaded the guns.

“In Acapulco,” she mutters, distracted.

Seth sits up beside her and rubs her back soothingly, leaning in and pressing his mouth to her shoulder as she distractedly pulls her underwear back on.

“We’ll get you another one just like it-”

She pushes away from him, stands at the side of the bed half-undressed and stares for a moment, watching his expression fall as he looks back at her from the mess of sheets.

“I have to go back.”

“Kate, we’re not going back, even if it was there when we left it’s been two days, you think the maid didn’t take it the second they realized we were gone?”

Kate shakes her head slowly, backing away a step.  

“I don’t care, I have to get it back.”

She picks up her jeans from the floor and pulls them on, cringing at the damp feeling in her underwear, how warm and flushed she feels even after the cold rush of realization.

“I can’t show my face there again,” Seth cuts in, standing now and touching her arm to try to turn her to look at him.  “Do you understand that?  If I go back there I have no idea what I’m walking into or who’s waiting for me to show up.”

Kate ignores him, shaking his hand off as she pulls her flip flops out of her bag and shoves her feet into them.  

“I told you,” he grabs her arm again, hand closing around her elbow this time and Kate shakes him off violently.  “I’ll get you another necklace just like it.  Jesus, we’re in fuckin’ Mexico you think Catholic symbolism is hard to come by?”

“It was my momma’s,” Kate bursts out.  “It was hers and it was the only thing I had left.  I don’t have anything from before.  That was it, I have to go get it.”

Seth watches her helplessly, panic speeding his breath and making his voice almost shake when he repeats.

“I can’t go back there, Kate.”

“I know.”

She picks up the car keys and walks out the door.

_

She drives blindly, hands fisted on the wheel at ten and two, for about fifteen minutes before the cellphone in the back pocket of her jeans starts buzzing.  She pulls it out and glances at the display before realizing she doesn’t have any numbers programmed in, and also that Seth is the only one with the number anyway.  She sighs and drops the phone on the passenger seat, keeping her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel.  She’s through the nearest small town and surrounded by open desert on either side when she starts to lose her nerve.  She has no idea how to get back to Acapulco, much less their hotel there, given the circuitous route they’d taken before stopping.  She’d have to buy a map, and she has only a few crumpled bills and some change shoved in her pockets, not nearly enough for the gas to get there, much less a place to stay to sleep on the way since she won’t be able to drive the whole way without stopping by herself.  She doesn’t have her gun or fake ID.  She lays the gas pedal to the floor briefly just to feel the rush of it, to push away the futility for a few more moments before easing off and coasting to a near-stop before pulling over into the dirt.

The phone is buzzing again and has been near-constantly since it had started but she ignores it for the time being, pulling the keys out and closing the door as she paces next to the car for a few minutes.  She looks at the surrounding emptiness, distant rolling hills obscuring the horizon, the sky coloring purple and dusty orange with oncoming night.  It’s the same sky she’d stood under in Texas, that she’d looked up at in Acapulco from the pool, that had dripped rain on her momma’s funeral and stood silent miles above, waiting to accept her daddy’s soul when she’d pushed it from his body with a stake.  The same sky Scott might be standing under, and Richie.

Kate walks around the car slowly to the passenger side and opens it, pulling out the phone and turning it over in her hands as she closes the door and walks back around the front of the car.  She digs in her pocket for the one other thing she’d brought with her, the one thing she always made sure was with her - the piece of paper with Ranger Gonzalez’s phone number on it.  She hasn’t memorized it yet but now she can put it in the phone she realizes.  Still something about the paper itself makes her want to keep it.  She pulls herself up to sit on the hood of the car as she listens to the ring over the phone line.

“Hello?”

“Ranger Gonzalez?”

“. . . Kate?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

She pauses, squinting in a gust of wind that kicks up dust, and coughs lightly.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.  I’m still in Mexico,” she adds.

“Yeah I’ve had a BOLO out for you since I got back so I’d know if you came back over the border.”

“You what?”

“Just to keep an eye out in case you come back, make sure you’re okay, that’s all.”

“Are you looking for Seth and Richie?”

“Are you with Seth and Richie?”

“No.”

The lie comes out quickly, easily, and she knows he probably knows it is one.  Or at least suspects.  She's not with Seth and Richie anyway.

“You traveling alone Kate?”

“. . . No.  I’m not alone.”

She stares out at the unending desert and swallows.  Touches her fingertips to the hollow of her throat and feels tears well in her eyes.

“Could you tell me if you needed help right now?”

She snaps back into the moment, realizing the verbal somersaults they’re doing, and sighs.  Lying feels exhausting.

“I’m with Seth,” she amends.

Now the Ranger sighs.  

“You left with him?”

“Yeah.  We don’t know what happened to Richie or Scott.  Neither of us really had anybody else.”

Another sigh, and a longer silence.

“I guess I know what you’re doing for money then.  You’re moving around a lot?”

“I thought you weren’t looking for him.”

“I never said that Kate.”

Her stomach turns over and in a split second she mashes the end-call button and flips the phone shut, staring at it in her hand like it’s going to burn through her palm, suddenly panicked again and beyond that betrayed.  

The phone buzzes in her hand, the same number she’d just called, and she watches it silently until it stops.  She feels sick with worry, with guilt, that calling the Ranger from the hotel phone had been like waving a flag over hers and Seth’s heads, leading him right to them.  Suddenly the thought of the Ranger as an ally seems idiotic and she wants to rip up the paper with his number on it and hide in the car on the side of the road like a mouse in a hole.  

The voicemail notifier blips from two to three and she flips the phone open slowly to call it and listen.  The first two are from Seth, one of him hanging up as soon as it picked up and one where he just breathes for a few seconds and she swears she can hear him scrubbing his palm over his jaw and pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead.

“Come on Katie, please,” he says softly at the end.  

There’s a few more seconds of silence before the message ends.  Kate hits the button to save the message against her better judgement before the last one plays.  It’s from Ranger Gonzalez.

“Kate, listen, whatever Seth’s telling you, you’ve got to remember why he took your family to begin with.  He’ll use you to get where he needs to go if it’s convenient, I know you know that.  I’m not trying to get on any culebra’s bad sides right now, that’s the only reason I’m not burning a trail straight to the Geckos to make them pay for everything they’ve done, but it’s gonna catch up with both of them and if you’re in the middle of it when it goes down I can’t guarantee I can help you.  You call me when you’re ready to get out and I’ll come get you, doesn’t matter where.  Call me, Kate, I’m serious-”

The message cuts off.  She closes the phone again more slowly this time and tucks her arms around herself.  The night is growing rapidly darker and colder.  She thinks about calling the Ranger back, locking herself in the car to sleep, waiting for him there.  Thinks about going back to Texas and Bethel Baptist and a life she couldn't fit inside anymore even if it still existed.  She stares out into the night and lets her mind blur out, overwhelmed all over again in the midst of this moment of quiet at what her life is now.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

She whispers the words to the horizon, the line growing faint and muddy in the distance where the last of the sunlight is nearly gone, stealing the distinction between earth and sky.

“Are you even here?” she murmurs.  

The outlines of a distant mountain range stand out against the fading light of the sky, black jagged forms rising up until they’re partially swallowed by some low-hanging clouds.

She closes her eyes, turns inward and lets a familiar quiet fill her chest.

She thinks about hymns sung in soft voices at the end of sermons, about her momma setting down full serving dishes on the dinner table, about the smell of the pillows on her bed.  She thinks about the heat of Seth’s hand holding hers.

She shivers when the breeze starts to kick up and opens her eyes to glance around her.  It’s fully dark now, and it’s been stupid to sit here this long, out in the open with nothing much to defend herself and no one nearby to yell for if they would even come to help a gringa traveling alone.  She climbs back in the car and drops the phone back onto the passenger seat, starts the ignition and u-turns back on to the road.  It’s time to go back.

Go back.  

Go home, almost, except what she’s picturing has nothing to do with Bethel, Texas.

_

Kate turns to watch Seth through her sunglasses, stretched out beside her on a lounge chair by the hotel pool.  She knows they’ll move on tonight, just like she had known when Seth had suggested on his own that they spend the day at the pool instead of planning a job or cleaning guns and watching old movies inside that he’d been appealing to her, showing a little streak of leftover panic from when she’d left the night before.  Now it’s early afternoon and the sun is high and unbelievably hot, bathing all their uncovered skin - Kate in her yellow bikini and Seth in a pair of plain gray swim trunks he’d picked up after breakfast - in prickling heat.  Kate’s been hot and drowsy for hours now between sleeping half-buried underneath Seth after she’d gotten back the night before and now laying out under the cloudless sky with her skin slathered in sunblock and her belly slowly filling with beer from the six pack they’re hiding under their towels.  Seth’s drinking his from the travel mug covered in kitten pictures he uses with a stubbornly placid face even though Kate had bought it expecting to get a rise out of him, and Kate sips hers through a straw from a big pink-tinted insulated tumbler.  Seth’s laying on his stomach with his chair folded out flat, his head pillowed on his forearms and his face turned toward her.  She’s let her eyes wander plenty over his naked back but now she watches his face, trying to suss out the expression behind his closed eyes.  

She’d blurted out what she suspected about Ranger Gonzalez tracing her call from the hotel in Acapulco nearly as soon as she walked back in the door to the hotel the previous night.  Seth had seemed caught between anger, panic, and relief and she’d braced for it to blow up at her but he’d just nodded and clenched his jaw and paced while she recounted their conversation and played the voicemail for him.  The Ranger’s words about Seth had crackled starkly into the quiet room and Seth had paused in his pacing and watched Kate from the corner of his eye as she held the phone up.  She’d avoided his gaze until he sat down next to her on the bed as she flipped the phone closed and held it on her lap.

“I’m sorry-” she’d started, voice a small croak at first.

“I’m not using you-” he’d said at nearly the same time.  “We’re not - this isn’t-”

“I know.”

He nodded, eyes on his hands folded and fidgeting between his knees.  

“I’m only gonna leave if I have to.  To keep you safe.”

“Don’t.  You can’t do that-”

“Kate-”

“I’ll just come look for you,” she said with a soft incredulous smile.  

Seth laughed humorlessly and scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Not your brightest idea, Fuller, y’know that?”

Kate shrugged mildly in response.

“I mean any idiot could tell you weren’t actually gonna drive all the way back to Acapulco by yourself,” he added, leaning into the half-joke that neither of them were laughing at.  “You gotta learn to make what’s called a credible threat.”

She’d knocked her shoulder into his, leaned in and kissed his neck gently and pretended not to hear the shuddering breath he took as she got up to drop her phone and the keys on the dresser on her way to the bathroom.  They’d crawled into bed again not much later, left the TV muttering in the background and curled up together, awake for a long time but not speaking.

Now Kate reaches out and draws a fingertip down the back of Seth’s upper arm, smiling softly when he twitches and grumbles.

“I was sleeping.”

“No you weren’t.”

“Fine, I was having impure thoughts about you in that swimsuit.”

Kate blushes and glances down at her legs, getting a little pink even through their layer of sunblock.  Her chest is too, the ruffled hems of the suit curling along the sides of her breasts and up to tie behind her neck.  

Seth’s hands as he’d smoothed sunblock onto her back had felt warm with intent under the cool cream on her skin and when he’d slid his palms up the backs of her legs, not stopping until his fingertips slid just beneath the hems of her suit where it cut high over her butt she had suppressed a gasp into her arm, suddenly feeling entirely naked right there in the middle of the day on the hotel patio.  The mood between them seems entirely different on the surface today than it had been the previous night; now it’s all teasing and flirting, but there’s an undercurrent to it, something looming, like they’re running out of road before reaching a canyon.  The subject of Ranger Gonzalez hasn’t come up again but Kate knows the entire situation is weighing on both their minds even as they lazily bake in the sun, drink, and get up periodically to float for a few minutes on their backs in the clear aqua water.  

Eventually Kate needs to either reapply the sunblock or go inside and she sits up from her chair and hangs onto the edge for a moment, unexpectedly woozy from the beer.  When she peeks under the towels the six pack of bottles are all uncapped so she can guess at how much she’s had to drink after only a light breakfast and no lunch.  She lifts one leg and pokes at Seth’s side with her toe to only a slight indignant sniff.  She’s just poking him a second time, thinking about how long it’s been since she’d painted her nails now that the polish is nearly all chipped away, when Seth grabs her foot and she yelps.  He yanks on her leg a little, not letting go even when she goes to withdraw her foot, and he maneuvers himself into a sitting position as well.  He looks just as groggy as she feels, like the sun’s heat and the beer have simmered their brains into jelly over the hours they’ve been out here, but his grip on her foot doesn’t falter.  He sits there calmly, holding her foot in both hands between his knees now, leaning forward a little to squint as he casually smoothes his thumb along her instep.  Her eyelids flutter and she pushes into his hand until he does it again, smiling and looking down as he adds more pressure in a slow rub from her heel to her toes.  Kate lowers herself to her elbows on her lounge chair, awkwardly resting her weight on the plastic slats but it feels good to stretch back out, better when Seth keeps going with her small foot held in his big warm hands.

“Better watch what kind of noises you’re making, princess, we’re technically in public.”

The patio is empty around them but Kate’s learning she can be loud.  She bites her lip and tugs her foot back out of Seth’s soft grip to pick up their towels and stand slowly, her legs weak and shaky beneath her.  Seth shoots her a squinting grin and gets up too, gathering his sunglasses, wallet, and keys from the ground under his chair and the six pack of beer to drop in the garbage can outside the gate that surrounds the pool area.  Their room feels icy when they key back in, and too dark.  Kate takes off her sunglasses and wraps her arms around herself, shivering as she kicks off her flip flops.

“I’m gonna go rinse off the chlorine,” she tells Seth as she passes by him, and he nods as he drops his stuff onto the dresser by the bathroom door.

She doesn’t close it behind her before leaning into the shower to turn on the water and adjust the temperature to warm, and when she turns around he’s leaning against the doorframe watching her unabashedly.

“Want some company?”

Her heart stutters in her chest and heat flashes through her despite the cold tile under her feet.  She nods dumbly at first, then licks her lips and adds, “yes.”

Seth crowds her back into the shower, hands at her waist steadying her as she steps over the edge of the tub and he pulls the curtain closed behind them, then pushes her gently back a step into the spray from the showerhead.  She tips her head back and closes her eyes, sighing at the warmth all down her back.  Seth is warm at her front, moving closer, hands wandering, and she trails her hands over his arms, tipping her head up again and leaning her forehead against his collarbone when a wave of dizziness sweeps through her.

“Alright?” he asks lightly, voice low under the pattering of the water.

“Mm-hm,” she answers, almost sleepy except for all the heat and and the little competing chill of anticipation in her gut.

It’s the beer, she knows, and the heat, and now being in the shower with Seth, feeling acutely that she’s still wearing her swimsuit as the water soaks into it.  She feels floaty and heavy both at once, not quite herself even as she’s operating on pure instinct.  She tips her chin and presses her lips to Seth’s skin, not yet wet from the shower since she’s under the spray.  The chill of anticipation turns into a twist, into a tug, low and aching and too fast she’s picturing him dragging off her bikini bottoms and pushing into her.  She doesn’t feel ready, physically or mentally, but her body ignores those things in favor of a sudden assault on her imagination, of being pinned to the shower wall by Seth’s broad sun-darkened shoulders, his hips pistoning between hers until she screams.  It’s generic and almost violent and she’s sure the image comes from some movie or imagined scenario because Seth’s hands on her hips are soft and the little murmurs he makes at her ear are nothing like the frantic grunts her libido imagines.

Seth’s hands slide from her hips down over her butt and grip, his palms over the fabric of her suit and his fingers on bare flesh and he pulls her hips against his solidly.  She can feel him through his trunks already and she turns them, her hands pressing insistently where they rest on his arms to get him to move until he’s under the water and she stands just outside the spray.  He hums and tips his face back, opening his mouth to the water and then tipping his head back up and shaking like a dog.  Kate laughs and shrinks away, slapping at his shoulder.  He stills and grins down at her and she leans up, one hand sliding to the back of his neck to tug him down to kiss her.  She licks at the droplets of water on his lips and he groans softly, one arm barring around her waist as he leans her back.  She sucks at his bottom lip and pushes until his back is against the wall.  The water hits her in the face briefly but she moves out of the way and slicks a hand through her dripping hair before kissing him again and working her hand down between them, skidding down his stomach to press and wrap around him over his trunks.  

Seth almost yelps into her mouth, grinding his hips up into her hand as she traces and squeezes lightly, starting to work her way up and then back down.  He grips at her ass again with a deep groan, groping down to the backs and then the insides of her thighs with searching fingers until she’s whimpering at his mouth, dragging her hand away to tug at his waist.  He bends just slightly at the knees and pulls her to her tiptoes to grind against her.  She nods frantically against him and he nudges one of her legs to wrap over his hip, holding her knee and angling it outward to spread her thighs wider open.  Kate grips at his shoulders, mouth pressing haphazardly to his, trying to scoop her hips up and catch the hard length of him where she needs pressure.

“C’mere,” he breathes, tapping at her other leg, and she follows his instruction, letting him turn them so Kate’s back is against the other wall, pick her up, and guide both her legs around his waist, her ankles locked together at the small of his back.

Her shoulders press to the wall, her arms wrap around his neck, his hands firm under her thighs, and she can feel him finally, impossibly hard and snug against her between her legs.  She pants out moans, her teeth pressing into his shoulder, and she can feel the muscles working beneath his skin as he bucks up against her, every movement sending a little whisper of pleasure like the brush of a feather deep in her middle.  Seth mumbles and groans at her shoulder, half-words falling out against her skin as he moves, remembering occasionally to kiss along her wet skin.  She cranes her neck for him and revels in the hot slide of his mouth, groans and digs her nails into his back and he answers her with his own as he bites at her earlobe.  He hitches her up a little and the change in angle does something, hits her differently and she feels a little clench and gasps in a breath of surprise at the sudden sensation, there and then gone and then there again like a paper airplane almost taking flight before nosediving.  

“Come on baby,” Seth murmurs encouragingly.

She clings to his neck and clenches her teeth, closes her eyes and tips her forehead down to his shoulder, tries to encourage herself closer to that edge with the motion of her hips but she’s already trembling, a soft ache blooming while her limbs turn to jelly.  He must feel her going limp because he lets her legs down carefully and helps her stand between him and the wall.

“Did you . . . ?” he breathes, bracing himself against the wall with one arm and letting the other fall to her waist to pet at her skin softly.

She nods.  “A little bit.”

He laughs under his breath, leans in and kisses her cheek lightly.

“Only a little?”

“It was just hard-” she pauses and he smirks, stopping when she glances up at him with a smirk of her own and snaking a hand down between them again - “I couldn’t get all the way there,” she adds.

He nods distractedly, head already tipping back as she touches him through his trunks.  It’s not enough, not close enough, and she’s still thrumming, doesn’t want it all to be over yet.  She leans into him, nuzzles at his collarbone and the base of his throat and slides her tongue over his adam’s apple.  She gets a little bolder, searching fingers mapping him out from root to tip, tugging experimentally and letting her eyes flutter closed, surprised at the little jump of pleasure in herself when he sucks in a harsh breath.

“Will you show me?” she asks softly.

“Hm?”

She tugs at the drawstring of Seth’s trunks and meets his eyes through her lashes.  When she pulls the knot free she glances down at the gap between his stomach and the fabric and tucks her fingers into it, brushing the edge of his coarse hair with the backs.

“Show me.  How you like to be touched.”

He lets out a breath and nods, leans his other arm against the wall on the other side of her head so she’s caged in but she doesn’t feel anything like intimidation, she just feels surrounded, feels a little bit of wonderment at seeing Seth look so overcome before she’s really done anything.  She slides her other hand under the waistband and pushes the trunks down slowly until they catch and Seth hisses a little.

“Out and down,” he mutters, and she glances up at him before realizing what he means.

She can feel the heat of a blush on her cheeks and chest even over the heat of the shower and the light sunburn that’s setting in despite the sunblock she’d put on earlier but she can’t keep her eyes off of him as she slides the trunks down, her hands trailing over Seth’s thighs as the wet fabric bunches.  He steps out of them and kicks them away and then he’s just there, entirely naked, inches away from her, and she can’t do anything but stare at her own small hands touching him lightly, tentatively.  She works her way back up his legs slowly, eventually trailing her fingers up the length of him, hard and upright.  He’s panting again at her temple, holding himself still for her as she explores slowly.  She wraps her hand around him finally and strokes, daring a look up at his face to gauge his reaction.  He hums, his expression not relaxed but slack with pleasure.  She tries gripping a little harder, moving a little differently and he seems to respond to that too but she wants to know, wants to see it happen when he falls apart in her hands and know she did it.  She tugs at his elbow with her free hand and leads his hand down to lay over hers, looks up and locks eyes with him when his fingers close around hers and he starts to move both their hands together over his soft skin.  She feels a pulse under her palm and he groans, eyes slipping closed again, and she lets herself look down and watch, his hand enveloping hers, the flushed straining head appearing and disappearing in their water-slicked grip.

“Fuck,” he sighs.  “‘M almost there.”

She leans up and kisses his jaw softly, takes in his furrowed brow and the soft straining sounds of his breaths.

“I want to see,” she murmurs, “I want to feel it, I want-” she reaches down and presses her other hand to his thigh, stroking aimlessly, impatient and overheated and searching.  

She doesn’t know where the words come from because they don’t feel like his that she’s copying, it feels suddenly like theirs, like part of her head has gotten into his and knows what tone to take, knows this isn’t about conquest or even just release for him but something quieter, something deeper.

“Please,” she murmurs, soft and pleading and somehow comforting, “come on baby-”  

Seth groans, whimpers really, the hand still braced against the wall pulling back to pound weakly with a loose fist and Kate’s breath catches as she looks down again at the white spilling over their hands and washing away almost as quickly with the water from the showerhead, goosebumps spreading over Seth’s thighs and low on his belly, all of him tensed and still moving, hips rocking into their hands and a shudder working its way through him from the inside out.

“Oh fuck, oh Jesus,” he groans helplessly, his shoulders sagging against Kate while his hips still move with a shuddering half-rhythm through the warm tunnel of their fingers clasped around him.

Finally he slows and she lets him stop the motion of their hands, rests her other hand still at his hip and breathes with him for a moment while he comes down bit by bit.  She’s not sure she’s ever felt anything as intense as Seth seemed to, not in this context, and he looks overwhelmed too, forehead heavy on her shoulder as he slowly tugs their messy hands away.  He lifts his head and cups her jaw in his free hand to kiss her deeply, humming into it and sucking on her tongue greedily.  

“Are you okay?” she asks breathlessly when he finally breaks the kiss and presses his forehead to hers.

Seth chuckles incredulously, still breathless himself, and nods.

“The okayest,” he sighs, smiling dumbly.

Kate grins and wraps her arms around his waist, pulling him against her and taking a little of his warmth as the water grows tepid.

“We’re gonna get all pruny,” she says softly, her nose tucked against his throat.

“You’re still wearing this,” Seth counters, fingers playing along the ruffled hem of her suit at her hip.

“Mm-hm,” Kate answers firmly, and he laughs softly, grinning as he leans down and drops a kiss on her shoulder before pulling the curtain aside and stepping out, leaving her to finish rinsing off.

_

“There’s somewhere I want to stop before we go,” Kate says when they’re in the car again, ready to leave the hotel and head back out onto the road.

“Gonna take long?” Seth asks, glancing at her from the passenger seat.

“However long it takes to get a tattoo.”

Seth pauses and gapes at her for a moment.

“A cross,” she says softly, focusing her gaze ahead as she pulls out of the parking lot.

Seth exhales and closes his eyes, nodding.

“Alright,” he agrees.

“You’re not gonna argue?”

Seth shakes his head.  “Your skin, sweetheart.”

Seth wanders the shop Kate had seen in town when they’d gotten breakfast while she flips through a book of designs with several pages dedicated to crosses of varying sizes.  When she sees it she knows it’s the right one; simple thin lines with sharply pointed ends and a shadowy glow behind it in lieu of any embellishments.  She takes it to the artist and twenty minutes later she’s sitting backwards on a chair with her left hand palm up on a table while Victor draws over the stenciled design on her inner wrist just over her pulse point.

She bites her lip and tries to breathe through it because it hurts, sharp bright pain dragging across delicate skin with every pass of the needle, seeming to sink into her arm and spread.  She decides to stop watching after the first line is done and looks around the shop to distract herself.  She catches Seth’s eye, leaning his elbows on the half-wall separating the studio itself from the waiting area and gallery, and he watches her back quietly.  He looks solemn, thoughtful, eyes following the needle on her skin every few seconds before flicking away and back to her eyes.  Before she knows it Victor is wiping away the excess ink to show her the finished product.  The lines stand out harshly against her sin and it seems bigger than she’d pictured but the design is what she’d wanted and the more she looks at it the more right it seems.  She nods and smiles, thanks Victor and after he’s bandaged her wrist pays him with a tip.

She feels almost giddy with the rush of endorphins following on the heels of the pain and adrenaline as she walks back over to Seth.  She leans on the half wall across from him and smiles.  He grins back slowly, looking a little unsure.

“You like it?” he asks.

She nods and trails her fingertips over the bandage.  He chuckles at her and angles his head toward the door.

“Let’s go.”

They drive until nightfall and then for another hour, stopping for food and then to find a room for the night.  Once they’re checked into a motel on the main drag of a town full of loud bars and restaurants Kate removes the bandages and rinses away the small smears of dried blood in the bathroom sink.  She’s patting lightly at the tender spot with a rough hotel hand towel when she looks up and sees Seth leaned in the doorway watching her.

“You need to get in?”

“No rush.”

Kate turns to lean against the sink and watch him back for a moment.  She can tell he’d been doing his somewhat-routine pushups and crunches; he’s in just a tank and the jeans he’d been wearing that day while they drove and she can see the slight sheen of sweat on his shoulders.  They’ll need to find a laundromat again, she notes, suddenly not sure if she even has any clean clothes left.

“This'll be a good place to ditch the car. Pick up phones again too."

Kate nods quietly.  Seth had trashed both phones before they left their first motel after Acapulco to eliminate any chance the Ranger could still be tracking them.

"Gonna need to find a score soon,” he adds quietly.

Kate nods again.  She knows they’re on borrowed time in more than one way, that her tattoo, even though it wasn’t expensive, was just another thing that brought them closer to that line of desperation.

“I should help again,” she answers, eyes on his face to gauge his reaction.

He almost winces but reigns it in with a sigh.

“If we find something, yeah.”

“I didn’t like you going out on your own.”

“I didn’t like you coming with,” he counters.

They stare at each other in silence and suddenly it feels like they’re not just talking about pulling jobs, good scores, logistics.  Kate hides a shaky breath, ducking her head to dab at her tattoo again.  Seth’s hand appears in her vision and he’s stepped forward to touch the back of her hand, bring it up so he can look closer at her wrist.  He brushes his thumb next to the inked skin and Kate winces but holds still until he lets go.

“That necklace was your mom’s, you said that’s why it’s so important to you.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s this for?  You still really believe in all that?  After all this?”

“You asked me that before,” she deflects softly.

Seth shrugs.  Kate draws her own fingers in a large loop around the design and then traces it lightly, hissing at the burn of contact.

“All the things they taught in church- I knew it was what Daddy believed, but I always felt like it couldn’t be that simple.  He thought . . . it seemed like everybody thought that if you were bad then bad things would happen to you, and if you were good they wouldn’t.  Even when he was dyin’ he clung to that.  Like that made it easier for him to think this happened because he was bad.  There were so many things like that, so many reasons to be good without really understanding why it mattered.”

She pauses, tangled in her own deep web of thoughts and long-held beliefs falling open into little messy piles of half-truths never before examined.

“Like what?” Seth asks quietly.

She shakes her hair back from her face and meets his gaze for a moment before she has to look away to say what she’ll say next.

“Carlos wanted me there.  At the Twister, so I could be sacrificed to the nine lords.  Because my blood was pure.”

Seth nods slowly, brow furrowing.

“I just assumed it meant because I was a virgin.  That’s what it is in movies, right?  Young innocent girl who’s never been touched, cut open for a bunch of evil men?”

Her voice starts to shake and she shakes her head, a rough humorless laugh breaking from her throat before she can continue.

“I was doing things right y’know?  Kyle liked me so much and I was gonna be his girlfriend and I was gonna get a purity ring to prove how good I was.  Wait until I got married, because that’s what you do.  That’s what all the good kids do.  But look what happened,” she finishes in a whisper, angry tears flooding her eyes.  “I got tied up and those things, that man, tried to use me.  Waiting was supposed to be safe.  I was supposed to be good and then I would be safe.”

Seth’s staring hard at the floor, frozen in place.  Kate swings her hands up in the air and lets them drop.

“You know what this means?” she asks, holding up her wrist with the cross etched on it.

Seth’s eyes flick up and he shakes his head cautiously.  Kate takes a step forward.

“It means that even though I still believe in God, they were wrong.  I didn’t have to wait and be good to get what I deserve.”

She touches Seth’s cheek softly, in his space now, leading him to look at her, his eyes large and lost and half-guilty until he sees the gleam in hers.  The shine of tears is abating and she gazes up at him with clear eyes so sharp they’re more steel than green.  Seth stares at her wordlessly for a beat, eyes flicking between her eyes and her lips, and she feels the anger clutching at her heart turn over into something brighter and effervescent, a hot bubble of perverse joy.  Seth tips his head down toward her, a fraction of movement before he pauses to catch her eyes again.  She nods and they both move slowly, her arms around his neck and his hands at her waist as they slide together and he cups a hand to the back of her head and kisses her.  It’s soft and light, half breath, their mouths open and tongues flicking lightly over lips and teeth.

“What you deserve,” he repeats, barely a whisper at her cheek, and she nods again before he starts to back them up toward the bed.

He spins them when they get there and pulls her down on top of him as he moves to sit and then lay back beneath her.  She squeezes her eyes shut tight and bites at her lip and she feels it pouring out of her so suddenly, this urge to take, to prove that she’s alive and that her body is hers.  There’s a clash, though, that halts her.  Seth’s voice comes to her, weakened as he’d collapsed against her in the shower; he hadn’t just leaned on her with his body, something of him had fallen into her and while the hunger in her is working up to a roar she feels just as fiercely sure that there’s something here she needs to protect.  Something not about her and her past and every stone-etched commandment she wants to throw from her back and crush into powder.  Seth may have told her “take me” at the beginning, may have been offering his body to hers, but somewhere along the way she’d reached past his skin and inside him and she may not hold his entire heart in her hand but what she has of it, of him, she has to hold carefully.

“Say it,” Seth almost whines at her ear, cutting off her scattered train of thought.  

His hips are working in an achingly slow rhythm beneath her now and Kate can barely think in complete sentences.

“What?”

“Anything, Kate, tell me what you w-”

She cuts him off with her mouth over his, impatient with his questions for the moment.  Their tongues slide together and then he’s lifting her off him only to roll her onto the mattress and lay himself on top of her.  He pushes one knee to plant on the mattress between her thighs and kisses her deeper, all teeth and tongue harsh and demanding.  She grabs at him restlessly, hands landing at his jeans and tugging on the beltloops at his hips before flattening and sliding just below the waistband.

“Please, please, I need,” she cuts off between kisses.

“Need what?” he asks, almost wheedling even though he’s just as breathless as she is.

“T-to . . .”

“C’mon Katie say it,” he whispers.

“Make me come,” she whispers back, arms locked around his neck and her eyes shut tight.

She feels something snap inside her, something surrender, and like a rush of wind Seth is leaning back, hands moving along her side and the rasp of his stubble gone from her cheek.

“Take these off,” Seth orders, his voice suddenly low and decisive, fingers sliding just under the waistband of her shorts at her stomach.

Her hands shake and she fumbles with the button and zipper while he kisses her, maneuvering around her on the bed so she can lift her hips and shimmy them down and off.  He grabs at her hips, kneeling now with her legs bent and curled between them and he carelessly tugs at her underwear, not quite taking them off but close and she breathes deep and lays back on the bed, eyes closed and her arms limp at her sides.  He nudges her legs apart with his knees and leans over her, pushing her shirt up to kiss her stomach and down in a wavering line between her ribs until he’s reached the waistband of her underwear, tugging her toward the edge of the bed as he backs up to kneel on the floor, one arm curled around her hip, stroking at her thigh with his other hand, pressing her legs apart around his chest.  He settles and slows down, nuzzling and pressing chaste little kisses all along her skin just above the elastic.

Kate leans up on one elbow and stares down at him, at the man between her legs and everything she’d said before about being taught to be good is still there in vestigial whispers at the back of her mind.  The assistant pastor’s wife who had taught the junior high girls’ Sunday school from a curriculum focused on turning them into chaste and holy women under the authority of the one true Lord would be screeching fire and brimstone right now, Kate thinks.  Seth watches her as he trails the backs of his fingers over the crotch of her underwear, slowly back and forth, and the gesture feels sweet and gentle and almost innocent.  There’s a little skitter of fear through her chest, a reaction ingrained in her for years before she was ever laid on an altar and purity once and for all became a death sentence and not a virtue.  She sits up further and reaches for Seth, pulling his face up to hers to kiss him.

“Are you gonna get me religion?” she asks breathlessly at his cheek, feigning bravery she doesn’t quite feel.

He exhales and nods slowly.  “Gonna try.”

“Tell me,” she whispers.

She can feel the hint of a smile taking over his mouth now as he starts kissing slowly down her jaw and pushes her to lay on her back again.

“Gonna kiss you,” he starts.

“You’ve done that already-”

“Lick you, make you scream, taste it when you come.”

She doesn’t try to stop the shudder that runs through her at his words, his plans.  She knows what she asked for and she’d realized what they were positioning themselves for but there’s a difference between whispering in vagueries and hearing the words in his low voice painted over her skin as he works his way down her body.  He runs his tongue under the elastic of her underwear and she jolts and gasps, lifting her hips to let him pull them off of her and fisting her hands in the sheets.  She hadn’t felt half this nervous, this keyed up before when he’d slid his fingers inside her and she wonders at that briefly, realizes this feels like so much more because Seth knows now in no uncertain terms exactly what she’s been doing with him, what she’s been proving to herself with his hands and his mouth and his body.  He knows and he’d acknowledged it all, somehow submitted himself to it even more fully than in the beginning in hearing and echoing her words, this mantra she hadn’t known was pushing up from her subconscious where she’s been processing the soft, heady, and frighteningly intimate mess she’s made of them.

“Oh fuck,” Seth sighs, staring at her, cheek sliding down her inner thigh, guiding her legs over his shoulders and nudging them further open little by little.  

She can’t make herself un-clench, can’t fall open for him, can’t figure out if her body wants to bow up into his mouth and hold him against her or snap shut and delay the moment when he touches her.  Delay until when she doesn’t know, just has this repeated frantic feeling of falling, of slipping away and down into a chasm and there’s nothing she can hold onto to stop it.  The heat in her chest is on the verge of ignition and it feels awful, wonderful and wrong.  Seth’s mouth drags along her skin in a slow looping swirl, barely even bringing him closer to the apex of her thighs, just wandering almost aimlessly and she squirms around him and whimpers.

“I”ll go slow,” he mumbles, nudging the tip of his tongue at the bend of her knee and then dropping three soft kisses like skipping stones back down her thigh.  “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

She shakes her head almost violently, teeth clenched, everything seizing up with anticipation.  She feels his breath on her, one of his hands warm and low on her stomach, his thumb tugging upwards on her skin so she opens up a little even in spite of her tensed legs.

“You ready or scared?” he asks softly, mouth suddenly gone and his other hand palming gently at the straining muscle of her inner thigh.

“Both,” she grits out, halfway to annoyed.

She wants to tell him how she’s scared half for herself and half for him, suddenly, in a way she can’t explain, just makes her imagine pushing him away and begging to go back to where they can’t anymore, to before he ever touched her like this, before she asked him to, before when they were alone even when they were together and like a hazy summer memory everything seemed to be safer.  But she wants, she wants even more to pull him closer, pull him in, cradle him in her body and give them both what they want.  What they deserve.

She feels him breathe out something like a laugh and rest his forehead against her knee.  

“Don’t wanna do it if you don’t want it.”

“I do, I-” she breaks off and lets out a short near-growl of frustration, shoving up onto her elbows again.  

She opens her eyes and then she’s caught breathless at the way it looks as he’s touching her, mouth on the swells of the thighs she’d grumbled about when she’d tried on homecoming dresses a few months ago, hands so close to touching between her legs.

“Please don’t stop,” she finishes weakly.

He’s still distractedly running his mouth all over her skin and every so often nudging at her inner thighs with his nose or his chin, testing her tension.

“Talk to me,” he murmurs, “what’re you scared of?”

She lets out a breath, watches him for a second, knows he’ll imagine she’s screwing up the courage to voice it.  She can tell him these things; they’re all true.

“That it’ll feel . . . weird,” she says softly, staring as he mouths back down her thigh.

He smirks, then seems to catch himself and shrugs.  

“That I won’t like it.”

He switches to her other leg, starts at her knee again and works his way down achingly slowly.

“Then I won’t do it again,” he answers, and scrapes a little with his teeth before laving his tongue out.

“That you won’t like it,” she adds, feeling choked even as the words fall out of her.

His eyes slide to hers and he shakes his head slowly.  

It slams into her then, that what she’d felt in the shower must be what Seth had been feeling too.  At some point - because she couldn’t have gotten here alone, couldn’t have tumbled so far past thinking of the things he was doing to her, that they were doing together, as idle experimentation - he must have felt that terrible dragging fear of hurting her, of forgetting that when he felt her she was feeling him too and the sensations they gave each other were becoming something solid and sharp, slicing them open and exposing more than just their skin.  Maybe he sees it, somehow, on her face, in her eyes, what she’s realizing; he ducks his head and seals his mouth on the highest curve of the inside of her thigh and sucks, biting lightly until when he pulls away there’s a wet red mark left behind.  He turns and she feels his breath on her again, feels the tug of his thumb and she sees the slow measured lowering of his head, mouth just parted, pausing for a second when she lays back down and closes her eyes, anticipation crushing her chest and her throat when he touches her with his tongue.

It does feel weird at first, distractingly so, and she almost shies away from the way he’s swiping lightly at her and she’s trying to force herself still, to concentrate and find the pleasure in it even though she mostly just feels so over-sensitive that she’s twitching involuntarily every time he touches her.  She doesn’t realize he’s talking to her again until his hand on her stomach releases and rubs comfortingly, his voice broken and husky.

“Keep talking.  ‘S it weird?”

She laughs in spite of herself, in spite of everything jumping and cracking inside her and it feels wild and inappropriate somehow and the blush branding her cheeks and her chest might as well be a second degree burn.

“Yeah,” she answers.   

Seth leans up to kiss low on her stomach between his fingers and then he lingers, sliding his hand away and moving his mouth down to her brush of short curls, down to nuzzle into the crease of her thigh.

“They never talked about things like this in Sunday school,” she murmurs.

Seth snorts, moving to mouth at one lip intently and letting out a pointed little groan of appreciation like he’s mocking whoever neglected that part of her education after the fact.  They hadn’t talked about this; not the act and not the choking of tears in her throat at how the physical sensations mean next to nothing, are becoming white noise compared to the tenderness he’s breathing into her, words she’s not ready to think about seeming to seep through her skin and into her bloodstream with every brush of his stubbled chin.

She swallows and tries again when she remembers she was saying something.

“I was scared . . .” he presses the flat of his tongue on her and nods upwards and her brain shorts out for a second, everything lost to the soft-hot-wet drag of his tongue, suddenly different from how he’d started.  

“I wanted you to but I was still scared I’d feel dirty.  Used.  Everything they told me I would be if I let anyone touch me.”

She was, she realizes.  Scared that some tiny kernel of truth remained in the stories of temptresses who used themselves to lure men to ruin and that the truth in them wasn’t that it was wrong to manipulate people but that it was wrong to want people to touch you, look at you, want you.  Somehow she feels ashamed of that, of believing it and letting it live inside her for so long without even questioning why.  Seth raises his head and watches her quietly, hands still weighing warm on her thighs to keep them open.  

“Do you?” he asks quietly.

She shakes her head hesitantly, wanting to say more but it clings to her throat and won’t budge.  Seth leans up, crawling half over her and pushing closer until his stomach presses between her legs and he can cup the back of her head and pull her to him.

“You’re perfect,” he whispers at her mouth, and when he kisses her she tastes.

The ball of fire in her chest breaks up through her throat and roars through her head and everything flies away, everything but his tongue stroking hers, laying the soft moisture he’d licked from her into her own mouth like a secret.  Something he knows, something she does too.  She clutches at his shirt desperately, tugging until it’s bunching at his shoulders and they both drag it off over his head, Seth pulling her to sit up fully with his arms around her waist, still kneeling at the foot of the bed and tilting his head back to kiss her, pushing a hand into her hair and holding her to him firmly.  Kate keeps her legs wrapped around his waist, ankles crossed and tugging him close.  He tears away and grips at her and she forces her eyes open and looks down at him breathlessly.

“You’re fucking perfect,” he repeats, one hand reaching down to cup between her thighs and stroke softly and she groans and arches into his touch and wants to cry.

She presses back on Seth’s chest and he lets her, a heady smile on his face as she lowers herself back to the bed, legs still wrapped around his waist when he falls over her and presses his face into the softness of her stomach.  When he spreads her legs this time, lifts them to rest over his shoulders, she’s languid and under his hands and her skin is warm and not awash with fire when he mouths downward again.  His eyes flick up to hers for a second before slipping closed and then he’s gently spreading her open with his fingers and kissing her, soft brushes and presses of his lips between searching flicks of his tongue and she feels like she’s deflating, a long slow breath flowing out of her and taking with it the tension, the fear of her own reaction, the fear of accepting everything he’s offering, as she whispers,

“Oh . . .”

Seth moans in answer and hums, “there you go,” approvingly, shifting closer and pressing in a little more.  

Now it feels like she’s falling again but this time the air around her is soft and she’s not plummeting alone, it’s Seth tugging her down with gentle sucking pulls of his mouth as she curls her legs around his head.

She does scream, after what feels like hours of that sweet falling, when she tips over the real edge, not dangling and teasing at release like she had before but a flying midair leap off a cliff like she’s never felt at her own hands.  She comes with his head between her legs, his moans vibrating into her, sweat on her thighs, her wrist stinging where his temple presses against it, her hands in his hair.  Comes away from every idea she’d held about purity, about feeling clean and safe and special.  Comes into a place that’s new and old and beautiful and terrifying and she leads Seth with her.

_____