Chapter 306: The Woods
"So he took you to some big tree in the woods," Elena said.
Her voice carried the specific flatness of someone who had been expecting the story to arrive somewhere more impressive and had not yet decided whether to give it more time.
She was sitting on top of Liam with her arms around his neck, her boobs pressed flat against his chest, her whole weight settled against him, and she had him inside her just enough, the tip of him present and warm and sitting exactly where she had put him when she climbed on, neither of them acknowledging the arrangement out loud.
"It isn’t just a tree, Elena," Liam said.
She looked at him for a moment. Then something in her face changed, the unimpressed quality softening into something quieter, and she exhaled slowly and looked at the wall beside them.
"You’re right," she said. "He probably hasn’t been there since my father died." She said it the way she said things about her father, arranged and level, the feeling behind it present but kept at a manageable distance. "I shouldn’t have said it like that."
She shifted her weight.
Which meant she shifted on him.
Which meant what had been just enough became considerably more than just enough as her body settled fully down and took him in completely, and whatever she had been planning to say next left her entirely as her head went back and a sound came out of her that had not been scheduled.
"Oh," she said.
Liam’s hands found her ass on instinct, both palms spreading across it, pressing in, his jaw going tight from the sudden warmth of her around him.
"Should I be telling this story right now," he said, the words arriving with some effort. "We can finish and then I can tell you the rest."
"No," she said, her voice slightly wrecked already. "No no. I’m fine. Keep going."
"You sure."
"Liam," she said. "Keep going."
He kept going.
"So there were two marks on the tree," he said, his hands still on her, feeling her warmth around him. "Two different sizes. One the size of Wrath’s fist which I could have guessed. And one smaller one, the size of a normal man’s hand, sitting right beside it."
Elena shifted her hips slightly, a small movement, experimental.
"Mm," she said quietly. Then, "And the smaller one."
"Wrath smiled when I asked about it," Liam said. "Said the big one was obviously his. And then he said the small one, as funny as it might sound, was your father’s."
Elena went still.
Not from the story being uninteresting. The opposite. She looked at him with the expression of someone who had just received a piece of information that had rearranged something.
"My father," she said.
"Your father," Liam said.
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she moved her hips again, slow and deliberate this time, and Liam pressed her ass and felt everything that came with that.
"How," she said. "He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t built like that. How does a man like him leave a mark on something that size without breaking every bone in his hand."
"That’s what I asked," Liam said. "And Wrath said he was taking the compound. Same thing the fighters took but a smaller dose. A refined version. Just enough to give him something without it consuming him."
Elena stopped moving.
She looked at him with something that had moved past surprise into something heavier.
"He was taking it," she said.
"A smaller dose," Liam said. "Wrath said he was the only one in the family who used it. And he said." He paused, feeling her stillness, feeling the weight of what was coming. "He said it was the cause of his death."
The room was quiet.
Elena looked at him. Her hands, which had been loosely around his neck, pressed in slightly without her noticing.
"Why would he do that to himself," she said. Her voice had lost the arranged quality. It was just her asking the question.
Liam looked at her face in the low light of the room.
"Wrath said he doesn’t know," he said. "But he said that every time they trained together, every time they came to that place, your father was happy. Genuinely happy. Not performing it. Just having it."
Elena looked at the wall.
’I can’t blame a man who finally found something that made him feel alive,’ Liam thought, watching her profile. ’Even if what he found was the thing that ended him. You can’t blame a person for following happiness. You can only feel sad about where it led.’
"I know what you’re probably thinking," Wrath had said, standing beside him at the tree that afternoon.
Liam had looked at him. ’How did he know that?’
"Don’t worry," Wrath had said, reading his face the way he read everything. "I can’t read your mind. But anyone I’ve told that to arrives at the same place. They think he was foolish." He had looked at the marks on the tree for a moment. "But not all men get to feel something in their lifetime. Something real. Something that is actually theirs. And when they find it they are going to follow it. Even if it costs them everything. Because the alternative is living without ever having had it at all."
Elena was still looking at the wall.
Liam watched her.
She blinked once and then looked back at him and her hips moved again, slowly, like her body had remembered where it was and what it had been doing.
"He was always happiest when he was doing something physical," she said quietly, moving in a slow rhythm now, her hands pressing slightly at the back of his neck. "I remember that. He would come back from wherever he’d been and he would just be." She paused on a stroke, her eyes closing briefly. "Different. Lighter."
"Mm," Liam said, his hands moving on her.
"I always thought it was just." She moved again, deeper this time. "Oh. I always thought it was just how he managed everything he was carrying."
"Maybe it was," Liam said.
She looked at him. Her rhythm had found itself now, steady and present, her boobs moving with each roll of her hips, pressing against his chest on each forward stroke and pulling back with each withdrawal.
"Did Wrath show you what he could do," she said.
"He punched the tree," Liam said, his jaw tightening as she moved. "Once."
"Once," she said.
"One punch," Liam said. "And when he pulled his hand back there was smoke coming out of the mark. Like the wood itself had been heated by the impact."
Elena looked at him with the specific expression she wore when something had genuinely surprised her and she was processing it.
"Smoke," she said.
"Smoke," he said.
She moved her hips and he pressed her ass and she made a sound.
"And then he just turned around," Liam said, his voice finding the effort required to keep the story going while she was doing what she was doing. "Looked at me like that sir and waited for my reaction."
Elena let out a short breath that was half laugh and half something else from the movement of her hips. "That’s very Wrath," she said.
"I know," Liam said. "My mouth was open for about ten seconds."
She moved again. Deeper. Her head dropped slightly forward, her hair falling around her face, and she found the angle she had been working toward and settled on it.
"Oh," she said. "Oh that’s."
"He told me he wasn’t expecting me to do it in one try," Liam said, his hands spreading wider across her ass, pulling her down onto each stroke. "But that we had limited time so I should start."
"And you tried," she said.
"I tried," he said. "Left a mark but nothing close to theirs."
"Mm," she said, her rhythm building now, less conversation and more of everything else. "Oh god."
"And then Wrath left to get wood for the fire and I kept trying and." He stopped.
She looked at him through her hair. "And?"
"And then I heard something in the bush beside me," he said.
Her pace slowed slightly, her curiosity arriving. "What kind of something."
"I thought it was Wrath coming back," he said. "So I called out to him. No response. Just the sound again, bigger this time, closer." He paused. "And then a bear came through the bush at full speed directly at me."
Elena stared at him.
"Aahhhhh."
The sound that left her had nothing to do with bears.
Her whole body locked around him, her hands gripping the back of his neck, her hips pressing down and holding, a long broken sound filling the room as she came, her thighs shaking against him, everything releasing in continuous waves.
She collapsed forward against his chest, her hair everywhere, her breathing wrecked and slow.
Liam held her.
After a moment she lifted her head and looked at him with her eyes still unfocused and her lips parted.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"I’m fine," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "I’m fine. Keep going."
He looked at her.
"The bear, Liam," she said. "What happened with the bear."