Page 58

Oscar sets me down. “I should⁠—”

“No.” I cut him off and take his hand. “I need a shower. Come with me?”

I’ve always been grateful for the bathroom Folk and his friends built me when I wasn’t looking. But never more so as I lead Oscar inside, up the stairs, and into a shower big enough for two grown men.

Oscar’s been working all day too. He tugs the band from his hair and lets it fall loose around his broad shoulders as the spray rains down on us.

I stare and I don’t even try to be discreet about it. I drink him in and he notices.

He smiles. “Okay?”

I am. I think. But the truth is, under the spot lights built into the ceiling, I feel like I’m seeing him properly for the first time. Not in moonlight, nor his shadowed living room. Not through a storm razing the land outside as we shelter in a dark, unfinished room.

No.

This is different. This is Oscar, and I’m obsessed with him.

He’s so tall. I have to tilt my head a little as he moves closer and a body honed by manual work crowds me against the tiles.

Water slides over muscles and ink. Tattoos that draw me in, not because I have a fascination with ink.

Because they’re his.

I follow the lines of one with my fingertip.

Oscar tracks my touch. “My grandfather hates that one.”

“Really? Why?”

“He was too catholic to believe in the ancient gods.”

“Do you believe in them?”

“It is hard not to when my life is ruled by waves and wind.”

I feel that as I trace the sketched lightning carved into his skin. Antlers. Forests. The sun and the stars. Warmth grows quietly between us. Intimacy as we wash the day from each other.

Somewhere along the way, I become aware of how deeply he looks at me. Like he’s trying to memorise me, and I’ve felt that before, with other people—other men—and I’ve pushed them away.

I pull Oscar closer, watching him as he rakes his gaze over my sun-stained skin, old scars, and arms built by years of hauling things that refuse to move.

I’m strong.

Most people notice eventually.

Oscar knew it from the start and he seems as wryly bewildered by it as he was two summers ago.

Outside, evening settles over the farm. In the steam-hazed bathroom, heat cocoons us, blocking out the rest of the world. Oscar braces his forearm on the tiles over my head. His chest presses against me, muscle on muscle, his dick hard and wanting as it slides along mine.

He exhales through his nose, desire swirling in his eyes, pupils blown wide.

I lick his neck and ask him a third and final question. “Come to bed with me?”

I’m talking about more than sleep and Oscar knows it. He wants it. I know, because he leads me there.

And then stops just inside my room with surprise on his face as I flick on a vintage lamp I unearthed from the barn when I got here. “Your father told Aras he brought you a bed. I didn’t realise you’d been as busy in the house as you have outside.”

“Just the painting left.”