Page 50

He let out a small moan, then pulled my shirt off over my head.

He began kissing his way down the side of my neck, running his tongue down my sternum, then pushing my good leg wide to give himself room, carefully avoiding bumping my knee or catching his fingers on the hydrocolloid bandages covering my stitches.

His fingers fumbled a little with the fly of my shorts, undoing the button on the second try, the zipper catching as he tried to pull it down.

“Fucking thing,” he hissed at it, drawing a small laugh from me.

A push from my good leg let me work my shorts and underwear off my hips, and Elliot very carefully helped pull both over the knee brace.

“I didn’t know my underwear could stretch that far,” I remarked, surprised he’d managed to get them off over the brace along with my much looser cargo shorts.

“If they hadn’t, I’d have ripped them,” came his response as his rough hands slid over my now bare hips.

“Good thing they did, then,” I breathed, the feel of his hands having stolen my ability to speak normally.

Elliot hummed out a question that I took to mean why? as he pushed my good leg wider, one hand running up the inside of my thigh.

“Don’t want to—” I hissed out another breath as he ran a thumb over the hypersensitive skin on the inside of my leg where it met my hip.

Elliot’s lips pressed against the inside of my knee, then up an inch before he hummed out another question.

“To have to buy anything else,” I finished, hissing slightly as he placed another, wetter kiss higher on my thigh. “Already have to pay for too much.”

Another kiss, and another. And then he licked that sensitive skin before blowing gently, the warmth of his breath chilled by the moisture from his mouth.

I let out a small whine, which quickly turned to a strangled gasp as he swallowed me completely, the muscles of his tongue and throat rippling around me. I sank my fingers into his hair, unable to stop myself from wanting to hold him exactly where he was.

The low, growly groan he made in response suggested he didn’t mind. But, God , what that vibration did to me… I shuddered, the sensations from Elliot’s tongue sending electric currents through me. “El?—”

He ran his tongue up my length, then leaned into me, pressing his body against mine. “What?” he asked, moments before kissing me, and I could taste the salt of my precum on his lips.

I whimpered.

He slicked his fingers with lube, then pressed one against me, rubbing, kneading, then pushing past muscle. I groaned, and he moved from my lips to the side of my jaw, kissing as he rocked his hips against my upper thigh, his cock hard and hot against my skin.

He continued fucking me with his fingers, but leaned back on his heels, taking his erection in his other hand and stroking himself as he watched me, eyes bright and face flushed, his breath almost as rapid and harsh as mine.

“Touch yourself,” he demanded, squeezing the head of his cock, a few droplets of clearish liquid beading on the tip.

I obeyed him, gripping my length in one hand as he pressed a second finger inside me.

“That’s it. More. Faster,” he ordered, following his own instructions with the hand on his cock, even as I did as he asked.

Between watching him stroke himself and feeling his fingers inside me, I wasn’t going to last, and I panted, trying to get enough breath to say so.

“Make yourself come,” he begged. “I want to feel you around my fingers.”

I groaned, speeding up the rhythm of my hand until my arm started to ache, the jerkiness of the muscles mirrored my hips as they tried to thrust both upward into my hand and down into Elliot’s fingers.

“Fuck, baby, that’s it,” he rasped.

I felt my control slip, and cum coated my fingers, my body trembling as the orgasm pushed through me. Elliot leaned back, his eyes closing as he came, drops spattering my thigh and slicking his fingers.

He settled back on his heels for a moment, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he caught his breath.

Then he slid off the bed, and I heard water running in the bathroom before he came back to clean me up with a warm washcloth.

Before he went to toss it on the floor of the bathroom—like you were supposed to do with towels you wanted replaced—he bent and kissed me, slow and deep.

I caught his face with a hand, holding him there.

“I love you,” I murmured against his lips.

I felt him smile. “I love you, too.”

When he came back, he stretched out, his head and shoulders propped up a little by pillows. “Come here, baby.”

I rolled onto my side, squirming a little to keep my leg elevated on the cushion, which fortunately was big enough to allow me to do this, and snuggled up to him, trying to ignore the pressing weight of the last however-many days.

I sighed, my cheek on Elliot’s chest, smelling the hotel’s shampoo in the damp hair brushing his shoulder.

“What?” he asked me softly.

“I just…” I broke off, uncertain how to continue, my fingers tracing over the lines of the tattoos on his left arm, the paw prints—meant to be mine—that ran up his arm, past the moon and star that were for Hart, the birch trees for his mother, the lavender roses for his father, and the flying cranes that were for the rest of his ancestors.

“You just what?” he asked, softly. Gentle fingers ran through my own damp hair.

“I wish I could just forget all of it. Every minute I spent in that goddamn house or in the barn or the fucking basement.” Especially the basement. “I wish I didn’t have to look at my own face and recognize either of them in it. Or sign my name and remember it was theirs.”

I’d been wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t care my parents were dead—and they were now both dead—it was that I’d never have to see them again.

Never think about the fact that, one day, I might run into one or both of them while on a trip to the mountains.

Never have to worry that they’d had another kid after Noah and I left and had tortured Rachael the way they’d tortured us.

I wished I didn’t have to have any connection to them.

We were selling the property, although we were taking the goats and the chickens we weren’t leaving with Ray and Helen, and we were definitely taking Sassafras, who had gotten disgusted with us and moved to sit inside Elliot’s duffel bag.

But there wasn’t anything I could do about my DNA or my name, because I didn’t want a new name, exactly, I just hated that they’d given me this one.

At least until Elliot spoke again.

“You could become a Crane,” he said softly, even as my fingers ran over the feathers of one of the birds on his bicep.

It took me two strong beats of his heart to process what he’d said. I pushed myself up to look at his face. “What?”

Something like nervousness flitted over his features. “My dad did, when he moved up to Shawano,” he murmured. “Became a Crane. His name was Gregory Garvin before he joined the Mamaceqtaw and became part of Mom’s family. If you don’t want to be a Mays, you could be a Crane.”

I felt tears pushing at the backs of my eyelids, and I had to blink rapidly, although that didn’t stop a few from falling. Elliot frowned, and one hand reached out to brush a drop off my cheek before it disappeared into my beard.

“Seth, you don’t?—”

“You’d want me to?” I asked, and my voice sounded very small, even to me.

His face relaxed immediately, softening, and he took mine in both his hands, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Baby, of course I do,” he whispered against my skin. “You are the family I choose, the clan I choose, the tribe I choose.”

I hugged him, burying my face in the side of his neck so that he wouldn’t see the tears I knew he knew were there.

His arms wrapped around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other on my back as I cried for all the years I’d desperately needed a family who wanted me for me and hadn’t had one.

Yeah, I’d had Noah. I always had Noah, and I always would have Noah.

But until Elliot had offered, I hadn’t realized just how badly I wanted more than Noah.

How desperately I wanted someone who wanted me the way I was, scars, aches, Lyme, stupid alpha-gal, and all.

Someone who loved that I was a gay shifter science nerd, not just tolerated it.

Who loved me for me. Who chose me. Permanently.

Someone I loved whole-heartedly in return.

My tears finally spent, I turned my face, and his arms loosened just a little, enough to let me shift, resting my cheek against his shoulder again.

“Okay,” I said.

I felt him move so that he could kiss my forehead. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Seth Crane,” he whispered, and I felt a rush of warmth go through me. “I like it,” he told me.

“Me, too.”