"Hey, kid. Remember how I said I was tuggin' on a couple threads about your daddy? Well...one of 'em tugged back. Get a notepad."

Katherine's family is looking for her.

Well...her Aunt Louise. 

Russell watched her fly around the room she'd put her belongings in and stuff each article into her gray duffle. His eyes lingered on the gray Texas Baseball t-shirt on the bed. His. Something she wore.

"Katherine, there's no way we're leaving for Georgia right now," he said. "It's almost five in the afternoon, and neither of us are able to drive through the night. It doesn't make sense."

"If we leave now, we can get there in just over 24 hours. I drive first and you sleep, and then we switch." She spares a glance his way. Her eyes are frantic, molten, and yet somehow so stone like in her resolve.

"We can just leave first thing in the morning, when we're both rested." She keeps shoving things into her duffle. "And what if this is some kind of trap?"

She scoffs. "I've known Rufus since I was little. He's not setting me up."

"No, I meant your family." Katherine's hands slow, and she lifts her eyes to look at him with a furrowed brow. "You haven't seen them in God-knows-how-long, right? And they're not happy with you...right?"

Katherine sucks in a deep breath through flared nostrils. As she exhales, her eyes move from him to the wall. "My Aunt Louise never practiced." Russell gives her a doubtful look.

"All I'm saying is, we need to know what we're walking into." Katherine looks at him again, almost cutting. "We," he insists. "You're absolutely high if you think I'm letting you go anywhere by yourself."

She cracks a smile. "High, huh?"

Russell shakes his head. "Your humor is..." He spares a scoff, almost smirking as he leans against the wall. "Dark."

She shrugs with one shoulder, rolling up a t-shirt. "You know you're not obligated to go with me, right?" Katherine murmurs. "Anywhere."

"I don't think there's a scenario I wouldn't go with you."

"Are you romancing me?"

"Is it working?"

She can't help the smile that erupts on her face, so she turns away before he can see it. 

"We should probably stop in on Florida," Russell quietly says.

Katherine sucks in a deep breath, turning to sit on the bed, and looks up at him. "I never want to go back to that place," she tells him.

His face wears an expression of pity, sadness. "I know," he murmurs, pushing himself off the wall. "But it's not right to leave his family reeling for the both of you."

Katherine rolls her tongue across her teeth, and he takes a seat beside her, setting her bag on the ground. "You're not wrong," she quietly agrees. 

"Anyway, I thought you said Louise was in Philly," Russell mutters, leaning his weight back on his palms. "Why would she be in Georgia?"

Katherine purses her lips. "She could've moved," Katherine hums. "But more likely than not..." She clears her throat. "There's some kind of ancestral home in Georgia. My ancestors left Ireland during the potato famine, came here...found peaches." She cracks a little smile. "And potatoes."

"Loved their potatoes."

"They sure did." She runs her hands along her thighs, something of a nervous tic. "Anyway...that's where the Book got stolen."

Russell's eyes are carefully trained on the side of her face. "Oh," he murmurs. "I guess I didn't connect that part." They both chew on the inside of their mouths. He takes a deep breath and his eyebrows furrow before he says, "Don't only rich people have, like, 'ancestral homes'?"

Katherine puts her hand up to her face and shoves, pushing them both down onto the bed. 

Russell grins. "Legitimate question."

"Technically it's abandoned," Katherine says. Russell turns onto his back and pulls her between his legs to lay across him. She rests her ear on his chest, closing her eyes as she listens to the sound of his breathing. 

It's comforting, lulling her into a state of calm and heavy. "I'll say it again just so it's abundantly clear," she murmurs. Russell almost doesn't hear her over the feel of her fingertips ghosting across his chest, down his shoulder, back up. "I'm not expecting you to go with me. I'd almost prefer you didn't."

Russell sighs through his nose into her hair, fingers tightening along the back and insides of her thighs. "I go where you go."

Katherine lifts her head from his chest, sitting astride his lap, and take a deep breath as she looks over his face. It's an unreadable expression, but not like stone. 

It's unfamiliarly tender. 

He offers her a smile, wrapping his fingers around her wrists. 

"How's your side?" She quietly asks.

Russell lamely shrugs. "Itchy."

It's tender all day long. He'd never had a wound as deep as the ones he suffered from the wendigo. Never had so much as a surgery, so the recovery couldn't be paralleled to anything he'd experienced before. Sure, he's needed some patching-up after odd jobs, but...nothing like that.

The emotional rollercoaster of the past week and a half has seemed to slow to an even coast, too, but he can't help but wonder how it all may change over the next few days, and beyond that.

"Can I see?" Katherine asks. 

He nods after a moment, and shifts his weight to pull up on his shirt. 

There's no blood dried anywhere, and most of his stitches are still intact, spare a few along the edges of his wounds. 

"You should be keeping this covered until your stitches fall out," she tuts, fingers gently pulling his skin this way and that. She's careful to be about an inch from a pink line. "You could get an infection."

He tilts his head to chase her eyes. "Isn't that what the antibiotics are for?"

She levels him with a glare, and he just smiles. "You're insufferable."

"Kiss me."

"No." 

His fingers curl into her knees, pleading, soft brown eyes searching her face. "Kiss me?"

The first thing he hears every time he looks at her is what she said last week. I shouldn't hope that you love me, too. They didn't have time to discuss it, because of the train of conversation directed elsewhere, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten it. He doesn't think he ever could. 

Love. What a strange thing. What it can make you do, make you say, think...it didn't occur to him that she was so angry after the wendigo because she loved him. You don't have to love someone to feel betrayed, right? But it makes sense. 

"I love you," he says.

Katherine shakes her head, blue eyes swimming with tears. She's looking at his chest, not at him. "You can't mean that."

"I do. If you meant what you said, that you love me...just kiss me." 

The guilt on her shoulders is immeasurable. Crushing. She loved two men before, at the same time, and they're both dead. How is it possible to love another in just a summer? They'd want it for her though, right?

She does kiss him, and it's the sweetest feeling in the world. His hands sliding up her legs, hitching at her hips, fingers digging into her skin. Knuckles of her right hand brush the tanned skin of his side, bunched in his t-shirt, and her left keeps as much weight from his right side as she can.

"You're being too nice," Russell breathes against her lips. 

"I don't want to be mean. I can't."

"Then don't stop."

Her skin is ablaze, her heart stutters, and she leans to meet his mouth again. His hot tongue runs across her lower lip, hands dragging her closer to him, and through their clothes, she feels just how desperate he is. A soft whimper is caged in her mouth, lips locked with one another's. 

"You're hurt," she says, pulling away from him, and he sits up to chase her.

"I am not," he hums, teeth nipping at her lip. "I need you." Her heart stutters again, and his mouth sponges a soft kiss to her face. It's wet, soft, hot. "Please." Her skin burns hotter, feeling his lips and teeth kiss and nip their way down her throat. His hands slide up her body, moving closer to her middle, and cup her breasts. Moans rumble from their throats. Russell watches her nipples harden underneath the thin material of her tank top. "Braless summer might be my favorite," he hums, running his thumb along the taut peak.

He'd be lying if he didn't admit he was thinking about it all day. He could tell by the way they moved she wasn't wearing one. He'd never seen her fully naked, and imagining it was driving him wild. He wanted to kiss them, lick, bite, suck. 

She watches his thumb roll over her nipple one more time before his hands move to her belly, sliding up soft flesh, until they come to the full weight of her breasts again. He sighs through his nose, thumbs skimming over her taut nipples as he pushes her tank top up. Katherine finishes the job and pulls it over her head. She hardly has time to let her arms rest at her side again before his mouth moves for her breast. She sighs, tilting her head back as Russell's tongue works against her, warm and wet. With every stroke, every circle, every gentle nip, she feels her middle tighten. She's aching, throbbing, wanton. 

Russell pulls his shirt overhead and discards it vaguely to the left, letting his mouth be chased by hers. A shiver rolls down his spine at the feel of her breasts against his chest, her fingers tracing down his side and over his belly, avoiding the pink, tender expanse of new and healing flesh. Her tongue works against the soft underneath his jaw, her teeth gently scraping there, and he feels it in his pants. His groan turns into a short laugh, his fingers winding around her wrist and squeezing. 

"Yeah?" She hums. 

"Yeah."

Katherine's mouth continues south, detouring wherever she feels like, hot and wet for the moment, but cool and naked when she moves on. Her tongue swipes out over his nipple and she closes her mouth around it, gently sucking and working her tongue against it, and he shivers before she moves on. Down the middle of his belly. He grows impossibly harder, more desperate, as he watches her head keep going. 

Sweatpants self-cut into shorts don't provide much of a shield from anything, but as her hand moves between his legs and slides up, right against his erection, he can't help but moan and close his eyes, grateful he chose to wear these today. 

"Tell me to stop," she says.

Russell laughs. "You'd be hard pressed to find any man who says that to you, especially now." Blue eyes lock on his, glimmering, waiting. "What...you want me to beg you?"

She grins, rolling up to kiss him quickly. "Not today," she murmurs, and sits back on her heels. 

"Tomorrow, then," he decides in a sigh. A soft laugh slips between her lips, fingers ghosting along the soft skin above his pantline. 

"I like these," Katherine purrs, fingertips slipping just underneath the waistband. There's still another between her skin and his. 

"I'll wear 'em more often for ya," Russell promises. 

Katherine runs the backs of her knuckles down his shorts and stop at his thigh, strong, but soft without being flexed. Her hand slips under the raw hem, and lifts the band of his trunks. 

She watches the fabric of his shorts shift, and her mouth waters. "Do you have time for a detour?" She lightly asks. If at all possible, seeing her laser-like focus turns him on more. The mental image of her mouth around him makes him groan.

"I've got all the time in the world." 

"Good." She settles on her knees and reaches for his hips with both hands. "I want you in my mouth."

He sputters out a laugh as he lifts his hips, helping her pull his shorts and trunks down. "You'll hear no protest from me."

Jesus Christ, this is actually happening. She kisses up his thigh, gently teething some areas, across his hip, and down just slightly. A sigh leaves his lips, watching and feeling her tongue lick his balls. His eyes close for the briefest of moments, and he wasn't expecting her to move so quickly, but when he feels her tongue lick up his cock, a low moan escapes his throat. 

It's a mental battle to avoid completely giving in to what she's making him feel, watching his dick disappear into her mouth, her cheeks hollowing, sucking. He's been ready to come for a little bit now, but he needs to last. He just can't bring himself to close his eyes. But then her own lift to his, and he groans, rolling his head back. 

"Fuck, Katherine. You've gotta stop."

Her touch is gone, and his eyes fly open. "I'm sorry—"

"No," he quickly shakes his head, and her features are panic-stricken, eyes moving for her patch job on his side. "No, I'm fine. I'm more than fine, I just..." He can't help his eyes moving down her bare torso, dancing around the drawstring of her sleep shorts. "I really, really need to be inside you when I come." 

Her thumbs loop into her shorts and she pushes them down her thighs. He sucks in a breath, watching the lines of her body, how her skin moves. "I think this is where I should say how hot you are."

She grins, settling over his hips, and the two meet in the middle for a kiss. "I was kinda thinkin' the same thing."

"Cocky, huh?"

"Shut up," she chuckles against his mouth. "You know I'm talking about you." He can hardly concentrate, because the head of his cock is just near her entrance. It would be so easy to slide in. "I'm clean," she murmurs. "Last they checked in May." He isn't even wrapping his head around what she's saying.

"I could use a shower," he says. His brows scrunch together and he shakes his head. "I meant...later, not like right now—" She kisses him, fingers knotting in the hair at the nape of his neck. His cock slides against the inside of her thigh, and she gasps against his lips. 

"Wrap it if you want to, but hurry the fuck up," she says. 

"Testy, testy."

Russell slides into her, mouths hovering just away from the other's, sharing a moan that reverberates through the room as she sinks down. Fully sat, she's certain she's never felt anything deeper, felt any fuller. It's delicious. 

"God, you feel good," she sighs in his ear. A shiver settles low in his back, and they sit there for the moment. 

"I was just thinking the same about you," he groans. "Fuck." His hands slide under her, cupping her ass, and he lifts. The sound of her whine is something else, twists low in his belly. 

"Lay down," she whispers, tonguing his earlobe into her mouth. Russell does as he's told, but never moves his hands from her skin. His eyes are stuck on hers entirely, lips parted as she rests her hands on his chest, rolls her hips backwards, and drags her clit along his length as she sits up. Whine, whimper, moan, it was all the same to him. Fucking delicious. She comes down the same way she went up, and he can't decide which way he likes better. 

Wet, tight, soft. Full, stretch, just enough discomfort to make it hot. 

"This was a good idea," Russell sighs, running a hand up her arm. Her head is tossed back, hands anchored to his chest, as she swirls and lifts her hips. Slow and sensual quickly turns into wanton need. He's sat fully up, one arm locked behind the small of her back, and pounds into her relentlessly. The slide and slap of skin carries him to the end faster, watching her head tilt bak and her mouth open. The thumb of his other hand reaches up and hooks into her mouth, pulling her towards him for a kiss. She pulls away for air, just a little, and cries out against his mouth. 

"Russell," she whines. "Don't stop."

Hot wetness floods between them, and between feeling that, feeling her walls tighten around him, he's echoing her moan of desperation, and coming inside her. The tightly-wound knot in his groin unravels, and she feels all the slicker. 

Their skin shines where their bodies met, where she came, and Russell moans, staring at his dick inside her. He always loved seeing the evidence of a woman finishing, especially on his skin, and seeing it now has somehow turned him on again already. 

Katherine leans into his chest, feeling him twitch inside of her, and kisses lazily where his jaw meets his ear. "That was so good," she sighs. He can feel her heart throbbing in her chest, the pulse between her legs. 

"Ditto." He thrusts one last time, catching her by surprise, and smiles at her moan. He lies back and takes her with him, still inside her. "I'm not rushing you," he says a few minutes later in her hair, when their heart rates and breathing has mellowed out. "Because I'm quite content to stay here all night, but I'm carrying you into that shower when you're ready."

"Only if you're gonna fuck me in it," she sighs.

"Yes ma'am."