Alternate Realities

It's a Drunken Miracle

The cherry wine tang flitted through her taste buds only when mixed with oxygen. Mare sat with her mouth open sucking in the cold air and letting the burst of flavor crowd out her worries. Deep into her second glass, she had carried the bottle out with her and wrapped the wool blanket around her shoulders. The swing had been hung on the long porch by the previous owners - a silver family long gone. It wasn't hard to imagine a couple rocking side by side watching the storms roll over the flat fields that made up their estate.

The skewed movement, her weight too much to one side to be even, dug into her thoughts and brought about a vast number of imaginings. Cal would have been restless after a while, but he would have sat with her and cracked jokes enjoying the view. Three months and still a pang. She sucked in another mouthful and carefully held the liquid around her tongue while she breathed in a gust of cherry fumes.

His body crashed into the swing with all the force of his exhaustion. Limbs limply hung at his side and his legs drug on the deck boards. Mare's head lolled to the side to cast judging eyes at his intrusion. He looked back with a mirrored expression that forbid her from questions.

Kilorn had always been on the starving side of thin, but the pace of the recent months carved an especially deep crevice around his collarbone. But he owed a bit to the work as well. Fishing had broadened his shoulders and strengthened his back, but the guard had cut the gaps between his muscles and popped his forearms into brawny, capable forms. She watched the tendons on the back of his hand pull his fingers into a fist around the bottle and the pockets of muscles articulate it to his lips then turned back to admire the dark clouds bringing snow into the valley.

He shivered hard enough to shake the swing. Mare edged closer to him and lifted the blanket over the both of them. The alcohol seeped into her, warming her cheeks and pulling the stiffness out of her back. She leaned into his shoulder until he adjusted so his arm was around her and her head pressed into him.

"For warmth," she said, another mouthful of wine following her words.

"Obviously," he smirked, raising the bottle.

Tucked so intimately into his side, the smell of boy, and earnest sweat mingling with poor judgement, she felt a throb course down through her core and into her groin. She sucked in an annoyed breath and shuddered the horrible aching shudder that came with physiological desire. Three months since Cal went his own way. Three months since she'd last traversed the hallowed grounds of pleasure. She wondered if tonight would be the night she'd finally fumble her way to an orgasm or if she'd break down crying like the last time she attempted.

"Cold?" he pulled the blanket tight around her side blocking the subtle draft.

"Nope."

"You're shivering."

"Other reasons."

"Ah yeah, the whole repulsive best-friend thing." It came out on both sides of the fence: teasing and yet hurt.

"You've moved light years beyond my hideous face." She drank again.

"Hideous face, but damn that ass." Now he was teasing, clear and with a chuckle.

"Glad I still got it," she murmured. Then a horrible idea struck her. "When was the last time you got laid?"

Kilorn groaned in the back of his throat and shifted uncomfortable next to her.

"Come on, it couldn't have been in the Stilts..." Another uncomfortable shift. "Not since we left home? Not since Chadia Canmore?"

"God no, tons since Chadia. More than you'd think, obviously." Kilorn's voice scolded her. "I do just fine, thank you."