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 nowbothdead—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 gottendisgusted 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 anewname, 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 wantedsomeone who wantedmethe 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. Whochoseme. 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.”
