Running Wild

getting better.
Seamus smiled down at him after Ri felt very well fucked. “Of course it keeps getting better.”
Ri must have said it out loud, in that after-sex haze when his entire body sighed with happiness.
As Seamus nuzzled his neck, Ri couldn’t help but ask, “Of course?”
Softly, in his ear, “We learn more about each other’s bodies. And while there is something stimulating about a new partner, the accompanying tension is sometimes too much. At least for some of us.” Seamus slid down beside Ri and turned on his side. He pushed hair off Ri’s forehead. “Especially with you, babe.”
Ri pulled a face. “I’m surprised you didn’t run away.”
“You’re the one who runs, not me.” He ran a knuckle over Ri’s cheek. “Speaking of which… Isn’t it time?”
“I’m developing the theory that more sex blunts my drive to go running.”
“Oh yeah?” Seamus’s eyes lit up. “So we’ll be diligent, eh? I can keep you with me all the time I’m here.”
That Seamus wanted to keep him left Ri speechless. How much Seamus sensed, Ri didn’t know, but he kissed Ri’s cheek before padding off to the bathroom.
Ri closed his eyes. Still happy, even if some of life’s reality had begun to creep back in. They had five more days before Seamus returned to work in the city. Ri thought he could hold off running till then. He would have except the horse in him insisted he should reconnoiter the area. The events of the past weeks were no guarantee that threats wouldn’t reappear. Ri ranging far and wide would give them a heads-up if danger was to return.
“I have to go in the morning,” he said as Seamus slipped back into bed.
“All right.” Seamus’s acceptance was immediate, but he did ask, “Can you return sooner? Since I’ll be gone by the end of the weekend?”
“I can try.”
“Maybe the sex will call you home?”
Ri laughed and pulled Seamus closer.
Maybe it would.
It wasn’t as difficult the second time, waiting for Ri. In a way, it should have been worse, because they’d moved past any initial awkwardness and into the intense having-sex-all-the-time part of their relationship. Seamus rather desperately wanted Ri. Now. But he was less worried Ri would take off, that this relationship would come to a full stop. This past year he’d begun to think he was doomed to not having a boyfriend after Pete. Not that he and Ri had used the boyfriend word yet.
They had tentatively talked through how they were going to spend the fall with Seamus working in the city and coming out for the weekends. Ri working around the place when he wasn’t running. Ri had some concerns about being a financial drain on Seamus, but Seamus had stressed that he needed help on this land, or he wouldn’t be able to keep it. He wanted to keep it.
Not only because of Ri, though that would have been enough. He liked working outside better than in, and he fantasized about this being the way he supported himself full-time in a future where the land was making them money.
He just hoped he didn’t arrive out here the following weekend to find Ri gone all Saturday and Sunday. They planned to leave each other notes, though that would only go so far.
His phone rang, and Seamus pulled it out to glance at the number, not wanting the outside world to intrude. Especially not in the guise of Pete’s voice. It had been a mistake to call Pete the other week, as he’d taken that as an invitation to check in regularly. Seamus needed to put a stop to it, so he let the call go to voicemail.
Half an hour later, his phone rang, and he rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to feel uneasy about Pete’s calls…yet. But it was becoming a near thing. He checked the number though and didn’t recognize it, so he hit the Talk button. “Hello?”
The voice was businesslike. “Hi, Seamus. This is Jonah. We met the other week.”
“Hello.” Seamus’s lack of enthusiasm was not unsubtle.
“I was hoping to talk to Ri.”
“He’s not available.”
“Can you ask him to call me when he is? I’d love to talk to him before heading back to Ontario.” Seamus had assumed Jonah and his boyfriend were already long gone.
“I’ll pass on your message.”
Jonah’s tone was sympathetic. “I get it. We’re strangers. But, you know, Ri hasn’t met a lot of shifters outside of some rather violent wolves who don’t count. I know how that kind of isolation feels. I was on my own for a long time.”
“Fascinating.” Seamus didn’t want this