Chapter 9
NINE
They took the boat out to the lakeshore. Found a few handfuls of still-dry kindling in sheltered spots. Chopped down some more trees to add to the woodpile, to dry out and season.
Then they trekked out into the forest, following a ranging circle for miles, checking out a perimeter that seemed to only exist in Wyatt’s head.
Jesse watched Wyatt’s six while he climbed rocks and bluffs and inspected clearings and cliff faces that dropped like Jesse’s stomach when he risked a peek over the edge. He watched armed with a hunting rifle he could successfully aim maybe one time outta ten.
But no harm, no foul. Jesse didn’t need to shoot any wandering zombies. Everything around was quiet and still. The snowdrifts were already multiple feet deep, and they’d be deeper by the next day, if the low, heavy gray of the clouds gave up the weight of snow it was promising.
Winter was winding up to pitch hard and fast. They’d be snowed in before the week was out. If any zombies even thought about heading their way, then those zombies would have to drag their undead asses through six feet of snow and multiple avalanches along the way.
Which wasn’t gonna happen.
Wyatt and Jesse were safe, for now, and at least until spring.
* * *
They worked all day. Worked the morning that was left to them, worked the afternoon through, worked until the light started to fade, then worked a little later still.
Jesse was shivering by the time they made it back to the cabin. He ducked under Wyatt’s arm and through the open door, already toeing out of his waterlogged boots.
“Lock up, Jess,” Wyatt told him, busy with his pack and Jesse’s pack, and with the rifle and the two creepy birds he’d managed to hunt. Blue grouse, he’d called them, which was a stupid name, because they weren’t blue at all.
“Sure, sure,” Jesse muttered, too intent on rubbing feeling back into his cold-numb hands. He hurried over to the fire and stoked it into life. Shucked his wet socks and his wet jacket. His cold, clinging sweater. He was reaching for the zipper on his jeans when Wyatt spoke again.
“Jesse.”
That caught Jesse’s attention like a zombie screech, the same hit of cold wrongness shooting up his spine. Wyatt never called him Jesse. Not ever. It was always Jess or bud or some other kinda nickname. That was a Wyatt thing. No one ever had before.
So it was deadass freaky to hear Wyatt say Jesse’s full government name. Especially the way he said it, extra low but kinda flat too.
“Uh…” Jesse straightened from his crouch in front of the fire. Wyatt was standing by the door still, looking pissed, or as pissed as he ever looked. Thin lipped, at least, eyes gone a little flinty. “What— what’s up?”
Wyatt tipped his chin toward the door — to the heavy steel bar that Jesse had neglected to slide into place, to the lock he hadn’t turned.
“Oh.” That was it? The reason for the epic stinkface? Jeez. “Yeah. Sorry. I forgot.”
“You forgot.” Not a question. Just a repetition lacking any kind of interpretable tone.
So Jesse chose snippy for his own tone. “That’s what I said.”
“I asked you to lock it.”
Jesse didn’t fight the fresh hit of irritation. Like fuck, he appreciated the military smarts, they’d saved his life a bunch of times, but sometimes Wyatt could be way too much of a hardass.
“I forgot, okay? An unlocked door or hypothermia, what are you gonna choose? Jeez, dude, chill.”
Even as he said it, Jesse regretted it. He was really fucking cold and hungry, hangry with it, and honestly kinda beat, but that was no excuse.
A zombie. A bad guy. Anyone could have strolled in through that unlocked door, stumbled in, stormed in — armed with a knife or a gun or grasping, clawed-up hands.
“Shit.” Jesse shook his head, pissed at his pissy self. “Sorry, fuck. You’re right.”
He scurried over to the door and clanked bars, threaded bolts, turned locks.
He doublechecked the shutters while he was at it, for good measure and maybe for some retrospective brownie points.
When he was done, the cabin was locked up tight.
Forest Fort Knox, no zombie ingress of any kind to report.
But the look on Wyatt’s face. It wasn’t much. Never was. Jesse could read it, though — Wyatt was disappointed in him. And Jesse was suddenly really fucking disappointed in himself.
“Wyatt…” he began.
Wyatt heaved a heavy breath. “Yeah, bud?”
He was sitting watching the fire, the one he’d stoked to a roar after Jesse’s pathetic attempt had failed. The cabin was already filling with heat, leaving Jesse’s skin prickling.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse said again.
Wyatt didn’t look Jesse’s way, but he tipped his chin, apology accepted. Wasn’t enough, though. Jesse needed to hear it. That he was forgiven. Needed that absolution.
He came close enough to kick at Wyatt’s foot. “I mean it, okay? I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“It will.”
“I mean…” There was some kind of useless protest to be made, but Wyatt was right and Jesse was a loser. He gave up with a sigh. “Yeah. I mean, yeah, probably.”
Wyatt just shook his head. “What do I gotta do to make you behave, bud?”
He shook his head, but he looked up at Jesse finally, and that eye contact shot through Jesse, a hit of crazy relief. “Who says you gotta do anything?”
“So you wanna be a misbehaving little shit?” Wyatt countered. “That’s it, huh?”
“It’s not, like, a want.” Maybe not the move, but Jesse couldn’t totally bite down on his grin. “More like a biological imperative.”
Wyatt breathed out something close to a laugh. Whatever it was, the sound of it made the ache unknot in Jesse’s chest. He was an idiot, just like always. He’d been an idiot, just like always, but he was forgiven — just like always.
“So you’re just gonna be a brat?” Wyatt said, playing along. “Can’t help it? No fixing it?”
“Maybe.” Jesse was grinning now. He couldn’t help it, not with the weird, giddy feeling that had taken over in his chest, a fizzing heat that flared like fat on the fire.
“Yeah, maybe. Or fuck — no. Not maybe. I’m totally a brat,” Jesse said.
“I’ll own it.” He touched his tongue to his bottom lip.
Let Wyatt see him do it. Then he said, “So what you gonna do about it, big guy?”
Wyatt went completely still. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. It was that same stillness as the first time he’d seen Jesse dressed in panties. “Do about it?” Wyatt said at last, his voice like a scrape.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. His heart was beating crazy fast, suddenly. He could feel it in his ears, in his pointy as fuck nips, in his cock, filling out in his jeans. “You heard me. What are you gonna do to make me behave?”
Wyatt was big and bulky and honestly kinda old. But when he wanted to, he could move quick. It always surprised Jesse how quick. It surprised him then, even though he knew it was coming.
Before Jesse could even blink, Wyatt had him scruffed. One-handed, he hauled Jesse down over his lap, over his knee, spreading him out on the couch.
Jesse flailed for a second, searching wildly for balance, but Wyatt didn’t give him time to adjust. Just brought his hand down hard.
The slap of his palm was deadened through the heavy denim of Jesse’s jeans. Still made Jesse cry out.
“Fuck!”
Wyatt smacked him again, same cheek. Again, different cheek. Again and again, one after the other, not trying to trick Jesse, just making him feel it.
Jesse started counting somewhere in the middle. Lost count at twenty.
“God. Oh fuck. Oh god.”
Not words so much as shaky breaths, let go on every impact, on every smack of Wyatt’s big hand, because Jesse was winding up to some crazy place, laying spread out over another guy’s lap, getting freaking spanked.
Spanked. Literally spanked, because he’d literally asked for it, with literal words.
A whine broke somewhere low in Jesse’s throat and cracked out of him.
Wyatt’s hand came down one last time and stopped there, laying heavy and hot enough that Jesse could feel the brand of it through his jeans.
The stillness was total. The only sound was the wet, heaving pant of Jesse trying and failing to get his breath back. His ass was throbbing. His cock was throbbing. Everything was throbbing. Jesse was one giant throb of want.
He turned his burning face into the crook of his elbow. “God.”
But Wyatt wouldn’t let him hide. He wound his hand in the fall of Jesse’s hair and tugged until he could see Jesse’s blotchy face.
“This what you wanted?” Wyatt asked. His voice was mild, kinda pointedly. “Wanted to be punished, bud? Wanna know that you’ve been bad, that you pissed me off — that what you wanted?”
“Fuck.”
Jesse was still breathing more than hard, like he’d forgotten how to fill his lungs.
He was aware of his bare, pointy nipples in a way that he was pretty sure a person shouldn’t ever be aware of their own nipples.
And his dick was beyond hard in his jeans.
Brick hard and bricked up, pressed tight against Wyatt’s thigh, and it was only the weight of Wyatt’s hand that held Jesse there, held him still, stopping Jesse’s desperate, mindless grind.
A smack, hard and quick, like a warning. “Got an answer for me, bud?”
“Yes, god. Fuck.” Not enough. Jesse knew that. Just like he knew that Wyatt was gonna make him say it. “It’s what I wanted,” he gasped out.
Wyatt’s hand flexed on Jesse’s ass, promise and warning. “So you’re gonna behave now? Gonna be good for me?”
Jesse shook his head. He wasn’t good. He’d never been good. But still, the stillness. Still, Wyatt waiting for it, for Jesse to say the words. And Jesse could do it. He could. For once, he could be brave enough.
“You gotta— gotta make me,” Jesse gasped out, words catching and tripping over the thrum of white-hot want pumping through every single artery. “Need you to— make me. Make me behave. Please.”
Wyatt yanked down on Jesse’s jeans, no warning. He didn’t unbutton them. Just hauled them down Jesse’s thighs, right down to his knees, trapping them together, leaving Jesse trussed up and ass up, balanced on his tippy toes, dressed in nothing but a pair of rucked-up satin panties.
“Fuck,” Jesse rasped out, to an echo of it from up above.
Wyatt’s hands were back on him, sliding kinda wonderingly over the satin, like maybe Wyatt had forgotten Jesse was still wearing his panties, like maybe he thought Jesse had changed them out.
But Jesse didn’t, and he hadn’t, and now that’s what Wyatt got to see — Jesse’s slapped ass spilling out of his panties.
“Make you behave,” Wyatt murmured. He smoothed his hand over Jesse’s throbbing cheeks, working the satin between them with every pass, until Jesse’s ass was sporting a weirdly sexy wedgie.
Then the heat of his hand slid away.
Jesse shivered with it, knowing that the next time Wyatt’s hand came down, it would be bare skin on skin.
That thought got him deep, the shivers raising goosebumps of hot anticipation — how good it felt, bound up and made helpless by his own damn jeans, unsteady, but rocking his dick against the hard line of Wyatt’s thigh, his brain gone a little hazy to the crazy contrast of smooth, slick satin rubbing up against rough denim.
“Because you’d take it, wouldn’t you?” Wyatt murmured, some conversation Jesse had long ago lost track of.
His voice was low and rumbling and fucking perfect, still that note, a building, solidifying heat.
“Take your punishment. Any punishment I’d give you.
You’d take it like the good boy I know you can be. ”
“God,” Jesse bit out. Bad-good-wrong-right pleasure prickled across his skin. He nodded, nothing smooth, just jerking his head like Wyatt was jerking his strings. “I would. I need it.”
Because this was doing it for him so bad, getting spanked red and rosy over the knee of a verifiable silver fox. Doing it in a way that literally nothing ever had before. Jesse wanted it so bad, to be good for Wyatt, for Wyatt to make him be good.
“Please.”
The first strike of Wyatt’s hand was as overwhelming as Jesse knew it would be.
Bare skin on bare skin. Jesse’s cheek rippled on impact.
The thrum vibrated up his spine and down every nerve.
Wyatt didn’t give Jesse any time to regroup.
Just smacked his butt again, other cheek this time but the same spot, low, where Jesse’s butt was fullest. Then both cheeks at once, his big hand spanning the reach with ease.
Again and again, making Jesse’s butt jiggle and his skin heat. Still no tricks. Just those smacks landing firm and sure, never wavering, until Jesse couldn’t hold it in any longer.
He cried out, a pleasure-pained moan. “Fuck!”
Wyatt stopped. The spanking stopped. One big hand dragged heavy through Jesse’s hair, and the other soothed gentle circles over Jesse’s stinging hot cheeks. “You gotta be good for me now, Jess,” Wyatt told him. “You’re gonna. I know you want to, bud.”
Not a single word left. Jesse had nothing. He was a hollowed out shell of undiluted need. He hid his hot, hot face in the crook of his elbow and nodded.
“Good,” Wyatt said. “That’s my good boy.”
Jesse whimpered. He was so hard. Wyatt had to feel it. The satin wasn’t doing anything to contain Jesse’s dick, just making it harder, the slick softness rubbing up against him every time Jesse rubbed up against Wyatt’s thigh, every time the flat of Wyatt’s hand sent him rocking.
Wyatt had to know what he was doing to Jesse, with the shit he was saying, the hot shit he was doing. That he had Jesse bricked up and right at the edge, just from wailing on his ass, just from calling Jesse — god, fuck — a good boy.
He had to know.
He did. “You can come now, bud.”
It was like a switch. Like Jesse had been holding back without knowing it, without even consciously trying, just waiting for Wyatt’s permission.
He had it now, though, and it was all he needed.
Jesse came.
He came undone under the weight of Wyatt’s hand.