Chapter 7 Teague
Teague
The thing about Ash Dunne is that he has no idea what he looks like.
The man genuinely does not know what happens to a room when he walks into it wearing my clothes with his hair wrecked and sleep still in his eyes and a bruise on his hip that I clocked the second his shirt rode up reaching for the coffee pot.
He doesn't know and nobody's ever told him, because my brother is an idiot who spent two years with the best thing that ever happened to him and used that time to teach him how to be small.
The line used to be the line. Ash was Marcus', end of story.
It didn't matter that my father looked at him the way I've never seen my father look at anything that wasn't land he intended to own.
It didn't matter that I felt it too, that every Thanksgiving and Easter and random Tuesday I watched this warm, bright, impossible person sit at our table and talk to our horses and laugh at my jokes with his whole body while my brother sat next to him scrolling his phone. The line was the line.
The line is apparently gone now. Ash walked out of my father's bedroom this morning instead of the guest room, and my father's hand found the back of his neck in the kitchen with the ease of a man touching something he considers his, and I stood there watching and thought, well. Here we go.
The fact that Ash just agreed to our... usual routine without any hesitation tells me two things. This is going to be the best two fucking weeks of my life and I’m going to kill Marcus for not giving Ash everything he deserved.
I find Ash in the barn, brushing Mabel’s dappled coat, the old bay mare who grants human touch as grudgingly as royalty bestows favors. He murmurs to her in that low voice of his, whispering that she’s the prettiest horse on the ranch and please don’t gossip with the others.
He’s using the soft brush from the third hook, the one we pull out for her sensitive skin, something he had to have remembered eight months ago. He knows exactly which brush belongs to which horse.
From the doorway I call out, “She’s going to fall in love with you, and then she’ll be useless to the rest of us. She already barely tolerates Cass.”
He startles, a barely visible hitch in his shoulders and I tuck it away with the rest of the little signals that tell me how bad it was.
“She’s sweet,” he says, returning to the brushing. His cheeks flush pink. Direct conversation isn’t exactly common around here. Not with four of us, and none of us are famous for restraint.
“She bit Cass last Tuesday.”
“Maybe Cass deserved it.”
I laugh and step further in, grabbing a halter from the wall even though there’s no reason to, just to have an excuse to stand closer. He’s in my clothes again, though a different flannel this afternoon that falls almost to his mid-thigh, sleeves rolled past his elbows.
I get that I’m the smallest of my brothers and Ash doesn’t exactly have anything to wear but that doesn’t make it any less prettier of a sight to see it.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Sure.”
“When’s the last time you asked for something you wanted? Out loud? Like you said, ‘I want this,’ and then got it?”
He pauses, brush hovering over Mabel’s flank. “What do you mean?”
I repeat myself, pretty sure of the answer.
Marcus is a fucking awful person even at the best of times.
Sometimes I wonder how we had the same mother and have more than once sent our DNA for tests and asked Dad a billion questions just to double check.
"I mean truly asked for something. With words. Said I want this and then got it."
He thinks about it long enough that the answer writes itself. The brush starts moving again, Ash still not looking at me. "I don't really do that."
"I know you don't. That's why I'm asking.
" I lean against the stall door, giving him room, because crowding Ash makes him go quiet and quiet is not what I'm after.
"My dad's approach is to take care of you.
Read you, stay three pages ahead, give you what you need before you know you need it.
That's his thing. That's not how I work. "
"How do you work?"
"I make you ask."
He looks at me then. Those dark eyes, full of uncertainty meeting mine, the brush forgotten against the horse's side. "Ask for what?"
"Whatever you want. Out loud. Full sentences.
No hints, no lying there hoping someone figures it out.
" I hold his gaze because I need him to hear this as something real and not a game, even though it is fun, even though the sight of him turning red makes me want to press him against this stall door and catalog every sound he makes.
"You want something from me, you say it. That's the rule."
"That's a rule?"
"That's my rule. You'll find we've all got different ones. Ledger has his own thing going on. Cass has approximately zero rules, which is its own kind of situation. But with me, you use your words. Always."
He swallows and I watch the movement travel down his throat. I want to put my mouth right there but I don't, because this is the part that matters. This is where Ash learns that wanting something out loud won't get him punished.
"What if I don't know what I want?" he says.
"Then we figure it out. But you start by trying."
His knuckles whiten around the brush handle, his chest moving faster than it should be. He's looking at me with something that's equal parts scared and starving and I hold steady and let him get there on his own.
"What if what I want is embarrassing?"
"Then I get to watch you be embarrassed while you say it, which is honestly a bonus for me."
The corner of his mouth twitches. He looks down at the brush, takes a breath, and I can see him reaching for it, testing the words in his mouth before he lets them out. "I want," he starts, and his voice thickens and drops and stumbles over itself. "I want to suck your dick."
The barn goes dead quiet as Ash continues staring at the ground like he's trying to bore a hole through it. Those six words, delivered in that barely audible, wrecked little voice, are the hottest thing I've ever heard in my life, and not because of what he said. Because of what it cost him.
"Yeah?" I keep my voice easy. "That's what you want?"
"Yes."
"Look at me and say it again."
His head comes up. His face is on fire and his eyes are glassy and defiant and terrified as he says, "I want to suck your dick, Teague," and I'm across the barn in two strides with my mouth on his because he earned that.
He gasps and I swallow it, cupping the back of his head so I can kiss him properly. He tastes like coffee and something sweet that might just be him, and when I pull back his lips are parted, his pupils nearly eating into his irises.
"Then get on your knees," I murmur against his lips, "and take what you want."
He sinks down in the hay as his hands come up to my belt, trembling, fumbling with the buckle.
I let him work at it because the effort matters, the choice to be here and do the work of getting what he asked for matters, and watching his shaking fingers finally get my jeans open and push them down is doing things to me that I can feel in the back of my throat.
I'm already hard and have been since he said the word dick in that ruined voice, and when his hand wraps around me, I nearly come right there.
He starts slow, his tongue tracing the length of me, testing, relearning something he was taught all wrong, and then his mouth closes over the head and the warm wet pull of him makes my exhale come out ragged.
"Just like that," I tell him, because he needs to hear it, that his mouth is doing something good instead of something he'll be punished for. "That's perfect, Sunshine. Take your time."
He takes me deeper and his cheeks hollow. My hand goes to his hair before I think about it, fingers threading through the dark strands, gathering a handful on instinct.
He goes rigid. Every muscle in his body locks at once and his mouth stops as his hands fly to my wrists and his fingers dig into my skin. He pulls off me, his voice coming out small and cracked and wrong in a way that makes my stomach drop to the floor.
"Don't," he says. "Don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me."
My hand opens instantly. I let go of his hair and take a half step back realizing just a fraction more of what my brother did to him.
The anger that moves through me is so hot and so focused that I have to close my eyes for a second and put it somewhere that isn't my face, because Ash doesn't need my rage right now. He needs my calm.
I crouch down to his eye level and keep my hands open and visible, waiting until his breathing slows. "I'm not going to hurt you," I tell him. "Nobody in this house is going to hurt you. That's not what this is."
"I know, I know that, I just—" His eyes are wet, Ash obviously angry at himself. "I'm sorry. I ruined it."
"You didn't ruin a single thing. You told me something I needed to know, and now I know it, and we adjust."
"It's just that he used to—" He chokes on the word, trying to continue and failing. My heart is breaking just watching him.
"You don't have to tell me."
"He'd hold my head and—"
"Ash." I wait until he looks at me. "You don't have to tell me.
I get it. Here's what's going to happen.
I'm going to sit right here against this stall door.
My hands are going to stay at my sides. And you're going to do whatever you want, at whatever speed you want.
If you want to stop, we stop. If you want to keep going, you keep going.
Your hands. Your mouth. Your pace. I'm just here to enjoy it. "
I sit back against the stall door and rest my hands on the hay beside my hips, palms down.
He watches me settle and I can see him working through it, the old fear against the new information.
I let him take his time because that's the whole point of my rule.
If he comes back to me, it's because he chose to.
He moves between my legs and this time he's different. He’s still careful but less afraid, his hands moving to rest on my thighs, his mouth finding me with a confidence that builds as he goes. He adjusts his angle and I groan as he does it again, harder, learning me by sound.
"Right there," I tell him, my head tipping back against the wood. "God, Ash, that's so good. You feel incredible."
He hums around me and the vibration shoots straight through my chest. I curse under my breath as his eyes flick up to my face and what I see there nearly finishes me on the spot, this bright, startled pride, the face of someone discovering that this can be something he's good at instead of something he endures.
"You can touch my hair," he says quietly, pulling back just far enough to speak. "Just don't push."
"I won't push."
"Promise?"
"I promise, Sunshine."
My hand goes back to his hair and I keep it light, fingers loose in the strands.
He leans into the contact and makes a sound against me that's closer to a purr than anything human.
Then his mouth is on me again and whatever hesitation was left is gone.
He's messy and enthusiastic and not technically skilled but I don't care because the desperate delight he's taking in this, the sheer joy of it, is undoing me faster than precision ever could.
"Ash, I'm close," I warn him.
He pulls back and looks up at me with wet lips and I take myself in hand and finish on him, across his cheek and jaw and the collar of his flannel shirt.
The sight of him kneeling in the hay marked with me and glowing with it, flushed and stunned and radiant, is going into the ground with me someday.
I pull him forward by the shirt and kiss him, tasting myself on his tongue, Ash letting out a shocked, pleased sound against my mouth. I kiss him until he's breathless and then wipe my thumb across his cheekbone where I caught him, Ash watching me lick it clean as his entire face goes scarlet.
When he agreed to my father’s offer this morning, I don’t think Ash had any fucking clue what he was getting into. Not that he didn’t want it, just that he has no idea how eager we are to please and watching Ash blush is going to be my new favorite thing.
Right next to the sounds he was making for my father last night.
"I need to shower," he says, scrambling to his feet, tripping over the hay, refusing to look at me.
"You do. You look thoroughly debauched."
"Stop."
"You look like a man who got exactly what he asked for."
"I'm going. I'm showering. This didn't happen."
"It absolutely happened, sunshine. I have hay in places hay has no business being." That’s not entirely true but now I’m wondering if Ash would ever let me fuck him in here. On a blanket of course.
He's halfway to the barn door already, pulling the flannel up over his face, an embarrassed laugh trailing after him. It’s the third best sound I've heard from him.
God, Ash is going to wreck every single one of us. He's going to walk through this house for two weeks with those shaking hands and that red face and that laugh and leave us all gutted when he goes, and he has no idea. He thinks he's the lucky one.
Mabel snorts and turns away. I pull my jeans up and brush off the hay before pushing to my feet. The barn smells like horses and sweat and the start of something none of us are ready for. But that's how this family operates. We find something that belongs to us and we hold on.
Ash Dunne belongs to us. He just doesn't know it yet.