Chapter 15 Boone
Boone
I'm on the porch the next morning just after six am with coffee I don't taste and a mood I'm not hiding. The boys know the difference between my quiet and my quiet, and the one I'm wearing today is the kind that makes them check their footing before they speak.
I've been up since four, since Teague texted me that Ash dropped with Cass and it was a hard one.
I drove back from the north pasture in the dark with my hands tight on the wheel and a fury in my chest that's pointed in too many directions.
At Cass for not waiting longer. At myself for not being here.
At the whole situation for playing out exactly the way it was always going to play out when I put a man who doesn't know his own limits in a house with my youngest son, who has never once in his life understood the concept of enough.
Ash is still asleep. I checked on him when I got back, watching him breathe in the dark, curled on his side with the blankets to his chin. Teague was in the living room and gave me the full account, while Cass was passed out in his own room, strung out from panicking.
God, we’re a mess.
The screen door creaks and Teague comes out with his coffee, reads my face, and sits on the far end of the porch.
Ledger follows with nothing in his hands and leans against the post and crosses his arms. Thirty seconds later, Teague disappears into the house and reappears with Cass, who looks like he hasn't slept.
He sits on the top step and puts his elbows on his knees while trying really damn hard not to look at me.
"Cassian."
He hesitates before peering up at me, looking every bit like the troublemaker he’s always been. I’m not mad at him, though. Hardly. But we’ve never dealt with someone as expressive as Ash and the way I see it going, it’s going to be difficult letting him go at the end of this two-week deal.
"What happened yesterday wasn't wrong," I tell him, watching the relief start forming on his face before I finish the sentence. "But it was close."
The relief stops.
"We had a conversation yesterday morning about what his body does and how to handle it.
You heard every word. And you still weren't ready when it happened, which tells me that knowing isn't the same as being prepared, and being prepared is your responsibility every single time you put your hands on him.
" I take a sip of my coffee before setting it aside. "Tell me what you did right."
Cass blinks, obviously not expecting the question. "I held him. I talked to him. I called for Teague when I couldn't bring him back on my own."
"That's right. You asked for help. That was the right call, and I want you to hear me say that.
" I hold his eyes because I need the next part to land as hard as the first. "But you went in fast and hard with a man who dropped twice in the previous three days, and you did it while I was an hour away.
While there was no one in the house but you and Ash.
That's the part I need you to sit with."
As much as I love all of my boys, they have their flaws.
Marcus... I’ve all but disowned. Cass, though, is just reckless.
In all things. The one who always ended up in the hospital with a broken something, the one who could tame any of the animals on the farm, and the one who always found a way to break one of the kitchen cabinets.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes, sir." He says it to the ground, his hands gripping each other between his knees. "I know."
"Being careful with him doesn't mean being gentle. It means being present. Watching his eyes, reading his body, knowing the signs. You can be as rough as he asks for as long as you're paying attention while you do it. We clear?"
"Clear."
"Good." I look at all three of them, silently delivering that same message to Teague and Ledger. "This isn't going to be the last time he drops. I said it yesterday and I'll say it as many times as I need to. Everything else is secondary to that."
The porch is quiet for a moment, the morning settling around us. I'm about to dismiss them when the screen door creaks behind us.
Ash is standing in the doorway in my t-shirt and Teague’s shorts, just a bit too large on him.
We’ll have to get him his own clothes at some point, but I’m rather loving him walking around in ours.
His hair is a disaster and his eyes are heavy-lidded, still carrying that glazed, underwater quality that tells me he's not fully back from yesterday.
He's got a pillow crease down his left cheek, blinking in the morning light and he looks completely, devastatingly unguarded.
"Morning," he says, his voice rough. His gaze finds mine, my sons fading into the background, the way they do when Ash's compass finds its north.
"Morning, Dove. How are you feeling?"
"Floaty. A little sore." He pads across the porch, stepping past Cass without seeming to register the conversation he's interrupting. He stops in front of me and tilts his head up. His chin is raised, eyes half-closed, lips parted ever so softly, just waiting. When I don’t move, he steps back half an inch, his face reddening a little.
"I just... I just want a good morning kiss," he mumbles. "Marcus never used to give them to me. I’m allowed to ask for that, right? You said I could... I..." He trails off, self-conscious.
The porch goes still. I feel it in all three of my sons, the shift in their breathing, the way their bodies tense at the name and at the casualness of the delivery.
Ash doesn't know what he just said. He's still half-asleep but he just told a porch full of people that his boyfriend of two years couldn't manage a kiss in the morning, and he said it like it was the weather.
Just a fact about the world he used to live in.
I draw him back into my chest before cupping his face with both hands and kiss him. Slow and thorough, the kind that says good morning and I'm here and you will never have to ask for this again. He sighs against my mouth as his hands come up to my wrists and he leans into me with his full weight.
When I pull back his eyes are wet but he's smiling, this small, sleepy, grateful thing.
"You feeling needy this morning, Dove?"
"I just wanted the kiss."
"You can have as many as you want. Every morning. That's not something you ask for, Ash. That's something you get."
His chin trembles as he presses his face into my chest and I hold him there with my hand in his hair.
Over his head, I look at my sons, each of them holding the same rage I’m feeling against Marcus.
I didn’t think I could be more pissed off at that man, but every time Ash explains something, I find out I can be angrier.
"The boys are going to give us a few minutes," I murmur against his lips, my sons clearing the porch without needing to be told twice.
They spread out on the grass below the porch, not far, close enough that the morning still feels shared.
Teague shoves Cass; Cass shoves back and within seconds they're wrestling with the graceless enthusiasm of boys half their age.
Ledger watches them from a few feet away, arms crossed, wearing an expression that suggests he's calculating the exact probability of someone pulling a muscle.
I turn Ash around so his back is against my chest and he settles into me with the boneless ease of a man who has stopped questioning where he belongs. We watch the boys, the roughhousing and the laughter, Ash's hand finding mine across his stomach.
"They're ridiculous," he whispers.
"They've been ridiculous since birth." I press my mouth close to his ear. "They're yours, you know. All three of them. For the next week and change, they belong to you and you belong to them and whatever you want from them, you get."
"Whatever I want?" His voice goes up an octave, the excitement in his voice painfully clear.
"Whatever you want." My hand slides down his stomach, slowly over the soft cotton of the sleep shorts, his breathing changing beneath my palm.
"We're going to show you things about your body that nobody's ever shown you.
We're going to push you to the edge of what you think you can handle and then hold you there until you realize you can handle more. "
His hips shift back against me. "Boone."
"And through all of it, you have your word, and you have us.
" My hand reaches the waistband and keeps going, down over the cotton, cupping him through it, and he gasps as his head falls back against my shoulder.
His hand tightens on mine across his stomach, Ash already getting hard, the post-drop softness making him responsive to the slightest touch.
"Boone, the... they’re right there."
"I know exactly where my boys are."
I press my palm against him through the fabric and stroke slowly, Ash letting out a sound that's closer to a whimper than anything else, his hips pushing forward into my hand.
My mouth finds the side of his neck and I kiss along the tendon before biting down and sucking there, working a mark into the skin above where any collar would cover it.
"Oh god," he breathes, his hand moving to my forearm, pulling me closer. "Boone, if you keep doing that, I'm going to—"
"That's the point, Dove."
I keep my hand moving and my mouth on his neck, building the bruise.
His breathing starts coming in short hitching gasps, his back arching against my chest as his hips rock into my palm in desperate little thrusts.
The roughhousing has gone quiet and I know without looking that my sons have turned around, that they can hear him, and that they're watching from the yard.
"Boone, I'm close, I'm so close—"
"Then come. Let them hear you."
He comes with a cry that carries across the yard, his body rigid against mine, his hand crushing my forearm. I feel the wet heat spread through the cotton and stroke him through it, his whole body shuddering against mine.
"So good for us, Dove," I murmur against his neck, against the fresh bruise. "So good."
I give him about ten seconds before my hand starts moving again, pressing against him through the wet fabric, and he jerks in my arms.
"Boone, I can't, it's too much—"
"Give me another one."
"I can't—"
"You can. I know you can." I stroke him through the oversensitivity, drawing out another pretty whine from him. "One more for me, Ash. One more and I'll stop."
"Oh god, oh god, Boone, please—"
I work him past the point where his body is fighting it, into the place where the pain tips over into pleasure again. His whines turn to moans as his hips start chasing my hand a second time, his pleas turning incoherent until it’s just breaths and my name and broken words.
Movement at the edge of the porch steals my attention, Ledger coming up to the railing inches from Ash. He leans over the railing and takes Ash's chin in his hand and tilts his face up before kissing him, swallowing the sounds Ash is making while my hand keeps working between his legs.
Ash comes apart for the second time with Ledger's mouth on his, the sound that pours out of him something I will hear in my sleep for the rest of my life.
His whole body convulses, his second release pulsing through the fabric as his legs give out entirely and the only things keeping him upright are my arms around his chest and Ledger's hand on his jaw.
Ledger pulls back and looks at Ash, something on my eldest son's face I've rarely seen, something cracked open and raw.
He lets go and walks back out to the field without another word.
I turn my attention back to the beautiful man in my arms, Ash all but liquid as he melts against me, cum soaking through his shorts.
I just hold him there, pressing my mouth to his temple.
"You're so good," I tell him. "You're so good for us, Dove."
He turns his face into my neck and smiles against my skin, exhausted and wrecked. None of us are going to be the same after this, and the man in my arms is the reason, and he still has no idea.