Chapter 17 Ash
Ash
The hallway stretches before me, impossibly long.
Each step sends the plug shifting inside me, sparking electricity up my spine and making my legs wobble beneath me.
I walk with the careful deliberation of a man crossing ice, my body still bearing the evidence of what Boone and Teague did to me in the office.
If I move too quickly, I'll moan loud enough to bring the entire house running.
From the living room comes the low murmur of the television mingling with voices.
Cass and Ledger talking—unusual for Ledger to participate in conversation at all.
At the end of the hall, I pause and inhale deeply.
My shirt collar bears Boone's dried cum.
Inside me, I feel Teague still, held there by the plug.
Heat radiates from my flushed face, and my hair falls in disarray around my temples.
Anyone looking at me would see exactly what I am: a man freshly fucked and sent on an errand.
When I round the corner into the living room, they both look up at once.
A squeak escapes my throat as I take in the scene—Cass sprawled across the couch, shirtless, golden skin catching the lamplight, while Ledger watches from the armchair opposite.
Their expressions tell me everything. They heard what happened down the hall.
They've been waiting. Cass's gaze travels slowly down my body, lingering on the stain at my collar, noting the flush spreading across my skin, observing how I stand with my weight shifted to one side because sitting would be unbearable right now.
"Goodnight," I say, too fast, too bright, already backing toward the hallway.
"Wait." Cass sits up and the couch creaks under the shift of his weight. "Do you know what that means?"
"I, you'll kiss me goodnight?"
Cass grins. It's a wide, slow grin that starts in his eyes and takes its time reaching his mouth, the grin of a man who's been waiting all day and just got told the wait is over.
"No, Ash. What happens is we bend you over something and fuck you and then send you off to bed.
That's how goodnight works around here." His eyes drop to my collar again.
"Looks like you already got a head start. "
"Teague explained the game and I thought, I mean I figured it was more of a—"
"Come here."
I move toward him, my legs obeying Cass's command before my mind can process it.
His voice wraps around me like velvet rope, low and certain.
When his fingers curl into my shirt, the fabric tightens across my chest. He pulls.
I stumble forward into the solid wall of his body.
His hands find my hips, fingers digging into flesh, and the world tilts violently.
The room spins in a blur of color and shadow until my face presses into the couch cushions.
My feet dangle above the floor, useless.
Behind me, Cass tugs my jeans down with one rough motion, exposing me to the cool air of the room.
"Damn," Cass says behind me, and I can hear the grin in his voice. "Teague works fast." His hand finds the base of the plug and he presses it deeper and I make a sound into the couch cushion that I'll be embarrassed about tomorrow. "How long have you been walking around with this?"
"A few minutes." My voice is muffled by the cushion.
My legs are dangling, feet nowhere near the floor, helpless and exposed.
I love it. I love that he didn't ask, didn't negotiate, just grabbed me and put me where he wanted me.
My body is sore from the day, sore in places I didn't know could be sore.
My muscles ache. I'm tired down to my bones.
None of that matters because Cass's hands are on me, the plug shifting, my cock hardening against the armrest.
Cass pumps the plug in and out, slow, twisting it, and I grip the cushions and press my face into the couch and the sounds coming out of me are obscene.
He does it again, harder. I feel the widest part stretch me open, then slide back in.
The sensation is so intense after everything today that I whimper.
"You sore?" Cass asks, and there's something underneath the roughness, a check-in disguised as casual conversation.
"Yes."
"Want me to stop?"
"If you stop I will kill you."
He pulls the plug out and I gasp at the emptiness and then he's pushing into me, thick and hot, and my forehead drops against the cushion and the sound I make is hard and loud and fills the whole room.
He's big, bigger than Teague. I'm sore and tender, the stretch burns, and I wince for just a second. Cass pauses.
"Keep going," I tell him, and he does, pressing in until I feel the full overwhelming size of him.
My hands are shaking on the cushions, my feet dangling off the floor.
He's holding me up by my hips and I couldn't move if I wanted to.
I'm draped over the arm of a couch, held in place by a man who could bench press me without warming up.
I am so tired, so sore, so completely and deliriously happy about this that I could cry.
He starts moving and I stop thinking. His pace is hard and fast because Cass doesn't have another setting.
Every thrust pushes me forward against the armrest, the friction on my cock making me gasp.
I'm loud, I can't help it, the sounds pouring out of me echo off the living room walls and I'm past caring.
A hand cards through my hair. Gentle, careful, so different from the force of what's happening behind me that the contrast makes me shudder. Ledger. He's moved from the armchair to stand beside the couch, his fingers in my hair, combing it back from my sweaty face.
"Where do you want me, Ash?" Ledger asks, and his voice is low and calm and completely steady despite the fact that I'm being pounded into a couch three feet away from him. "Or do you want to spend the full goodnight with both of us?"
"All of it," I manage between thrusts. "I want all of it. Both of you."
Cass's hand squeezes my hip and he pulls me back against his chest, lifting me off the couch like I'm made of paper.
He steps back and drops to the floor with me in his arms, his back against the hardwood, and the transition is so seamless I barely register it happening.
One second I'm over the couch and the next I'm straddling Cass on the living room floor, his hands on my hips repositioning me, and he pulls out just long enough to turn me so I'm facing him and then sinks back in and I cry out and grab his shoulders.
"Ride me," Cass says, grinning up at me, his hands guiding my hips into a rhythm. "Show me what you've got, Ash."
I ride him. My thighs are burning and my body is exhausted and I can feel every inch of the day in my muscles but his cock is hitting the spot that makes me forget all of it and his hands are steadying me and I'm rolling my hips and watching his face change and the power of that, of making this enormous man groan and grip my hips harder, is intoxicating.
Ledger kneels behind me. His chest presses against my back and his hands settle on my shoulders and his mouth is close to my ear.
"I'm not going to fit both of us inside you," he says, calm and factual. "Not tonight. But I'm going to make you feel what it would be like if I could." His hand runs down my spine, slow and grounding. "You tell me when to stop."
"Teague gave me colors," I breathe, my hips still moving on Cass.
"And what color are we right now?"
"Green. So green."
Ledger's cock slides between my cheeks, slick with lube, and the first stroke catches the rim of my hole where Cass is stretching me open.
The sensation, the pressure and the fullness and the tease of something more, makes every nerve in my body fire at once.
I drop my head back against Ledger's shoulder and the sound I make is something between a moan and a scream.
"Color," Ledger says against my ear.
"Green, green, don't stop—"
Cass pumps up into me from below and Ledger thrusts between my cheeks from behind.
Cass filling me, Ledger's tip catching on my hole with every stroke.
My body trembles, my vision blurring. I can feel the edge of the drop hovering at the edge, that warm dark invitation to let go and fall.
But I don't want to fall. Not tonight. Tonight, I want to be here for all of it, so I dig my fingers into Cass' shoulders, focus on the feeling of his skin under my hands, Ledger's chest against my back.
"I'm close," I gasp. "I'm close, I can't—"
"Then let go," Cass says from below me, his voice strained and rough. "Come on, Ash. Give it to us."
I come so hard my vision whites out, pulsing onto Cass's stomach. Ledger follows a second later, hot across my lower back. Cass thrusts up into me one more time, groans, and finishes inside me. He's adding to what Teague already left. The fullness is obscene, perfect, too much and not enough.
Cass grins up at me from the floor, sweaty and satisfied, and drags his hand through the mess on his stomach, before smearing it across my chest in a slow, deliberate streak.
"That's disgusting," I say.
"I think I like you filthy." He does it again, painting another line across my ribs.
His grin is so wide, so pleased with itself, that I almost laugh except I don't have the energy for laughing.
I don't have the energy for anything. My body has hit the wall.
Not the subspace wall, just the physical one, the point where muscle and bone and nervous system collectively file a petition to stop and the petition is unanimous.
Cass lifts me off him and I make a sound at the loss that's barely human.
He stands up with me in his arms, because of course he does, and carries me down the hall to the guest bathroom.
My head is on his shoulder, my arms around his neck.
I'm covered in the cum of four different men plus my own.
I should be horrified except I'm too tired, too happy, too thoroughly used to feel anything except the warm, buzzing contentment that's settled over me.
Ledger is already in the bathroom when Cass sets me on my feet, the shower running, steam starting to fill the small room.
Cass transfers me to Ledger's hands with a "goodnight, Ash" that's quieter than anything I've heard from him before, almost tender.
Then he's gone and it's just me and Ledger and the hot water.
Ledger guides me under the spray and I lean against the tile and let him wash me.
His hands move gently across my skin, cleaning the mess from my chest, my stomach, my thighs, between my legs where I'm tender and swollen.
My legs are shaking. My eyes keep drifting shut.
I'm barely standing but there's a goofy, stupid smile on my face that won't go away.
"You okay?" Ledger asks, and his hand pauses on my hip.
"I feel like I'm drunk," I say, my words coming out slow and slightly slurred, the syllables bumping into each other. "But the good kind. Like everything is warm, floaty, really far away but also really close at the same time. Does that make sense?"
Ledger makes a sound. It's quiet, barely there, an exhale through his nose that's just slightly too sharp to be a regular breath.
If I were more alert I might miss it but I'm not alert at all and the sound lands on me with the weight of something rare and precious.
Ledger is laughing. Or the Ledger equivalent of laughing, which is this tiny, almost invisible thing that I caught by accident and that I'm going to hold onto like a jewel.
"It makes sense," he says.
"Everything is so nice," I tell him, because my filter has completely dissolved along with my ability to stand without the wall's assistance.
"Everyone is so nice. You're nice. You're really nice, Ledger.
You don't talk much but you're nice. You carried me that one time. You washed me. You made me eggs."
"Let's get you to bed before you pass out on me."
He turns off the water and wraps me in a towel and dries me off with the brisk, competent motions of a man completing a task.
He pulls one of his own shirts over my head, which is new, I've been wearing Teague's clothes and Boone's clothes but not Ledger's, and the shirt is big on me in a different way, longer in the torso, and it smells like him, clean and woody and quiet.
He walks me to the guest bed and pulls back the covers and I crawl in. My body sinks into the mattress and every muscle unclenches at once. I'm clean, warm, wearing Ledger's shirt. The sheets are cool against my legs. The room is dark and quiet, the house settling around me.
Ledger sets the plug on the nightstand. Just places it there, cleaned, next to the lamp, where I can see it. He doesn't say anything about it. Doesn't explain. Just sets it down and straightens up.
"Goodnight, Ash," he says.
"Goodnight, Ledger." I'm already sinking into the pillow, my eyes closing. "Thank you for washing me. And for the eggs. And for the shirt. And for not pushing into me when Cass was inside me even though I could tell you wanted to."
He's quiet for a second but the hint of a smile on his lips and the desire burning in his eyes tells me everything I need to know. "Goodnight, Ash."
He pulls the door halfway shut and his footsteps move down the hallway, quiet as always.
I lie in the dark in Ledger's shirt, the plug on the nightstand, the warmth of four men still on my skin.
I smile at the ceiling like an idiot because I am so far past any version of my life I ever imagined that I can't see the old one from here anymore. I don't want to.
The old one had Marcus in it and cold food in parked cars and a ceiling I stared at after sex while the man beside me scrolled his phone.
This one has a plug on a nightstand, a goofy smile I can't get rid of, a shirt that smells like a man who laughed at something I said. I know which one I'm choosing.