Chapter 18 Boone
Boone
The house sleeps around me while I lie awake, pretending to read.
Pages remain unturned as I listen to the settling wood and distant hum of the refrigerator.
Then another sound interrupts, something from across the hall in the guest room.
A creak of bedsprings. A frustrated exhale.
A soft whimper bitten back between teeth.
"Ow," comes the whisper through the wall, the single syllable carrying both annoyance and surrender.
My mind conjures the image without effort, Ash sprawled across rumpled sheets, his body still tender from earlier, stubbornly attempting to work the plug back inside himself.
His fingers would be slick with lube, his face flushed with concentration as he tries to prepare his body for morning.
One week with us and already he craves fullness this desperately.
The earnestness of his desire pulls at something deep in my chest.
I reach for my phone in the darkness and send a single message: Come here.
Silence stretches for thirty heartbeats before hinges whisper across the hall.
Footsteps pad over hardwood. My bedroom door swings wider to reveal Ash standing barefoot in the threshold, wearing only Ledger's oversized shirt.
The cotton drapes past his thighs, revealing lean legs that shift nervously under my gaze.
His shower-damp hair curls against his neck, still wet from when Ledger washed him earlier.
His eyes reflect what little light filters through the curtains, wide and vulnerable.
He hovers in my doorway like a man who has left something essential behind—his composure abandoned in the guest room alongside the plug he couldn't quite manage to insert.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." I pull the covers back on his side. "Get in."
He looks at the bed and then back at the door, calculating whether retreat is still an option, and then crosses the room and crawls in beside me.
He smells like Ledger's soap and clean skin, and underneath that, faintly, like all of us.
I pull the covers over him and he settles against the pillow, his body tense with the particular stiffness of a man who's embarrassed about something and trying to figure out if I know.
"Ash."
"Yeah?"
"Were you trying to put the plug back in over there?"
His face goes scarlet. Even in the low light I can see the color flood from his neck to his hairline. He presses his face into the pillow.
"No," he says into the cotton.
"Ash."
"Okay, yes." He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling with the committed expression of a man who's going to see this confession through no matter what it costs him.
"But I wasn't trying to be weird about it.
I just wanted to be ready. For you, for all of you, in the morning.
I wanted to be ready so nobody had to spend time getting me, you know.
" He grips the blanket with both hands. "And I couldn't get the angle right.
It kept, it wouldn't, doing it to yourself from behind is completely different than when someone else is—"
"Ash."
"The angle was wrong," he finishes miserably.
I laugh. It comes out before I can catch it, warm and surprised, and his face somehow gets redder.
"I'm sorry," I say. "That wasn't funny."
"It was a little funny."
"It was, wasn’t it?" I roll onto my side and prop myself on my elbow and look at him lying there in Ledger's shirt with his face the color of a sunset and his dignity in pieces.
I love this man. The realization is plain and complete and doesn't need any fanfare.
"Here's the thing about sleeping with a plug.
Your body needs to work up to that over time.
The silicone doesn't give the way flesh does.
It holds you at one size all night and by morning you'll be swollen and sore in a way that isn't the good kind. Especially after today."
"I know, I just liked feeling full." His voice has gone quiet and honest. "I liked knowing I had something of you still inside me. And when Ledger took it out and cleaned me up I felt empty. Which sounds insane."
"It doesn't sound insane."
"So I was trying to put it back. Because I wanted to feel ready. Yours."
"You're mine whether there's a plug in you or not."
"I know that logically."
"But your body wants proof."
"Yes." He looks at me. "Are you saying I should sleep with a cock instead? Do you have a, I mean, is there a..." His face is doing something heroic in its attempt to form the word. "Do you have a dildo? I could, if you have one—"
"Ash." I wait until his stammering runs out of fuel. "There are no dildos in this house. I'm going to give you me."
His eyes widen. "What?"
"Roll over."
He rolls onto his side, facing away, and I can hear his breathing change. I pull my boxers off and settle behind him, my chest against his back, and reach over to the nightstand. Not the lube, a different container, a small jar from the back of the drawer.
"This is a salve," I tell him, unscrewing the lid. "Not lube. It's meant to heal, not slick. You've been used hard today, Dove. By me, by Teague, by Cass and Ledger. Your body needs care right now."
I warm the salve between my fingers and reach between his legs.
He hisses when I touch him, tender and swollen, and then melts back against me as it starts to work.
I can feel the tension drain from his muscles as I work it in gently.
He makes a sound that's all gratitude and presses his face into the pillow.
"That feels so good," he mumbles. "What is that?"
"Something I keep for sore muscles. Works better than anything you'd find at a pharmacy."
I work the salve in until he's soft and relaxed against me, his breathing slow, his body pliant. Then I slick myself just enough and line up behind him.
"Color?" I ask.
"Green."
I push into him in one steady, continuous press until I'm fully seated. His back arches against my chest and the sound he makes is something between a gasp and a sob. His hand reaches back and grips my hip, fingers digging in.
"Boone." His voice is tight and strained. "You're hard. I can't sleep with you hard inside me."
"Your body will adjust." I wrap my arm across his chest and hold him against me.
"I'm going to come." He's gripping my hip harder now, his body clenching around me. "Oh my god, how is that possible, I just, you didn't even do anything, you just pushed in and I'm already—"
"Then come, Dove. Nobody's stopping you."
I press one shallow thrust into him, and his whole body locks against mine. I feel him pulsing around me, the grip of him testing every thread of my control, but I don't move. I hold still inside him and tighten my arm across his chest, pressing my mouth to the back of his neck.
"Fuck," he breathes, and his voice is wrecked. "I've never come from just, you didn't even—"
"Shh." I kiss the knob of his spine. "I'm not going to fuck you tonight. Not this time. I just want to be inside you while you sleep."
"I feel so full." His words are already getting heavy, the edges softening. "Of you. Of everyone. I didn't know I could feel like this."
"Now you know."
"But you're hard. Don't you need to—"
"I don't need anything except you against my chest." My hand finds his over his heart and laces our fingers together. "Go to sleep, Ash."
His grip on my hand loosens by degrees, his fingers uncurling as exhaustion takes him. His heartbeat slows against my arm, steadying, finding the rhythm it settles into when he's truly letting go.
"Boone?"
"Yeah, Dove."
"This is the best I've ever felt in my life." His words slur further. "Not the sex. All of it. The bath, Teague, Cass and Ledger, you inside me right now. Nobody's ever, I've never had—"
I push down the rage that wants to take over the moment and choose the contentment that comes with knowing we’ve given Ash more than he’s ever had. "I know."
"I don't want it to end."
I tighten my arm across his chest and press my mouth into his hair, breathing him in. Ledger's soap and the faint warm trace of us layered on his skin meets my nose.
"Go to sleep, Dove."
Between one breath and the next his body goes heavy, his hand going slack in mine and his breathing deepens into real, unguarded sleep.
I listen to the house settle around us, and somewhere far off a coyote calls.
There are eight days left on a deal I made because he needed an end date to say yes, and the man in my arms just told me he doesn't want it to end.
I just hope he feels the same way when he’s fully conscious.