Chapter 20
Ash
Lunch is a turkey sandwich cut diagonally, the way I mentioned liking once at a dinner almost a year ago. A glass of water and an apple sit beside it. Nobody at the table claims to have made it, which means Ledger did it.
I'm sitting at the kitchen table completely naked while three clothed men eat like this is any other Tuesday.
Cass is across from me scrolling his phone between bites.
Teague is leaning against the counter with leftover chili, talking about fence posts along the south pasture like he isn't five feet from a bare man whose face hasn't dropped below the shade of a tomato since this morning.
Ledger is at the end of the table with coffee, not eating, because Ledger operates on a fuel source the rest of us don't have access to.
Every time I shift in the chair the plug moves inside me, which means I've been taking very small, very careful bites and trying not to shift at all.
My skin prickles with awareness of how much of it is exposed, the cool wood of the chair beneath my thighs, the air from the open window moving across my chest. A crumb falls from the sandwich onto my bare stomach.
I brush it away too fast. Teague catches the movement, grins, but doesn't say anything, which is almost worse than if he had.
"Eat," Cass says without looking up from his phone. "You're going to need it."
"That's not comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be."
The screen door bangs open as Boone appears in the kitchen doorway still wearing his work jacket, smelling like hay and cold air. His eyes sweep the table, land on me, and stay. The slow grin that spreads across his face makes my stomach flip so hard I nearly drop the sandwich.
"Well," he says.
"Don't."
"Come here, Dove."
"I'm eating."
"Bring the sandwich."
I look at Teague for help. Teague takes a bite of chili and shrugs.
I push my chair back, the plug shifting as I stand, and cross the kitchen on bare feet with a half-eaten turkey sandwich in my hand, feeling every pair of eyes in the room on my skin.
Boone pulls out a chair and sits and pats his thigh.
I straddle it because that's apparently who I am now, a man who straddles his ex-boyfriend's father's thigh in a kitchen full of people while holding a sandwich.
"Tell me the rules today," Boone says, his hand settling on my bare hip as I stare at the rest of the men in this kitchen.
"No clothes. Plug stays in. Anyone can have me whenever they want." My voice comes out steadier than I expected, though the blush has spread from my face down to my chest and there's nothing to hide behind.
"And your colors?"
"Green. Very green."
"Good." His hand slides from my hip to the inside of my thigh, his thumb tracing the crease where my leg meets my body. I inhale sharply as my grip tightens on the sandwich. "Now eat your lunch."
"Boone, I can't eat while you're touching me like that."
"Sure you can." His fingers wrap around my cock, already half-hard from just sitting on his thigh, as he strokes once from base to tip with the same unhurried confidence he brings to everything.
My hips jerk forward and a sound punches out of me that makes Cass look up from his phone. "Take a bite, Ash."
I take a bite. My jaw works mechanically while Boone's hand moves in slow, purposeful strokes, his thumb catching under the head on every upswing.
The bread tastes like nothing because every nerve ending in my body has migrated south, all of the others watching me try to chew a sandwich while Boone takes me apart with one hand.
"Good boy," Boone murmurs against my shoulder. "Another bite."
I take another bite. His grip tightens, his pace quickens. I'm chewing, trying to swallow, while making sounds around the food that are completely obscene. "Boone, I'm going to, I can't hold it—"
"Swallow what's in your mouth first."
I swallow the bite so fast I nearly choke.
His wrist twists on the next stroke, his thumb pressing hard against the underside.
I come on his hand with a broken sound that fills the kitchen, my free hand gripping his arm while the sandwich dangles uselessly in my other fist. He strokes me through it, milking every last tremor while I shake on his thigh and try to remember how breathing works.
He raises his hand, my cum streaked across his fingers.
He brings them to my mouth and I open without being told, tasting myself on his skin, my tongue moving between his palm while his eyes darken.
I clean each finger thoroughly, Boone watching over my shoulder the whole time with an expression that tells me this is going to cost me later.
"Finish your sandwich, Dove."
It takes me three more bites and I barely taste any of them.
When I'm done I slide off his thigh and carry my dishes to the sink with the kind of speed usually reserved for men fleeing burning buildings.
Because I've learned something today. Lingering near a flat surface in this house is an invitation, and if I stand at this sink for more than thirty seconds someone is going to bend me over it again.
"Going somewhere?" Teague calls from the counter.
"Outside. I need air."
"Naked?"
I stop in the doorway. The property stretches out beyond the porch, the barn, the pastures, the far treeline I've walked a dozen times over two years of visits.
The idea of being out there with nothing on should terrify me.
It doesn't. Something about this week has stripped away the part of me that flinches at exposure.
Maybe it burned off somewhere between the first few nights with Boone, or the kitchen sink this morning, Boone's hand, or the plug that's been inside me for hours, a low constant pressure that's become almost comforting.
"Nobody's on the property today," Teague says, reading my hesitation correctly.
"Dawson's delivery isn't until Thursday.
The hands are off for the week. It's just us.
" He sets his bowl in the sink and leans against the counter with his arms crossed.
"And if someone did show up, they'd regret seeing you naked, because not one man in this house is going to let anyone else within fifty feet of you looking the way you look right now. "
"I'm not as shy as you all think I am."
Teague's eyebrows rise. Cass makes a sound from the table.
"Can I at least have shoes?" I ask.
Teague digs a pair of worn boots from the mudroom and sets them on the mat.
They're his, a size and a half too big, and I shove my bare feet into them without socks.
The look of me, naked in nothing but oversized boots with a plug between my thighs, should be ridiculous.
I catch my reflection in the window glass as I push through the screen door.
I look feral, flushed, marked, and grinning like a man who's lost his mind or found something better.
I head past the barn toward the east pasture, the boots crunching on gravel, the breeze moving across every inch of skin I own. Excitement blooms through me as I find Mabel by the fence.
She lifts her head when she sees me and I'd swear on my life she gives me a once-over, her dark eyes moving from my face to my bare chest to the boots that aren't mine. I reach the rail and lean my forearms on it. She walks over and presses her nose into my shoulder.
"I know," I tell her. "It's been a weird week."
She huffs warm air against my collarbone. I scratch behind her ear, the spot she likes as her head drops low.
"I'm naked in a field talking to a horse. That's where we're at." I scratch a little harder and she leans into it. "But I'm happy, Mabel. Like genuinely happy. Not the kind where I'm telling myself I should be. The kind where I actually am."
She doesn't answer because she's a horse, but her ear flicks toward me and her weight shifts closer. I stand there for a while with the sun on my back, scratching a horse who bit Cass days ago but lets me put my face against hers.
Eventually I wander back toward the barn.
The storage stall at the far end has always been my favorite corner of this property, tucked behind the tack room, half-hidden by stacked hay bales with a dusty workbench along one wall.
I used to sit in here during visits when the noise of the house got too loud inside my head, when Marcus was on his phone and I needed somewhere to exist without being watched.
I duck behind the hay bales and sit on the floor with my back against the wall, the cool concrete beneath me, dust motes spinning in the light that cuts through the gap in the boards. This time I'm not hiding because I'm scared. I'm hiding because I want to be found.
My phone buzzes on the floor beside me. I'd grabbed it from the guest room on my way out, a habit I can't break even on a day like this. Teague's name fills the screen.
You okay out there, Sunshine?
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. A week ago I would have typed I'm fine and meant please don't worry about me, I'm not worth the effort. Today the message that forms in my head is different, brighter, edged with something I recognize as want.
Come find me.
The three dots appear and disappear twice. Then: Where are you?
Figure it out.
I set the phone down and pull my knees up and wait. My heart is beating fast but it's the good kind, the electric kind, anticipation instead of dread. The plug shifts as I adjust my position and I press my lips together against the sound it pulls from me.
Time passes as a brief chill rushes over my bare skin, anticipating building in my chest. I’m brought back to the present when I hear footsteps.
I hear them check the first stall, the second, Teague's voice low and amused saying "he's in here somewhere.
" The tack room door creaks. Silence, then more footsteps. They round the hay bales.