Chapter 22
Boone
The bedroom door opens at half past nine and Ash slips through it like he's sneaking into church late, barefoot, wearing one of Cass’ shirts that hangs past his thighs, his hair still damp from a shower.
He closes the door behind him with both hands, which tells me he's nervous, because Ash only uses both hands on a door when he's trying to control the sound it makes.
Two years of watching this man taught me his tells before I ever got to touch him.
I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed from the waist down, coffee on the nightstand going cold.
I'd been reading but the book's been facedown on the mattress for ten minutes because I heard the shower turn on across the hall and I knew what was coming.
Ash doesn't shower at nine in the morning unless he's preparing for something, and the slight flush crawling up his neck confirms it.
"Morning, Dove."
"Morning." He hovers by the door, his fingers twisting the hem of the shirt. He's working himself up to something and I can see the words building behind his teeth, the way his jaw moves just slightly before he speaks. "I prepped."
Two words and my blood goes hot. Not because of what they mean physically, though that image is doing plenty on its own.
Because of what they cost him. A week ago this man couldn't ask for a kiss without apologizing for wanting one.
Now he's standing in my doorway telling me he got himself ready because he wants me inside him, and the courage that took is written across every inch of his burning face.
"Come here."
He crosses the room and stops between my knees. I don't touch him yet. I look up at him, at the dark eyes that are trying very hard to hold mine, at the lip he's chewing raw.
"Did you eat?"
"Toast. And an apple."
"Did you drink water?"
"A full glass. And half of Teague's orange juice, which he doesn't know about yet."
"How are you feeling?"
"Sore. Good sore. Not the kind where something's wrong, just the kind where my body reminds me it had a very eventful week." His fingers are still twisting the shirt hem. "I want you, Boone. I want to feel you, without rushing, without anyone else. Just you."
It has been a little while since it was just the two of us and I couldn’t be happier for a moment alone with Ash.
I pull the shirt over his head. He lifts his arms and lets me take it, standing bare between my knees in the morning light.
The bruises on his hips have layered into something complicated, purples fading to yellows at the edges, newer marks overlapping older ones.
My handprints. My sons' handprints. A map of everyone who's touched him this week written on his skin.
I reach for the lube on the nightstand and warm it between my fingers.
He watches my hand, his chest rising faster.
I pull him forward by his hip as he straddles my lap, his knees settling on either side of my thighs, his face inches from mine.
I reach between us and press two fingers into him, finding him already open, the muscle yielding easily.
His forehead drops against mine, his breathing going fast and shallow, his hands gripping my shoulders.
"You did this yourself," I say, curling my fingers just enough to make his thighs clench around me.
"In the shower." His voice is already thin. "It took me three tries to get the angle right."
"And you're telling me this because you want praise or because you want me to know you were thinking about me in the shower with your fingers inside yourself?"
"Both." The word comes out strangled as I press deeper. "Definitely both."
I withdraw my fingers, unfasten my jeans, push them down far enough. He hears the sound and his whole body tenses with anticipation, his hands tightening on my shoulders. I slick myself, line up, and settle both hands on his hips.
"Slow," I tell him. "Take your time."
He sinks onto me, his mouth falling open against my cheek, his fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave crescents.
The heat of him is devastating, tight despite the prep, his body gripping me as he takes the full length.
When he's fully seated, his chest flush against mine, a sound falls out of him that's half relief and half surrender.
"There," I murmur against his jaw. "Right there."
I wrap one arm across his lower back, pulling him tight against my chest. My other hand slides up his spine to the back of his neck, fingers threading into the damp hair at his nape. He melts into the hold, his face turning into the curve of my throat, his body going pliant around me.
"Don't move yet," I say. "Just feel it."
"I can't not move, you're so deep—"
"You can. Breathe."
His ribs expand against my chest, his body adjusting, the initial desperation settling into something slower.
I'm buried to the hilt inside him and his heartbeat is pounding against my sternum, fast enough that I can count it.
His hips make one involuntary roll and the friction pulls a groan from both of us.
"Boone, please."
"Move."
He rolls his hips, finding the angle that makes his breath catch, and then he's riding me in slow, deep undulations that pull sounds from his throat on every downstroke.
My hand stays on his neck, holding him against my chest, my mouth pressed to the spot behind his ear where his pulse hammers.
He's beautiful like this, working himself on me with the unhurried greed of a man who's learning that taking what he wants doesn't come with a punishment.
His pace builds, his thighs trembling with the effort, the sounds getting louder.
I thrust up to meet him, matching his rhythm, my grip tightening on his back as the heat between us becomes something with weight.
His hand comes up to curl around the side of my neck, holding on, his face pressed into my throat where his moans vibrate against my skin.
The house phone rings. It cuts through the room like a blade, insistently rattling on the nightstand. Ash freezes mid-roll, his body clenching around me. I glance at the phone, at the number on the display, and something cold settles in my chest alongside the heat.
I shouldn’t but teaching Marcus a lesson while I have this precious man in my arms overrides any other sense.
"Don't stop," I tell Ash, reaching for the phone with my free hand. He doesn't move, his hips hovering. I thrust up once, his body jerking against my chest. "I said don't stop."
He starts moving again, slower now, his face still buried in my neck, his attention split between the sensation and the phone I'm bringing to my ear.
"Yeah?"
"Where is he?"
Marcus’ voice comes through with the practiced tone of a man who's been rehearsing this conversation for days. I can hear the fray at the edges, the pitch just slightly too high to be steady.
"You're going to have to be more specific," I say, keeping my voice level while Ash rocks against my chest.
"Don't play games with me, Dad. He hasn't come home in over a week.
His clothes are still in the closet, his toothbrush is still in the bathroom, but he's gone.
I called his job and they said he put in for time off, which he never does.
I went to that coffee shop he likes on Fourth and they haven't seen him.
Nobody knows where he is, nobody's heard from him, and I know you know something because you always fucking know something. "
"Have you considered that he doesn't want to be found?"
"He's not thinking straight. He sent me some bullshit text about breaking up and then disappeared. That's not a decision, that's a tantrum. He gets dramatic, then he comes back. We move on."
Ash rolls his hips in a long, grinding stroke that pushes me deeper. His mouth opens against my throat, hot breath on my skin, and the sound that comes out of him is low, resonant, a moan that starts in his chest and fills the bedroom with a clarity that the phone picks up without mercy.
Silence on the line. Dead, ringing silence.
I count three heartbeats before Marcus speaks.
"Is that Ash?"
I don't answer. My hand tightens on Ash's back, holding him against me, this precious, trembling man in my lap who trusts me enough to keep moving while his past screams through the phone.
"What the fuck is that? Is that him? What are you doing to him?" The controlled voice is gone. What's left is raw, climbing toward a register I haven't heard from Marcus since he was fourteen and cornered. "Dad, what the fuck are you doing?"
"Giving him everything you should have."
"You're fucking my boyfriend." His voice drops low, vibrating with a fury that's trying to sound like authority. "My boyfriend, Dad. The man I've been with for two years. You're actually sitting there—"
"Your ex-boyfriend. His words, not mine.
" My arm tightens around Ash's waist, feeling the heat of his skin, the rapid flutter of his pulse against my chest. This man.
This beautiful, brave, impossible man who walked into my bedroom on his own two feet and asked for what he wanted.
I would burn this family to the ground before I let Marcus touch him again.
"He's been here for ten days, Marcus. Ten days and you're only just now getting desperate enough to check.
You're not looking for Ash because you miss him.
You're looking because you can't stand that something you own walked away. "
"I have been looking! I've been calling everyone, I drove around for three days, I went to the fucking police and they told me he's an adult who left voluntarily—"
"Because he is. And he did."
"This is sick. You understand that? My own father, with my—"
"Your what?" My voice drops to the register that makes my sons go still at dinner, the one that doesn't negotiate.
"A man who you left on the side of a road at night?
A man who sat on a curb for six hours while you went to a party?
The man you never once took to a restaurant for a proper meal, who you taught to apologize for existing, who you punished for laughing too loud at his own kitchen table?
" I feel the rage building beneath the calm like an underground fire and I keep it there, banked, because the man in my arms doesn't need my fury right now.
He needs my steady hands. "Finish the math, Marcus.
You had him for two years. What did you build? "
"I'm coming over there." The words spill out fast, tripping over themselves. "I'm on my way right fucking now. This is insane, Dad, you need to understand how fucked up—"
I press my thumb into the bruise on Ash's hip, the one shaped like my grip from a few nights ago, pushing deep into the tender skin.
Ash's back arches against my chest, a moan tearing from his lips that's louder than the first, broken and desperate, the sound of a man being touched exactly where he wants.
The line goes dead.
I set the phone on the nightstand and wrap both arms around Ash. His face is still buried in my neck, his body trembling, his cheeks burning hot against my skin. His hips have stilled, my cock still deep inside him, his heartbeat slamming against my ribs.
"He's coming here," Ash whispers.
"He is."
"He heard me."
"He did."
Ash pulls back enough to look at me. His face is scarlet from his hairline to his collarbones, his eyes glassy, his lips swollen from biting them. Underneath the flush and the trembling is something I've been waiting ten days to see. Defiance.
"You're going to let me come first, right?"
A laugh tears from my chest, catching me offguard. This man, this impossible man, just heard his ex-boyfriend discover us on the phone, heard the threats, heard the screaming, and his first concern is whether I'm going to finish what I started.
"Of course, Dove." I pull him into a kiss that starts soft and turns hungry. Against his mouth I murmur, "You always come first."