Chapter 11
Chad didn’t want to move. His ass felt raw, and he dreaded the long walk back to Peter’s Jeep—not to mention the bumpy ride home. Peter was cleaning off his cock, standing next to Chad where he still lay handcuffed on the ground, grinning and looking utterly smug.
“You look so pleased with yourself,” Chad commented, unable to keep himself from smiling. Peter tucked his cock back into his pants and buttoned them up, nodding down at Chad with a grin.
“I am.”
“So what now?” Chad asked, sitting up. There were leaves and dirt all over him, and his feet were wet and soggy inside his boots. By all accounts he should be feeling miserable, but he wasn’t. He felt great.
“We go home,” Peter said. He reached down and grabbed Chad under the arm, pulling him to his feet. Chad winced when he put his weight on his bad ankle, and Peter steadied him.
“Your ankle okay?” Peter asked.
“It’s fine,” Chad said, leaning into Peter’s grip. “Just a sprain. I tripped on a branch or something.”
“I’m sorry you got hurt,” Peter said, looking down at Chad’s feet with a severe expression. “This was supposed to be fun.”
Chad laughed. “It was fun. A total adrenaline rush.”
“So you liked it?” Peter smiled softly.
“Course I did,” he said. “But now I’m wet and tired and I want to go home.”
Peter laughed. “Okay. Turn around, I’ll get those cuffs off you.”
Chad obeyed, and Peter removed the cuffs from his wrists. With his hands free, the first thing Chad did was pull his pants back up.
“How far is it back to the car?” he asked, rummaging around inside his underwear to remove a wet leaf.
“About two hours.”
Chad groaned. He was not at all in the mood for a two-hour hike. What he wanted now was a hot shower, a comfy sofa, and beer.
“Carry me?” he asked, trying for the puppy eyes that Peter always accused him of using. He wasn’t sure he was getting it right, but he must have because there was a brief moment where Peter looked like he was considering it.
“No.”
“Piggyback ride?”
Peter snorted. “No.”
Chad let out a sigh like Peter was being completely unreasonable, and when that didn’t get a reaction he did it again.
“I still have the gag,” Peter commented, looking all too happy at the idea of using it. He tilted his head slightly and raised his eyebrow, daring Chad to keep on being a brat.
“Fine, I’ll walk,” Chad said, smiling and shaking his head. “But I’d like to see how much you’d enjoy a two-hour hike after having a cock like yours up your ass.”
Peter just threw an arm over his shoulder and pulled him in close, laughing.
***
When they got home, the first thing Chad did was push past Peter and lock himself in the bathroom to take a shower. He stepped under the warm water with a sigh, closing his eyes and letting the heat seep into his tired body.
“Why did you lock the door?” Peter asked from outside, sounding annoyed.
Chad ignored him, knowing that if he engaged he’d end up letting Peter into the room. If that happened, they were almost guaranteed to have sex—and Chad’s ass quite frankly wasn’t up for it.
“Chad!” Peter called, banging on the door.
Chad kept on ignoring him, his resolve only strengthening when he soaped up his back and some of the suds ran down his crack and over his hole. It stung so bad he almost bit his tongue.
“Fine, I’ll use the guest room shower,” Peter huffed, walking away. Chad snorted out a laugh and smiled to himself. He cleaned between his legs, flinching when he moved up to wash between his cheeks, and then rinsed off.
Warm and happy, he dried off and put on a robe and then walked out into the living room. He sat down on the sofa, wincing slightly and angling himself so that his weight was shifted away from his hole, and leaned back to get comfortable.
“What was that about?” Peter asked when he came into the room. He was wearing sweats and an old t-shirt, and when he sat down they were pressed together shoulder to shoulder. He smelled clean and fresh, and Chad leaned into him even though it meant aggravating the pain in his ass.
“I’m not letting you near my ass again for like a whole week,” Chad answered, looking down at the obvious bulge in Peter’s sweats.
“That’s fine,” Peter said, kissing his cheek.
Chad frowned. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Peter was supposed to object, get forceful, and then Chad would relent and fun times would be had.
“What?”
“We probably should ease off on the anal, anyway. I don’t need you to do that for me. We can have fun in other ways.”
Chad scrunched up his nose and looked up at Peter, wondering what the hell he was smoking. Peter looked right back at him, serious as hell, before bursting out laughing.
“I’m just kidding. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your ass nice and well fucked whenever you’re here with me.”
Chad’s lips pulled up and he shoved his elbow into Peter’s side. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen for that.
“Good. I like getting fucked,” he said. “Just not tonight.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, relaxing and thinking, and Chad closed his eyes and listened to Peter breathing.
He could tell that Peter was still very affected by the kidnapping attempt, and he wondered if maybe the hunt and catch thing they’d spent the whole day doing had just been a way for Peter to reassure himself that he was capable of finding Chad whenever he was missing.
“Have you talked to Merchant today?” he asked, and Peter’s thigh tensed under his hand.
“No. He’ll update me if there are any developments.” Peter didn’t sound happy.
“I wonder what they wanted,” Chad mused, stroking his thumb over the fabric of Peter’s sweats.
“Who?” Peter asked.
“The people who hired the driver,” Chad said, looking up at Peter’s face. That had been obvious, hadn’t it?
“We’ll find out when we know who they are.”
“Not money,” Chad speculated, thinking it over. “You’re way too scary for anyone to even think about doing that. It must have something to do with your company, right? Maybe someone wanted information, or they—"
“Let’s not talk about this,” Peter interrupted. His tone left no room for argument and Chad snapped his mouth shut.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Peter sighed.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Peter said. “I just don’t want to speculate until we have more facts. It’s just going to make me crazy.”
He sounded frustrated.
“Okay,” Chad said. He was still intensely curious about the motives of the people who had tried to take him, but Peter obviously wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Peter didn’t like talking. He liked doing. Talking about something when there wasn’t anything he could do to fix what they were talking about was just a waste of time.
“I shouldn’t have taken you out today,” Peter said after another few minutes of silence. He sounded guilty. “We have no idea who we’re up against. I don’t know what I was thinking—taking you into the woods so that I could chase you like I’m some kind of hormonal teenager.”
Chad found Peter’s hand and squeezed it.
“We needed something to take our minds off things and relieve some stress,” he said. Peter’s look wasn’t impressed, and Chad continued. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the smartest move, but nothing happened. We were lucky. So from now on we don’t take risks like that.”
“You got that right,” Peter muttered. He looked at Chad’s face. “No more risks. You don’t go anywhere without a full team of bodyguards.”
Chad hated the idea of having a whole team of Peter’s people following him around, but he knew when to pick his battles.
Chad was actually a little surprised that Peter wasn’t just ordering him to stay in the apartment until things were taken care of.
Chad wouldn’t have accepted that, but he would have expected Peter to ask it.
He appreciated the show of restraint.
“I’ll be careful,” he promised. Then, something occurred to him. “What about your parents?”
“What about them?” Peter asked.
“What if someone goes after them?”
Peter shrugged, and Chad furrowed his brow. He knew that Peter didn’t have a good relationship with his parents, but he couldn’t imagine him being callous or indifferent to their safety.
“They both have pretty extensive private security, so I’m not too worried,” Peter explained.
“Why?” Chad asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do they have security?”
Peter shrugged again. “They’re rich. People try to kidnap them often enough that they have a permanent security team assigned to them.”
“From Tank Security?” Chad asked.
The question made Peter bark out a laugh. “Hell no. My father would rather die than acknowledge that Tank Security exists. As far as he’s concerned I’m living off my trust fund and refusing to join the family business.”
Chad blinked, shocked at this particular revelation. What Peter had accomplished with Tank Security was impressive, and Chad couldn’t imagine why his parents wouldn’t be proud of him.
“What do they have against Tank Security?” he asked.
“Back when I was first starting out I took some pretty questionable jobs. My father found out about one of them and didn’t approve.
” Peter ran his fingers through his hair, smiling ruefully.
“He wants me to settle down in a corner office at T.I. and prepare to take over the company when he retires. It’s not going to happen, and he knows it, but he still keeps pushing. ”
Chad mulled that over. He could understand why Peter’s father wanted him to take his place in the family business—thus becoming the fifth Tank to do so—but it also seemed patently silly to expect Peter to change his mind. Didn’t they know him at all?
“I guess that’s okay. Have you warned them, though? That someone might try something?”
“Merchant gave their security team a call. Don’t worry about it.” Peter leaned over and kissed his cheek, wrapping an arm over his shoulder and pulling him flush against his side. “How’s your ankle?”
The change in subject was as obvious as it was forceful.
“It’s fine,” Chad said. He lifted his feet up on the coffee table and looked at Peter with a grin. “My ass hurts way worse.”
Peter smiled, self-satisfied and infinitely smug, and leaned in and kissed him again. When he pulled back his grin was practically wolfish.
“Want me to kiss it better?”
Chad laughed, throwing his head back against the seat cushion. He didn’t say no.
***