25. Epilogue #2
"I walked the pass," I said. "Found it where you stood. All your life you never pointed a gun at a man, and you spent that on me." I tapped the brass once. "You don't get to leave that lying in the rocks. You carry it."
His hand closed around it. His jaw worked. "Coyote."
"Wait. There's more."
I took his free hand. Then I turned my own hand over under his and opened it, palm up.
"Everything up that hill is mine," I said. "You know it. Everybody knows it. The horses, the ground, the people. Mine."
"I know the speech."
"Down here, there's one thing that runs in the other direction." I pressed his open hand flat against my chest. "I'm yours, John. All of me. You're the only man alive who could leave me, and I'm handing you that on purpose, and I won't ever take it back."
The fire popped. His fist stayed closed around the brass.
"Nobody's ever had that," I said. "Not Rafe.
Not Sierra. Nobody. What's mine can't leave me.
That's how I've kept everything I've ever kept.
" My throat closed down, and I talked through it.
"If I'm yours, you can walk off with me any day you please, and I get no say in it.
That scared me so badly I almost didn't bring you down here. "
"And?"
"And you're worth being scared over. I love you," I said. The word didn't fight me on the way out anymore. I'd been spending it for two months, and it still bought the same look on his face every time.
He opened his mouth.
I put my hand over it. "No speeches. Say it back, or kiss me. Those are the choices."
He moved my hand aside. "I love you, Percy," he said.
Two months he'd had that name and never once spent it, and he'd been saving it for this.
"I know." I had to stop and start again to get it out.
Then he took the kiss too, greedy man, and pulled me down into his lap. The casing pressed flat between us, already warm from his skin.
I started on his shirt buttons, and I couldn't shut my mouth either. "Boots first. Then the shirt. Then you're going to lie back and let me—" I stopped. "No. Scratch all of that. Your rules tonight, big man."
He pulled back and looked at me. "Say that again?"
"Your rules. I had a whole plan. You heard most of it in the bathhouse. I'm handing it over. That's the rest of the gift, so take it before I change my mind."
He held still for a moment, giving me the chance to do exactly that. When I didn't, he said, "Lie down."
My dick twitched. Turned out I liked being told.
I stretched out flat on the bedroll with my pulse thudding in my ears, waiting on orders in the one place I'd never taken one.
He started with my boots. One lace at a time, at a quarter of my speed, while I whined at him and dug a heel into his thigh to get him moving.
He put the heel back down and did the other boot at the same pace.
Then he opened my belt and peeled my jeans down my legs, and my cock sprang free and slapped my belly, already hard, already wet at the tip.
The cave air hit my skin, and I hissed through my teeth.
He just looked. My knees in his big hands, firelight moving on his face. He'd put himself down on a dirt floor to do it, folded up under a ceiling built for a smaller man. He shifted his weight off the stitched side of his ribs and didn't mention it.
"John."
"Quiet. I'm working."
Oh, I was in so much trouble.
He pressed his lips to the crooked ridge of my right knuckles, one at a time.
Then he shoved my shirt up under my arms and kissed the scar of his own teeth over my heart, end to end, twice.
Every nerve I owned fired at once. My cock jumped and leaked a warm line onto my stomach before he'd laid one finger on it.
He watched it happen and hummed, low and satisfied.
"You're leaking, little one."
"You're slow, big man."
"Mm. One of us is suffering more than the other."
He closed his lips over my nipple. I arched up off the bedroll and grabbed for his hair. That turned out to be the wrong move. Or the rightest one I made all night. He caught both my wrists in one hand and pinned them to the bedroll over my head.
"Hands stay."
"Since when do you give the—"
He swallowed my cock to the root with no warning.
He took me down in one long, wet slide, and I shouted.
He held me there, deep, his nose against my belly, his throat working around the head of my cock.
Then he pulled off, tongue flat and dragging the whole trip.
My thighs shook against his shoulders. My hands strained against his grip and stayed exactly where he'd put them.
"There it is," he said, and kissed the tip. "That's the sound I wanted."
"Right there," I panted. "Deeper. Fuck. They should take your license. Faster, big man. Faster."
He pulled off and waited, one big, patient hand flat on my thigh, until I quit giving orders.
Then he went lower instead of higher, took my balls into his mouth one at a time, rolled them on his tongue, and hummed, and I forgot whatever I'd been about to demand.
Then his lips slid back down over me. He moved when I shut up and stopped when I didn't. So I quit ordering.
I learned fast, given the right teacher and my cock down his throat.
He pulled off right when I was getting close, ringed the base of my cock with his fingers, and squeezed the finish right back down out of me.
"?Cabrón!" The word cracked off the cave ceiling. "You son of a—"
"Not yet," he said. "My rules. Your words."
"You're a thief."
"I learned from the best." He grabbed the backs of my thighs and folded me, knees toward my chest, hips coming up off the bedroll.
Cool air hit my hole, and every muscle in me knew it.
He looked his fill. Any other night, I'd have run this show from start to finish.
Now I hung folded in half in his hands, on display in my own cave, and my cock drooled onto my stomach.
Then his lips went where I wasn't expecting them.
The first pass of his tongue over my hole shorted out every thought I had left.
My whole body locked, then melted. I whined, high and loud, and it bounced off the rock and startled Nimue.
He did it again. He spat on me and worked me open with his tongue, patient and filthy and thorough.
Somewhere in there he'd let my wrists go so he could hold me folded, and I pulled his hair with both hands.
"John." My heels drummed on his back. "Madre de Dios. Who taught you—where did you learn—"
He didn't answer, and he didn't hurry. His tongue breached me, and my voice cracked.
"Get up here," I managed, "or I'm finishing without you."
He lifted his head, beard slick to the jaw, breathing through his mouth. "You'll finish when I say."
God help me, my cock jumped at that. He saw it jump, and the corner of his mouth curled up.