Operation 22 The Road Back Home #2
The bedroom was lit by the moonlight filtering through large, open bay windows. The sheer curtains swayed with the breeze, slow and romantic. The damp air carried the scent of pasture grass, warming his face.
The bed was rumpled, quilt pushed back, and the pillows tossed, proving that Syn hadn’t slept either.
He closed the door, and for a moment, they stood facing each other in silence. Syn’s gaze found his, and Furi’s entire body went still under the weight of that expression. Syn reached for the waistband of his jeans and Furi’s breath stuttered.
He didn’t smile, or make it a performance, his expression controlled as he began to undress with quiet, deliberate movements.
Furi gripped the lapels of his jacket and slid it off, letting it fall over the chair by the door. He removed his shirt, boots, belt, and jeans. Each piece landing where he stood.
Syn watched him and Furi let him. It felt like another form of apology. He’d turned himself into money and called it sacrifice without letting the man who loved him decide what sacrifice was to him.
Syn pulled back the quilt and got into bed, raising the other side of the cover in invitation.
Furi’s heart kicked once, before he climbed in beside him. For a second, he stayed on his side of the mattress, not wanting to presume the summons to come there tonight meant more than a mere invitation.
Syn reached over and pulled him against him. Furi went willingly, folding into the heat of Syn’s body, in a long, slow contact that made him release a pleased sigh.
Syn wrapped his arms around him, not as crushing as they’d been on the porch, but just as desperate. He pressed his face to Syn’s throat and tangled his legs with his beneath the soft sheet.
Syn angled his face down, and Furi turned into it. Their bodies aligned from chest to thigh, fitting together perfectly, like always. Syn spread his fingers wide against his spine, his other hand sliding up into his hair.
Furi stayed where he was, letting Syn choose the next inch, decide on the direction. The space between their mouths was so thin it felt cruel. Syn’s breath brushed his lips and Furi parted his mouth, waiting, craving.
It took too damn long, but Syn finally touched his mouth to Furi’s with a pressure that lingered until it ached.
No words were spoken between them, as if they’d both said everything they’d needed to, and it was time for their bodies to do the rest.
Furi opened, and Syn answered with a depth that made him tremble. He brushed his tongue along his bottom lip in a slow, gentle tease.
There was no rush in it.
He rested his palm over Syn’s heart, the other against his cheek.
Syn’s mouth was warm and careful. Stroking his tongue lightly over his, then easing back only to return again, softer and slower.
He moaned into Syn’s mouth as their hips shifted, grinding together in a languid rhythm. It was unhurried, skin sliding over skin, the heat between them building but neither of them rushing to quench the fire.
Furious rolled his hips and almost came undone when Syn responded the same way. Their cocks rubbed together in steady, sensual strokes, the motion more about closeness than completion.
Syn ran his hands along Furi’s arm, then back up to cup his jaw.
Their bodies rocked together in calm, continuous motions, the kisses growing lazy as unwanted exhaustion crept in.
Their movements slowed until they were barely rocking, just holding each other in the quiet dark.
Syn pulled back and gazed at him. A flicker of natural light caught the tired lines around his eyes, and Furi felt another vicious wave of regret.
He exhaled, and the sound came apart at the end. Syn pulled him closer and kissed his forehead.
He closed his eyes, drifted and jerked awake.
He hadn’t slept much since Syn left. And for the first time in weeks, he believed his sanity might survive the night.
Still, he tried to fight it. He didn’t want this to end, because what if morning came and Syn felt different in the daylight?
“Sleep,” Syn whispered.
Furi wanted to say he couldn’t, that he’d forgotten how.
But Syn’s heartbeat was under his cheek, and his hands were in his hair, a combination he couldn’t fight.
So Furi let himself drift.
Syn
Syn woke with Furi gathered to him, warm and bare beneath the quilt, his honey-blond hair spilling across his cheek and shoulder like silk.
He didn’t move at first, breathing in the clean scent of shampoo mixed with sleep-warmed skin and the faint trace of everything they had shared in the dark.
Three and a half weeks shouldn’t’ve felt like a lifetime, but it did.
Before this, he and Furi had never spent more than two nights apart, and even then, there’d been calls, texts, dirty jokes, complaints about food, photos sent from hotel beds, little pieces of each other traded back and forth until they could get home.
This had been different. It’d been real distance.
Now Furi was here, in his arms, heavy with sleep.
Syn tightened his hold. Furi made a small sound and shifted back into him, all heat, long limbs and loose hair.
Syn buried his nose deeper into the strands at the crown of Furi’s head. He closed his eyes at the hurt still in his chest. Though it wasn’t as sharp, perhaps bruised, but healing.
Furi moaned, the sound sleepy and hot, as he rolled in his arms. “Stay in bed with me,” he murmured.
Syn looked down at him.
Mistake.
Furi’s hair spread over the pillow in a gorgeous golden blanket, his eyes half open and dark with that morning heat that had ruined Syn’s discipline more times than he could count.
Syn bent and kissed him once.
Furi wrapped one long leg over his hip.
Syn pulled back before the kiss could turn into something that’d make him burrow back under the covers, and Bull’s father lose respect for him when he didn’t come downstairs until after noon.
“I have riding lessons with Fox.”
Furi blinked up at him.
The heat in his eyes gave way to disbelief so absolute Syn almost smiled.
“Are you insane?”
“Good morning to you too.”
Furi’s brows rose. “You can barely hold a Harley between your legs and ride a motorcycle. How are you gonna ride a twelve-hundred-pound animal?”
Syn’s mouth twitched. “Maybe I just had a shitty teacher.”
Furi glared at him before he shoved him in the shoulder. “I know your ass didn’t just say that.”
Syn climbed out of bed before he could lose whatever thin hold he had on himself. He washed up, brushed his teeth, and got dressed in jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and a pair of worn boots Fox had loaned him.
Furi stayed sprawled in bed gazing at him with one tattooed arm tucked behind his head, a toned leg bent and splayed open on top of the quilt in obvious invitation.
Syn glanced over. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Mmhmm.” Furi’s eyes moved over him slowly. “I’m just enjoying the view before you get on a horse, get bucked off, and I have to spend the next two weeks messaging your hurt back.”
Syn pulled the shirt down over his stomach. “I love how much confidence you have in me.”
Furi’s expression shifted, a flicker of humor in his eyes.
“Come down when you’re ready,” he said.
Furi nodded before he turned over and buried his face in Syn’s pillow.
Syn forced himself to walk out before he climbed right back into that bed and told Fox and his riding lessons to go to hell.
Noise reached him halfway down the stairs.
Voices overlapping, drawers opening, plates clattering, Amelia’s sharp command slicing through male nonsense, Bull’s low rumble, Fox laughing at Walker bitching out the interim sheriff, and the game show on the little kitchen television blaring loud enough to qualify as another family member.
Syn smiled, shaking his head, wondering what it’d be like to wake up to this every day at the crack of dawn.
Umm, no thanks.
Fox was insane.
The kitchen was alive and pulsing with fresh-brewed, strong coffee. Plates were loaded with bacon, sausage, fried potatoes, fluffy scrambled eggs, and biscuits split open and glistening with butter.
Fox and Bull better be glad they did manual labor all day, otherwise they’d each be three hundred pounds.
“Morning,” he said gruffly.
Every head turned.
Fox and Bull watched him first, grinning like fools.
Syn stopped beside the coffee pot and pointed at them without turning all the way around. “Shut up.”
Fox grinned wider. “I didn’t say a word.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Syn filled his mug so full it nearly kissed the rim, then took a long drink before fixing himself a plate. He piled all the fixings on and sat across from Dale and Rid, who were already in the middle of an argument.
“I’m telling you, I’m booked solid,” Rid said, stabbing at his eggs with his fork. “Morning stall rotations, I got a vet check on Grover, tack inventory due by one, and you want me to help move hay?”
Dale didn’t appear impressed. “You’re the stable’s manager. The hay is for the goddamn animals in the stable.”
Rid opened his mouth, closed it, then pointed his fork at his boyfriend. “That is manipulative wordplay. Get some of the yard hands to move it.”
Syn hid a smile behind his coffee.
At the end of the breakfast bar, Walker sat with his actual newspaper spread open. He was a strong man gone older, with a silver beard, a few wisps on his head, brown skin weathered from years of sun, and hands that looked as if they’d built half the buildings on the property.
He flipped a page with a snap and jabbed one thick finger at an article as if it’d offended him.
“Now see,” Walker muttered, lowering the newspaper with a disgusted flick of his wrist, “this is what I don’t understand. Interim sheriff been sitting in that office collecting a check but ain’t done a damn thing.”
Syn frowned.
Walker slapped the paper with the back of his hand. “Is there not one qualified man in this county willing to apply for this job?”
Sheriff.
A badge without the constant beat of a war drum.
A county that needed help.
Syn set his fork down slowly, not ready to admit how hard that thought had just hit him.