19. Vaughn
NINETEEN
VAUGHN
I wake up slowly, with dawning awareness I’m not in my own bed. The sunlight comes from a different angle, but that’s not it; it’s the warm body against mine that gives it away. It’s the arm around my chest and the warm, heavy breathing on my neck.
Silas’s head is in the crook of my neck. I can feel his heartbeat where his chest presses against my side. I can feel every point of contact between us.
When was the last time I woke up like this, with someone wrapped around me after a night of laughing, making out, and more orgasms than I can count? Not for at least a decade.
I’m going to enjoy every moment of this, and I’m going to be thinking about last night for a very long time.
I turn my head slightly to see Silas. The line of his jaw, the dark lashes against his cheek, the short beard he keeps well-trimmed, the messed-up waves on top of his head. He looks almost younger like this.
Also like someone I could get used to waking up next to for the rest of forever.
Silas shifts. A small movement at first, and his arm tightens slightly across my chest. There’s a heavy intake of air, then his eyes open slowly until they meet mine.
We smile at each other, and then he lifts his head and kisses me softly and with the lack of hurry of someone who isn’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon. When we break apart he stays close, his forehead near mine, and he takes a breath.
“Is this,” he says, “when we have the talk?”
I don’t want to have the talk as much as I can see in his eyes he doesn’t want to have the talk.
I want to stay in this bed in this configuration and not have the talk for as long as physically possible, because the talk will end in only one of two places, and I don’t want to go to either of them.
Either we agree this was a mistake and it doesn’t happen again, which is the sensible conclusion, or we agree to something that has a finite end date built into it, which is better than nothing and also the kind of better than nothing that is going to hollow me out when it’s over.
The problem is that for a man with a few doctorates under his belt, I’m really not that smart.
“What if we don’t stop?”
His features draw together in a frown.
“What if we just do this while you’re here? And when you leave, it ends. We go back to what we were.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“I’m still Rowan’s best friend.”
“I know. It’s one of the things I like the most about you.”
“What if we can’t stop?” He voices my biggest fear. “I’ve wanted you for a long time. This won’t just go away.”
I run my hand over his silky hair, then let it come to rest on his cheek.
“I have many bad habits. Once the shine comes off, you’ll be running for the hills.”
“Do you leave your nail clippings on the sink?”
I laugh. “I can start if you want.”
“Give me a few days to enjoy this first.”
“I can do that.”
“It won’t even be that hard,” he says, like he’s giving himself a pep talk. “After a few times it won’t be this good. It’ll get boring. These things always do.”
“Exactly,” I say.
“We’ll be over it within a week.”
“Probably less.”
“It’ll be very easy to end,” he says.
“Very easy.”
Neither of us is remotely convinced.
He kisses me, so I kiss him back, because for now, I can.
The kiss starts as the end to the conversation, but it becomes the start of something much more enjoyable. Something I definitely won’t miss once he’s gone. I’m already bored.
I’m not only not very wise. I’m also a liar.
My brain scrambles when his hand moves down to tightly grip my erection. I’m not bored; I am the opposite of bored.
Silas pushes the sheets aside and shifts above me, covering me practically head to toe and trapping our erections between us.
“Good morning,” he says, with great satisfaction.
“Morning,” I manage.
He spits on his hand and wraps it around both our cocks. My hips come off the bed involuntarily.
“We’re going to ruin these clean sheets,” I say.
“I don’t care,” he says, starting to move his hand. “I’ll do the laundry later.”
“Fuck, Silas.” His strokes are slow and deliberate, his lips curling into a teasing smile.
“I have you right where I want you, Vaughn Reeves. Now you’re at my mercy.”
If only he knew how true that is.
It doesn’t take long for him to get me right on the edge of the orgasm, which is surprising considering it’s not even four hours since he woke me up by sucking my cock down the back of his throat, making me come so quickly that at first I thought I was having a wet dream.
I’d followed by sucking and fucking his hole with my tongue until he was a rambling mess. I managed to move and catch his cum with my mouth by a split second, avoiding a mid-night bedsheet change.
My head is filled with Silas. Last night, right now. He consumes me.
We come together with his hand working us both through it.
“I was hoping we’d be too spent to make a mess,” Silas says. “Looks like I’m doing laundry.”
“You did volunteer.”
We use Silas’s shower. The shampoo is different from the one in my bathroom. The soap is the same. The shower is not entirely focused on getting clean.
Afterward, as we dry off, Silas says, “We need to have sex in every room of this house and every corner before I leave.”
“It’s good to have goals in life.”
“I’m a motivated person,” he says.
“There’s the kitchen,” I comment, moving closer to him and already thinking about bending him over the counter. “The living room. The study—”
“The lab.”
“Absolutely not,” I say. “That’s a professional space.”
“Fair enough. The garden.”
“No.”
“The vegetable patch specifically,” he says. “I feel like—”
I kiss him, and it turns out to be the most efficient way to shut him up.
“The garden,” I say, when we break apart, “is not happening.”
He opens his mouth, but I kiss him again.
Breakfast is eggs and the last of Tess’s sourdough, which Silas prepares while I make coffee.
We eat at the kitchen table in the morning light, and even though this is something we’ve done most days, today feels different.
I’m not running to the lab to avoid the pain of being around him and not being able to touch him.
He steals from my plate, and I let him.
“You’re going to be late,” he says eventually.
“I know.” But I don’t move. Instead, I pull him onto my lap and kiss him. He kisses me back with both hands on my face, and it takes considerably longer than it should for me to actually leave.
“Go,” he says against my mouth.
“Going.”
“Vaughn.”
“Going,” I say, and go. Very reluctantly.
The lab is its usual morning self. I say good morning to everyone and go to my office, where I close the door and sit at my desk.
Silas has occupied every single one of my thoughts and actions for the last twelve hours, but I haven’t forgotten the thumb drive Atlas gave me.
I plug it into my computer and open the files.
Jordan’s documentation is thorough. I already knew that from the research on HelixGen he did for us, but this is different.
The corporate chain is clear.
Hargrove & Associates, the law firm that sent the cease and desist, is retained by a company called Meridian Legal Solutions LLC. Meridian is owned by Apex Agricultural Holdings. Apex is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vertex Holdings.
Three layers. Three shell companies between the law firm threatening me and the multinational corporation that owns it all.
I read it twice before going into the second section.
Vertex Holdings has agricultural land acquisition operations across twelve states.
Its strategy is documented in internal communications Jordan has somehow accessed.
The acquisition of undervalued farmland, the suppression of research that would increase land values, the pattern of targeting scientists and researchers whose work threatens their acquisition model.
There are names of two other scientists. One in Oregon and one in Minnesota. Both received similar legal threats. Both went quiet in the eighteen months before my threats began. Jordan has flagged their names with a note: Status unknown. Investigating.
I sit back in my chair and look at the photos again. These people have the resources to place surveillance on me in Poland and deliver the evidence to my farm in Colorado.
This clears HelixGen. It doesn’t seem like there’s a connection to this threat. This is also no longer something I can ignore or try to figure out myself.
I pick up my phone and call the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Dale Briggs, who happens to be Clayton’s brother, arrives at the lab at two in the afternoon. He’s in his sixties, broad-shouldered, and has that sort of face to him that inspires trust from the community but you wouldn’t dare to be on the wrong side of the law.
I show him everything. He takes his time leafing through the file and the photos as well as Jordan’s information. After a good while, he sits back on his chair and scratches his head.
“Here’s where we are,” he says. “The package delivered to your lab, that’s harassment.
The fact that someone surveilled you in Warsaw and then sent those photographs to your workplace tells me this is organized and resourced.
” He taps the photograph of me at the conference.
“Taking photographs of someone at an event is not unusual, and using those photographs to intimidate them is an escalation.”
“But?”
“But I need a named individual making an explicit threat before I can act formally.” He looks at the email printout.
“This has been carefully written to stay just inside the legal line. ‘A friendly warning before this becomes unfriendly’ is menacing. A good lawyer would argue it’s a figure of speech.
” He pauses. “And the shell company structure you’ve shown me as well as your friend’s research, unless it was obtained legally, I can’t use it. ”
I shake my head. “What can you do?”
“I can open a file,” he says. “Which I’m doing today.
I can make some inquiries. Sometimes that’s enough to make them reconsider.
I can also contact the law firm and make it known that their correspondence has come to my attention.
I can’t compel them to reveal their client because of attorney-client privilege, but the inquiry puts them on notice. ”
He leans forward slightly.
“I also want to increase patrols past your property,” he says.
“Regular drive-bys. Morning and evening. Nothing dramatic, but enough to establish a visible presence.” He sits back.
“And I want you to vary your routines. Don’t be predictable about when you’re at the lab and when you’re at the house.
Don’t be alone on the property if you can help it. ”
“I have a guest staying,” I say.
“Good,” Dale says. “Keep it that way.” He picks up the photograph of me at the Bristol Hotel bar. The one with Seth. “This was taken inside a restaurant?”
“The restaurant of the hotel when I stayed in Warsaw.”
“And you had no idea you were being photographed.”
“None,” I say.
He sets it down. “I want you to understand that I’m taking this seriously. I want you to call me if anything else happens. Anything at all. A car that drives past more than once. A delivery you weren’t expecting. Anything that feels wrong.”
“I will.”
He stands and picks up his hat.
“Thank you, Dale.”
He nods. He shakes my hand. He goes.
I sit in my office for a moment after he, leaves considering if getting the sheriff involved was the right thing to do. What if making contact with the law firm will escalate things?
Silas is at my place alone. I pick up my phone and message him.
Vaughn:
On my way home.
The reply comes back in under a minute.
Silas:
Drive fast. But safe.
And then, a few seconds later, a single emoji.
A small flame.
I pull up in front of the house, and before I’ve reached the front door, it opens.
Silas is naked.
Completely, and without any apparent concern about this, naked.
He throws himself at me, and I catch him, his legs going around my waist the way they did last night.
“What if I hadn’t been alone?”
He points to the floor, where just by the door there’s a pile of his clothes. “I was watching from the window. I only got undressed when I saw you were alone.” He kisses a path from my neck to my ear, where he whispers, “We’re fifty percent ready. You need to catch up.”