22. Silas
TWENTY-TWO
SILAS
When I wake up, the bed is wrong.
The sheets are warm, the pillow is right, and the morning light is coming through the curtains at the right angle. But the particular weight and warmth that has been on my left side every morning is absent.
Vaughn’s side of the bed is cold, so he must have gotten up a while ago.
I reach for my phone and check the time. It’s nine in the morning, which is later than usual, but then again, I don’t always drink as much as I did last night. Tess does know her wine because the absence of a hangover this morning can only be considered a miracle.
There’s a message from Zuza.
Zuza:
Check your emails.
I open my inbox and see the information.
I ran the photo through every facial recognition database I have access to—and you know how many that is. Government records, corporate databases, law enforcement systems, immigration. I ran it all without leaving any trace of the inquiry.
He doesn’t exist.
No match anywhere. No passport. No driver’s license. No employment record. No social media. No digital footprint of any kind. He is either living completely off the grid, which almost no one does successfully, or he’s a ghost. Someone who has been professionally erased.
In my experience, Silas, the only people who look like nobody are people who are very specifically somebody.
Be careful.
I read it twice, then put the phone face down on the nightstand.
A ghost.
The man I saw at the festival with the family. Were they actors? Hired to provide a plausible cover? But why would a hit man need cover when we’re not meant to be seen?
The threat is no longer abstract. It’s here. In this town. It watched us at the pumpkin weigh-in yesterday.
I have more questions than answers, which pisses me off, because usually I’m the one with the answers. I have all the information, I go in, I kill.
There’s too much restless energy inside me and only one way I know to get it to settle. I get up, pull on my underwear, and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth because Vaughn doesn’t deserve morning breath when I’ve drunk more than I should the night before.
The kitchen smells like coffee and eggs. Vaughn is at the stove with his back to me, so I stand in the doorway for a moment, just appreciating the broad line of his shoulders, the silver hair, and the way his butt looks in those black boxer shorts.
I need this man more than I need coffee right now. He hears me in time to turn and open his arms. I walk into them and hold on tight, breathing in the smell of his shower soap mixed with the natural scent of his skin.
He holds me for a moment and then pulls back a little. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong,” I say, “is that we still haven’t christened the kitchen.”
His expression changes immediately. He reaches down and gets his hands under my thighs and lifts me. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me to the kitchen table, kissing my mouth, my jaw, my neck.
He sets me on the table, and his hands move over my chest and my stomach. His fingers catalog each ridge of my abs until he’s right where I need him to be. I lie back on the kitchen table and close my eyes.
He replaces his hands with his mouth, then pulls the elastic of my boxer shorts down just enough to expose the head of my cock. His warm tongue licks over me, but then he pulls off just enough to blow on it.
“Fuck, Vaughn. Just suck me, please.”
“Is that what you want? I don’t think that’s what you want, baby.”
I open my eyes. If he’s shocked by the term of endearment he just threw at me as if we’re really something, he’s not showing it.
He pulls my underwear the rest of the way down and out of the way before his mouth engulfs my cock.
I say his name, several times, in registers probably only audible to dogs. I dig my fingers into his hair in case he stops what he’s doing, but a stronger desire eventually takes over. “Your fucking mouth is fucking sin, but I need you to fuck me right now.”
He lifts his head, and his smile is one hundred perfect smug. “We don’t have lube.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I just need you. Right now. Please.”
He stands up and pulls me up to a seating position. He kisses me, and then says into my mouth, “Don’t move.”
I may have just died, because that voice could tie me to a bed and have its way with me and I’d come back for more.
The problem is that sometimes I’m not that good with orders. I slide off the table, turn around to face it, and lean forward with my forearms on the surface and wait.
“I thought I told you not to move, Silas.” He crosses the kitchen and comes to crouch down in front of my ass.
“I misunderstood.”
He laughs, and my punishment for moving feels like a reward when he slaps my ass, but then his tongue runs from my balls all the way up to my hole, where he proceeds to kiss and lick me like I’m the best dessert he’s ever had.
I try to see behind me, but I’m no longer in charge of my body. All I can do is feel.
One finger. Two fingers.
“Hurry up,” I beg.
“Be patient.” That’s easy for him to say, but then he removes his fingers and replaces them with his dick, and I stop being able to form words.
He moves slowly at first. When I push back to meet him, he slaps my ass again, and then the kitchen fills up with the sound of Vaughn fucking me into his kitchen table.
I try to keep my orgasm at bay, to make it last. If I don’t touch myself, I’ll stay in limbo forever.
Except Vaughn has other plans. He pulls all the way out and then pushes in until he fills me up in one go.
He does it again and again, and with each time I feel closer and closer to the point of no return.
I’m not even touching my cock. I feel the moment Vaughn loses control, the sounds he makes, his hands gripping my hips, and I hold onto the edge of the table and let him have it.
For a moment I think I’m going to come too, but it doesn’t happen. I’ve leaked plenty of precum onto the floor, but I’m still hard. Still desperate.
Vaughn pulls out of me gently and turns me around.
“Your turn,” he says. “I want you to fuck me.” A sentence I did not expect from this man.
He flips us around and takes my place at the edge of the table. I maneuver myself between his legs, reaching for the lube to slick up my cock.
I stop, surprised, when I’m about to use the lube on him.
“Vaughn?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been wearing a plug all this time?”
I meet his eyes, which are filled with pure lust and want even though he’s just come.
“I need you to fuck me as hard as you can, Silas. Take what you need. Everything you need.”
My hands shake as I carefully remove the plug and set it aside, then I give my cock a couple of strokes and line it up with his hole.
Vaughn’s gasp as I fill him is a sound I will never forget for the rest of my life.
“I wish I could go slow, but you feel so fucking good and hot and—”
“Give me everything, Silas. I need it.”
I am wound so tight from everything that’s come before. His mouth and his hands and his heated gaze when he turned me over. There’s no going slow, just me and him in the kitchen in the morning light, and I give him exactly what he asked for.
He cries out, and I hold his hips, but I don’t stop because he doesn’t want me to.
When I come, it’s with his name on my lips and my eyes on his, both of us shaking. I look down and see a little bit of cum on his stomach. Even though he didn’t get hard, he got to come again.
We stay there for a moment, not moving, just existing in each other.
“I think,” he says, practically out of breath, “the kitchen is well and truly christened.”
I laugh. “Yeah, but we still have the living room and the gard—”
“We’re not having sex in the vegetable garden.”
I tut. “You’re really not the adventurous type, are you?”
He slaps my ass as we walk up to the bathroom to shower. “I’ll show you how adventurous I am once I recover from this round.”
The shower turns into another torture session for me. And when I say torture, I mean the fucking man edged me until I begged for relief. For a long, painful moment I thought he was going to leave me hanging, but he took pity on me and let me come down his throat.
Sadly, the eggs didn’t survive the long wait, so we sit with coffee and toast for a late breakfast.
“What are your plans today?” Vaughn asks, looking up from his phone.
“I offered to help Tess and Teresa at the baking stand. Teresa has an appointment later. I’m covering until she gets back.”
He picks up his coffee cup. “That’s nice of you.”
“It’s the least I can do when I’ve consumed more than enough of their baked goods.”
His eyes bore into me.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Do you want to go out for dinner tonight?”
“You want to take me out?”
“Yeah. I think it would be nice to check out the seasonal menu at the Harvest and Root.” He holds out his hand, so I take it, and then he pulls me onto his lap. “There’s a band playing at the Ridgeline, so I was thinking we could go there after.”
I press my lips against his. “Hmm. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date.”
“It’s not a date,” he says.
“If it’s dinner like a date and music like a date, then I think it’s a date.”
“Fine. It’s a date,” he grumbles.
With Vaughn gone, I do a full check of the property for any signs of a foreign presence.
I start off around the house and expand the perimeter to the shed, the orchard, and the guest house, and then I check the fence line and the access road.
There’s nothing immediately suspicious, but then I notice tire tracks at the far end of the access road where it meets the main road, in the soft earth at the shoulder.
Two sets. Neither of them from Vaughn’s truck or from the vehicles I’ve seen on the property.
Most folks here drive the same type of truck, and I don’t use this road in the car.
I take the side road to the lab because it gets to the main road faster.
Someone has been parked at the end of this access road.
I really don’t like this.
My phone dings. I pull it out of my pocket.
Vaughn:
It really is a date.
Silas:
I know.
Vaughn:
No. I mean, I really want it to be a date.
My heart melts for this man. The ache will come, but for now I’m going to enjoy this.
Silas:
I’ll dress to impress.