Keeping Promise Rock (45 page)

Jon started to giggle, just like he used to in high school, and Benny caught it next. Andrew rubbed his eyes, and Crick just stared at him, shaking his head. “
That
is the weirdest thing I’ve heard all day, and that’s saying something. Jesus, buddy, maybe come see us when we’re not fighting off rabid relatives or something, you think?” Poor Officer Perkins was backing out of the door, blushing almost as badly as Deacon had, and Jon laughingly called him back. “Don’t worry, that’s just Crick. Tell you what—you come Sunday night for dinner and bring some flowers for my wife who’s more pregnant than sweet right now, and you can get to know us, how’s that?” The guy blinked and looked hopeful and skeptical at the same time.

“Do you even live here?” he asked Jon.

“He’s wanted to his whole life,” Crick said dryly. “Lucky me, I got the gay chromosome.”

Jon shrugged. “Yeah, being het’s a curse. Have you met my wife?

When she’s not pissed off about being twelve months pregnant, she’s über-hot.”

“I’ll have to ask Deacon about that,” Crick said smugly. “I wouldn’t know.”

Jon laughed sincerely and slugged Crick in the good shoulder.

“Okay. Okay, I give. I did miss you, and I think I’ve just totally forgiven you.” He looked over at their poor blushing cop friend. “You’re still welcome to dinner—but we might need to know your name.”

“Shane,” the guy said, still blushing. “Shane Perkins. And I’d love to come to Sunday dinner. Man, the people in this town will die of thirst before they admit they have enough water to share, you know what I mean?”

Crick suddenly forgot his banter with Jon and looked at their new friend grimly. “Buddy, we know exactly what you mean. I’m going to go out and talk to Deacon. I know we should give him his space, but I can’t stand that he’s out there working through this alone.” And brother, was he working.

His back was shiny with sweat, and the muscles in his arms, neck, back, and chest rippled with effort as he grabbed a bale off the back of the truck with the hay hooks and threw it up against the stable wall under the protective overhang designed to shelter it. Crick was pretty sure his calves and thighs would be flexing under his jeans too, and he tried not to think of how sexy it was to watch Deacon’s body move—there were other things to work on right now. The haystack was almost surgically neat, and Crick had to admire the efficiency with which Deacon moved. It was a chore he’d been doing since he was big enough to hoist a hay-bale without hurting himself.

He was talking to himself as he worked, and from the sound of it, he was cursing out step-Bob but good. “Dumb-fucking-son-of-a-bitch…

fucking kill you, asshole… come here on my property, touch my family.

Fucking stay the fuck away from my family if you want to keep your fucking balls. Dumb-fucking-son-of-a-bitch….” Crick took one look at that furious energy and thought that maybe he’d be better off waiting to speak until Deacon didn’t have potentially deadly weapons in his hands. He made to turn around and leave when Deacon surprised him by coming up out of his own head long enough to call out.

“I’m sorry, Crick—was there something you wanted to talk about?”

“Just checking on you,” Crick told him, somewhat reassured when Deacon’s tight, fierce little smile came out to play.

“I’m working shit out.”

“I figured. It’s getting hot—you may want to put this off until evening.”

Deacon shrugged. “There’ll be other shit to do then.”

“Yeah,” Crick conceded, and then, because he’d been thinking about it in the kitchen, he said, “Hey, Deacon—you think there’s any way I can take trip to Seattle in the near future? I need to make a visit to Lisa’s folks.

It’s only right.”

He was unprepared for the effect of the request. Deacon actually
dropped
the hay hooks—didn’t hook them in a bale and let go,
dropped
them—and the leather gloves on top of them, and then his back and neck, which were facing Crick, began to shake with tension.

“Leave me?”

“Just for a couple of days,” Crick soothed. “I’d ask you to come with me, but you’re so busy here… I don’t want to take you away from….”

“Leave me?” And Crick’s heart started to pound in his chest—it was that voice again. That lost, alien voice, the one that came from the throat of a small boy locked in a big house with only the echo of his own heart for company.

“No,” Crick backpedaled. “Won’t leave you. Swear. You can come with me… or I just won’t go….”

“
You’re goddamned right you won’t go!
”
Deacon roared, whirling at Crick with desperate speed. In a second, in a heartbeat, Crick was pressed against the back wall of the stable with Deacon’s sweating, heaving, bare skin flush with his own.

“You won’t leave me!” Deacon ordered, and Crick nodded furiously.

“I won’t leave you.” Oh God—he smelled like last night’s sex and sweat and rage, and he looked like he’d taste like salt.

“Not ever again… you won’t fucking leave me. You promised!”

“I promised,” Crick said, mesmerized by the furious intensity of Deacon’s green eyes. He was almost insane with the idea of Crick leaving—terrified, angry, hurt—all of the things Crick thought he’d been feeling for two years but hadn’t shown.

“You won’t leave me,” Deacon hissed, pulling Crick’s head down in a crushing kiss, invading his mouth with a punishing tongue and smashing Crick’s body against the wall so possessively that Crick wondered if his skin wouldn’t just open up and take Deacon inside. He tasted like…

Deacon, but bitter. There was no sweetness in his mouth, no gentleness in his breath or his kiss, and he mashed Crick’s lips hard enough to hurt.

Crick tore his mouth away long enough to say, “I won’t leave you, I swear, not ever again,” before Deacon took his mouth again in another blazingly angry kiss. Their bodies went nearly instantly erect, both of them, and Crick ground himself against Deacon’s hipbone as his cock swelled so fast, so hard, it literally hurt.

Deacon jerked his own hips against Crick’s thigh and hissed angrily in his ear, “You won’t leave me, you won’t, you won’t fucking leave my side… dammit, Carrick, you promised….”

“I promised,” Crick grunted. “I promised… Deacon, the tack room….”

Deacon kept kissing him, biting his neck and then his chest hard enough to leave marks. His hands moved Crick’s shoulders sideways, and Crick went with him, stumbling slightly as Deacon pushed him backwards through the open door of the stables. Andrew’s bedroom was right inside, and the spare room, the one filled with tack and a small space of bed, was right next to that one. That was where Deacon pushed him, one stumbling step, one angry, fierce kiss or suck or even bruising bite at a time.

Crick opened the door to the tack room and practically fell into the stifling, dusty dark, and Deacon slammed the door shut behind them and slammed the latch home. Crick dropped his pants and went to kiss Deacon again. Deacon ripped away long enough tear Crick’s T-shirt off and then to whirl him around and bend him over the bed, leaving his ass in the air.

“Stay there,” he growled, and Crick did. He heard Deacon dig in his pockets, and then the jeans hit the ground. Deacon’s thumbs, oily with something that smelled like cherries, spread his ass cheeks and pressed smoothly into his anus, then stretched it roughly, making it ready, and Crick buried his head in the dusty mattress, right next to a bag of horse feed, and groaned.

“God, Deacon….”

“I said stay there!”

“Ain’t moving,” Crick moaned, and those thumbs worked him, hard and rough and fast, and his hips jerked. He moved his hand down to grab hold of his cock, which ached mightily, and Deacon grabbed his hand and shoved it back next to his head.

“Said stay there,” Deacon muttered, positioning his cock at Crick’s back door.

“Yes sir,” Crick whined, and he was completely submissive. The military had taught him how to take orders, had taught him it was a matter of life and death, and right now, he knew Deacon’s life depended on knowing Crick was going to be there for him for as long as he needed him.

Deacon was oiled too, but whatever he was using for lube was grainy and not as slick as it might be, and it burned as Deacon thrust the head of his cock in Crick’s ass. Crick groaned, liking the edge of pain, liking the roughness, because
God
did Deacon need him, and that was enough to turn a saint on. Deacon popped inside, only his thick shaft there, stretching him, thrusting into him until Deacon’s rough, curly brown pubic hair was ground up against Crick’s ass and their testicles smacked together with the force of their joining.

Crick buried his face in the dusty mattress and howled with the angry joy of it.

Deacon pulled back and thrust again, still chanting, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, you’ll never fucking leave me again, you hear?” and Crick found himself begging the same way.

“Fuck me, Deacon, please, just pound me, oh God, please, grab me… grab my… oh God, yes!
”
Because Deacon, who was merciful and wise, reached around and grabbed his cock with his slippery hand and gave it a hard stroke, and another, and another, and Crick’s words turned to gibbering, and Deacon’s words turned to rough pants. Crick gave another howl as his come spattered up against his stomach and another as Deacon’s cockhead brushed his little bundle of nerves, and then another as he did it again.

Deacon grabbed Crick’s hair, which was long enough to get a grip on now, and dragged Crick’s head back to hiss in his ear. “
Don’t fucking
leave me
.”
Crick groaned in response as Deacon’s hips kept pounding him into the mattress. “I mean it, goddammit.”

“I won’t leave you,” Crick moaned softly, his body used and full and still quivering as Deacon fucked him into Jell-o. “I love you, Deacon. I’ll never leave you again.”

Deacon jammed his hips forward one more time and came, roaring, biting Crick’s shoulder hard and grunting against the sweaty, slick skin of Crick’s back as his hips jerked again and again and again.

“You’re goddamned right you won’t,” Deacon panted against him into the sudden stillness of their bodies.

They stayed there for a while, Deacon shivering in sexual aftershocks, Crick recovering from the sudden sensual assault. Deacon clasped his wrists around Crick’s middle and held Crick so tight he could barely breathe. Crick put his good hand over the hands at his waist and let all his weight rest on his bad shoulder. Deacon’s hands were shaking—not just trembling, shaking—and the sweat between Crick’s back and Deacon’s cheek was thicker and hotter than it should have been.

“Deacon,” Crick asked into the silence. “Deacon, are you okay?” Deacon’s voice was really his voice now. It wasn’t the lost five-year old, it wasn’t the fierce sexual dominant—it was Deacon. Crick’s Deacon.

And Deacon was in pain.

“Not so much, Crick,” he choked, and Crick nodded. He straightened, and Deacon fell out of his body. Then he turned and sat his bare ass on that little spot of bed and wrapped his arms around Deacon’s waist. Deacon hid his face against his own shoulder for a moment, and Crick reached his good hand up to the back of Deacon’s head and pushed him down. Deacon followed that urging and sank to his knees naked in the dusty straw, buried his face in Crick’s middle, and sobbed.

Naked Words
,
Naked Hearts

OF COURSE, the tricky part was sneaking past the entire family to get to the shower. They were both covered in sweat and dust and hay, and they smelled like hot, sweaty, dusty sex in the hay, and you couldn’t hide the fact that you’d been crying for an hour using nothing more than a rumpled T-shirt and your lover’s sweating hands on your face.

In the end, they dressed as well as they could, stuck their heads out of the stable to make sure they didn’t shock Patrick into a coronary, and walked into the house, hoping the cop was gone. He was, and Jon and Benny were sitting in the lovely, air-conditioned cool, eating pie that they had apparently bought while Deacon and Crick were otherwise occupied.

Because they were family, they both looked up, saw Deacon’s face as he slunk toward the bathroom, and didn’t say a blessed thing. Behind him, he heard Jon call Crick’s name, but he didn’t stay to hear what was asked or how Crick responded. By the time Crick got to the bathroom, Deacon was already in the shower, looking with gratitude at the new bottle of shampoo Benny had put on the ledge.

“Mmm,” Crick muttered, grabbing for the bottle before he could.

And then Crick tended to him, as simple as that. Washed his hair, washed his body clean, rubbed his warm, soapy hands over Deacon’s chest, his back, his neck.

“What’d Jon want?” Deacon muttered, content this once to lean back in Crick’s arms and be tended to.

“Wanted to tell me they’ve got Bob in custody, but we probably shouldn’t press charges or you’ll be in for assault.” Deacon grunted. Well, damn—the shitbag would get to walk.

“Anything else?”

“Wanted to know how you were.” Crick’s hands soaped his chest, and Deacon almost whimpered, they felt so good on his skin.

“And?”

“I told him you were not okay.”

Deacon wondered if he could live with the thought that he hadn’t been able to stand it, that he’d crumbled like rotten mortar.