by Emilia Loft
“Well first,” his voice tight. “I need to see if you’re strong enough for the kind of labor I got in mind.”
His fingers trailed over the hem of Casper’s tunic, sneaking beneath the soft leather to trace along his stomach and ribs. It made him smile to feel the muscles jump beneath this fingertips.
“Hmm…you certainly feel like you’re nice and fit, but I’ll just have to be sure.” With that he has the tunic up and over Casper’s head in one swift move. The preacher stands there with a look of feigned innocence but the blush staining his cheeks is real and Evan’s delighted with how much their game is affecting the man. He runs his hands carefully over the heated flesh of his upper body, careful with the faded remains of his injuries, tracing the curves and feeling the firm give of muscles under his probing hands, taking his time to examine all of it while he watches Casper’s breathing fall off pace. Without warning Evan brings a hand up to pinch and roll one pink nipple between his fingers, making Casper gasp and arch into the sensation.
“W-What was that for?”
“Need to see how responsive you are darlin’,” He gives the other nipple the same treatment, plucking it smartly until Casper is crying out and twisting handfuls of Evan’s clothing in his fists. “What about this?” And his mouth attaches to a soft stretch of Casper’s neck, tongue laving down across his collarbone. He makes a point to hit all the spots he knows make Casper come apart the quickest. “Mmmm, you’re doing so good.”
“T-Thank you Mr. Parker.” He groans out, and Evan roughly palms the bulge in Casper’s breaches.
“Now what’s this?” The mock sternness in his voice almost making Casper laugh.
“I’m sorry, Mr. PaParkern’t help it. When you….you…” The pressure of Evan’s hand
increases until Casper can’t help rutting into it, stuttering little snaps of his hips.
“Don’t be sorry darlin’,Parkeru like this. Now take off the rest, want to see all of you.”
The soft sheen of sweat glossing Casper’s skin makes peeling out of the leather pants a bit more difficult and he ends up having to sit on the furs to get them past his ankles. He’s about to get up again when Evan stops him.
“On your hands and knees”
Quick to comply, Casper waits while Evan circles him, his inspection causing goosebumps to prickle Casper’s naked skin. With a soft thump, Evan’s tunic is thrown to the ground beside his hands, but Casper can’t see him from this position.
“You look real good like this.” A firm hand runs down Casper’s back and over the swell of his ass, kneading the flesh while the other grabs hold of his leaking cock. “But the real job’s gonna be seein’ if this pretty pink hole of yours can take my cock.”
Casper whimpers when both thumbs begin to massage him in that sensitive spot, not quite spreading him. “Please.”
“Yeah, let’s see how good you work this perfect ass of yours on my dick. Now don’t move.”
He’s gone, but not long enough for Casper to start squirming from his absence. There’s a slick sound, a sound he knows and one oiled finger is prodding him, teasing him open before sinking in. Casper grunts low, it’s been a while but the tiniest hint of burn is a welcome relief, his body thrumming with desire for what comes next. Another finger pushes in and he thrusts back onto it, needing the stretch but impatient to have Evan’s cock filling him.
“So eager for it, that’s good. But you’re going to have to wait, I like this part.”
Casper makes a peevish little growl that Evan punches into a keen when he hits the man’s prostrate. By the time Evan has four fingers thrusting into him Casper’s arms have given out and his thighs are shaking. Then the fingers are gone and Evan is flipping him onto his back, looming over him as he slicks up his cock with oil. He pushes Casper’s thighs up and apart before wasting no time gripping himself hard and pushing into that tight, wet heat.
“Shit look at you, just taking me like this.” He pulls out then slams back in, Casper writhing and more than ready to take it a little rough. “God you’re fucking incredible, feel so good.”
“Evan! Evan!”
At this point neither of them is lucid enough to hold onto their character, so when Evan pulls Casper’s legs over his shoulders and watches with wild hungry eyes the place where Casper’s body is gripping him, sucking him down, there’s no joking when he growls. “Every day Cas, have you like this every fucking day.”
And Casper has nothing to answer back with but the sounds being wrung from his body, hoping that they say clear enough the yes finally that’s sounding in his head. His orgasm comes at him from below, lifting his whole body and spreading across his skin like brush fire.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” Evan ruts into him hard and quick, his own release milked out of him sooner than he’d expected, spilling deep into Casper’s body.
Sweaty, heaving and collapsed into each other, Evan tilts his head up to kiss Casper. “You’re hired!” he jokes and they both dissolve into breathless, gleeful laughter.
Though Casper is recovering well from his injuries, the activity still drains him thoroughly, so he lays boneless and sleepy on the furs while Evan gets him clean and arranged snug against his chest. The heavy weight of Evan’s arm holding him under the warm furs, his hazy bliss, pull him down into sleep almost immediately. So he couldn’t be totally sure he heard right what Evan whispered into his hair.
“Konoronhkwa.”
12
Chapter 12
Evan and Casper spend all of that winter with the Iroquois tribe. It was not a particularly harsh one, all told, though the snow never quite let up enough for safe travel. Or rather, there was always just enough of it for them to forego any serious attempts. Plans were set, the outline of their future together spelled out between them at night as they curled around one another. But there was the matter of setting their lives to right in Lawrence that needed attending, and no amount of certainty in each other made either man particularly look forward to what needed to be done when they returned.
Besides, it was nice here. Casper had made an impression on them when he’d been made to run the gauntlet, and now these people that were once beating him and screaming for his blood smiled and offered him kind words and showed him the trick of their ways. They’d held Evan in a great deal more suspicion, their time with Alistair as their guest all too fresh in their minds. But he worked to prove himself, hunting, building, even playing with their children and laughing good naturedly when they beat him at their games. He didn’t need to wear his guns and didn’t need to feel so constantly alert like he did when he was sheriff. It was another world out here, secluded, difficult but satisfying to him in ways he hadn’t expected. Both men began to learn a few words of the language, but what surprised them both was Evan, and not Casper, taking to it so quickly. He and Waneek’s brother even formed an odd sort of friendship, eyeing each other with constant misgiving but teaching each other the things they knew and bickering as they could over such things as the best way to prepare venison while Casper and the women sat back and rolled their eyes. It was with his help that Evan built them their own hut, smaller than the other, but snug and secure. And they filled it with things that they’d made or hunted and traded for and before long it was more a home of their own than anything they’d ever had in civilization. Waking together in the mornings, going about the chores of the day, consorting with new friends who were too unaccustomed to the ways of white men to question their living arrangement. Nights gasping each other’s names and whispering promises in the dark because it was so warm here, warm and safe in the little burrow they’d carved for themselves out here in the cold open plains.
It was, without question, the happiest either man had ever been.
The spring came on fast, and with it their need to return. Not that they were being asked to leave, both of them providing another set of sturdy hands and never letting their presence become a burned to their hosts. But it was time, the sun rising one day and both of t
hem looking at each other wordlessly with the same understanding.
Once again, Waneek and her brother led them home, both men taking but a few small reminders of their time with these people and leaving the rest to her family. They spent one last night on the plains, under the stars before riding out in the morning and making it to Lawrence a few hours later.
They said their goodbyes to the siblings at the outskirts of town, Casper promising that someday he would visit. They watched the two ride off before turning toward home. They traveled the long way around, heading to Casper’s house so that they could spend one last moment in quiet together before announcing their return to the town. Before Evan set off to end things with Lisa.
The house loomed ahead, but both men were so caught in eager conversation that neither of them noticed the smoke curling from the chimney until they were dismounting. They looked at each other, then at the yard, cleared and clean. The barn and its animals appeared cared for, Casper’s two ornery chickens scratching in newly laid feed just outside. Maybe someone in town had seen to his homestead, kept it in ready for his return. And he was wondering at who this charitable soul might be as he and Evan climbed the steps when the front door was thrown open and his whole world stopped.
“Casper!”
“Anna.”
* * *
Evan didn’t remember how he’d made it back to his home, only that he was there, looking at it from a distance and trying to get hold of himself while his insides died.
She was alive. Red hair and striped dress and shocked blue eyes, standing in the doorway and taking away everything he wanted in life. But he couldn’t watch that, couldn’t watch Cas flounder in the face of this revelation. Couldn’t watch the moment he had to let Evan go. So Evan left.
Lisa and Jess ran out to meet him when he got close, Ben coming soon after from behind the house. He embraced them all and let himself be led indoors and fed and fretted over. Ben sat in his lap while he gave them the basic outline of his stay with the Iroquois tribe, thrilled with the bone handled knife his uncle had brought him. He held his niece for the first time and looked around, and nothing was familiar, though he knew every bit of this place by heart.
He should have given them a day, maybe more, but this task needed seeing to and tomorrow wouldn’t make things any easier.
He took Lisa outside for a walk. He told her what he’d meant to tell her. How it wasn’t fair to her to live life tied to a man like him, how she could live on in this home with his provision and Sam’s protection and his blessing to choose someone who could offer her love as well. And she didn’t say anything while he spoke, and didn’t seem angered or shocked, just listened till he’d said his piece then threaded her hand in his own.
“I know there’s someone else, Evan, known for some time. And I can’t say’s I mind, but I don’t want to know who. You been good to us, to that boy, and I wish you could stay for him, but I won’t make you. You’re a fine man, but after the way it was ‘tween us, I don’t see as I need another husband. But Ben needs his family and I expect you do too. So don’t disappear on him, can you promise me that? I got no fuss in me with giving you up, reckon whoever it is has a much better claim. Just….don’t let her take you from your family.”
He kissed her hand, returned to the house and packed his things. He hugged Ben and took the badge from the boy’s hand when he brought it, telling him he had one last job to do and asking him to look after his mother and Jess and baby Mary.
Sam was at the jailhouse, and Evan managed to slip in without anyone noticing him. Their reunion was brief, seeing as soon as Evan told Sam his plans the younger man set about to stop him or come with. But something set hard in Evan’s features must have conveyed how futile it would be to dissuade him.
He didn’t say a word about Cas.
Sam hugged him tight, and Evan allowed it as both men knew this might be goodbye for a good long while. If Evan even managed to stay alive.
And that night Sam went back to Evan’s home, Lisa’s now, and said grace over supper and all of them sent an extra prayer to Heaven for Evan.
* * *
“You’re alive.”
It was she who spoke the words as they sat at the kitchen table staring at one another, both unsure of what to do.
By the time Casper had managed to pull himself together, vision dimming and short of breath at the shock of her, Evan was already tearing off down the road, Casper’s cries drown in the sound of the hoof beats. And he couldn’t go after the man, not with the puzzle of Anna standing there and demanding some sort of explanation.
“I’m alive. But so are you.” And she looked at him with an expression that was so….so very
different than what one might expect from a woman whose husband had just been returned to her.
It almost looked like grief. It looked very much like how Casper felt.
“I thought you might be dead, I was sure of it, you and the others that were taken. It was Alistair, after all, and no one thought….”
“But I saw you Anna, I…your body was…..I held you and you were wearing that blue dress and-“
She sobbed now, the grief pricked suddenly to the surface. “She loved that dress, she thought that it was lucky and we laughed how she might find her own husband at the party if she wore it.”
“Who?” But he already knew. There was only one other person in town with hair like hers.
“Esther! I was in the house, upstairs with the baby and I went to the window when I heard. And I saw her Casper! She was running to the house and a man tried to grab her but she hit him and-and-“
Maybe he should hold her, hush her weeping with some comfort over her lost sister, but he hadn’t the strength for it and when she looked up with red rimmed eyes he knew she didn’t want it from him either.
“I’ve done a terrible thing.”
And he would have laughed at that, for if she only knew….
“Now Anna you mustn’t-“
“No. Let me say my piece. I will not lie to my- my husband and whatever you will do with me after that I will abide.” She moved to the window, and the action held more intention than just her unwillingness to look at him. She was searching for something.
“Esther…..was dead and Ma and Pa were….well you can imagine. We lost friends, too, we all lost
a great deal. And he was so kind to us, to the family, even with his own brother killed. It brought us together some, but more than that, it made me realize what I’d been trying to forget. I….you’re a
good man Casper, better’n me. It were my Ma that wanted us to marry, even though she knew how I felt about Alphie. But you were a preacher and he was just a farm hand and…..”
She wiped away the silent tears, and Casper went to her then, handed her a handkerchief and gave her a moment with a look of understanding.
“It was always the two of us, growing up, but I didn’t know, I didn’t understand until I thought you were gone and he was here, getting me through things and-I-I lay with him Casper. Like I never did with you, but…”
He turned her by the shoulders and made her look into his eyes. “But you love him.”
She nodded, lip quivering and eyes wet. “I do.” She whispered. “I do, but I made my vow to you, so if you can forgive me….if you could ever find it in your heart to forgive what I’ve done I’ll be a good wife to you. I promise.”
“Anna.” And he kissed her forehead and smiled into it. They’d both been playing pretend. “I absolve you.”
“Of my sins?”
“Of our marriage. We were both of us looking to do what we thought was right for others and not ourselves. You are a good woman Anna, I hold no blame against you. And if you love Alphie, if he can love you in return, then you have my blessing.”
“But my family-”
“Has no voice in the matter. All that matters is what you want.”
“I…” She looked at him unsure, unused to choosing for herself. “I want him.”
> “Wait for me here, will you? I have something I need to do.”
* * *
It was May, or thereabouts, when Evan finally caught him. Run across state lines, tearing such a swath of righteous fury across the country that it was a wonder his own face never landed on a wanted sign. But it didn’t take long for word to spread far and wide what Evan Parker was after. Near about every town had a message from one of the local marshals waitin’ for him, whatever word they’d found on the whereabouts of Alistair Jones. He never let the man Parkerr let him gather men or fresh horses or supplies to give him lead enough to disappear. He was the wiliest bastard Evan ever hunted and any other man on earth would have cried surrender at being run down so hard, but Evan had some sense, something that showed itself in a hanging man made of twigs or a possum carved open for no reason other than sport that this man who was barely a man, liked it. Over the open fire, his horse run to ruin, he got the sense that he was being toyed with somehow, that Alistair might be watching, out there in the dark. That the man wanted to see how far Evan would go, what kind of death he could bring.
The homestead was in the middle of nowhere, farmland stretching on to the horizon. A boy stood out front, brushing down an old horse. Brushing and brushing and staring at Evan in silence with vacant eyes. Evan was ready to move on, nodded at the boy to offer no threat. But something was off. A scent on the breeze.
He rode past the home, through the field, finding a spot in the shade of some trees to tie up his horse and pull off his boots, slipping on the moccasins he’d kept all this time. They were better for hunting, he’d found. On silent feet he crept back, staying low until he was in view of the boy. He held up a finger to his lips and nodded at the house, slipping out his knife. The boy nodded once, small as could be, then again toward the side of the house. The scent was stronger here.
Evan slipped around the other side, crawling low on his belly till he could peek around the corner.
