Ashley slicked more lube on the condom and impatiently pressed himself up against Finn’s hole, nudging the tip in and groaning at the tightness and the heat, not sure he could hold himself back. You were supposed to go slow. How the hell were you supposed to go slow?
But apparently Finn had other ideas, pushing himself down hard onto Ash’s cock, arching his back on a satisfied cry as he was impaled. Ashley stared down at the space between their bodies where he disappeared into Finn and then threw his head back and shouted in pure delight before gripping Finn’s thighs hard and plunging into him, taking what he wanted and needed and had been craving for years.
Finn gripped the sheets hard and pushed back against every thrust, pleading for it to be harder and faster and more, limbs contorting to push Ashley further into his body. His cock arched between them and Ashley encased it in his large hand, fisting it hard in time with his thrusts, delighted when Finn’s eyes went wide and he yelled Ashley’s name, spilling over Ashley’s fingers and onto his chest and tightening impossibly on Ashley’s cock. It was almost painful, but in all the right ways and Ashley came harder than he could ever remember in his life, falling into Finn’s arms, both of them slick with sweat and breathing hard.
‘Fuck,’ Ashley swore and Finn chuckled breathlessly under him, his hands suddenly in Ashley’s hair, shifting his head until their lips met again, still panting between needy kisses.
‘That was …’
‘Yeah,’ Finn agreed, nuzzling his cheek and slowly calming.
‘We need another shower,’ Ashley observed, growing uncomfortable as cum cooled on their skin.
‘Yeah.’ But Finn made no move to get up and when Ashley looked down at him he looked completely vanquished, skin flushed and eyes bright as if sick with fever but he knew the truth. This was what Finn Hale looked like after being thoroughly fucked, and Ashley wanted to be the only man responsible for it for the rest of his life. He had to find a way to make that very clear to Finn.
After a shower.
‘Come on,’ he coaxed, smiling at the lethargy obvious in every line of Finn’s exhausted body. He forced himself off the side of the bed and bent to scoop Finn up in his arms, amused he could.
‘Put me down.’ But Finn made no effort to escape Ashley’s hold so Ash carried him through to the bathroom and lay him in the tub before turning the shower on.
Finn squawked, the cold water having had no time to heat.
‘You bastard!’ But he ceased complaining when Ashley climbed in and lay on him in the cold porcelain, kissing him to distract him from the cold until the water warmed.
Washing Finn was becoming one of his favourite rituals. The man let him do what he wanted, soaping him up, rinsing him off and licking his way through Finn’s mouth and down his throat. He sucked hard on Finn’s collarbone, pleased by the dark hickey that bloomed on his skin, thrilled the man was marked, even if it was childish. He wanted everyone to know he was taken.
‘That’s going to be hard to explain to your brothers.’
‘I don’t care.’ Ashley knew it was stupid, but he really didn’t care. He wanted Taylor and Clay to know. He wanted them to be annoyed or offended or whatever, as long as they knew Finn was his.
He took Finn out to the couch and pulled on shorts but didn’t bother with a shirt, amused when Finn followed his lead and only put on boxers. The movie was still on and Anubis was still snoring. Ashley grabbed two fresh beers from the fridge and sprawled at one end of the couch, pulling Finn down onto his chest and looking down at the wide arc of the scar across his back. He took a sip of his beer and waited for Finn to relax against him before stroking his hand down through the large gouge in his skin.
Finn stiffened immediately. Sighed heavily. Sat up again and drank his whole beer, putting the empty bottle on the floor and getting another before settling back against Ash’s legs, curling in around him as if trying to tangle them together until they were inseparable. As if they weren’t already.
As if his past could take away his future. It hurt to see, but he still had to ask.
‘What happened in Kisangani?’ They were the hardest words he’d ever spoken, and he held his breath waiting for an answer.
Finn frowned at him, clearly wondering how he knew even that much, but then he morosely looked at the ceiling and nibbled on his bottom lip while he thought about it.
‘I did my private security course when I was nineteen. They’re pretty cheap and common in South Africa, so I took a break from the reserve and went and did it. And then this job came up and they needed an extra person. It was a security detail taking some miner’s north and they asked if I was interested. It was a lot of money, and my first job offer. I needed money, and I wasn’t due back on the reserve for a few weeks, so I took it.’
Seriously, the first job? Talk about unlucky!
‘There’s a little town right on the edge of a reserve, north west of Kisangani, called Bafwasende. It’s pretty, right on the edge of the rainforest. The kind of place you look at in travel brochures and think it would be nice to live there. Looks idyllic in pictures, you know?’
Ash didn’t. He sat quietly, a picture in his mind that he knew didn’t match the reality.
‘It’s pretty, but the people are poor. Farmers mostly. Scavengers, really. No school …’ He looked suddenly lost, eyes haunted by an image that only existed in his memories. ‘They were burning their homes when we got there.’
‘They?’
‘The ADF … Allied Democratic Forces, they’re a branch of the rebels active in the Congo.’
He’d known it was serious, but that sounded worse than he’d thought for some reason. Somehow you put acronyms on something and it was official. Add guns and it was frightening. Add money and well, that was how wars happened.
Maybe the sinking feeling was knowing his worst thoughts were true, Ashley wasn’t sure. Maybe it was knowing it was Finn, who looked suddenly small, closed in on himself and sunk deep among Ash’s limbs, cradled safely even if the memories were still there. Maybe it was the awareness he couldn’t change it. That the pit in his gut was a yawning chasm he wasn’t certain could be filled.
‘They surrounded the jeep and ordered us out. It was only the six of us, four security and two guys who worked for the mine who hired us. We were supposed to get them there safely, but as soon as we were out of the car they shot Malcolm Gardner in the chest and ordered the rest of us to our knees. I was so sure we were going to die.’ He still seemed shocked he hadn’t, doing nothing more than remembering it.
The way Finn spoke was odd. A mixture of detached police report and young man unable to come to terms with what he’d witnessed. Like hearing both the victim and official version of something twined together.
‘It had rained. We had to kneel … My knees sank in this thick yellow mud halfway up my thighs, and this guy put a gun in my mouth …’ His fingers lingered on his lips, brushing soft flesh as if he could still feel it resting there.
‘I was sure, you know? I was so sure that was it.’ He exhaled, the sound wet and laden, expelling the demon that rode him. ‘Then this kid comes running out of one of the burning houses and the guy turned around and shot him instead. Just a kid. He was tiny!’
Finn didn’t cry, it was maybe too old for that, but his hands were shaking and he kept rubbing his thigh as if it were dirty and he couldn’t get it clean. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Ash wanted to close his hands over Finn’s, to still him in some way, but he let him be. Maybe he needed to move to tell the story.
‘They killed everyone they found. The blood mixed with all the water on the ground … the mud turned red. They shot Dale and Sal … two of the other guys I was hired with and I kept thinking … ‘I’m next’.’ He shook his head, face pale and lips parted on a breath he suddenly exhaled in a rush.
‘But then they ran out of bullets. Can you believe that?’ His laugh was brittle. Ashley ran a soothing hand down Finn’s arm but he flinched away, clasping his sha
king hands tightly, trying to make them stop but his teeth started chattering instead.
‘So they hacked open Nate’s chest with a Machete and they got me across the back, left us for dead with all the rest. Took the one surviving Engineer as ransom.’
Finn wasn’t seeing him, his gaze fixed on shadows that weren’t there.
‘Apparently the mud compacted in my wound and saved my life.’
Horrified, Ashley couldn’t think of anything to say. He tugged Finn down against his chest, wrapping his arms tight around him and stroking a shaking hand down the length of the scar. No stitches. Mud. No wonder it was so wide and uneven. It was a miracle Finn was alive. From the newspaper clipping, Ashley had assumed Finn had been the one up for ransom. It was strange to still be so wrong.
He noticed Finn used their names, instead of keeping them nameless and faceless. He deliberately made them real, reminding himself who they had been. He refused to let any piece of them fade, as if his memory was all that remained of them. Maybe it was, Ashley knew it was not his place to ask.
‘That’s the easy part,’ Finn whispered. Ashley was hollowed out by the admission but stroked Finn’s hair back, letting him know he was there. Still listening.
‘The ADF came back two days later. They’d been up at Beni. It’s on the Ugandan border … it’s okay …’ He shook his head, aware he was getting sidetracked. Ashley felt broken, watching the way he frowned and visibly gathered his thoughts before moving on. Changing locations on his mental map of an Africa that was.
‘They were interrupted by the real Army and fled back south. They found me alive. I was sick with fever and infection and I couldn’t even stand up but I hadn’t died and it impressed them, so they gave me a choice. They would finish the job right there, or they would take me with them, help me get better. If I joined.’
That was not what Ashley had expected. He flinched and kissed the side of Finn’s neck, very aware this was the part that haunted the man. The rest was terrible but it was tucked into a part of his mind that turned into something that had happened. This was something he’d actively taken part in.
‘You joined.’
‘I did,’ he admitted, voice faint. ‘They realised I was a very good shot. Surprisingly, that helped. I didn’t have to kill anyone, they used the bad shots to do that; you don’t need to be accurate to shoot someone at point blank range. I would scare people into giving them what they wanted before they got shot.’ His voice was growing increasingly brittle.
‘Like you’d done on the game reserve,’ Ashley sighed. At least those skills had saved Finn some pain. He was certain if Finn had been made to kill people he wouldn’t have made it back.
‘I didn’t want to hurt anyone.’ Finn sounded so much younger. ‘I wanted to go home. I’d never had that before, that need to just go home.’
‘How long were you with them?’
‘A bit under a year, not that long.’
Too long. That was way too long!
‘A UN peacekeeping force was looking for some tourists who’d been kidnapped and found me instead. They brought me home … that was about eight … nine years ago now? I joined the police, and you know the rest.’
He didn’t know the rest, but it could definitely wait for another time. He wasn’t sure what to say. Sorry felt ridiculous. ‘I’m here’ felt cliché and insipid. Nothing had the weight he needed, except his body so he folded Finn in under him and shielded him from the outside world for a while. He thought that maybe sometimes that was all you could do, and all that was needed.
‘Do you think less of me, for what I did?’ Finn’s words were soft, barely audible, but they rang like thunder in Ashley’s ears. He took a deep breath and pulled back so Finn could see the sincerity on his face, not only hear it in his words.
‘No, I don’t think less of you. Nothing you did was for any purpose besides staying alive. That doesn’t make you less, or evil, or whatever you’re thinking. It makes you human. I could never think less of you for that.’
Finn was quiet, studying his face, confused and incredulous and hurt so far down inside himself Ashley wasn’t sure he would ever heal. But that was okay as well, because Ashley wasn’t going anywhere.
‘How can you …’ Finn was still frowning.
‘Because I love you, you moron,’ Ashley laughed at him, leaning in to kiss the crease that formed between his brows when he frowned. It was cute, but unnecessary. His pale green eyes went wide and when his sweet lips parted in startled wonder Ashley slipped his tongue between them and stroked the roof of his mouth, feeling like he’d achieved something when Finn groaned and laughed in delight.
‘How can you …’
‘I just do. You get no say in it. I love you, so deal with it.’ It was that simple to him. He wasn’t going anywhere, and Finn was going to have to get used to him being in his life. He’d opened the door and offered the invitation and that was that. He knew Finn was probably thinking he was too young to know what he wanted, but that was bull. He was twenty-three. By that age Finn had already moved to Africa, saved rhinos, trained anti-poachers, completed a private security course, been kidnapped, murdered and left for dead, conscripted into a rebel army, rescued by the UN and joined the Police. Too young was not an excuse the man could use, but Ashley was okay if it took him a few years to convince Finn of that fact.
‘What’s with that look on your face?’ It wasn’t what Ashley had expected him to say.
‘Huh?’
But Finn was laughing, stroking the lines of Ashley’s face and watching his expression change. He seemed amused, and that was a good thing.
‘You look so much like your brothers sometimes. When you get stubborn about stuff. But only then! The rest of the time they look like savages and you look like …’ His voice trailed off, gaze running over Ashley’s shoulders and down his chest to where their bodies were pressed too tightly together to see any further.
‘I look like?’ He probed, smirking.
‘Smug. You look smug,’ Finn told him flatly.
‘Oh, come on! Be honest with me!’
‘I’m always honest with you!’ Finn snapped, but then he forced himself to calm and took a deep breath. ‘I like the way you look. You’re softer than your brothers, kinder and gentler and … better. And you can see it, when you look at the three of you. You look like them, sure, but you’re not like them and it shows in the way you walk and talk and the things you say or do. I thought you were cute the first time I saw you, but you were still a kid, and then the next time you were in your training gear at work and I damned near swallowed my tongue. That was when I realised you were no longer a kid. You were sexy as hell. Then the next time I saw you I knew I had to avoid seeing you or Taylor was going to figure out I had a crush the size of Madagascar and he would have to kill me.’
‘Madagascar’s not that big …’
Finn laughed at him, but he was still frowning.
‘My crush was at least the size of Africa!’ Ashley argued. ‘My friends called me Hale-centric, it was so bad at one point!’
Finn was still laughing and the sound was like magic.
‘Come on, I’m at least worthy of South America!’
‘Why South America?’ Finn wanted to know. ‘Why not Antarctica?’
‘Because it’s fucking freezing there, and I want to melt your stupid heart, not freeze the damned thing!’
Finn was in hysterics, eyes watering and mouth so wide his teeth were sticking out in a shiny white line. He was still the most beautiful man Ashley had ever seen. Scarred, a little broken, completely crazy but utterly breathtaking.
‘Fine, I had a crush on you the size of North and South America.’
‘Now you’re just trying to make your crush bigger than mine,’ Ashley argued, shifting off the couch and reaching down to haul Finn into his arms, amused by his squawking and demands to be released. Like that was going to happen. He carried him through to the bedroom and dumped him on the bed, feeling his cock ha
rden at the sight of Finn sprawled there again, but also driven by the lingering scent of sex.
‘I love you!’ Finn blurted, face flushed and startled as if he hadn’t meant to say it. Ashley suspected he’d never said it, certainly not to a lover, and it filled him with warmth and longing. He reached down and tugged Finn’s shorts from his body, sliding them down the long length of his legs and then sliding back up between them himself, settling against Finn’s thighs, face to face with his cock.
‘You love me, hmm?’
‘Oh, don’t tease me about it! Come on!’ Finn grabbed a pillow and held it over his face in an attempt to hide his embarrassment but Ashley reached up and deliberately pushed it away, fingers clutching Finn’s chin and forcing him to watch as Ashley very slowly licked up the length of him.
‘Fuck, Ash …’
‘In a bit,’ he agreed, snickering as he bathed Finn’s dick with his tongue. ‘I want you to tell me you love me again.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Mmhmm,’ he hummed around the cock he buried in his throat, holding Finn’s hips down hard against the bed so he couldn’t thrust or find any kind of release, making him go at Ashley’s pace which was somewhere between snail and when I feel like it.
‘Come on, please? I need you.’
Yes he did, but for many more reasons than the amazing sex they were going to have. Finn needed him because he understood him, and because no-one would ever love him as much as Ashley did and he wanted to hear Finn say it. A lot.
‘Ash!’
He sucked harder, demanding, knowing Finn would give in because the man could deny him nothing.
‘I love you, you stupid prick, now can we please have sex?’ Finn yelled at him in frustration and Ashley immediately stopped his blowjob.
‘Of course.’ He laughed into the pillow Finn slammed into his head.
Rhino Ash (Saturday Barbies Book 2) Page 21
