“Fuck, I love this, Jarrett. You’re so tight,” Thayne groaned. His voice was graveled and thick with sex and it turned Jarrett on like nothing he’d ever heard.
“Come on then. Fuck me.”
Thayne smirked just a little and thrust his hips, sinking deeper as Jarrett groaned. The slide of his thick cock, brushing along the slick walls was something he adored after the initial sting began to ebb and he tightened his arms around Thayne, bringing his face down where he could reach his full lips for a kiss. Thayne moaned into the kiss, filling his mouth with his tongue as Jarrett opened for him. Thayne rocked his hips again, sinking deep and then pulling back, dragging his dick alongside the inside of his body and lighting him up like a firecracker. He gasped as he sank deeply again, filling Jarrett with his thick cock as he began to speed his movements.
“God!” Thayne groaned. “So tight, so tight, baby.” Thayne let his forehead drop to the juncture between Jarrett’s head and shoulder, dragging his open mouth over the sensitive skin of his neck, and Jarrett loved every second of it. Seeing Thayne getting this worked up was worth every ache and pain he’d be feeling once this time was said and done.
“Harder, darlin’,” Jarrett gasped, needing him more now, needing him desperately.
Thayne pushed up, bracing both hands on the bed beside Jarrett’s shoulders as he stared down at him. He rocked his hips faster, driving his cock ever deeper, following the thrust by pulling back and then repeating it all over again until it had Jarrett groaning with each thrust and retreat. He felt his orgasm rising and reached for his cock that was leaking a thin thread of precome from the slit of his dick to his abs, taking hold of it and giving it a tight squeeze as he began to stroke it. He felt the muscles of his ass clamp down on Thayne’s steadily plunging and retreating cock, hugging it as it slid in and out, faster and faster as his lover gasped out his name.
“Jarrett! Fuck!”
“Come on, darlin’. I need to feel you shoot all that inside me. Give me all you got.”
Thayne’s gaze was locked with his and he loved watching the way Thayne’s jaw relaxed and dropped, hearing the rasping quality of the breaths he huffed out as he fucked him harder and harder, pistoning into him. He could see how close Thayne was to orgasm and he sped his hand, pumping his cock through his tight fist, harder and faster. He wanted them to come together but even if Thayne came first, there was no doubt he would follow close behind. There was nothing quite as beautiful as Thayne’s face right at this moment. He was sexier than hell, strong, muscled, and the cords on either side of his neck stood out in thick bands as sweat trickled from his temples down his jaw.
“I’m gonna come, Jarrett,” Thayne gasped, letting lose as he pounded into his body, lighting him up inside with his deep thrusts.
“Come on, Thayne!” Jarrett shouted through gritted teeth as his own orgasm began.
Thayne gasped and then held himself still, as Jarrett felt the first hot wash of come shoot up deep inside him. The feel of Thayne coming deep inside him without a condom between them was something he still hadn’t gotten used to and hoped he never would. They’d only done this one other time before, with Thayne topping then too, but he’d enjoyed the slow buildup then as well. Thayne was so very good at giving him exactly what he needed without Jarrett even needing to tell him.
“Jarrett,” Thayne growled, emptying himself deep up inside him. “Fuuuuck…”
Thayne’s words triggered Jarrett’s orgasm and he let himself fly, feeling the shivers that managed to overtake him as his whole body convulsed, brought off by his own hand as Thayne continued his slow slide in and out of his body. Jarrett’s come splattered between them, up and over his abs as Thayne watched, his face a mask of lust similar to what his own must look like. Thayne reached down and dragged his fingers through the milky-white puddles, lifting his hand to his mouth and slipping his long fingers between his lips so he could taste Jarrett. It was fucking sexy as hell to watch.
“Jesus, Thayne,” he groaned again, wringing out a second spurt as he watched Thayne’s show. “You’re so fucking hot,” he groaned.
When Thayne smiled and leaned down to kiss him, Jarrett lifted his arms and slid his hands through his curly dark hair, feeling the soft wisps running through his fingers as he held on to him for dear life. Thayne kissed him again harder, letting their lips and tongue slide together in a decadent dance.
Chapter Eleven
“So would you agree we know how the explosion happened?” Jarrett asked his partner the next morning. “If what Haney says is true, Boggs and his board of directors ignored the citations that were issued by the MSHA inspectors. We can only assume it was because of money.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right. And when they had money after the accident five years ago, everything should have been upgraded and fixed.” Thayne peered at Jarrett over his coffee. “We need to find out about that accident. Why hasn’t anyone mentioned it before and what the hell happened to that safety money?”
Thayne watched Jarrett as he sipped his coffee. They were sitting at a table on the patio of a small café where they’d eaten breakfast, planning out their day. After making love in the hotel, they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, something that was becoming more and more common. It felt very domestic to Thayne but the last thing he wanted to do was get ahead of himself. Though Jarrett spent nearly every night in his apartment, he still kept his own place. Thayne had never been there and Jarrett hadn’t invited him. He’d given up hoping Jarrett would ask him over and he tried to tell himself not to be offended that Jarrett didn’t want him on his turf. He’d told him it was where he hung his clothes and stored some things and that was all. Besides, it was rent-by-the-week type of place anyway. It probably had pictures of sunsets or some shit on the stark white walls.
“I think we need to assume that we were being kept outta the loop by Haney on purpose.” Jarrett was frowning as he glanced at him. “And if Sales and Lafford knew about it and didn’t say anything, that could be a problem. Maybe that’s why SAC Howard wanted someone from outside of Bluefield so bad. He might have been right to have suspicions about them.”
“I don’t know. I like both of them. I wonder if the rumor that they gamble is founded in truth of any kind. Neither one of them wear expensive clothes, shoes, watches, or from what I’ve seen, drive an expensive car. They seem to have been nothing but open with us and I haven’t seen any reason to suspect them of anything so far, have you?” Thayne could feel the frown on his own face now. He picked up his coffee and sipped as he watched Jarrett shake his head.
“Naw, I don’t. It seems like they know what they’re doing. Judging by how they were down in the mine yesterday, they have about as much experience with mining as you do but at least they have a decent rapport with the locals. That’s more than can be said for us.”
“This is the thing, though,” Thayne began. “We were sent down here to lend our expertise as ATF agents to find out what caused the explosion. Well, they would have found that out themselves. All you have to do is go down into that mine to see those blown apart seals and smell the methane to know what caused it. What’s the next step? I know we need to get a hold of those citations issued both before and after the first incident and we need to find out what reports were written about that first incident to begin with.”
“So we start with Sales and Lafford. They might know about the first collapse but from what SAC Howard said, they were assigned after it happened,” Jarrett said, draining the rest of his coffee.
“Let’s start there.” Thayne pulled out his cell phone and looked up the number for Bud Sales. He punched it in while Jarrett paid the check for their breakfast and when it picked up, Thayne arranged to meet the two agents out at the mine in an hour. He swiped the phone closed and stood up, following Jarrett to the truck, seriously hoping they weren’t going to find out that the two men they were
beginning to think of as friends had been withholding key information from them.
****
As they drove up, Sales and Lafford were waiting for them in the parking lot wearing yellow hard hats the same way they had the morning before. They smiled and greeted the men with handshakes and recounted what the miners had told them in the bar the night before. Judging from the expression of surprise and wariness on their faces, they’d never heard about the collapse five years before.
“I swear, we didn’t know anything about it,” Clint Lafford said. They both looked genuinely put out. “No one was killed though?”
“Not to our knowledge. I think the miners would have said so,” Thayne replied. “They were really upset about the miners who were killed this time around. Downright pissed about Harlan having to struggle for breath the way he is.”
“How is he, by the way?” Jarrett inquired.
“Better. The doctors say he has to stay until his lungs are at 80 percent of their function, but then he’ll go home on an oxygen tank until he heals which might take a while,” Lafford replied.
“Glad to hear it. Anyway, back to this, we think Haney should have told us about the previous collapse and the injuries or deaths if someone was killed down there,” Jarrett said.
“He should have told us either way,” Thayne said. He was fuming when he thought about the duplicity and only slightly relieved that the two agents seemed to know nothing about the accident. They could still be lying but they seemed genuine. He really liked the two men and he hoped that they hadn’t known anything about the collapse.
“You’re right,” Lafford said, still frowning deeply. “That was before we got this assignment here in Pocahontas County.”
“Well, that’s why we asked ya to come back and meet us here today. We thought we should be together when we asked Haney why he didn’t say anything about it,” Jarrett said.
The two agents nodded and handed them both the yellow mining hats that were required wear. Thayne put his on and he watched Jarrett do the same. The bright yellow hat gave Jarrett the most rugged sexy look, as if he’d walked right off the pages of one of those theme calendars he’d seen… the ones with firemen one month and cops the next… gay fantasy material all the way. Thayne cracked a big grin before he could stop it and Jarrett cocked his head to the side, studying him closely as he narrowed his eyes.
“What?”
Thayne almost started laughing but he certainly couldn’t admit that he’d been thinking about Jarrett yanking his jeans down and shoving him up against the wall of the mine and fucking him like mad, regardless of the fact that was exactly where his thoughts had strayed.
“Nothing.”
“You’ll tell me later,” Jarrett said through gritted teeth.
“Nope.”
Thayne turned and walked away, following Sales and Lafford toward the mining office trailer, leaving Jarrett to wonder about what he’d been thinking. Chances were, he was going to have to explain himself later on but that was okay with him. In fact, maybe he’d make Jarrett so crazy, his lover might be inclined to show him just what he thought about it. He was still chuckling when they walked up the steps to the trailer. Haney wasn’t in the front room and the four of them followed the sound of his voice through the trailer to the office he’d come out of the morning before, when he’d been arguing with the bank. He was on the phone once again but this time he sounded a lot calmer.
“Thank you, Miss Keyes. I suppose if that’s the best y’all can do, I should be grateful. It ain’t gonna hold us long but Mr. Boggs says, the board is meetin’ this week to okay another transfer of funds from somewhere else so we can stay up and runnin’ ‘til this here crisis has passed.” He paused and nodded his head at them as he looked up. His familiar frown was in place. “Yes, ma’am. I appreciate that. Thank you. Will do. To you too.” He hung up the phone and stared at them, sitting forward in the desk chair. “And, here ya are to yank my chain some more. Just what I need. The AT—fuckin’—F.”
Thayne glanced at Jarrett who was smirking. “I can name that tune in one note,” Jarrett said.
Haney frowned deeply and stood. “Huh?”
“Never mind,” Thayne said. “We’ll get to the reason why we’re here.”
“I’m waitin’ with baited breath,” Haney sneered.
“We’ve learned that there was an accident when the Saginaw Collective owned the mine,” Jarrett said. “A collapse?”
Haney nodded, setting his hands on his hips as he lifted his chin and looked down his nose at them. “Yeah, and? This explosion ain’t got nothin’ to do with that.”
“Yes it does,” Thayne interrupted him as Haney opened his mouth, probably to tell them to get the hell out. “It has everything to do with it if the federal safety funds that were awarded Saginaw have not been used to fix the problems in the mine. It’s illegal to use or divert federal safety funds anywhere but to where they were intended… in this case, to clean up safety violations out at the mine. I think you know now why we need to see those citations and we’re getting the feeling that you’re giving us the runaround, Mr. Haney.”
Haney’s face turned so red, for a second Thayne thought he had stopped breathing and that smoke was going to come pouring out of his ears. “I told ya! I don’t have copies of them citations. They go…”
“To the corporate office. Yeah, we heard you the first time,” Bud Sales said, interrupting the mine manager. “What we wanna know is why you never told us about the collapse in 2010.”
“It was 2011… and it was a totally unrelated incident to this,” Haney said, still agitated as he waved his hands in front of himself. “Look. I know it seems like we did nothin’ to clean up the messes out here but I can’t even pay my miners.” He gestured to the phone. “I just hung up with my banker and she told me that they’re clearing a credit line of twenty thousand for us. That’ll take care of pay for all of two weeks and it still don’t cover my cost of fuel and electricity.
“I’ve begged Boggs to get this under control but at this point, if I didn’t have men who depended on me to make sure I give ‘em their pay, I’d tell that asshole where he can shove his job. I haven’t taken a salary myself in two months. I ain’t got no savings and I’m not eligible for Social Security yet so that means, I’m gonna lose my house. If that happens… shit, I still got a kid in college. Am I supposed to tell her she can’t be a nurse cause her daddy can’t pay for school? What’s she gonna do? Come back here and marry some dirt poor hillbilly who can’t even get a job?” Tears sprang into his eyes suddenly and he reached up and swept his hard hat off his head, flinging it into the corner of the room. “I’ve fuckin’ had it! Now if ya don’t have anythin’ else, get the fuck outta here and leave me to my business!”
“Where’d the safety funds go?” Thayne pressed, feeling bad for the man yet needing an answer to their question.
Haney sent him a murderous scowl. “I never saw ‘em. After the collapse, we was closed for a week, clearin’ the mine and then we spent another ten days gettin’ our rotted timbers replaced and shored up.”
“The mine is fifteen years old,” Thayne said. “Is it normal to have rotted timbers five years into the mining operations, rotted so bad that the mine has a collapse by the time it’s only ten years old?”
Haney narrowed his eyes. “Look, I don’t have to tell ya anything. Y’all are here to investigate the cause of this explosion. I’m gonna tell ya what I think about things and then y’all are gonna leave my office and not darken my damn door again,” he sputtered.
“Okay,” Lafford said.
“I’m not sure why them timbers started rotting five years after we started building the mine. Chances are, they built the mine on the cheap and they purchased substandard lumber. I don’t know. I’ve been here since the mine was opened, but I sure wasn’t in the loop on what was
delivered out here to build the first mine shaft. I was here when it was bein’ constructed and the invoices I saw when the supplies was delivered showed only the best quality. Don’t mean them invoices weren’t falsified. There’s a chance that Saginaw bought poorer quality timbers and the suppliers altered the invoices to show we was usin’ the best. I had no idea who Saginaw was when I took the job. I sure would have said somethin’ to Saginaw if I thought the timber was substandard just like I’ve been tellin’ them about the problems with the intercom system and the ventilation systems since I got the first citation from the MSHA.”
“I thought you said the corporate office gets them,” Jarrett said, staring at the man suspiciously.
“They get the citations but the safety inspectors tell me exactly what they find when they come out here quarterly. They been sending the reports to the Red Hills Mining Collective directly since I was recruited to work here.”
“How did they recruit you, then?” Sales asked.
Haney reached up and rubbed at the bridge of his nose like he had a terrible headache. “Saginaw approached me when I worked out at the Carbon Creek Mine in the Powder River Basin when the Red Hills Mine was being built in 2001.”
“In Wyoming?” Jarrett asked and Thayne glanced at him. He’d never heard of it but until this case, Thayne knew nothing about coal mining.
“Yeah. The same. Anyway, I was workin’ as a safety officer and Roy Finster, the CEO of the Saginaw Collective, approached me out at the mine. He invited me for dinner and offered me a substantial increase if I’d move my family down to these parts and run his mine for them. They paid for my movin’ and bought me out of my two-week notice with Carbon Creek and had me and my family on a plane a few days later. They even sent someone to pack up our house and move our cars on a flatbed. He told me he couldn’t find good talent in West Virginia so he was poachin’ the Powder River Basin for good employees. I suppose I was blinded by flattery or I never would have made the move.
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