33 Degrees of Separation (Legacy)

by Rain Carrington

  At exactly six, he opened the door to the surprise, and whisked her into the kitchen. She was so nice, he wished he could have done it when he’d first thought of it, but it didn’t matter. From then on, they’d all benefit from the new relationship.

  After assuring things were running smoothly, he returned to the bedroom to wake his partner up gently. Heading under the covers, Ian kissed along Pat’s side until he came to his dick, which he slurped into his mouth, and found it hardening right off the bat.

  Moaning from above the covers told him that the gesture was appreciated, and it wasn’t long before he was sucking a long, hard cock to completion. Pat stiffened and caressed his face at once, pulling him up as soon as Ian had swallowed to kiss some of the taste from his mouth.

  “That was great, baby. Did you get your business finished? I thought maybe we could stay in bed today.”

  “I think that’s a great idea. I think breakfast in bed would be a good start to that. What would you like?”

  Pat chuckled and teased, “A lot of things you don’t have here. Some toast, I guess, with that funky jam in the fridge.”

  He was talking about the plum mango that someone had sent him a few weeks before, one from a fine shop that sold only specialty items like the jam. “You have good taste.”

  He got a long, sweet kiss for that. “I sure do. Look at the guy I picked.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere. I’ll be right back with your breakfast.” He got up and to the door before he worried Pat might follow. “Don’t move. Let me serve my Dom.”

  “I will be right here, baby.”

  Relieved, he hurried to the kitchen, hoping the smell that was smacking him in the appetite wasn’t wafting to the bedroom. It would give everything away. In the kitchen, on two plates were piles of the perfect biscuits and gravy, the same that they’d had at the diner when they were living in the motel.

  The cook, Theresa Mares, was wiping her hands on her crisp, white apron. She was in her fifties, short and a little overweight, but that just added to her pretty round cheeks. “I could cook something else; you know. Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “Next time, if you don’t mind coming back, say, once a week? I don’t think my waistline could handle more.”

  She seemed shocked. “Once a week?”

  “If you can! I don’t want to interfere with your other job! I can pay you more!”

  “No! Mr. Andrews, you’re being very generous already. I didn’t think you’d want a steady appointment, though. That would be great, truly. I have two kids in college, everything helps.”

  “Then once a week it is. I’ll pay your travel back and forth; I know that’s a long drive.”

  “Thank you. That would be appreciated. Please, take it, before it gets cold and we can work out the rest later.”

  Denny came stumbling into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What do I smell?”

  “Denny, this is Theresa. Theresa, this is my roommate, Denny. Can you feed the poor starving man? His girlfriend can’t cook.”

  “She can, she just won’t. She says I can feed myself.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Theresa pointed out, “but I’ve yet to let a man starve because he’s able and not willing. I guess that makes me a bad feminist.”

  “But a wonderful human being,” Denny crooned, pulling the plate she served him close and taking a long whiff. “Dang, that smells like heaven.”

  Ian laughed and took the plates to the bedroom, kicking the door open with his toe. Pat was sitting up and when he saw the plates, his eyes got huge. “What the hell?”

  “Surprise! I hired the cook from the diner we used to go to. She and I just made an arrangement to have her come once a week.”

  Pat took the plate from him but wouldn’t stop staring. “Ian? Are you serious?”

  Thinking he was angry, Ian quickly explained, “I am paying her very well, and she says the money is coming in handy, so I hope that doesn’t make you think I’m throwing it around or anything. I’d learn to cook this myself, but I probably still couldn’t get it right.”

  “No, no, baby! Jesus, that was kind and generous of you!”

  Pat looked at his plate and licked the side of his mouth. Ian sat by him, digging into his own food, and the moment that creamy, spicy bite hit his tongue, he moaned loudly.

  “Once a week? Ian, this is…I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t. It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full anyway.”

  Pat ate like he was starving, and when both plates were clean, they took them to the kitchen together, so Pat could meet Theresa and thank her for her food. “This…I can’t tell you how much we loved going to that diner every morning. I think we let ourselves starve most of the day and evening, so we’d have room for breakfast.”

  “Aw, well, aren’t you a sweetheart? Mr. Andrews told me how much you loved the food, and this works out well for me. The diner dropped a shift on me last week. This more than makes up for that.”

  “They’re idiots to cut your hours. Thank you so much.”

  She set her hand on her hip and grinned at them both, and Ian noticed Denny was on his second helping. “Anything special for next time?”

  Ian wanted to list off five things he remembered at least, but it was Pat’s gift, so he let Pat have the choice. He was glad of it when Pat said, “Your western omelet. The vegetables with crunch, the bacon pieces that weren’t so crisp I felt like I could break a tooth!”

  “Well, dang, good memory. I’ll pick up the stuff and be here and seven, sharp. Let me clean up and I’ll make myself scarce.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Ian corrected. “I’ll clean up.”

  She tried to argue, but Ian shooed her to the door, adding a hundred-dollar bill to the five they’d agreed on. “That’s a tip, so please, take it. You made my boyfriend’s week.”

  “You all made mine. You’re a sweet man, Mr. Andrews.”

  “Ian, please. Thank you.”

  As soon as she was gone, Pat grabbed him and kissed him so hard it took his breath away. Pat smiled through the kiss and Ian knew then he had done well. “You are so fucking thoughtful. Ian! That was wonderful of you. For me and for her.”

  “Really? You liked it?”

  “You know I did. Bedroom, now.”

  Denny was heading through the living room to grab his phone from the coffee table when Pat said that last bit, and he giggled, teasing, “Lord, I need to put in my earpieces and listen to music. Loudly.”

  “Yeah, you should crank it,” Pat warned, dragging Ian to the bedroom.

  Once the door was closed, Ian could feel and even smell the arousal in the room. It took up all the air, all the room until he felt he was in a tiny box and it was getting smaller by the second.

  Pat took up the most room in there, engulfing him, wrapping around him until they were no longer two entities, but one being, and his clothes were shed quickly, the heated, wicked look in Pat’s eyes actually scared him a bit.

  They’d taken it easy since that first ravenous fuck. Ian knew that was over and he as about to be sore for days again. Pat pushed him to the bed and was on him in a heartbeat, holding his hands to the bed, keeping him quiet by smashing their mouths together.

  Pat was making him dizzy, and his body had waves of heat and lust flowing through it, from his toes to the top of his head. Not once in his life had a person done that to him, got his entire body into the sexual acts. Not until Pat.

  When Pat was lubing, rubbing the slick over his cock, he was staring at Ian, his steel glare stabbing through him like that cock was about to do. That look, those eyes, he couldn’t escape them, and he didn’t want to. Trapped under that ice and fire, a willing captive.

  He spread as wide as he could after moving up on the bed to give Pat the room he’d need to work. And Ian didn’t make a mistake in that, it as work. He used his body to work Ian into wails of pleasure that didn’t form words, couldn’t. He wasn’t human when P
at was fucking him, so he didn’t have a language. Animal grunts and screams were all he could manage, a sexual thing, only involved in the act.

  Pat speared him, and that was the only way to describe it. When his cock entered Ian, it was as if he was speared, the staff disappearing inside him, invading his insides and Ian could only hold on for dear life and he started to be pummeled.

  With teeth biting into his lip and massive hands holding him, he could do nothing but take it, the cock, the powerful hips that guided it. Wrapping his legs around Pat, he tried to keep from being shaken around, a lifeless, boneless thing that the cock was controlling.

  Sweat, heat, saliva, lust, those were his focus. The morning sun lit on them through the partially open blinds, a spotlight on their decadence. Gluttons for one another, Ian could barely breathe, but he could taste, and he did. Any spot of flesh he could get close to was being licked, sucked, nibbled, and Pat was going farther, pressing his between teeth and pulling, leaving marks all over his neck, chest and shoulders.

  Pat didn’t stop his savage thrusting except when he held Ian’s head in both hands, kissing him, whispering harshly, “I love fucking you. I love fucking you, Ian. I could fuck you all day, every day.”

  “Yeah, yeah, do it, do that, nothing but fucking, all day.”

  “Fucking slut,” he accused, biting into his neck. “Slut for my cock. Craving cock, yeah, that’s by baby.”

  He started in again, and his short break gave him the renewed energy to ram into him again, manhandling him, digging his fingers into Ian’s flesh, staring into his eyes, daring him to move in a way Pat didn’t allow, beg him to stop, anything. Pat dared him through the entire rest of the fuck, and Ian started to growl like Pat usually did, begging for more, daring him to fuck harder, fuck him deeper.

  It was a violent dance, a fight, the rolling on the bed, the slamming of Pat’s cock into him, holding him down, dragging him up, never giving Ian a moment to get adjusted before he was spun around again and fucked some more.

  He didn’t need to jog or swim, not with the workouts the sessions with Pat were. The sweat poured off them, only to be tasted by flat tongues running over flesh and sucking mouths.

  It took ten minutes before his breath so much as started to slow, and Pat was laid out next to him, having as hard a time with his own lungs. “Pat…Pat…I can’t.”

  “I can’t first.”

  “Move.”

  “Think,” Pat countered, laughing.

  “I need water,” Ian informed him, then sat up, which was hard as it was. “You need water?”

  “I need a shower, but that’s not happening. Water would be a nice start, though.”

  Ian stumbled to the bathroom, washing cold water over his face, then got his robe on and went out into the living room, where Denny sat with his earbuds in, listening to music.

  Ian waved and Denny shook his head, chuckling low. “You done?” He took out his earbuds to hear the answer, but it wasn’t needed. All Ian could answer with was a nod of his head.

  After getting the two of them water, he got back to the bedroom, handing the glass to Pat. “I drank one full one before I left the fridge.”

  “Good. Can’t have you dehydrated.”

  Ian kissed him after they drank and then kissed him again. Pat held his face gently, the kissing sweet and tender, so unlike the sex they’d just had together. “You’d tell me if I was getting too rough?”

  “I would. You’re not. I’ve wanted that for a long time, Pat. Manhandled like that. It takes me out of my head. I can do nothing more than feel, and it feels amazing. Pat, don’t think I’m not up to it, or anything. Trust me that I am…stronger than even I thought.”

  Pat lost the little grin he had and made his entire year. “I don’t think either of us has seen the extent of your strength yet, babe. You have something inside you that glows with it.”

  He lay his head on Pat’s chest as they got back in bed and he asked, “Pat? If I can’t manage all this, and we have to fake my death, or whatever, that means…you and I…?”

  “Will be in it together. We’d probably have to be apart for a while, in case they’re suspicious and watching me. Then…then you can forget ever getting rid of me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Everything else in his life was falling into place so easily and perfectly. He was suspecting the Grail was somehow making everything easy for him, but they weren’t magicians. They couldn’t have made him so lucky to get Pat, or friends like Denny and even Javi.

  Javi’s hacker connection was making a little headway. She’d found an email service that the Grail used, and only the Grail. They had their own piece of the internet, she said, like the darknet, but one only the members of the Grail used. Ian wondered why he hadn’t been let in on that yet, but he was only a first degree.

  The night before he was to visit his father, Javi called to get he and Pat to the new house he was using. The new one was a three-story home in a new development, and didn’t look like it had been lived in yet. That was a relief, not having to wonder where the residents of the home he was using were.

  When they met him, he was sitting on the rented couch, going over something on his computer. “Come here, guys. Check this out. I think we can forget Ian’s theory.”

  They sat on either side of him and watched the video he brought up, and Ian as shocked to see what it was.

  Like the day his father had taken him to that secluded area and handed him the gun, he was watching James Kent lead Cameron into the woods.

  “What the fuck is this, Javi? Where’d you get this?”

  “Prue got it off that darknet of the Grail’s. They have recordings of all of you, and more, going back a long time. Decades.”

  Someone was maybe fifty feet away, using a zoom lens to record, and James Kent was walking beside his son, arm slung around his shoulders.

  They were so similar, and the quality of the recording wasn’t so great, that it was hard at first to make out which was which. Even their suits were similar, save the red pocket square one wore in his suitcoat and the white the other wore.

  It became apparent quickly, however, which was which when one collapsed in the other’s arms as they were passing a choke cherry bush.

  “Right here, they stay there for a long time. What are they doing?”

  Ian answered Javi, but it didn’t sound like his own voice, it was so gravely and bitter. “He’s begging his father not to make him do it. He’s using everything he can think of to talk his father out of it. Begging, that’s how it starts, bargaining, telling him that he’ll go far away, where no one will ever find him. He cusses at him, then apologizes and does it again two or three more times.

  “He’s calling his father a monster, calling him out on the lies. He’s telling his father that this will haunt him for the rest of his life.”

  Javi was quiet, but Pat said, “You know that because you did all those things.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ian could barely feel his legs, his heart was beating excruciatingly slow. The memories of that day were jumbled, mixed together most of the time, but watching it, he was reliving every second and remembered exactly how everything smelled, the dirt under his hands as he was on the ground, like Cameron, begging for his life.

  When James and Cameron could be seen again, they went another few feet. Cameron’s face was in his hands as he sobbed, but it didn’t matter. James pushed him to his knees and handed him a gun, forcing it into his hand.

  “The gun is heavy, and so cold…so fucking cold. It was like holding a heavy piece of ice. I knew it, I just knew it was the one with the bullet. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. I thought…I thought that my father had known all my life I’d be the unlucky one, the one who’d get the real bullet. God, I felt everything, so much loss…”

  “Baby, it’s over. You don’t have to keep watching. It’s pretty obvious that Cameron didn’t fake his death.”

  “No. I have to see it. I have to know for
sure.”

  He watched Cameron on the ground, and though his face was obscured with his hands, he knew what he looked like. His face was likely soaked with tears and his eyes slammed shut, unable to face seeing his father.

  James bent over his son and moved the hand with the gun up to his chin, and though there was no sound, they saw him speaking to him.

  “What the fuck would a father say in that situation?”

  “Javi,” Pat scolded. “We have someone who fucking knows that.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Ian.”

  “He said…he’s saying that he has to be a man. That sacrifice is the way of the world, that without it, no good can come of it. He’s saying that he’s doing it for his family, and that his family can continue to have the best of lives because of the sacrifice, if he is the one with the bullet.”

  “Sick fucks, man. Sick mother fuckers.”

  They watched James holding the gun to his son’s head, and both their hands were shaking, James turned away from the camera, his own emotions getting the best of him, it seemed. They were struggling a little, and Ian felt his stomach clench, as if he were going to be sick. It seemed Cameron wasn’t strong enough to stop it, Ian thought bitterly, but James had shown more emotion than Ian’s father had.

  Ian got up and walked away, unable to take another minute. Like he thought, Pat and Javi watched, but Pat was up quickly after and told him, “Yeah, baby, it…happened. It showed, well, the impact of the bullet. There was no faking that.”

  Ian thought his legs would give out, but he wouldn’t show Pat or Javi his weakness. “Yeah, so much for that.”

  “What are you going to tell your father tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know, Pat. I just don’t know. I’ll have nothing on him anymore.”

  “Still, you think he and James are lovers. That may be something.”

  It was true, he had that, but after his last theory was wrong, he was worried all his thoughts were way off.

  The one high spot came to his mind and he turned, sighing, “At least we have this. We have proof that James knew, and if there are others she found, there’s more proof. We could blackmail them or turn them in to someone.”