33 Degrees of Separation (Legacy)

by Rain Carrington

  “I got a few blow jobs when we’d land anywhere where I could find a bar, but I didn’t fuck anyone for the longest time. I reasoned I was in a hurry, or had things on my mind, so a blowjob in a bar was better. What it really was, was I could disconnect from a blowjob.

  “I started to fuck a guy, and you were there. I saw your face when I looked down at him, and I started to cry. Like a fucking kid, I cried, and I pretended I had something to do and I kicked him out of my room. I felt bad for the guy, but I couldn’t help it.

  “That’s when I knew I had to try. I knew you’d tell me to go fuck myself, but I had to try, you know? I flew to Denver, I planned out everything I’d say. I wanted to make sure you were single still, so I figured I’d watch a couple days, so I wouldn’t get my nuts kicked again. I saw you leave for work for two days, surprised you were building new homes instead of restoring old ones. Anyway, you went to work, went home, hung with your mom. I thought…I thought maybe I had a chance. Then you went off with that guy, and I thought…well, you know what I thought. It was over and my heart broke all over again. I mean, I couldn’t breathe for days, like the first time. It hurt so bad I wanted to die, but I’m not a coward that way.

  “Now, to know it wasn’t what I thought, and if I’d have had the guts to just go talk to you, I’d have known that.”

  When he grew silent again, Ian felt his own tears running down his face and he wanted to scream and pound his fists against the wall over how unfair it had been that they both had felt the same, done the same, and had missed out on years being together.

  Not that it was sure they could get it back. He worried Pat would think they’d gone through too much. Still, he had to try.

  He moved to the bottom of the bed, wrapping his legs around Pat and as soon as Pat turned his head, Ian moved fast to kiss him.

  Pat moved him around to sit on his lap, and they kissed, closed-mouthed, for a full minute. Ian pulled back after and whispered, “I never stopped loving you or wanting you. Everything you said, I did the same, except for finding you.”

  “Ian, I’m so fucking sorry. I know I fucked up, and how badly I fucked up.”

  “Shut up. I forgave you for that a long time ago. If he’d have died, he would have died to save me, like my mother wanted to do, and what I know you would have done.”

  “I wanted to go in, but he told me it wouldn’t work. The fail-safe supposedly only worked with a Grail member to operate it. I guess that was a lie.”

  Ian’s chest felt like a thousand-pound weight suddenly sat on it, and he couldn’t breathe. “You? You wanted to do it?”

  “Like your mother, I saw you finally had a dad. I didn’t want you to lose that. I stupidly thought you could go on to find another guy easy enough.”

  Ian kissed him again, though it was different. He used his whole body for the kiss, moving into Pat, thinking about his not being in the world slamming everything home to him. It could have been him all those months, crying, like his mother had. She’d lost the man she’d loved, and it could have been him.

  Pat moved him to the bed and kissed him again, but that time, the kiss was short and when Pat moved away from him, he was smiling. “Ian, I never thought I’d hold you again.”

  He was crying openly, and he didn’t care. He wanted Pat to see it. “I hoped.”

  “You always hoped, Ian. You were the one that knew the Grail could be crushed, that their evil could be taken from the fucking earth. You had hope for us all, and because of you, we’re winning. We’re winning back hearts and minds to see that money and power isn’t all there is. I want to tell you everything, and there’s so much to tell.”

  Both his hands held Pat’s beautiful face. “I want to hear it all, but after. Make love to me again, Pat. Well, maybe not again. Make love to me for the first time, while we don’t have anything to worry about or fight. Make love to me for the first time, just you and me and the love I never stopped feeling for you.”

  And he did. They stripped down and Ian found a whole stash of condoms and lube in the bottom drawer of the dresser. He laughed when he found it, wondering if it was Javi’s for his many trysts, or if he knew so conclusively that Pat and Ian would reunite that they’d need them.

  Pat was sheathed and ready quickly and he lay beside Ian, fingering him while they kissed slowly, passion making them both groan with the anticipation of being together, feeling their bodies connect for the first time without the Grail following their every breath, without the fear of the end or the thought that at any moment, everything could change.

  There, on that mountain, surrounded by the live, noisy jungle, their sounds competed, and when Pat finally moved, pushing inside him, he knew that no matter where he and Pat were, that was home.

  Epilogue

  “Ian!” Pat was yelling for him from the kitchen, and Ian laughed, shaking his head as he placed the last screw into the new window. As he stood back to admire his own work, his hands were set on his hips.

  That didn’t last as Pat came up behind him, grabbing him around the waist, spinning him around fast. “Hey!”

  “I was calling you,” he said as he set Ian back on his feet.

  “I heard, but I was busy with the window.”

  Pat finally noticed the oval window was in place in the attic, where it could be the crown of their home, the beautiful Victorian Pat bought him as a wedding gift. The glass depicted a villa in the jungle, where their lives together truly started.

  “It’s fucking beautiful, baby. I can’t believe how great of detail that artist got it.”

  “Javi sent him a picture, but I never thought he’d get it so close.”

  After they reunited in that villa, three days after, Javi returned. Cockier than ever at the success of his scheme, he stayed one night with them before taking them back to Colorado.

  Marianne was thrilled to coordinate the wedding that was small, inexpensive and held on the plateau of another mountain as the sun rose that morning. Never once looking back, Pat and he had made a life together, and after six months, the home Pat purchased could be lived in, though there was still a lot of work to do.

  It was work Ian cherished. He couldn’t work on it all the time, as he kept his job building new homes. When he was able, however, he was there, hammer in hand, making their home into its former glory.

  Pat was lending a clumsy hand. He was great with a gun, great with people, but he and wood didn’t exactly mix. “Okay, why were you calling?”

  “Come see. My project is almost done.”

  Ian took his hand so he could be led from the attic, down the stairs that had been recently fixed. Pat was like a giddy kid as they descended, and Ian was so glad he’d given up being a mercenary.

  Pat was back to his former self, working not for the government, but for the investigation agency founded by Stacy Woo and Steve Ricci. The Denver office was run completely by Pat, and he’d managed to do so well, they’d hired ten people.

  Ian was taken all the way to the basement where Pat had set up camp when they went together to the house to fix things. After making him swear he wouldn’t go near the foundation or any structural holds, he’d given permission for Pat to go wild with whatever he had planned to build.

  Ian was shocked and stopped short, letting go of Pat’s hand as he saw that there was a complete room built there. “Pat, how the hell did you do this? You suck!”

  “Gee, thanks, babe.”

  The walls were solidly built with wide boards and heavy crossbeams. The door was the same and it blended with the walls. “Pat, it’s great!”

  “Thanks, but you were right. I suck at this stuff, so I actually hired some guys to come do it while you were at work, and I just did the inside. That’s the best part anyway, at least I think.”

  He made Ian close his eyes as he led him into the room. The thud of the door shutting behind him made Ian’s stomach do a flip. “Is this some cell for me to live in when you fly to Texas on business or somewhere else?”

  �
�It could be, so you better behave.”

  “Let me open my eyes now!”

  He felt Pat close to his face and he got a long, delicious kiss. “Open,” Pat whispered, then moved away as Ian did.

  He could feel the blush as it crept over his cheeks, and he set his hand over his mouth to muffle the nervous laughter.

  “Pat, it’s a fucking playroom.”

  There was a spanking bench in the center, floggers on hooks along the far wall, and thought the space wasn’t huge, maybe 12x12, Pat had managed to include a cross for Ian to be strapped on the wall to the left of him.

  “Damn right it’s a playroom. I thought, well, we’ve been playing around with BDSM for a while now, and you seem to like being tied to the bed and stuff. Why not take the next step?”

  Ian walked around the room, running a hand over the implements, blushing more, but not all the heat was from blushing. A lot was his body reacting to the thoughts running through his head.

  He noticed Pat’s face then, the fire in his eyes and Ian stepped back, almost afraid. “What? Now?”

  “Damn right, now. Get your clothes off, baby. We’re going to try this room out.”

  Ian laughed nervously, but did as he was told, and once naked, his clothes thrown into one of the corners, Pat bent him over the bench in the middle of the room. “Welcome home, baby.”

  He was kissed down his back as he felt tears spring to his eyes. They conflicted harshly with the good he felt, but it had been a long road for them. The feeling of being home, of having the man of his dreams, the love of his life, and knowing he’d do anything for Ian, it was all so much.

  They’d stuck to the basics on safewords, and he croaked out, “Yellow.”

  He was immediately brought up and into Pat’s arms, after Pat saw his face and the tears. “I’m sorry, baby, I thought you’d like this!”

  “No,” he managed. “I do!”

  Pat didn’t ask him for anything else, but took him out of the room, and that made Ian cry more. On the other side of the room, Pat had brought his old couch, and he sat with Ian there, on his lap, cradling him. “I’m sorry-”

  “Shhh, stop that. That’s what safewords are for. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! Nothing at all is wrong. I’m home for the first time in my life. You, this house that was a crumbling mess, but now, it’s ours and it’s really ours, you put the perfect touch to it, something I would have never thought of, and it’s ours!” He realized he was rambling, so he chuckled and lay his head on Pat’s shoulder. “I was overcome, that’s all. I swear. I’m so fucking happy.”

  “You scared me. All I’ve wanted since the moment I saw you in that heap on the cabin floor was to make you happy, Ian. I hope you know that.”

  He nodded, feeling Pat’s lips on his forehead. “I do. I saw it in your face that day, but I couldn’t let myself believe it.”

  “Well, believe it.”

  They kissed and again, he was coming home. It was a place that was magical, warm, comfortable and filled with passion all at once. Pat was everything, and Ian knew it was forever.

  “Take me back in there. Hurt me, then make it all better. It’ll be like my life, how much everything hurt until you came into it and made everything better.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I know.”

  He was led back into the room, this time bound to the bench, that was made solidly, a thin cushion for comfort over heavy oak. There were straps on the sides, thick leather that he was cuffed to by his wrists, and another strap went over his lower back, keeping him snug, secure.

  That’s how he felt. Secure in everything, knowing that Pat was there to guide him, push him, make him better. The pain would come and he’d take it, screaming, perhaps, crying, for sure, and his body would come alive with it, heated, tingling before Pat brought him to release and then held him, living him.

  It was a ritual that few understood, but Ian lived that every day with Pat. Held down to the bed, fucked so hard it hurt and made him crazy with desire at once, then was held, kissed, coddled. This would be an extension of that, a leveling up like a video game, where it was harder, but the rewards so much more satisfying.

  A hand rubbed over his ass, and Pat asked him what the safewords were, though he’d just used one. After he repeated them, it began, first with Pat’s bare hand, slapping across each cheek of his ass, progressively getting more sting, the strength behind each strike increasing.

  Then, when he knew Ian was ready, he used a leather strap, one as thick as the cuffs. Easy at first, to warm Ian to the coming pain, then harder, switching from the left cheek to the right, sending lightning bolts of pain to his entire being.

  Ian’s throat hurt was moaning, from yelling out, but there was no safeword uttered. There were no words period, as all was a jumbled mewling. Faster the whipping became, Pat’s big, strong hand on his back, though he wasn’t moving.

  Then, he stopped feeling the times when the leather wasn’t on his skin. It was all one long whip, the sting incredible, the pain turning into something else as he floated away on one of his screams. He could hear it, like he was in a tunnel, and the tunnel echoed it back to him, the noise, the white noise of his own voice.

  Then, through that noise came a sound that he reached out for. It was Pat’s voice. “Ian? Are you okay? Can I continue?”

  Garbled, but enough for Pat to understand, he groaned, “Yes.”

  Right next to his ear, that growling, deep voice that sent Ian to the top of the world spoke, informing him with ho hesitation, “I’m going to take your ass now. I’m going to fuck you, Ian, and take pleasure from you, because you’re mine and you belong to me.”

  He belonged to Pat. The words were a life raft in an ocean that he was lost in for so long. Belonging, somewhere, to someone, it was all he’d wanted. “Yes.”

  Pat was inside him, and Ian felt it, but barely. He was still floating on the wave of the whipping, and Pat’s body connecting to his, the heat of him, the hairs on his legs touching Ian’s raw flesh, it threw that into overdrive.

  Then Pat was hitting his prostate, and his hands were gripping Ian’s shoulders so tightly that his fingers bit into Ian’s muscles. All of it was a collage of sensation, scrambling him more, keeping him far from himself, and yet so far inside himself that it was as if he was meeting the Ian there for the first time.

  Pat didn’t hold back, and he rarely did. He fucked Ian like a he was tossing around a rag doll, his grunts coming over the cacophony of the white noise and his own whimpers. The bench held him steady, keeping him in place so Pat could take his pleasure, ramming into him hard and telling him what a good boy he was.

  He was good. Ian hadn’t felt that way most of the life he’d led before Pat. He wasn’t good, wasn’t bad, he existed in some plane in between. There was money, and friends who weren’t really friends, then there was confusion and questions that never got answers.

  And then there was Pat, giving him everything he could need. All the questions were answered, and he was a good boy, a good man, and that was because of the man fucking his ass like he owned it. And he did own it.

  Pat bent over him, the rush of words coming over him, bringing him back from the far reaches of his sanity. “I need to come inside you, Ian. I need to come inside you and watch it leak out a little. I want you to feel me inside you like that.”

  He couldn’t answer, didn’t have a language or a mind to do so, but his head was nodding, his tear-wet cheek sliding on the vinyl of the bench.

  He didn’t feel it, the cum being shot in him, but he felt Pat’s hips stuttering, heard the strangle as the grunt was stuck in Pat’s throat. What he didn’t know that when Pat was watching the cum leaking from him, he’d be jacking Ian’s cock from between his legs, making him scream out until his own scream was caught, and he choked on it, head lifting then falling as he was spent so completely, he felt as if he’d left his body entirely.

  He walked on legs that couldn’t hold him, but that was
okay. Pat held him, taking him to the couch he had before, holding him on his lap as before, giving him tiny sips of tepid water, kissing the drying tears from his face. “God, Ian, I love you so much. You’re everything to me.”

  When he could speak, he looked to Pat, who’s eyes were glistening with his own intense emotions showing plainly, and said, “Welcome home.”

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