🔥 HIDDEN FLAMES Chapter XX: Celebration

🔞| Explicit sexual content | Mature audiences only

The bourbon burned my throat like an old friend's embrace. Familiar. Warm. Comforting.

We sat on the porch, the rocking chairs swaying gently beneath us, watching the sun go down over the farm. The sky was on fire. Orange, red, gold, purple, every color nature ever invented, poured across the horizon like a tipped-over paint glass. The air above the fields shimmered with the last heat of the day. The scent of freshly mowed grass mixed with the dust of dry earth and from somewhere on the neighboring farm the smell of a fire drifted toward us.

Lucas sat beside me. His rocking chair swayed slowly. The bourbon glass in his hand, the ice cubes clinking softly as he raised it. His eyes watched the sky but at the corner of his lips that smile was hiding. That Lucas smile that always stopped my heart. That smile that didn't ask permission. That said: it's over. We survived. We're here.

George got his punishment.

Eighteen years. Eighteen years behind bars. When the judge read the sentence, the courtroom went so silent I could hear my own heartbeat. Lucas's hand squeezed mine under the bench. I didn't look at him. I couldn't look at him because I knew if I did, I'd fall apart. I held myself together until we got out of the building, until we got in the car, until Lucas closed the door and then, only then, I collapsed like a building with its foundations ripped out.

I cried. I cried like I never had in my life. Lucas just held me. He didn't say anything. He just held me until my tears ran dry and after that too.

That was three days ago. Since then the world is different. The air is different. The sky is different. Every single morning when I open my eyes and realize George is in prison and I am free, it's like learning to breathe all over again.

"What are you thinking about?" Lucas asked.

I looked at him. The golden sunset light poured over his face and made his skin glow honey-colored. His eyes in that light didn't even look blue, more golden-brown, warm, like home.

"That I'm free," I said.

Lucas raised his glass. "You're free."

We clinked. The glass chimed, the bourbon glowed in the sunset, and we drank. The fire went down my throat and I felt warm inside, but not from the alcohol. From that word. Free.

For the first time in months I didn't look over my shoulder on the street. For the first time in months my stomach didn't freeze when an unknown number called. For the first time in months I felt like the farm wasn't a shelter but a home.

The sun kept sinking lower. The orange turned to deep red, the red to purple, the purple to dark blue. The crickets started their music, softly at first, uncertainly, then louder and louder as the night took over. Somewhere by the stable a horse snorted. The wind carried the sweet scent of alfalfa from the pasture.

The conversation dwindled to fewer and fewer words. We didn't need to talk. The silence between us wasn't empty. The silence between us was full of everything that had happened and everything that was yet to come. The silence between us was home.

Lucas set his glass down on the table. The ice cubes rattled. He turned toward me. His eyes changed. Not because of the sunset light. Something else ignited in them. Something that wasn't warm from bourbon.

I knew that look.

My body responded before my brain processed it. My skin tingled. My heart sped up. My mouth went dry and at the bottom of my stomach something tightened, sweet and hot and urgent.

Lucas didn't say anything. He just looked at me. With that gaze that always stripped me bare. Not of my clothes. Of my walls. Of my armor. With that gaze that said: you're mine and tonight we celebrate.

The air changed between us. It grew thicker. Hotter. The warmth of the bourbon in my chest paled compared to what was now igniting in my entire body.

The last sliver of sun disappeared behind the horizon. The sky shifted to deep blue. The first stars lit up above us like tiny fires.

Lucas stood up.

His rocking chair creaked as he rose from it. He set down his glass. He turned toward me. Two steps and he stood before me. He looked down at me. His eyes against the darkening sky looked black but in their depths that fire I knew so well was glowing.

He leaned down to me. His mouth stopped next to my ear. His breath was warm and smelled of bourbon.

"Come with me," he whispered.

His voice ran down my spine like a finger walking along the vertebrae. My skin broke out in goosebumps. My mouth opened but no sound came out. It didn't need to. My body had already answered.

I stood up. Lucas took my hand. His fingers laced into mine, tightly, surely, possessively. He led me down the porch steps. The wood creaked under our feet. At the bottom of the steps the grass was soft and cool beneath our soles.

The yard. The open space in front of the farmhouse where during the day dogs ran around and chickens scratched at the dirt. Now it was quiet. Just the crickets and the stars and the wind that stroked our skin with its warm breath.

Lucas stopped in the middle of the yard. He turned me to face him. His hands cupped my face. Palms on both cheeks, fingers in my hair, holding me like something precious that needs protecting.

He looked into my eyes.

A long moment that held everything. Everything that had existed between us from the beginning. The first glance. The first touch. The first kiss. The first time our bodies became one. The fear. The secrecy. George's threats. The fight. The trial. Lucas's hand squeezing mine under the bench. My tears in the car. The farm door closing behind us and finally, finally we are safe.

All of it was in that single look.

Then he kissed me.

Slowly. Deeply. His lips pressed against mine and the world disappeared. The taste of bourbon on his tongue, warm and burningly sweet. His tongue sought mine, slowly, savoring, as if he had all of eternity. As if there was nowhere to rush. As if nothing existed in the whole world but this kiss, this yard, this night.

I sighed into his mouth. My hand pressed against his chest, I felt his heartbeat beneath it, fast and strong like a drum calling to battle.

The kiss slowly changed. Deepened. Grew hungrier. Lucas's hand slid to my neck, his fingers gripped my hair, gently but firmly, and pulled my head back. My neck stretched taut, I turned toward the starry sky, and Lucas's mouth latched onto my neck.

Lips. Tongue. Teeth. He raked across my skin and I moaned, the sound escaping me before I could stop it, lost in the night like a secret prayer no one heard.

No one but us.



Lucas's hand slid to the hem of my shirt. His fingers touched my skin and I shivered, not from the cold, from the heat. He slowly pulled my shirt up. The fabric slid across my chest, my collarbone, over my head. The cool evening air hit my bare skin and my nipples hardened instantly.

Lucas stepped back. He looked at me. Just looked. His eyes on my chest, my stomach, the hip bone that outlined itself at the edge of my pants. He looked like someone studying a work of art. Like someone who wants to memorize every line, every curve.

His hands reached my waistband. He slowly unbuttoned it. Pulled it down slower than he needed to. As he did, he knelt before me. His mouth landed on my hip bone, a kiss, soft and hot, and I trembled above him like a leaf in the wind.

The pants slid down to my ankles. I stepped out of them. The boxers followed. Lucas's fingers hooked into the fabric and pulled them down, slowly, inch by inch, and every inch of skin he uncovered, he kissed. My hip. The crease of my thigh. The inside of my thigh.

I stood naked in the grass under the stars.

My skin glowed silver in the moonlight. The wind ran across my body, cool, soft, and the sensation on my burning skin was almost painfully good. I felt the softness of the grass under my feet, the warm embrace of the air on my chest, the music of the crickets that now seemed to play just for me.

Lucas stood before me. He stood there clothed while I was naked, and that contrast somehow aroused me even more in some perverse way. He towered over me, his eyes burned across my body, and I felt his gaze as if it were his hands.

Then Lucas began to undress.

Slowly. He unbuttoned his shirt, top to bottom, one by one. His chest opened up in the moonlight. Broad, strong, the body of a farmer who'd worked the land for years. His skin golden-brown from the sun, the muscles not from a gym but from hard labor. His shirt fell onto the grass.

His pants came next. The sound of the buckle in the silence was sharp as a gunshot. The jeans slid down his muscular thighs and he stepped out of them. Through the boxers his hardness was visible, straining fabric, impatient body.

The boxers fell too.

Two naked bodies under the stars, in the soft grass, in the silence of the farm. The moonlight poured silver across our skin. The wind ran over us. The silhouette of distant mountains against the night sky. Somewhere by the barn an owl hooted, softly, sleepily. The soft snorting of horses from the stable. The endless music of the crickets wrapping around us like a blanket.

Lucas knelt before me.



His mouth started on my chest. It wasn't a kiss. It was a bite in the disguise of a kiss. His teeth pressed against my skin, right at the edge of pain, just enough to make my back tremble and my head snap backward. I felt the muscles beneath my chest tighten from the heat. My heart was beating so hard I could almost hear it.

He took my nipple between his teeth. Pulled. Sucked. His tongue traced circles around it, hot and wet, then the teeth again, sharper than they should have been, and I moaned. Loudly. My hand found the back of Lucas's head, my fingers wove into his hair, and I pulled, squeezed, because I needed something to hold onto or I would have collapsed.

The other nipple came next. The same torture. Tongue, lip, teeth. A suction that almost hurt and then the tongue's soft caress that soothed, then the teeth again, the pain again that turned to pleasure. My body couldn't decide whether to flee or pull closer. It wanted both. At the same time.

Lucas moved lower. His mouth on my stomach, the tongue trail glistened wet in the moonlight on my skin. My stomach trembled with my breathing. I felt his hot breath as it traveled lower and lower and my hips rose, instinctively, impatiently, my body begging before my mouth could.

Lucas's hand pressed onto my hip. Pushed me down. Held me. His eyes looked up at me from below, I could see them glinting even in the dark, and in that look was: you don't decide when.

His mouth on my hip bone. Kiss. Bite. His tongue in my inner thigh, hot and wet, deliberately avoiding the place I wanted most. He tortured me. He enjoyed it. He knew exactly what he was doing and relished every second of it.

"Lucas..." I moaned his name and there was no dignity in my voice, only need, only hunger, only begging.

He smiled up at me. That devilish smile. Then finally, finally his mouth was where it needed to be.

He took my cock in his mouth slowly. Torturously slowly. Just the head at first, his tongue tracing circles around it, tasting, feeling the throbbing heat. My mouth fell open, my eyes closed, my head snapped back and the starry sky spun above me.

He took me deeper. His throat received me, warm, tight, wet, and the pleasure started at the base of my spine and exploded in my brain like lightning. My hand gripped his hair. My hips thrust forward, I couldn't stop them, my body took control from my brain.

Lucas didn't pull away. He took me in. Deeper. He increased the rhythm, his mouth wrapped tightly around my cock, his tongue stroking the vein underneath, and I made sounds I didn't recognize, moans that were deeper than my voice, sighs that were higher than I thought possible.

The crickets went silent. Or maybe I just couldn't hear them anymore. The world narrowed to this single point, Lucas's mouth, the heat, the wetness, the feeling of the peak approaching, approaching...

"Stop," I moaned. "Not yet. Don't..."

Lucas looked up. His mouth glistened wet in the moonlight. He smiled. He understood.

He stood up. His mouth found mine. I tasted myself on his tongue, salty, warm, intimate, and somehow that was the most exalted thing in the world.

Then Lucas turned me around.



His hand on my shoulder, firmly, gently, he turned me the way someone turns you when they know your body perfectly and know exactly how to move it. I turned my back to his chest. I felt his hardness behind me pressing against my ass, hot and demanding.

He leaned down. He whispered in my ear. "Kneel."

I knelt. The grass was soft under my knees. I put my hands on the ground. On all fours under the starry sky, on the farm, outdoors, where no one could see and anyone could have. That thought sent a perverse thrill running down my spine.

Lucas knelt behind me. His hands settled on my ass. Stroking, kneading, spreading. His hands were hot and rough, a farmer's hands, palms calloused from work, and that coarse touch on my skin aroused me more than anything.

Then his tongue.

It ran down my spine, top to bottom, from neck to lower back, and further, lower, all the way to the point where my back curves into my ass. His hands spread me open and his tongue found that place from which there is no return.

I screamed.

The pleasure hit me so suddenly and so intensely that my fingers dug into the earth, I ripped fistfuls of grass into my palms, and my body convulsed like someone struck by lightning. Lucas's tongue on me, in me, around me, hot and wet and relentless. He licked, he sucked, his tongue pushed inside and I screamed, I screamed into the night sky because nothing else remained, only the sound that erupted from me like a dam breaking.

"Lucas... God... Lucas..."

He didn't answer. His mouth was busy. His tongue worked, methodically, mercilessly, with pleasure, and I felt the world around me dissolving, the farm and the stars and the crickets and the night melting into a single hot, wet, throbbing point.

Then instead of his tongue, his fingers. One first. Slowly, carefully, sliding in. My body received it, tightly, hotly. He moved it, traced circles, searched for and found that spot that lives inside, deep, and when he pressed it, my eyes rolled back and my voice broke.

Two fingers. The sensation of stretching, the pressure, the fullness that balanced right on the edge of pain and pleasure. Lucas moved his fingers slowly, in and out, deeper, faster, and I felt myself losing control, felt my body no longer being mine, my body was Lucas's and Lucas knew exactly what to do with it.

Three fingers. I sighed. I moaned. I hissed through my teeth. The sensation was at the edge, almost too much, almost too intense, but Lucas knew. He always knew. He gave exactly as much as I could take and a hair more.

Then he pulled his fingers out. The emptiness almost hurt.

"Please," I whispered. "Please, Lucas."

I felt him position himself behind me. His cock at my entrance, hot and hard and throbbing. He paused for a moment. His hand settled on my hip.

Then he entered.



Slowly. One deep, endless, merciless thrust that filled me inch by inch. I felt my body resist, then surrender, then receive. The heat and the fullness spread through me like a wave washing onto shore. My mouth fell open, my eyes closed, and the sound that rose from me wasn't a moan and wasn't a cry but something between the two, something that only the language of pleasure knows.

Lucas trembled behind me. I felt his body behind mine, his chest against my back, his hand on my hip, and his breath on my neck, ragged and hot.

"Nathan..." my name on his lips was a prayer.

He began to move.

Slowly at first. He pulled back, almost all the way out, and the emptiness he left behind almost hurt, then he pushed back in, deep, all the way, and the fullness that filled me nearly drove me insane. That rhythm, that cruel, slow undulation, was the sweetest torture I had ever felt.

The rhythm built. From slow to faster. From faster to harder. From harder to wilder. Lucas's hand gripped my hip, his fingers dug into my flesh, leaving red marks I'd look at in the mirror tomorrow and smile. His other hand was in my hair, pulling my head back, my neck arched, my mouth open toward the sky.

The slapping rhythm filled the night. Flesh against flesh, body against body. The sound, that unique, unmistakable sound that sex produces, wet and hard and rhythmic, blended now with the music of the crickets and the whisper of the wind and Lucas's moans behind my back.

Sweat dripped from Lucas's chest onto my back. Our bodies gleamed in the moonlight as if dipped in silver. The scent of sex filled the air, sweet and salty and primal, blending with the smell of grass and the scent of earth and the warmth of the night.

"Harder," I moaned. I didn't recognize my own voice. It was deeper. Huskier. Hungrier. "Lucas... harder..."

Lucas delivered. The thrusts grew deeper, faster, more violent. I felt his hip bone slamming against my ass, felt his cock reaching the deepest point, the place no one else had ever reached. With every thrust the pleasure climbed one notch higher, like a spiral rising into infinity.

Lucas's hand slid to my cock. His fingers wrapped around it and stroked in the same rhythm as he thrust. The dual stimulation blew my mind apart. Inside and outside at once, everywhere at once, Lucas was everywhere at once.

My body trembled. My voice broke. I begged and cursed at the same time, words that made no sense, sounds that weren't language, just the body's speech, the mother tongue of pleasure.

"I'm close," Lucas panted behind my back. His voice was ragged, barely human. "Nathan... close..."

"Together," I moaned. "Together..."

Lucas sped up. His hand on my cock sped up. His thrusts were wild and merciless and perfect, and I felt the peak approaching like a train hurtling toward me unstoppably.

The orgasm hit me like a tsunami.

My body convulsed. I came into Lucas's hand, hot, pulsing, my cum spilling onto the grass, and my voice ripped into the night, toward the starry sky, higher and wilder than anything I'd ever let out of myself. My body sobbed with pleasure. Every muscle clenched then released then clenched again, in waves, once, twice, three times, as the pleasure washed over me again and again.

Lucas followed. I felt him come deep inside me, hot, pulsing, his hips pressed tight against my ass. His moan was deep and ragged and beautifully hoarse, and I felt his cock throb inside me as the waves of pleasure crashed through him too.

We collapsed.

Into the grass. Onto each other. Beside each other. Gasping, sweating, trembling. Lucas lay beside me, his chest heaving and falling, his skin glistening with sweat in the moonlight.

I turned to him and laughed. I didn't know why. Happily, freely, a laugh that erupted from deep in my chest and refused to stop. Lucas laughed back. He pulled me to him and kissed me, lazily, softly, with bourbon-and-salt lips.



We lay in the grass. The air slowly cooled on our skin. The crickets played again, or maybe they'd been playing the whole time and we just hadn't heard. The stars shone bright above us, millions of them, as if they'd lit up just for us.

The world was perfect. In this moment, on this farm, under the starry sky, lying in the grass, naked, beside Lucas, the world was flawlessly, completely, irrevocably perfect.

"You know what I'm thinking?" Lucas asked. His voice was lazy and satisfied like a well-fed cat's.

"Hmm?"

"That this is ours. This farm. This sky. This night. Nobody can take it away."

I rested my head on his chest. I listened to his heartbeat. It was slow, strong, steady. This was the heartbeat I could come home to. This was the rhythm that was the safest sound in the world.

"I love you," I said.

"I know," he replied. I felt the laughter in his chest. "I love you too."

The silence settled over us like a soft blanket. The wind brushed over our naked bodies. Lucas's fingers walked along my spine, slowly, aimlessly, the way he did when he was thinking or when he simply wanted to touch me.

My lips found his nipple. I kissed it softly, more for play than with intent. But Lucas's body responded. I felt his heartbeat quicken beneath his chest. I felt his breathing change.

The rest slowly turned.

The touches didn't stop. My fingers traced patterns on Lucas's chest. His on my back. My lips on his neck. His on my forehead. Nobody said it but we both knew the night wasn't over. Far from over.



I climbed on top of Lucas.

He lay in the grass beneath me, his arms spread beside his head, his body open and vulnerable and beautiful. The moonlight poured over his chest and lit up his face and his eyes looked up at me from below with that gaze that said: I'm yours, do whatever you want.

I leaned down. I kissed him. This kiss was different from the first round. Slower. Deeper. Lazier. My tongue strolled through his mouth as if it had all of eternity. But beneath the slowness, fire burned. The embers just needed stoking.

I reversed the position.

I turned around on top of him. My mouth above Lucas's cock, Lucas's mouth beneath mine. The starry sky above my back, the grass under my knees, and Lucas's body beneath me like a warm, breathing mattress.

We started at the same time.

I lowered my mouth onto Lucas's cock. I felt it harden between my lips, growing and swelling and throbbing in my mouth. My tongue sought the head, slipped into the slit, I tasted the salty-sweet drop of pre-cum.

Lucas's mouth received mine. The heat, the wetness, the tightness hit me from below and above at once, and the pleasure mirrored itself: what I felt in my mouth, my body also felt in Lucas's mouth. Perfect circulation. Perfect balance. Giving and receiving at once, feeling and making feel at once.

Our rhythms synced. As I took Lucas deeper into my mouth, Lucas took me deeper. As I sped up, he sped up. As my tongue caressed, his did too. We were mirrors. Mirrors of pleasure.

The sounds we made were swallowed by each other's bodies. The moans vibrated through skin. The wet sound of sucking blended with the night's music. The sweat on our skin mingled, mine with his, his with mine.

Lucas's hand settled on my ass above him. He kneaded, squeezed, his fingers slipped into the crack and stroked, and with his mouth on my cock and his fingers in my crack I felt everything this man could give at once.

Faster. Deeper. More hungrily. No thoughts remained in my head. Nothing remained in my body but sensation. My mouth was full of Lucas, his taste, his scent, his heat, and meanwhile Lucas's mouth devoured mine, mercilessly, impatiently, as if he couldn't get enough of me.

We were both near the edge. I felt the trembling in Lucas's thighs, felt the raggedness of his breathing on my cock, felt his body tensing beneath me.

Then Lucas stopped.

He pulled his mouth away from under me. The cold air hit my wet skin and I hissed.

"Wait," he said. His voice was hoarse. "Wait here."

I climbed off him. Lucas stood up. I lay in the grass, gasping, with a throbbing cock, a trembling body, and watched as Lucas's naked body moved toward the house in the moonlight. His ass was round and firm and his stride was confident and predatory.

For a minute I lay alone in the grass. The stars shone above me. My heart was pounding. My body burned with desire.

Then Lucas came back.



In the moonlight I saw what was in his hand. At first I didn't understand what he was holding. Then as he came closer, the moon's silver light glinted off it and my mouth went dry.

A dildo. Huge. The biggest I had ever seen in our possession. Thick, long, dark-colored, its surface realistically veined.

Lucas was grinning. He stood there in the moonlight with the massive dildo in his hand like some pagan god demanding a sacrifice. His eyes sparkled.

"Surprise," he said.

My eyes went wide. Heat flooded my face. Arousal and a touch of fear swirled in my stomach, mixing with the desire that was already ablaze.

"That's huge," I said. My voice was hoarse.

"I know," Lucas replied. His grin widened. "You can take it."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement. Lucas knew my body better than I did. He knew what I could take. He knew what I wanted even when I didn't dare say it.

Lucas knelt beside me in the grass. He lifted me, turned me, laid me face down. The grass pressed against my chest and face, soft and cool, the sharp contrast to the fire on my skin.

Lucas's mouth started on my back. Kisses along my spine, downward, lower and lower. His hands spread me open and his tongue was there again, preparing, loosening, wetting. I moaned into the grass. My fingers dug into the earth.

Then I felt the head of the dildo at my entrance. It was colder than Lucas's body, harder, smoother. The contrast made me shiver.

"Relax," Lucas whispered. His free hand stroked my lower back, soothing, loving.

He pushed it in slowly.

The head slipped in and the air was ripped from my lungs. It was thick. Thicker than anything I had ever felt. My body resisted, tensed, then Lucas's tongue was there beside it, loosening, and my body slowly, millimeter by millimeter, surrendered.

Deeper. Inch by inch. I felt it filling me, stretching me, every single inch lighting a fire inside. The pain was there, sharp and hot, but beneath it the pleasure arrived in waves, growing stronger, growing deeper.

"God," I moaned into the grass. My hands tore at the earth. My back arched. My legs trembled.

Lucas didn't stop. He pushed. Slowly. Mercilessly. With worship.

All the way in.

When the dildo was buried all the way inside me, the world stopped. I felt everything. Every inch. The fullness that bordered on insanity. The pressure stretching my body from the inside. The feeling of being full, completely, utterly.

Lucas began to move it. He pulled it halfway out, the sense of loss nearly hurt, then pushed it back in, all the way, and I cried out. The rhythm built. Slowly, mercilessly, lovingly. Out and in. Emptiness and fullness. Absence and presence.

"Good?" Lucas asked.

I couldn't answer. My voice didn't work. I just nodded, my head in the grass, and hoped he understood.

He understood.

He sped up. The dildo moved faster, deeper, harder. Every single thrust hit my prostate and the pleasure threw sparks behind my eyes like fireworks. My body convulsed, my hips pushed back against the dildo, I wanted more, deeper, harder, everything.

Then Lucas stopped.

The dildo inside me. All the way. Motionless.

I felt Lucas position himself behind me. I felt his cock at my entrance, beside the dildo, hot and hard and throbbing.

My heart stopped.

I understood.

My head turned back. I looked into Lucas's eyes. In the moonlight his face was serious and beautiful and his eyes were burning.

"Can you take it?" he whispered.

My body trembled. My mouth went dry. My heart pounded so hard it almost hurt. I knew what he wanted. I knew what it meant. The dildo and Lucas's cock. At the same time. Inside me.

The fear was there. But the desire was bigger. So much bigger.

"Give it to me," I moaned. There was no doubt in my voice. No hesitation. Only hunger. Only need. Only yes.

Lucas's cock pressed beside the dildo at my entrance. The pressure suddenly multiplied. My body protested, tensed, clenched. Lucas waited. His hand stroked my lower back. His mouth kissed my spine. He waited until my body surrendered.

It surrendered.

Lucas entered. Beside the dildo. Slowly. Millimeter by millimeter.

The sound that erupted from me was not in any human language.

The fullness... the fullness was not something words could describe. It wasn't the pain I'd expected though that was there too, sharp and hot and real. It wasn't the pleasure though that was there too, in waves, wildly, unbearably. It was something else. Something that transcended everything I had ever felt. As if the boundaries of my body had dissolved. As if there was no longer a place where I ended and Lucas began.

"Nathan..." Lucas's voice trembled. His body trembled behind me. I felt that he too was at the edge, the tightness and the heat and the dildo pressing against his cock too and he was also in that place where pleasure and pain and madness meet.

"Move," I whispered. "Please... move..."

Lucas began to move.

Slowly. Carefully. His cock and the dildo slid in and out at the same time, and every movement felt like being taken apart and put back together again and again. The world pulsed around me. The stars spun. The grass beneath my face was wet with tears I hadn't felt spill.

The rhythm intensified. Lucas grew faster, deeper, bolder. The dildo and his cock worked inside me simultaneously and I felt my body surrender completely, definitively, irrevocably. I was no longer Nathan. I was no longer anyone. I was just body, just sensation, just pleasure and pain and Lucas, everywhere Lucas.

My sounds were no longer sounds. Screams. Sobs. Begging. Cursing. Prayer. All at once. My body sobbed with pleasure that was so intense it hurt and so painful it was pleasure.

"Close..." Lucas sobbed behind me. "Nathan... I'm close..."

"Yes..." that was all I could manage. "Yes... yes... yes..."

The orgasm hit me like a bomb detonating in my chest.

My body convulsed. Nobody was touching my cock but I came anyway, my cum spilling onto the grass, my body spasming, jerking, my scream ripping free and scattering into the night sky. It was an orgasm that shook my entire body. That reached into my bones. After which I didn't know my name. After which I didn't know where I was. After which I didn't know if the stars were in the sky or behind my eyes.

Lucas followed. I felt him come inside me, beside the dildo, deep, hot. His moan was deep and ragged and sounded happy like someone who'd come home. His cock throbbed inside me, once, twice, three times, and I felt his warmth spreading through me and the feeling was perfect and intimate and final.

We collapsed.

Into the grass. Into the world. Into each other.

Lucas slowly pulled out. Slowly pulled the dildo out. My body shuddered from the emptiness that remained, sudden and almost painful emptiness after so much fullness. I winced. Lucas's lips pressed against my lower back, a soft kiss, apology and gratitude at once.

We turned to face each other. In the grass, under the stars, sweating, trembling, gasping. Lucas looked into my eyes. Tears glistened in them. Not sadness. Not pain. Pleasure so intense it spilled into emotion.

Lucas kissed my tears. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

The night slowly turned to dawn. On the horizon a faint light glowed, first gray, then pale pink, then gold. The stars faded like candles blown out by the morning.

We lay in the grass. Naked. Tangled in each other. My body ached in the places where Lucas had been and that ache was the most beautiful ache in the world. Memory in the skin. Story in the flesh.

I lay on Lucas's chest. I listened to his heartbeat. Slow, strong, steady. I was home.

"We're free," Lucas whispered. His fingers in my hair, softly, sleepily.

"We're free," I repeated.

The first rays of sun touched our skin. Golden light on naked bodies. The farm was waking. Roosters called in the distance. Horses snorted in the stable. A new day. A new chapter.

We got up. We gathered our clothes from the grass, laughing, stumbling, our limbs heavy and lazy and satisfied. We went inside. The kitchen was warm and familiar. Lucas made coffee. The machine hummed, the scent of coffee filled the room. The sweetness of a normal morning life.

We sat down at the kitchen table. Our mugs steamed. Under the table Lucas's leg pressed against mine. I smiled at him. He smiled back. It was a moment worth nothing in money and everything in the world.

Then my phone rang.

Its sound was sharp in the morning silence. I looked at the screen. Unknown number. I didn't answer. I sipped my coffee. The phone went silent.

It rang again.

Same number. Something shifted in my stomach. Lucas looked up from above his mug. His eyebrow went up.

I didn't answer. The phone went silent.

It rang a third time.

Lucas set his mug down. His eyes bored into mine. "Answer it," he said quietly.

I answered.

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end of the line yanked me through time. I fell twenty years backward in a single second. Under the kitchen chair my legs trembled. The mug in my hand tilted.

"Nathan. It's me. Your mother."

The blood drained from my face. The world that had been perfect five minutes ago lurched beneath me like a ship struck by a wave. Lucas saw it instantly. He knew instantly that something was wrong. His body tensed in the chair. His eyes narrowed.

"What do you want?" My voice was foreign. Thin and hard like the edge of a blade.

"We need to talk. I'll be there at the farm tomorrow."

The sentence wasn't a question. Not a request. A statement. The same voice that in childhood told me when to go to bed, what to eat, how to live. The voice that one day said: I don't have a gay son. The voice after which a door closed and didn't open for ten years.

"Don't..." I started.

"I'll be there at noon tomorrow." Click. The line went dead.

The phone stayed in my hand. The screen went dark. In the kitchen the coffee maker gave its last hiss and fell silent.

"Who was that?" Lucas asked. His voice was calm but his eyes were not. His eyes were preparing for war.

I looked into his eyes. The words in my mouth tasted like ash.

"My mother. She'll be at the farm tomorrow."

Lucas's face hardened. His jaw clenched. His hand tightened around his mug. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. His eyes said everything: I won't let her hurt you. I won't let anyone hurt you. Not anymore.

But in my eyes there wasn't anger. Not fear either. Something worse. Something I'd been trying to bury for years and that now, with a single phone call, had clawed its way out of its grave.

Hope.

And hope is the most dangerous weapon a mother can wield against her son.

The sun flooded the kitchen but the warmth suddenly went cold. Because there are storms that nature doesn't send. There are storms that travel in the blood.

And my mother always brought a storm with her.



To be continued...