Tenino’s expression became all cop. He set the piggy bank on the floor, in between the chair legs. “What do you mean by ‘You can hardly believe it survived the first time’?”
Trey’s eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. But his stomach did the same funny little flip-flop it’d done when Tenino said he wanted him to be able to protect himself.
“Patricia trashed my place. That’s why I’m here. The Feds don’t need me to testify as a witness or anything. They’d pretty much made their case before they approached me. But there were a couple of links in the distribution chain they couldn’t pin down.
Finally they figured out it was because the guys only dealt with Patricia. That’s what I did for them mainly, glued myself to her side, passed on anything I heard or saw.
“They weren’t even sure how deeply she was involved in the business until they raided the place. Mainly they were after her father and two uncles. When the Feds missed Patricia, they thought she’d flee the country, or at least go into hiding.
“But day before yesterday I came home to find almost everything important to me destroyed. All my pictures—of my mom, of me, of the classes I’ve taught—were burned in the fireplace. Anything that couldn’t be burned was ruined some other way. The pig escaped because somehow one of my shirts ended up on top of it. Patricia knew it meant something to me. She went to Tanya’s funeral with me.”
Trey didn’t resist when Tenino’s arm slipped around his waist and pulled him close. “You did the right thing helping the Feds, even if it cost you.”
“I know,” Trey said, leaning into the embrace, accepting the comfort offered and feeling closer to Tenino than he’d ever felt to another person—male or female. “I’d do it again. The Verons needed to be stopped.”
He sought Tenino’s lips, found them. Said with his kiss what he didn’t dare put into words.
Tenino’s moan was a sweet harmony. The press of his erection against Trey’s hard cock was a validation that touched his soul. Fantasies of spending the rest of the day in bed started to take root until Tenino said, “Target practice first, fun second. And if I remember correctly, today is the day you’re going to beg me to fuck you.”
“What if I start begging now?” Trey asked, his hands curving around Tenino’s muscular buttocks, his fingers digging in, preventing Tenino from stepping away, from escaping the rub of hard cock against hard cock.
Tenino laughed, had the advantage because Trey was naked from the waist up. His fingers found Trey’s nipples, squeezed and sent icy-hot flashes of painful ecstasy streaking through Trey to make his hips buck, his penis leak.
“Start begging now and I’ll think you want to come any way you can, even if it means having to change your pants,” Tenino said.
“What about payback being a bitch?”
“I think I proved last night I can take it. Didn’t I?”
Images flashed through Trey’s mind, of lying on top of Tenino, of thrusting, fucking another man for the first time. Coming.
Trey’s hands dropped away from Tenino’s ass. He stepped back. His cock pulsed in protest but his heart soared when Tenino’s expression revealed that the loss of contact cost him too.
“Let’s get going,” Tenino said, voice husky, face taut.
Trey dressed in warmer clothing while Tenino gathered what they needed. At the doorway Tenino thrust a bag containing aluminum cans into Trey’s hands, along with a rifle.
They stepped outside. Trey followed Tenino around to the back of the cabin, laughed when he saw the size of the satellite dish. “And who says bigger isn’t way better.”
“Hey, I live alone in the middle of nowhere. I get tired of playing with myself.”
Trey gaped. Found it difficult to imagine Tenino surfing live porn sites to jerk off.
Tenino read his expression and grinned. “Get real. I don’t pay to peep and I don’t hook up online to masturbate. I’m talking Xbox live. World gaming. You’ve got a dirty mind for a teacher.”
“You set me up by saying you got tired of playing with yourself,” Trey grumbled.
Tenino stopped. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of Trey’s jeans and pulled him forward. “Yeah, well now that you’re here, playing with myself isn’t going to be necessary—unless I do it so you can watch. I don’t intend to make it easy for you to leave.” He delivered a quick, hard kiss that left Trey dazed.
Did Tenino mean what he said? Did he want more than a short-term hookup? Trey’s thoughts and emotions bounced around like a ball while his cock pleaded with him for release.
He licked his lips and would have shoved his hands into his pockets, or better yet into the front of his jeans to give himself some relief, if he hadn’t been holding a sack of cans and a gun. The thing with Tenino had happened so fast, blown a lifetime of denial away.
Trey felt totally out of control but it didn’t scare him. He felt alive, truly alive. Now if only he had the courage to actually ask Tenino straight out what he meant, where he wanted this thing between them to lead.
They walked in silence though the land wasn’t silent. Birds called in the damp mist. A breeze whispered through trees, making shadow figures dance and merge.
The pounding of Trey’s heart seemed to be echoed by the distant beat of a drum accompanied by chanting. He shook his head, smiled at his own flight of fantasy. Laughed silently as an internal voice intoned, Blond-haired, blue-eyed Anglo schoolteacher relies on Native American warrior for protection in a remote wilderness.
How clichйd was that? Even if the warrior wore a badge and dressed in flannel and jeans instead of buckskin and beads, and the teacher was male instead of female.
At the far end of the clearing was a tree stump, tall and wide enough to serve as a table. Tenino put the ammo bag and guns he was carrying on it then headed to where two wooden frames waited for targets to be clamped onto them.
Trey followed with the sack of aluminum cans. As Tenino unrolled and put up the paper targets with their human-shaped torso image in the center, Trey placed the cans on small logs.
When they returned to the stump, Tenino was all business. He was as tough as any instructor at a police academy firing range and Trey fell a little bit more in love seeing that side of him.
Trey thrilled each time he made an aluminum can jump into the air or skip across the ground. He basked in Tenino’s praise each time they stopped to check the paper target and found he’d hit it.
Time held no meaning. The outside world was far removed as they shot a wide variety of guns and enjoyed each other’s company.
“So where’s the closest bookstore?” Trey asked after they’d fired the last round of bullets and removed their ear protectors.
“Are you hinting you’d rather be reading a book than shooting guns?”
Trey slapped his hand over his heart, tried for an affronted expression. “What! You think I don’t enjoy manly pursuits like decimating aluminum cans and pretending to kill people? Next you’ll be expecting me to wear pink and put on mascara.”
Tenino snickered and snaked an arm around Trey, pulling him against the front of his body. “I bet you look good in pink,” he said, pressing his lips to Trey’s, sliding his tongue in for a very thorough, very arousing kiss.
Trey groaned, rubbed his cloth-covered erection against Tenino’s. The phantom singing he’d imagined as they crossed the clearing returned, only louder this time. The drum beat in time to his heart, in time to the need pulsing through his cock.
In his mind’s eye, Trey saw the two of them standing bare-chested in this spot under a summer sky, shedding their clothing, driven by a sudden urgency to fuck after target shooting. He shivered and ran his hands over Tenino’s back.