Saviours of Oestend Oestend 2 (19 page)

“This just isn’t how we do things.”
“I know.” Frances moved up so he was looking down into Simon’s eyes. “But it’s just one night. One night here in front of the fire. Not hiding in a barn, or in some dirty shed. That’s all I want. Just one night where I can feel like we have something good.”
Simon didn’t understand what any of those things had to do with what was going on. All he knew was, their easy arrangement was suddenly looking decidedly less simple. “Wait—” he started to say. But just as he did, Frances kissed him.
It was strange and awkward and not at all erotic, and Simon lost his patience. He pushed Frances backward. “Stop!”
The sudden surprise in Frances’ eyes was quickly replaced by something far more painful to see. As if Simon had betrayed him. It should have hurt, but it only made him angrier.
“I don’t want this!”
“But…” Frances’ voice caught.
If he cries, I’ll never forgive him.
“I don’t understand. You asked me to stay down here with you.”
“Not for this!”
He’d been worried Frances was going to cry, but his eyes suddenly hardened into something more like anger. “Then for what?”
“I don’t know! For what we usually do! We have an arrangement.”
Frances sat back hard as if he’d been shoved. “An ‘arrangement’? Is that how you see it?”
“How should I see it?”
Frances shook his head. He stood up and began buttoning up his shirt and tucking it back into his pants. “I can’t believe I was such a fool. You said you wanted to come here to Aren’s—”
“Not for this!”
“—and you asked me to stay downstairs with you, and I was stupid enough to believe you actually wanted to be with me.”
“Frances, don’t be mad.”
Frances grabbed his boots and pulled them on, then turned to glare at Simon. “Do you have any idea what it meant to me to think that?”
“I’ve never lied to you about the way I feel.”
Frances’ laugh was harsh and bitter. He covered his eyes with one hand. “You really think that’s what I’m angry about?”
“Isn’t it?”
Frances laughed again. It was a horrible sound, full of heartache and self-recrimination. He looked up at the ceiling, as if searching for answers, then back down at Simon where he still sat on the floor.
“The real problem is I’m a Saints-blessed fool.”
He turned and headed for the door, and Simon hurried to get up off the floor and go after him. “Frances, it’s full dark out there!”
“Then stay inside.”
Frances slammed the door behind him, forcing Simon to fumble it back open and close it again in his haste to catch up. “Frances, wait!”
“Go to the wraiths.”
Simon debated the wisdom of pointing out the fact that it was well past sunset, and they were both inviting that exact fate by being outside at all. “I’m sorry, all right?”
Frances stopped in his tracks and turned to face him. “Sorry for what? Do you even know?”
Did he? Not really. Not only that, he wasn’t even sure it was true. Underneath it all, he still felt it was Frances who owed
him
an apology, not the other way around. It was Frances who had taken him to Aren’s without explaining why. It was Frances who had stood there and let Aren get him off as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It was Frances who had tried to alter the beautiful simplicity of their relationship by making it romantic.
“I don’t know why you’re pissed at me! This is
your
fault!”
Frances flew at him so fast, Simon barely saw it coming. The boy slammed into his chest with both hands, knocking the wind out of him and shoving him hard enough that he stumbled. He fell and landed hard on his ass.
“Fuck you!” Frances yelled.
Simon tried to stand up, but as he did, Frances punched him in the face. Simon fell back to the ground. He tasted blood and had to turn and spit into the dirt. “Holy Saints, Frances, what the fuck is your problem?”
“Would it have killed you to let me pretend, for just one night?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Frances reeled back and kicked him hard in the thigh. On one hand, Simon recognised that Frances was intentionally aiming for a place that wouldn’t do any damage. Saints knew he could have hit him in the gut, or the kidneys, or the head or the nuts. Even in his rage, he was being kind. Still, it hurt like hell.
“Enough!” Simon roared. He pushed himself up and shoved Frances, although not nearly as hard as he could have. “You want to fight me, kid? You really think you can win?”
Frances didn’t back down. He stood up straight. He squared his shoulders. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, but he looked Simon right in the eyes. “Go ahead. You can’t hurt me any more than you already have.”
It was worse than being punched in the gut. Simon wished Frances had hit him instead. He took a step back, trying to understand what the hell had just happened. An hour or two ago, they’d been friends, and everything had been fine. What had brought them to this?
He wanted to erase it all. He wanted to go back to that moment where Frances had so innocently told him, “I’m going with Aren and Deacon.” But this time, Simon wanted to let him go.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything. He just stood there and watched Frances walk away into the night.

Chapter Nineteen

All the extra people at the ranch were making Dante crazy, and he had to physically be restrained from killing Foster when he saw him. The man made Cami nervous too, and Dante noticed how she stuck close to the house.

More hands had shown up the next day, and so Jay had volunteered to go back to the now-deserted McAllen ranch and turn away anybody else bent on finding sanctuary at the BarChi.

Of course, the hands liked having women around, as did Alissa. Some of the women stayed hidden in the house, which Dante thought was wise, but others delighted in wandering out and flirting with the men. It was becoming all too common to stumble upon couples who thought they’d found a private place on the very crowded ranch.

Despite the hubbub and the fact that she was comfortable with only a few select people, Cami seemed happy. Unfortunately for Dante, one of those people was Aren. And try as he might, Dante couldn’t stop being annoyed at how often he saw Aren with her. The boy seemed to make a point of searching her out. Even worse, he couldn’t seem to talk to her without touching her too. It made Dante seethe.

After breakfast the next day, Dante took Cami’s hand and led her away from the bustle of the ranch. He took her up the hill, towards the fields, into the untamed land of the prairie. It was surprisingly warm. The sun was golden, the Oestend wind a gentle breeze—a hushed, rippling melody that made the long grasses frolic and sway. Cami hugged her sweater around her, smiling, her eyes bright. Dante couldn’t believe how happy she looked. He wished he felt the same, but it was tainted by his thoughts about Aren.

“Quit scowling at me and tell me why you’re so grumpy.”

Was he scowling? Yes, he supposed he was. He thought again about the way Aren had flirted with her, and a familiar feeling bloomed in his chest. “I’m a jealous man.”
He wasn’t looking at her, but he saw from the corner of his eye the way she turned to him in surprise.
“Jealous? Of what?”
“Of Aren!”
“Because of Deacon?” she asked in a carefully guarded tone.
“No! Not because of Deacon!” Not anymore, at least. “Because of you! I hate the way he touches you!”
“Ah.” It was a sound of understanding, but not of sympathy. She sounded sad. He wanted to ask her what that ‘ah’ had meant, but he wasn’t sure how.
“Do you see the way Aren is with the other women?” she asked at last.
“What other women?”
She sighed in exasperation. “What other women do you think, Dante? Any of them. All of them. Have you ever seen him flirt with Tama or Alissa or any one of the McAllen maids the way he does with me?”
He thought about it. Other than Olsa, the only woman he’d ever seen Aren talk to was Tama, and when he did, he certainly never touched her the way he did Cami. It made his jealousy run hotter than before. “No! It’s only with you.”
“Right. It’s not that he dislikes them, but they make him uncomfortable. He doesn’t know how to behave around them, so he avoids them whenever he can.”
“Yeah. So?”
She sighed again, clearly even more exasperated with him than before that she had to spell it out so completely. “I’m not a woman to him, Dante,” she said at last, and he heard the way it hurt her to say it. “He acts that way with me because he knows…” Her voice caught. She took a deep breath, and said, so quietly her voice was nearly lost in the wind, “He flirts with me because he knows I’m a man.”
He’d never heard her say those words. He knew how much it pained her. And with that knowledge came real understanding of what she was saying. “It hurts your feelings.”
She shrugged. “It reminds me every time that I’m not what people think. Or, I guess I mean it reminds me that what I think I am isn’t what other people see.”
In the blink of an eye, his jealousy was gone. On one hand, he was happy to hear that even Aren could get things wrong from time to time. But he recognised his self-righteousness was petty. Somebody was hurting her, and he wanted to fix it. “Do you want me to kill him for you?” He was joking, because he knew he could with her, but there was an edge of truth to it, too. He’d do just about anything to make things right.
“Ha!” she laughed. “Yes. Go be a big brute and kill the poor boy for hurting my pride.”
He stopped walking, grabbing her as he did so that she turned to face him. “I will if you want.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t mean it. I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it. It’s still better than how most people treat me when they find out.” She smiled at him, and if it had a hint of sadness behind it, it seemed to have true humour in it as well. “He’s a friend. He accepts me, just not quite on the terms I’d like.”
He pulled her close and kissed her chin. “So I don’t need to kill him?”
She laughed again and put her arms around his neck. “No. And you don’t need to be jealous of him, either.”
Her laughter was real this time, light and sweet. He loved her eyes, the light in them and the happiness. Knowing he was the one who’d put it there made him feel larger than life. Like he could conquer the world. How could anybody look at her and not see what he saw?
He brushed her cheek with his fingers. “They’re all fools.”
She nodded as she leaned in to kiss him. “Yep. And you’re the biggest fool of all.”
Somehow, he couldn’t quite bother to be offended.

* * * *

That night, they lay in bed together, tangled in each other’s limbs. Cami’s legs were wrapped around Dante’s waist, and as he pushed against her, he caressed her smooth, flat chest. He sometimes forgot that she didn’t really have breasts. Yes, they would have been very small, flat breasts, but she responded when he touched them in a way that implied they were what she wanted them to be.

He sat up, so he could look down at her—her deep, dark eyes, closed now as she succumbed to his touch, her long, lean body, arching into him, and her small, hard cock, lying erect against the flat of her abdomen.

He ran his finger down its length, and she moaned.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
She opened her eyes, although her lids were heavy with arousal. He loved being able to

make her that way. “Does what bother me?” she asked.

Again, he brushed his finger down her length. “That it’s wrong.” Of course, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it at all, but he knew she believed it shouldn’t have been there.

“It used to. There was a time when I wouldn’t let myself use it. If I touched myself, it felt like my hand was betraying my heart.”
“What changed?”
She smiled at him, that wicked, flirtatious smile he loved so much. She used her legs to pull him tighter against her. “I guess I got horny.”
He laughed, and leant down to kiss her chest. But he knew she was evading the question. “It couldn’t have been that easy.”
It took her a moment to answer, and when he looked into her eyes, he could still see her arousal, but underneath it, he saw the pain of remembering it.
“This is all I have,” she said. “It’s all I’ll ever be. I realised that denying myself any kind of pleasure didn’t prove anything. It just meant never feeling as good as I do right now.”
Her words warmed him and made him smile. He caressed her cock again, stroking it softly until she closed her eyes and arched into him. “It
is
all you have,” he said, and she opened her eyes again to watch him. “It’s all you need.”
“Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes, when you’re inside of me, I close my eyes, and I let myself believe it’s different. I imagine things down there are the way I think they should be.”
He could tell by the way she said it that she expected that confession to bother him, but it didn’t. He leant down to kiss her lips. He loved to watch her. And to hear her. And to taste her. He loved that he could make her moan and writhe. He loved exploring her body and seeing the different ways she responded.
“You imagine anything you want. Just as long as you know I love you the way you are.”
He moved his hand down, between her legs, stroking her where her opening would have been if she’d been completely female. For himself, he was glad to feel the smooth skin of her perineum, and the heaviness of her scrotum in his hand. But if it made it better for her, he didn’t care what she imagined. He stroked between her legs, letting his fingers play over her flesh as if seeking the opening in the moist folds of a woman’s sex, and she responded, gasping and spreading her legs wide. He refrained from touching her cock again, but he caressed every inch of the skin between her thighs. As he did, he kissed her neck, and her collarbone. He teased each of her nipples with his mouth until they were red and swollen.
He moved down her body and put his tongue where his fingers had been. He used his mouth between her legs, sucking and licking her perineum until she was gripping his head, panting and moaning. He moved lower, lapping at her entrance until her rim was slick and wet. And then he slid his finger inside.
She cried out, pushing down hard onto his hand, and like an over-anxious teen, Dante lost control. The warmth of her around his fingers, the smell of her sex, the feel of her bucking towards his hand, it was all so perfect. His orgasm caught him completely by surprise, crashing down onto him far sooner than he might have liked. He came hard, grinding his erection against his bed, marvelling a bit even as he did at just how much she turned him on.
His climax was strong and sudden, but over quickly, and he focused again on her and what he wanted to do. He knew he’d teased her enough. He moved up, and he swallowed the length of her erection, letting it push deep into his throat. He slid a second finger in with the first and moved them in and out, matching the rhythm of his mouth on her cock. He didn’t know what she focused on mentally—whether she revelled in having her penis sucked, or whether she imagined that the opening he fingered was really a vagina. Either way, he was just happy to give her what he could. All he cared about was the way she gripped his head, thrusting into his mouth. The way her back arched. The way her body spasmed around his fingers. And the way she cried out his name as she came.
Yes, this was all she would ever have. He planned to make sure she never regretted allowing herself to use it.