🔥 Bonus Chapter: A Second Ring

A full-length bonus chapter for Snowed In With Gramps by Jace Wilder

⚠️ Too hot for Amazon. This bonus chapter is explicit, graphic, and uncensored. MM age-gap, praise kink, creampie, bondage-light, first-time explicit uses of husband in bed, and a 56-year-old widower off the leash. 18+.

One year to the day after a boy came up Silas Whitaker’s mountain in a dead Corolla, Jasper Ellis wakes up in the loft of the Whitaker cabin as a near-married man, with matching wooden rings on leather cords, paying guests asleep in the guest bedroom, and an entire morning of empty cabin between them.

This is the morning the book earned. Silas’s POV. Fully explicit. Fully off-Amazon. 9,400 words of what two men do when they finally have the house to themselves.

This bonus takes place the morning after the Snowed In With Gramps epilogue.

A Second Ring

One year later — December 20th

At six in the morning I woke up with my husband on my chest for the thousandth time, and for the first time, the cabin was all ours.

It took me a full minute to register it. I had woken at this hour every day of my life for thirty years, and I had woken at it next to a person for most of those, but I had not woken at it in my own cabin in a house emptied of guests and obligation since Jasper Ellis had come up my mountain in a Corolla a year and a day ago. The Harrises had not checked out yet — they were still asleep in the guest bedroom downstairs, I could hear Mr. Harris’s slow even snore coming through the wall — but they would be gone by eleven. The driveway was clear. The road was open. Earl wasn’t coming till two. Noah wasn’t up this weekend. Dave and Carla were in Buffalo for a Wegmans grandson-christening or something. There was nothing between now and two in the afternoon but me and the boy on my chest and a cabin that had stood empty for seven years waiting for somebody to use it like this.

Jazz was out cold. His hand was closed into a loose fist in the fabric of my henley over my heart, the way he slept every night now, and his ring — the gold band his grandmother had left him, the one his mother had mailed up in July with a seven-word note — was warm against the skin of my ribs where his knuckles pressed in. His mouth was open a little. His breath was slow. I could feel the weight of him on my chest and the weight of the wooden ring against my own throat where I had hung it on its leather cord under my henley last night before bed, and I thought — very clear, very settled — all right. All right. This is how it is now. This is the shape.

I lay there for maybe twenty minutes. I did not move. The skylight over the bed was pale gray, new snow visible in patches through the glass, dawn not quite committed to itself. The cabin was warm. The dog was snoring on the rug by the door. My husband was asleep on my chest.

Husband. It was a word I had used at a courthouse in Elizabethtown on a Tuesday in October and had not said out loud in a bed. I had not said it to him in the dark. I had not said it to him with my mouth on his throat. I had held it back on purpose — not because I did not mean it, but because I wanted to save it for a morning like this one, when we were alone, when nothing was between us, when I could put the word into his ear at the exact moment his body remembered why it was true. I had been waiting for that morning for six months, and the morning was here, and I was going to use it.

But first I was going to get up and I was going to be a gentleman about it.

I slid out from under him slow. He made a small sleepy sound of loss and his hand reached for me and I tucked the pillow into the space where my shoulder had been, and he wrapped himself around it without waking, and I covered him with the quilt up to his chin. I went down the ladder in my socks and my sweats and my henley. The henley was the same one. I was not going to change it. The house was quiet.

I made coffee. I stoked both stoves. I set out the glass dish with the almond pastries on the sideboard where the Harrises would find them, and the French press with fresh grounds in the canister next to it, and I wrote a card in block letters on a square of heavy cream cardstock and propped it against the dish:

Coffee in the press. Boiling water in the kettle. Help yourselves to anything. We are upstairs and will be down around eleven to see you off. Drive safe. — S & J

Short. Polite. Gave them full run of the downstairs for five hours without us in it. Which was the entire point of the card.

I took two mugs back up the ladder.

He was still asleep. I knelt by the edge of the bed and I looked at him for a long moment before I woke him. He was on his side, curled around the pillow, hair a disaster, mouth open against the pillowcase, his ring hand flat under his cheek so the gold caught the pale skylight. Twenty-three. Twenty-three and my husband and asleep in my bed and not leaving. I set the mugs on the bedside table. Slow. I lowered myself down onto the mattress next to him and I laid down behind him and I spooned against his back and I pressed my mouth against the nape of his neck.

“Boy.”

“Mm.”

“Coffee’s on the table.”

“Mm.”

“Come up for me, Jazz.”

He turned in my arms. Slow. He blinked up at me in the half-light and his mouth did the sleepy half-smile and he said, thick — “Morning.”

“Morning, boy.”

“Is it — are they — “

“Still sleeping. They won’t be up for an hour.”

“Oh.”

“The house is ours till eleven.”

He went still. I watched him clock what I had said. I watched his eyes change. He was not fully awake yet and he was already reading my face, and his pupils went a little wider, and he said, quiet — “Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“The whole house.”

“Till eleven.”

“Till eleven, boy.”

“Oh.”

I reached past him. Got his mug. Put it in his hand. He sat up against the pillows with the quilt in his lap and he drank, slow, and I sat up next to him and drank my own, and we did not speak for about three minutes. He leaned his head against my shoulder. I put my arm around him. We watched the skylight go from gray to a paler gray to almost-white as the sun came up over the ridge we couldn’t see from the bed. The snow on the skylight had frozen overnight into a fine pattern of crystals around the edges of the glass and the middle was clear, and I could see the faint disc of morning forming behind the clouds.

He set his mug on the bedside table. Turned to me. His eyes were awake now.

“Silas.”

“Mm.”

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Yeah?”

“Since yesterday. Since last night. Since the porch. I went to bed thinking about you and I woke up thinking about you and I just spent five minutes lying against your chest thinking about you and I am — “

“Jazz.”

“I am going to die if you don’t — “

“Boy.”

“What.”

“I was going to fuck you for two hours this morning anyway. You don’t have to convince me.”

He laughed. A bright surprised laugh into the mug still half-full on the table, and he pressed his face into the crook of my neck and laughed again, and he said — “Two hours.“

“Give or take.”

“Silas Whitaker.“

“Mm.”

“Take your shirt off.”

“Take yours off, boy.”

He stripped for me. He did it slow because he had learned that I liked it slow, and he did it kneeling on the bed with his ring hand braced against the log post of the headboard, and he pulled the henley off over his head and his hair went wild with static and he laughed at himself and then he pulled the sweats down his legs and he sat back on his heels in nothing but his own skin and his grandmother’s gold ring and the pale column of his throat and the small silver bar at his navel, and I looked at him for a good five seconds before I moved.

I got out of my own clothes. Stripped the henley off. Pulled the sweats off. I was hard already — I had been hard for about four minutes — and he looked at me and his mouth opened a fraction and then closed, and he said, soft, “Come here, Gramps.”

“Gramps.“

“Mm.”

“You called me that deliberately.”

“I did.”

“You want to play it that way.”

“I want to play it however you want to play it. But yes. I did. Come here.”

I came there.

I laid him down. I laid him flat on his back with his head on the pillow and I spread his knees and I settled between them on my elbows and I kissed him. I kissed him with all of the time I had, which was a lot of time. I kissed him until his hands were in my hair and his breath was ragged and he was rolling his hips up against my belly, and then I broke the kiss and I moved down his body and I kept moving.

I kissed his throat. His collarbone. The hollow at the base of his throat where the gold ring on the cord I had put there last night was still hanging, and I put my mouth on the cord and followed it down his sternum to where the ring was lying against his breastbone, and I kissed the ring. He made a soft sound. I looked up.

“Silas — “

“Shh.”

“You didn’t say.”

“Say what.”

“This — the ring — you didn’t explain, last night, you just put it on me and I — “

“I know, boy.”

“What is it.”

“Pine. Same board as the chickadees. I’ve been working on it for a week. Thumbnail-small. Flat profile so it sits against your chest without catching. Oiled twice. It’ll last you twenty years if you don’t lose the cord.”

“Why.”

“Why?”

“Why’d you make it.”

I sat back on my heels. I looked down at him. He was laid out on my bed with his hair on the pillow and the gold ring on his hand and the wooden ring on its cord against his chest and his cock hard against his belly and his eyes shining up at me, and I took a moment, and I said — slow, careful, because I was going to say it exactly once —

“Because I can’t wear the metal one when I’m working. Gloves, wet hands, the router, the planer. I take it off. I have taken it off a dozen times in the last month. I don’t like to. I hate it. I came up with the idea of a wooden one I could wear on a cord around my neck under my shirt, that I wouldn’t have to take off for anything. A second ring. A backup. So that no matter what I was doing, I would be wearing a thing you gave me. I made one for you too, because I wanted you to have the same. I wanted us to match.”

“Silas — “

“But, boy.”

“Yeah.”

“You put mine on yourself last night.”

“Yeah.”

“Not your own.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you do that.”

His eyes were wet. He swallowed.

“Because I wanted to wear something you’d made for yourself. Not something you’d made for me. I wanted the one you had chosen for your own neck. I wanted it to have been yours first. I don’t know. I don’t know why. I just — when you put it in my hand, I — I wanted to put it on me.”

“Okay.”

“So here’s what we are going to do, Jasper.”

“Okay.”

“I am going to get out of this bed in about ninety minutes. I am going to go down to the workshop. I am going to carve a second one, matching, the same dimensions, out of the same board. I am going to oil it. I am going to come back up here and put it on my own neck, and we are going to have one each, and yours is going to be the one I carved for myself, and mine is going to be the one I carve for myself after I have watched you wear the first one around your neck while I fuck you.”

His breath stopped.

“Do you hear me.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Silas — “

“Now. Lie still.”

I went down on him slow.

I had been waiting almost a year to do this uninterrupted. The closest I had come in the main run of our life was a shower in December that had ended with me inside him instead of with him in my mouth, and a couch a year ago almost to the day that Bear had interrupted, and about eighteen other moments where the order of operations had put my mouth somewhere else. This morning I had no interruptions scheduled and no audience and a husband laid out on my bed and a full five hours of house to ourselves, and I was going to take him in my mouth and I was going to finish him with my mouth, and I was going to do it slow.

I took him all the way down on the first stroke. His hips came up off the bed and I pressed them back down with my forearm across his lower belly, flat, and I held him pinned, and I worked him slow — tongue against the underside of his cock, cheeks hollowed, head moving in a steady easy rhythm — and he was already leaking, already half-gone, already making the little broken noises he made when he was close, and I pulled off him and I looked up.

“Not yet, boy.”

“Silas — “

“Not yet.”

“I’ve been — I’ve been thinking about your mouth since — “

“I know.”

“Silas — “

“Breathe. Count to ten.”

“One, two, three, four — “

“Slower.”

“Five. Oh god. Six.“

“Good boy.”

“Seven. Eight.“

“Good boy.”

“Nine. Ten. Please.”

I took him back in my mouth.

I worked him slow. I let him feel everything. I had one hand flat on his belly, holding him down, and the other hand wrapped around the base of his cock in a loose ring so I could feel exactly when he was about to go, and I edged him one more time — I let him get right to the edge and I pulled off and I watched his face twist and I watched him swear under his breath and I watched his hand fist in the sheet beside him — and then I took him back in, and I went all the way down, and I hummed against him low in my throat, and he broke.

“Silas — I’m — “

I did not pull off.

I took him all the way down and I held him there and I felt him go — I felt his cock pulse in my mouth and I felt him come against the back of my throat in long hot pulses and I swallowed, I swallowed every stroke, I did not spill a drop, and he was saying my name — Silas, Silas, oh god, Silas, with his hand fisted in my hair and his hips jerking up against my forearm and his back arched off the mattress — and I stayed on him until he stopped, and I gentled him down slow with my tongue, and I pulled off him with a wet sound and I laid my cheek against his thigh and I looked up at him.

“Jazz.”

“Silas.“

“You taste exactly the way I remembered.”

“Silas — “

“You all right, boy?”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah?”

“I cannot — I cannot move.”

“Good. Stay there. I have more to do to you.”

He laughed. A wrecked, wet, beautiful laugh, and he put his hand over his face, and he said, muffled through his fingers, “Silas Whitaker, you are going to kill me.”

“Not this morning, boy.”

“Silas.”

“What.”

“Come up here. Please. Come up here. Kiss me.”

I came up there. I crawled up his body slow, kissing as I went — his belly, the silver bar at his navel, his sternum, the wooden ring lying against his breastbone, his collarbone, the hinge of his jaw — and then I was lying on him, my weight on him, and I kissed his mouth. He kissed me back. He tasted his own come in my mouth and he did not flinch — he sucked on my tongue, softly, pulling the taste into himself — and he made a low soft sound and his arms went around my back and he held me there.

I let him hold me. I dropped my weight onto him the way he liked. I pressed my face into the side of his neck and I felt him breathe under me.

After a minute I said, low into his ear — “Now I’m going to fuck you.”

“Yes.”

“Slow.”

“Yes.”

“I am going to fuck you slow for a long time.”

“Yes.”

“I am going to fuck you and I am going to tell you what you are, and you are going to listen, and you are going to take it.”

“Yes, Silas.”

“Good boy.”

The oil was on the bedside table where it lived. I reached for it one-handed without lifting my mouth off his throat. I slicked my fingers and I worked them into him slow, slow, and he was loose already from last night — he had been loose since the porch swing — and I took my time anyway because taking my time was the whole point. Two fingers, three, curled up and steady, pressed against the place that made his breath catch, and he was hard again already, or coming back hard, and he was grinding down onto my hand and saying please, please, please, and I pulled my fingers out and I oiled myself and I settled between his thighs and I pressed in.

He was tight and wet and ready and he took me easy and I slid all the way in on one stroke and I stopped, bottomed out, forehead on his, and I breathed.

“Jazz.”

“Yeah.”

“I am going to say a word.”

“Yeah.”

“I have not said it to you in bed.”

“Silas — “

“Husband.”

He made a sound. A small broken one. His eyes filled.

“Say it back.”

“Husband.“

“Whose.”

“Yours.”

“Say the whole thing.”

“I’m your husband, Silas.”

“Good boy.”

I moved.

I fucked him slow. I rocked into him in long even strokes and I kept my forehead against his and I watched his face. His eyes stayed open on mine. His mouth fell open. His hands were on my back, fingers spread, pulling me down into him. The wooden ring on its cord around his neck swung a little with each stroke, small and pale between his collarbones, and I looked at it and I thought — mine. I put that there. He is wearing a thing I made with my hands and I am inside him and he is my husband and the cabin is ours. I started to talk.

“Look at you.”

“Silas — “

“Look at how you take me. Good boy. Such a good boy, Jazz. So open for me. So fucking open for me. Did you know I’d be this deep in you this morning?”

“Yes.”

“You did, huh.”

“Yes. Please. Please keep going.”

“I am not going to stop.”

“Don’t stop.”

“I am going to fuck you like this every morning.”

“Yes.”

“Every morning in this cabin for the rest of my life.”

“Yes — “

“You understand me, boy.”

“Yes.”

“This is how I’m going to have you.”

“Yes — “

“Slow. Deep. Every morning. My husband under me. My husband taking my cock like this. You hear me, Jasper.”

“I hear you.”

“Good.”

I picked up the pace. Not much. Just enough to make the bed frame creak, just enough to make him gasp on every stroke, just enough. He was panting. His eyes were glassy. His cock was hard between us, trapped against his belly, pinned flat, dragging against my skin every time I came down, and I could feel him leaking against me.

“Silas — “

“What, boy.”

“I am going to — “

“Come untouched, Jasper.”

“I — “

“You heard me. Come like this. Don’t touch yourself. Come with me inside you. Like a good boy.”

“Silas — Silas — “

“Come.”

He came.

He came between us with a small shaking cry, no hand on him, just my cock inside him and my weight on him and my voice in his ear, and his cum went hot across his own belly and onto mine, and his body clamped down around me — tight, a ring of heat locked around my cock — and I kept fucking him through it, slow, steady, talking.

“That’s it. That’s it, boy. Good boy. Look at you. Look at you come for me. Good boy. So good. Such a good boy for me.”

“Silas — “

“I am going to come inside you, Jasper.”

“Yes — “

“I am going to fill you up.”

“Silas — “

“My husband.”

I came.

I came inside him with my forehead pressed against his and his legs wrapped around my waist and the wooden ring hanging between us and the skylight over my head gone bright gold now with actual sun and his hand fisted in my hair at the nape of my neck, and I came saying his name, Jasper, Jasper, and he caught it with his mouth — he turned his head and caught my mouth with his and kissed me through it, slow, deep, holding me there, and I came longer than I had any right to come at fifty-six years old with a morning’s worth of orgasms ahead of me still planned, and when I finally slowed he was stroking the back of my neck with his fingertips and his legs had loosened around my waist and he was breathing against my mouth and his eyes were closed.

I did not pull out. I stayed in him. I settled my weight onto his chest and I dropped my face into the side of his throat and I breathed, and I felt his hand move slow on the back of my head, and he said, very soft —

“Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“You came in my mouth.”

“Mm.”

“You didn’t come in my mouth yet.”

“Didn’t I.”

“Silas.”

“No. I did not.”

“Well.”

“Mm.”

“That’s unfinished business.”

“It is.”

“We’ll see about that.”

I huffed a laugh into his throat. “Yeah, boy. We’ll see about that.”

I stayed inside him for a long time.

He did not ask me to pull out. I did not ask him to let me. The sun came up all the way at some point and the skylight went gold and the loft was full of it and I was still inside him with my forehead against his and his fingers in my hair, and he said — after maybe ten minutes, soft, not rushed — “Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“The Harrises.”

“Oh.”

“Are you going to pull out of me so I can make pancakes for the guests of our bed and breakfast.”

“Jazz.”

“Well.”

“Fine.”

I pulled out slow. He hissed, once, small, and I kissed his temple. I reached for the washcloth on the bedside table — it was not the one from a year ago, of course, but it was a washcloth, and it lived there, and it was warm from the water in the bowl — and I wiped him down. His belly. His chest. Between his legs. I kissed the inside of his thigh when I was done. I wiped myself off. I set the cloth on the table.

He sat up slow. He was a wreck. His hair was everywhere. His mouth was swollen. His cheeks were pink down into his neck and his chest. The wooden ring was still around his neck on its cord. His cock was soft and pink against his thigh. He looked at me and he said, laughing —

“I have to look presentable to hug Mrs. Harris in thirty minutes.”

“I know.”

“How am I going to — “

“Robe.”

“Robe. Over pajamas. Hair wetted down. Wool socks. You’ll look like a newlywed. Which is what you are.”

“Silas Whitaker.”

“What.”

“You planned this.”

“I planned two hours of this morning very carefully, Jazz.”

He laughed into his hands.

We made it downstairs at ten-fifty.

Both of us in robes over pajamas. His navy, mine dark gray, both of them wool, both of them gifts from Carla last Christmas. His hair was damp at the ends because he had splashed water on it in the upstairs bathroom and combed it back. My beard was acceptable. The wooden ring on the leather cord was under my robe and under my henley and invisible unless you were looking for it.

Mrs. Harris was already up. She was sitting at the kitchen island in a lavender cardigan with a mug of coffee cupped in both hands and half an almond pastry on a plate in front of her, and when she saw us come down the ladder she smiled a small delighted smile and she said, “Good morning, boys.”

“Morning, Mrs. Harris.”

“Morning, ma’am.”

“The coffee is excellent.”

“Silas grinds it the night before.”

“Of course he does.”

She beamed at Jasper. She reached across the island and patted his hand — the one with the ring on it — and she said, “Honey. I slept twelve hours. Twelve. I haven’t slept twelve hours in a decade. Your guest bedroom is a miracle.”

“Oh — thank you, ma’am, that’s — that was Silas, he — “

“And the mural.”

“The mural was me.”

“Honey. I have been in B&Bs across three countries. You will make a name with that mural. I want you to know that. I am going to tell every woman in my bridge club about that mural, and I am going to tell them your name.”

“Ma’am — “

“Carla was right about you. She said sweetest boy you’ll ever meet, and I came up here thinking, well, Carla is partial, and here I am, one night in, a twelve-hour sleep and a mural, and Carla was right.”

Jazz was scarlet. I was trying not to smile too visibly. Mr. Harris came out of the guest bedroom with his hunting hat in his hand and he shook my hand firm and he said, “Silas. Excellent bed. Excellent chicken last night. Thank you for having us.”

“Our pleasure, sir.”

“Send us your summer booking calendar when it’s open.”

“Will do.”

“And — ” He paused. Looked at both of us. Looked at Jazz. Looked at the tasteful ring on Jazz’s left hand. Looked back at me. “Congratulations, boys. Whenever it is. In case my wife’s card got lost in the shuffle. Which knowing her it did not. Congratulations.”

I felt Jasper go still next to me. Mrs. Harris reached into her handbag — exactly into her handbag the way a person reaches for something they have pre-located — and pulled out a small square envelope on cream paper with our names in her handwriting on the front, and she set it on the island with a small firm tap, and she said, “Now you can open it, honey.”

Jasper took the envelope. He looked at me. I nodded.

He opened it carefully. Inside was a hand-lettered card and a folded check. The card said, in her handwriting: For the honeymoon. Or the wedding. Or something silly on your anniversary. Don’t argue. — Eleanor and Walt.

The check was for a thousand dollars.

Jazz looked up.

“Mrs. Harris — “

“Honey.”

“I — I can’t — “

“You can and you will. Walt made a lot of money in insurance and we do not have children and we are in the last ten good years of our lives and if we want to put a thousand dollars toward a dessert table at a gay wedding in an Adirondack cabin in June we will, and nobody is going to stop us. Am I right, Walt?”

“You are right, honey.”

“Thank you,” Jasper said. His eyes were wet. He did not let them fall. “Thank you. Thank you, both of you, I — I am going to write you a proper thank-you this week. I promise.”

“Mm-hm. You just do what makes you happy, honey.”

She kissed his cheek. She hugged him. She hugged me. Walt Harris shook my hand one more time and bought three chickadees from the jar in the workshop on his way out and left a fifty in the leave-one jar, which was — he clocked what he had done and he said, mildly, Don’t make a fuss, Silas, and I did not make a fuss. I walked them to the porch. I helped Walt load their overnight bag into the back of the Subaru. Eleanor hugged me a second time on the porch step in the cold and whispered, against my ear, he is a gem, honey, you are a blessed man, and I said, I know, ma’am, and she patted me on the arm and got in the car.

They drove down the forest road and around the first bend and out of sight.

I stood on the porch in my robe and my boots with my hand raised in a small wave at nothing. I lowered my hand. I turned around.

Jazz was in the doorway in his robe and his socks with the check in one hand and the card in the other, and he was crying, openly this time, not trying to hide it. He looked at me across the porch.

“Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“Come inside.”

“Yeah, boy.”

I came inside. I took the envelope out of his hand and set it on the kitchen island. I took his face in both of mine. I kissed him.

He wrapped his arms around my waist inside the robe and pressed his face into my throat and he said, muffled, “She knew.“

“She did.”

“She knew and she — she had a check — “

“She’s a force, boy.”

“Silas.”

“Mm.”

“I don’t — I don’t know what to do with — “

“With what, Jazz.”

“With people being kind to me.”

“Boy.”

“I don’t — “

“Come here.”

I held him in the kitchen for about a minute. Bear came over and sat against my calf, quiet. The card was on the island. The check was on the island. The almond pastries were half-eaten on the sideboard. The coffee was cooling in the French press. My husband was crying into my neck because a woman from Buffalo had given us a thousand dollars, and outside, the Whitaker cabin stood in the late morning snow of December the nineteenth, a year and a day after a boy had come up my mountain in a dead Corolla.

I kissed the top of his head.

I said, quiet, “Boy.”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to take you to the workshop.”

A beat.

“Yes.”

“You want me to finish what we started upstairs, and carve my own ring while you watch, and get my hands on you on the workbench.”

“Yes.”

“You want to stop crying now.”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.”

He laughed. Wet, fast, broken, into my throat.

I locked the front door. I took his hand. I walked him through the kitchen, through the breezeway, into the workshop.

The workshop was warm. I had stoked the stove on the way down for the Harrises’ coffee run and it had held, and the air was woodsmoke and cedar and pine oil and the particular cold-metal smell of the tools on the wall. The chickadees were on the shelf — thirty of them now, thirty-one, thirty-two, I had not stopped carving them, they went in the jar for guests to take — and the stool I was making Carla for Christmas was clamped to the main bench with its third rung pegged. The bench was clean. I had wiped it down last night because I was exactly the kind of man who wiped his workbench down on a Friday night, and at the time I had not known I was wiping it down for this, and now it turned out I had been.

“On the bench, boy.”

“Silas.”

“On the bench.”

He climbed up on the bench. He sat on the edge of it in his robe and his socks, his feet dangling a foot off the floor, and he looked at me with his mouth already open a little and his pupils blown and his face still wet, and I walked over to him and I put my hands on his thighs through the robe and I spread his knees.

“Open.”

He opened.

I pushed the robe up his thighs. He was naked under it — of course he was, it was ten-thirty on a morning in our cabin and he had spent the last hour and a half being fucked, he was not going to bother with pajamas under a robe for fifteen minutes of checkout — and his cock was half-hard already against his thigh, pinking up because I was looking at it, and I let my hand slide up the inside of his thigh and wrap around him.

“Silas — “

“Shh.”

I stroked him slow. He hardened under my hand in about forty seconds, his breath catching, his hand coming up to brace on the bench behind him. I watched his face. I watched the wooden ring on its cord fall out of the neck of the robe and hang against his bare sternum. I watched his mouth open.

“Jazz.”

“Yeah.”

“Look at me.”

He looked.

“I said I was going to come in your mouth. Before we did any more.”

“Yes.”

“We’re doing that now.”

“Okay.”

“Off the bench. On your knees.”

He slid off the bench. He dropped to his knees on the shavings at my feet. He looked up at me with the robe hanging open around him and the ring against his chest and his mouth already parting, and I put my hand flat against his cheek and I ran my thumb across his lower lip.

“Hands behind your back, boy.”

“Silas — “

“Do it.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. He kept his eyes on mine. The robe slipped off one shoulder and I did not fix it.

I untied my own robe. Let it fall open. I was hard already — I had been hard since his eyes had tracked me across the kitchen — and I took myself in my hand and I guided the head of my cock to his mouth and I pressed it against his lower lip.

“Open.”

He opened.

I slid into his mouth. Slow. Not to his throat. Just a few inches. Let him work his tongue under me, adjust, take me a little deeper on his own rhythm. His hands stayed behind his back. He was looking up at me.

“Good boy.”

He hummed around me.

“Look at you, Jazz. On your knees in my workshop with my cock in your mouth and your ring against your chest. My husband. Look at you.”

His eyes flicked at my husband. He took me deeper.

“There you go, boy. Take it. Take me a little deeper. There. There. Good boy.”

I slid my hand into his hair. Not pulling. Resting. Guiding. He took me another inch, and another, and then I was against the back of his throat and he made a small adjustment with his jaw and I slid past it, into his throat, and he held there, and he hummed, and my knees almost gave.

“Jesus — “

I held his head still. I did not thrust. I just held him there with my cock buried in his throat and I watched his eyes go wet and steady and I said, low —

“Good boy. Oh, good boy. Oh, you are so — fuck — you are so fucking good at this, Jasper. Look at you. Look at how well you take me. Stay there. Stay there, boy. Good boy.”

I pulled back, slow. He took a breath. I slid back in. He took me all the way again. I started to move — shallow strokes, then a little deeper, then deeper. He was working with me, letting me use his mouth, his hands still clasped behind his back, his knees spread on the shavings, his cock hard between his thighs and leaking onto the pine boards.

I was not going to last. I did not want to last. I had been hard since the porch last night and I had come once already and the sight of him on his knees in my workshop with a ring I had carved for his neck hanging against his naked chest — it was more than I had any business surviving.

“Jasper.”

He hummed. The vibration went through me.

“I’m going to come in your mouth.”

He hummed again.

“Like a good boy. Like my good boy. You want it?”

He nodded, my cock still in his mouth, his eyes on mine.

“Good boy.”

I came.

I came in his mouth with my hand fisted in his hair and my other hand braced on the workbench behind him and my knees almost buckling, and he took it — he took it all, he swallowed, I watched his throat work around me, I watched him swallow every pulse, and when I finally stopped and pulled out of his mouth slow he looked up at me with my cum shining on his lower lip and his eyes bright and a small proud smile breaking across his face, and he licked his lip clean and he said —

“Good.”

“Jazz.”

“What.”

“Come up here.”

I pulled him up to his feet and I kissed him. I kissed him with my taste still in his mouth, I kissed him deep and slow, and I wrapped my arms around him and I held him against my chest in the middle of the workshop and I let the rest of me calm down.

After a minute he said, muffled against my collarbone —

“Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you — “

“I’m not done with you, boy.”

“Oh.”

“Not even close.”

“Oh.”

“Back on the bench.”

I carved my ring first.

I sat him on the bench in his robe with his knees tucked up and his arms around them and I kissed him once, hard, and I said, ten minutes, boy, you watch, don’t move from that bench, don’t touch yourself, and I walked across the workshop to the scrap shelf and I pulled the pine offcut I had been saving and I brought it back. I put on my apron. I left my robe on under it because I was not going to walk around my own workshop naked with my husband watching me, I had some standards.

I laid out the tools. The coping saw for the rough cut. A drill for the center bore. Files, small ones. Sandpaper, three grits. The linseed oil on the rag.

I worked fast. I had done one of these already — I had spent a week on the first — and I knew the shape I was making now and I knew which angles mattered. I cut the blank. I drilled the bore. I rounded it on the small lathe in the corner with Jazz watching me from the bench, his face rapt. I filed the inside smooth. I sanded it through three grits till it was as smooth as the first. I oiled it.

Start to finish, fifteen minutes. I walked back to the bench with it in my palm.

“Cord.”

“Silas — “

“There’s a spool in the top drawer of the bench. Second from the left. Cut me a length. Eighteen inches.”

He slid off the bench, found the drawer, cut me a length of the same dark leather cord his was on. He handed it to me. I threaded the new ring onto the cord. I tied the cord around my own neck in a simple slipknot so it sat against my sternum the same way his did on his. I looked down at it.

Matching pair.

I looked up at him.

He was looking at me like I had hung the moon.

“Jazz.”

“Yeah.”

“Get on the bench.”

I bent him over it this time.

I put him on his forearms over the pine surface with the robe pushed up around his waist and his ass bare and I stepped between his legs and I oiled him and I pressed in. He was still slick and open from the loft and I slid into him easy and he gasped and his forehead dropped to the wood.

“Silas — “

“Good boy.”

“Oh — “

“Look at you. On my workbench. The bench I cut every chair on, the bench I cut every chickadee on, the bench I made your wedding ring box on in April — “

“You — you made the — “

“Jazz, boy, look around you. Everything in this room I made for a reason. I am fucking you on the bench I made your ring box on. I am fucking you in the shop where I carved the bird in your pocket a year ago. I am fucking you with my ring on my neck that I carved for myself while you watched me, because you could not stand for me to not have one.”

“Silas — “

“And I am going to come inside you here. And I am going to pull out and watch my cum run out of you onto the wood that I planed myself, and I am going to wipe it off with a rag because this is my workshop and I care about it, and I am going to clean you up. And then I am going to take you to the tub. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Say yes what.”

“Yes, Gramps.”

“Boy.“

I fucked him hard.

I fucked him harder than I had in the loft. He was past his second wind by now and his cock was hard again between the bench and his belly and he was biting the inside of his arm to keep quiet — he had forgotten, briefly, that there was no one to be quiet for, that the Harrises were gone, that the cabin was ours, and I reminded him without words, I reached up and pulled his arm away from his mouth and I let him make whatever noise he wanted.

He was loud. He was so loud. He had not been this loud in a year. I was proud of him. I leaned down over his back and I put my mouth at his ear and I said, “Mine,” and he sobbed once and he said “Yours,” and I reached around his hip and wrapped my hand around him and I stroked him fast and hard and —

“Silas — I’m — “

“Come on the bench, boy.”

He came.

He came all over my workbench. Across the pine, across my hand, on my wrist, on the shavings on the floor. He came with my hand on him and his forehead pressed to the wood and his back arched and my cock buried in him, and I came a half-minute behind him — I pressed all the way in and I held there and I emptied into him with his name in my mouth, Jasper, Jasper, husband, mine, husband, and he clenched around me and pulled every last drop out of me.

I pulled out slow.

I watched it happen. He stayed bent over the bench. My cum slid out of him slow, a fat bright slow trickle down the inside of his thigh, and I said out loud, to him, to nobody, to myself — “Mine.“

He whimpered.

“Good boy.”

I reached to the shelf behind me for a clean rag and I wiped him — gentle, between his thighs, down the back of his leg. I wiped the bench. I wiped my own hand. I threw the rag in the laundry basket by the door. I pulled his robe back down over him and I turned him around and I wrapped him in my arms.

He was boneless.

“Jazz.”

“I can’t move.”

“I know.”

“Carry me to the tub.”

“Yes, sir.”

I carried him.

I lifted him up under the thighs and he wrapped his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist and I walked him through the breezeway, through the kitchen, into the bathroom, and I set him down on the closed lid of the toilet, and I ran the bath hot with Epsom salt while he sat there in his robe looking at me with his eyes half-closed.

“Silas.”

“Mm.”

“The workshop.”

“Mm.”

“I’m never going to be able to walk into that workshop again without remembering you — “

“Good.”

“Silas.“

“Jazz. That is the whole of why I did it. Every room in this house is going to have a memory in it. That is my plan.”

“Your plan.”

“My long-term plan.”

“Silas Whitaker.“

“Get in the tub, boy.”

He got in the tub.

I got in behind him. He settled back against my chest. The water was up to our chests. Both of our wooden rings floated on the surface of the water, attached to their cords, bobbing small and pale against the white enamel. The candle on the shelf was lit. He reached up and picked my ring off the surface of the water and pressed it against my chest with his palm, and he said, softly — “Put it back where it goes.”

“Yeah, boy.”

“You can take it off for work. Not for water.”

“Okay.”

“Water counts.”

“Okay, Jazz.”

We talked about the wedding.

Not everything. A little. The arbor — he wanted to build it with me in April out of the downed birches on the north slope, and I said yes, and we talked about where on the yard we would put it. The flowers — Connie had offered to arrange them, she had been a florist for twenty years before she’d retired, and she had written us a quiet note in January saying if you’ll have me, I would be honored, and we had decided we would. The officiant — Earl. Earl ordained online on a Thursday afternoon in February, and he had called me from his living room laughing and had said, Silas Whitaker, you owe me, and I had said, I know, Earl, and he had said, I am going to write you the best goddamn wedding ceremony of your life, and I had said, I know you are.

“Silas.”

“Mm.”

“My mother.”

“Yeah, boy.”

“Do I invite her.”

I went quiet for a moment. I tightened my arms around his waist in the water and I pressed my mouth against the top of his wet head and I thought.

I said, slow, “Boy. Here is what I think. I think you send her a card. A beautiful one. One you make. You write in it that you are getting married on the twenty-first of June at your husband’s cabin in the Adirondacks, and she is invited, and there is a bed for her here if she wants to come, and the RSVP date is May first. You send it in January. You mail it. You put it in her hand. And then — and this is the part — you let it be her work. If she shows up, she shows up. If she does not show up, that is her work and not yours. You will have sent the card. You will have invited her. What she does with the invitation is her life, not yours. And you will have a wedding either way.”

He was quiet for a long time.

“Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“That is exactly what Mrs. Harris said to me when she hugged me.”

“Did she.”

“She said — she said you just do what makes you happy, honey, and I thought — I thought she was just being kind, but she meant — “

“She meant it, boy.”

“Yeah.”

“Send the card.”

“Okay.”

“Good boy.”

He leaned his head back against my shoulder.

We sat in the tub for a while. The water was hot and getting hotter because I kept the faucet on a slow trickle, and the wooden rings bobbed around us in the water, and the candle on the shelf burned low, and Bear scratched at the bathroom door once and settled on the rug outside.

“Silas.”

“Mm.”

“I am going to fall asleep in this water.”

“No, you are not. Earl is coming at two.”

“Is he.”

“Mm.”

“What time is it.”

“One forty-five.”

“Silas.“

“Time flies.”

“Silas Whitaker.“

“Up, boy.”

We dried off. He dressed in jeans and a dark green flannel — one of mine, rolled at the cuffs, he had stopped asking if it was okay to take mine about eight months ago — and I dressed in my work pants and a thermal and a dark blue flannel, and we were both out of the bathroom and in the kitchen by one-fifty with our wooden rings on the leather cords tucked carefully under our collars.

I put coffee on.

I was pouring Jazz’s cup when Earl’s truck came up the road.

I heard it first. He heard it second. He was at the kitchen island drinking from his mug and he looked at me across the butcher block and his mouth did a small pleased thing and he said, “Silas.“

“What.”

“You are grinning like a fool.”

“Am I.”

“You are.”

“Mm.”

“I’m a fool too.”

“Are you.”

“Look at my face.”

I looked at his face.

He was. He had the small bright punch-drunk look of a person who had been thoroughly and repeatedly ruined in the course of one morning and who had been dragged up out of a hot bath into warm clothes and a hot cup of coffee and who was now watching his husband pour him a second refill while his oldest friend’s plow pulled up the drive, and he was grinning like a fool.

“Jazz.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Silas.”

Earl’s truck crunched up and parked.

Earl came in.

He did not take his cap off. He took his boots off at the mudroom. He came into the kitchen in his wool socks and his Carhartt and he accepted a cup of coffee from me without speaking and he sat down at the island across from Jasper and he took a long pull of the coffee and he looked at Jazz.

Jasper was pink.

The flannel collar on Jasper’s chest had shifted — just a fraction, when he had leaned over the island to pick up his own cup — and the pale leather cord around his neck was visible at his collarbone. Just a loop of it. Not the ring. Just the cord.

Earl’s eyes went to the cord. Held there for one second. Went back to Jasper’s face.

He did not say anything.

He looked at me. His eyes found my collar. The same cord. The same half-inch of leather showing above the seam of my thermal.

He smiled. Small. Private. The kind of smile Earl Dutton smiled when he was deciding on purpose not to comment on a thing.

He said, mildly, to me — “Silas. Where are the shims for the back porch step.”

“Workshop. Third bin on the left.”

“I’ll go get them.”

“Take your coffee.”

“I will.”

He stood up. He took his mug. He looked at Jazz one more time on the way past — just a glance, kind, amused, approving — and he clapped me on the shoulder with his free hand on his way to the breezeway, and he said, against my ear as he passed, too low for Jazz to hear:

“Good morning, brother.”

“Good morning, Earl.”

He went. The breezeway door swung shut behind him.

Jasper looked at me across the island.

He mouthed, silently, without a sound, his mouth making the shape of the word slow and clearly across the kitchen — good boy.

I laughed. I laughed out loud. I set my mug down because I was going to spill it. I walked around the end of the island. I took his face in both my hands. I kissed him — hard, quick, laughing into his mouth — and I said, against his cheek, “Get out of my kitchen, boy. I have shims to find.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go sit on the couch. Read a book. Draw me. I’ll be in before dinner.”

“Okay.”

“Jazz.”

“Yeah.”

“Tonight, after Earl leaves, we are going to do it again.”

“Okay.”

“And tomorrow morning we are going to do it again.”

“Okay.”

“And Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. And every morning in this cabin for the rest of my life. Because I have earned it. Because Marianne raised me to hold on to a gift when I was given one. Because Earl taught me what a husband looked like. Because the boy with ink on his knuckles who is standing in my kitchen is wearing a wooden ring I carved for him around his neck under his shirt, and he is going to be naked in my bed tonight with that ring on his chest and no clothes on, and I am going to be inside him again, and that is not a thing I am ever going to get tired of. That is the shape of a life I did not know I was going to get, and I have it, and I am not going to stop being surprised by it until the day I die.”

“Silas.”

“Mm.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Jazz.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, boy.”

He went to the couch. He picked up his sketchbook. He opened it to a fresh page.

I went to the workshop.

Earl was already at the shim bin, pretending hard to be absorbed in the shim bin, not looking at me when I came in. I went to the shelf. I pulled down the pine offcut, a fresh one, a clean rectangle I had been saving. I set it on the bench. I sat down at the bench. I picked up my coping saw.

I was going to make another chickadee.

The jar was full. The jar was always full. But I was going to make another one, because that was what I did in this workshop on a Saturday afternoon in December after my husband had come in my mouth on my workshop floor, and because the next guests would be in next week and they would take some, and because Jasper liked when I made them, and because the making of a thing was what I was made for and I was not going to stop.

Earl said, mildly, across the workshop, with his back still to me —

“Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“Got the shims.”

“Good.”

“Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“Congratulations on the morning you had.”

“Thanks, Earl.”

“Mm.”

He walked past me with the shim box under his arm on his way out to the porch steps. He clapped me on the shoulder once. He left.

I sat at the workbench in my workshop with a fresh piece of pine in my hand and my husband on the couch through the breezeway and my oldest friend on the back porch with his shim box and my wife’s ghost long settled in a green field I had visited last week in Lake View Cemetery, and I bent my head over the bench, and I started to carve.

The cabin held.

The morning had held.

The afternoon was going to hold.

That was the shape. That was the shape of a life I had not known I was going to get. I had it. I was keeping it. I was going to keep it every morning in this cabin for the rest of my life, because I had earned it, and because the boy would be wearing my ring around his neck when he was naked in my bed, and because that was what husbands did, and because that was what I was now, and because I was not going to stop being surprised by any of it until the day I closed my eyes and did not open them.

I had that long.

And I was going to use it.

I picked up the knife.

I started the cut.

The cabin held. — Jace

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