Hands On, Good Boy by Jace Wilder - MM Age Gap Woodworker Romance book cover

The Cabin at Christmas

A bonus chapter for Hands On, Good Boy

🔥 WARNING: This bonus chapter is explicit and much hotter than the main novel. It contains graphic sexual content including D/s dynamics, collar/cuff play, ring worship, breeding talk, Daddy kink, edging, and an extended claim scene. Intended for readers 18+.

Set between Chapter Fourteen and Chapter Fifteen of the main novel. Christmas Eve through Christmas morning, the year Declan and Rowan signed the partnership. Uncut. Unredacted. Too hot for Amazon.

Haven’t read the main novel yet? Start here.

By Jace Wilder. Christmas Eve afternoon through Christmas morning, the year Declan and Rowan signed the partnership. Uncut. Unredacted.

Declan

At four o’clock on Christmas Eve afternoon I was alone in the cabin with a ring in my pocket and forty minutes before Rowan’s truck came back up the gravel.

The ring had been in my pocket for fifty-three days.

I had counted. I am the kind of man who counts days in a shop, and it turns out that when you are a man carrying a small silver band in the inside pocket of your jeans for seven and a half weeks, the count becomes a private number you check every morning. Fifty-three. Every morning I had taken the ring out of yesterday’s flannel and moved it into today’s flannel. Every morning I had patted my pocket before breakfast to make sure the ring was there. Every morning the ring had been there, and every morning I had not given it to him.

Tonight I was going to.

Clem had finished it on the second Wednesday of November. She had already been working on it for three Wednesday nights by the time she handed it to me at her forge at nine-forty p.m. on a cold Wednesday in a small canvas pouch, and she had said, very simply: “Old man. If you don’t give this to him by Christmas I’ll come to your shop and give it to him myself.”

I had told her I was giving it to him on Christmas Eve. She had nodded. She had poured me a finger of bourbon out of a bottle she kept in the forge drawer. She had said: “Don’t fuck it up, Declan.”

I had said: “Not planning to, Clem.” She had said: “Good.”

That had been forty-six days ago. The ring was, today, in the inside pocket of the flannel I was wearing — my good flannel, a charcoal-and-cream pattern Thomas had bought me at a dry goods store in Middlebury in 2012. Rowan had, this morning, pulled it off the hanger and laid it across the foot of the bed without saying anything, and I had understood the gesture. He had a way of communicating through cloth selection now.

I had not told him what was happening tonight. I had also, I suspected, told him what was happening tonight with every small gesture I had made for the last two weeks. He knew. He was waiting.

That was the arrangement we had now. He was waiting, and I was going to deliver.

The storm was going to hit at midnight. Ten to fourteen inches of snow. The two-lane would be impassable by dawn. Fitz had offered to come up in his own plow on the twenty-sixth. From midnight tonight through noon on the twenty-sixth, the cabin would be sealed. Nobody was coming up the gravel.

Inside the cabin, by four o’clock, I had prepared.

The bearskin rug — Thomas’s bearskin rug, the one we had fought about in 2012 at the barn sale and that I had been, for a year now, understanding was for exactly this night — was pulled off the bedroom floor and laid in front of the hearth. The hearth was lit. Three fresh oak logs were stacked beside it. Two bourbon cocoas were warming in their mugs on the kitchen counter, both with a finger of Weller 12 and two spoons of cream. The candles on the mantel were two pillar candles I had lit at three forty-five, and they were burning now under Thomas’s black-and-white photograph.

I had stood in front of the photograph for maybe ninety seconds at three fifty-five. I had said, quiet, to the photograph: “Tommy. Tonight’s the night. I wanted you in the room for it. You’ve been in the room for everything else.”

The photograph had not answered. The small bright room in my head had not answered either. That was fine. That was Thomas resting.

On the kitchen counter: brioche from Hollis’s. Three eggs. Real vanilla. Fresh cream. Cast-iron skillet warming slow on the stove. Maple syrup from the Pennock farm in a small pitcher. Bacon from Hollis’s meat counter waiting in the oven on low.

I had decided — two weeks ago — that we were going to eat French toast for Christmas Eve dinner. Because Rowan’s mother had made French toast on Saturday mornings. Because Christmas Eve dinner for a man who had lost his mother should be his mother’s food.

I had not explained this to him. I was not going to. He was going to walk in the door and see the brioche on the counter and the skillet warming and he was going to know.

At four thirty-one his truck came up the gravel.

I heard the diesel. I heard the tires on the frozen stones. I heard the engine cut. I heard the driver’s door open, the door slam, his boots on the gravel.

I stood at the kitchen window. I watched him come up the walk. He was carrying two paper bags and a smaller bag. Green wool coat. Carhartt beanie. Breath in clouds. Already smiling because coming home had become a thing he smiled about.

He opened the door.

He stopped three feet inside.

He saw the candles. The hearth. The bearskin. Me in the good flannel with a dish towel on my shoulder and the bourbon cocoas on the counter.

He said, finally: “Oh.”

Just: oh.

He put the bags down. He took off the beanie. He unbuttoned the coat with fingers that were a little clumsy. He hung the coat. He toed his boots off. He walked to me across the cabin and stopped a foot away.

“Declan.”

“Hi, baby.”

“The cabin — “

“I know.”

“You — “

“I’ve been thinking about tonight for a long time, Rowan. I want you to know that up front.”

He swallowed. I watched his throat move.

I put both my hands on his face. Thumbs under his ears. Palms along his cheeks. I turned his chin up. I kissed him. Slow. Closed. The kiss that meant I have you and you have me and the afternoon has arrived.

I pulled back an inch. “Dinner first. Then I want you in front of the fire. Then I want you in our bed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Three stops tonight.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rowan

The first thing I noticed — after the candles and the hearth and the bearskin and my fiancé-to-be standing in his good flannel with a dish towel on his shoulder — was that he had laid out the French toast ingredients.

I put my mug down. I stared at the back of his neck where his hair met his collar, and I understood, in a way I had not fully understood in the doorway, that Declan Brody had decided he was going to make my dead mother’s food for dinner on Christmas Eve. Because he had been paying attention to a thing I had told him in the finishing nook with his cock inside me in November and had not let that thing go.

“Declan. Why are you making French toast for Christmas Eve dinner?”

He did not turn around. “You know why.”

I closed my eyes. My throat did a thing. I did not cry at the kitchen table. But I did bite the inside of my lip, and I said, to his back: “Yes, sir.”

“Good boy.”

He went on cooking. He cooked slow. He did not rush dinner. He dipped the bread slice by slice in the egg mixture, and he laid it in the cast iron, and he watched it brown, and he flipped each slice with a small metal spatula that had belonged to his grandmother. He plated two slices each on two small ironstone plates. He sat down across from me.

“Merry Christmas Eve, apprentice.”

“Merry Christmas Eve, Declan.”

“Eat, good boy.”

I ate. Slow.

Halfway through he reached across the table. He took my fork out of my hand. He speared a small piece of French toast on the end of my fork. He held it up to my mouth. I ate it off my own fork from his hand. The candles on the mantel behind him threw small light on the silver in his beard.

He did it again. I ate it.

He took my left hand across the table. He turned it palm up. He lifted it to his mouth. He kissed the inside of my wrist over the compass tattoo.

“Leave the dishes. Come to the fire.”

“Yes, sir.”

Declan — First Scene, The Bearskin Rug

I undressed him in front of the fire.

I did it slow. I was going to get his flannel open but not off. I was going to get his T-shirt up but not off. I wanted him half-bare, half-held, vulnerable in a particular way. A man in his own clothes with his chest bare and his shoulders still bound by the cotton on his upper arms is a very specific kind of exposed. I wanted him that way for what was coming next.

I put my hands on his chest through the flannel. I unbuttoned from the top down. One button. Two. Three. Four. I kissed every inch of collarbone and sternum as it appeared. I kissed his pulse at the base of his throat. I pushed the flannel off his shoulders. I let it slide down to his elbows. I stopped it there.

I pulled his T-shirt up. Up over his ribs. I kissed each rib as the cotton came off. I kissed the 1962 tattoo for a long second. I sucked on the skin around it. I pushed the T-shirt up to the notch of his collarbones and left it there, bunched at his throat.

He was standing in front of the fire in a flannel slid off his shoulders to his elbows and a T-shirt bunched at his collarbones and his jeans still on. His chest and stomach were firelit. His curls were falling over his forehead. His breath was going fast.

“Declan.”

“Stay there. Don’t move.”

“Yes, sir.”

I stood up. I walked to the mantel. I took the small walnut box off the mantel — the box Rowan had turned himself on the Powermatic in October, his first turning attempt, slightly lopsided at the lid. I had emptied out the matches and the dime and the dried lavender seed and put the ring inside.

I walked back to the rug. I knelt in front of him. I held the box between us at chest height.

He looked at the box. His eyes went to my face. His lips parted.

“Rowan.”

“Declan.”

“Clem made this. She’s been working on it on Wednesday nights at the forge for six weeks. I asked her in November. I’ve been driving up to her forge telling you I was watching her work. I’ve been lying to you, good boy. I’m telling you now.”

“…yeah?”

“Open the box.”

He took the box with both hands. His hands were shaking. He opened the lid. He looked inside. He made a small noise — not quite a sob, not quite a laugh. The noise a man makes when his life just turned.

“Look at me, Rowan.”

He looked at me.

“This is not our wedding ring. I am making our wedding rings. I’m building them in the spring. Out of the cherry tree. Out of Thomas’s cherry tree. With gold from a jeweler I talked to in Burlington on the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. This is a placeholder. This is tonight’s ring. This is the ring I wanted on your finger between now and May.”

He was crying now. Quiet. Tears going down his face in two tracks.

“Will you wear this, Rowan, until we trade it for the one I haven’t made yet?”

“Yes. God. Yes. Yes. Declan. Yes.”

I took the ring out of the box. I took his left hand. I slid the band onto his ring finger. Clem had sized it off a wire tracing I had taken of his finger one night in November while he was asleep. It settled at the base.

I lifted his hand. I kissed the knuckle above the band. I kissed the palm. I kissed the inside of the wrist over the compass. I kissed the tips of all four fingers one at a time. I kissed the ring.

“Mine. My fiancé.”

“Yours.”

“Come here.”

I pulled him down onto the bearskin and I laid him on his back and I kissed him hard for the first time tonight. Open mouth. Tongue. Teeth at the edge. My beard against his jaw. He made a small sound into my mouth and I swallowed it.

I pulled back an inch. “I’m going to fuck you on this rug, fiancé. With the ring on.”

“Oh my God.“

“Clothes off, baby. All of them now. I want you all the way naked.”

“Yes, sir.”

He got his clothes off — jeans, briefs, boots, socks. Naked on Thomas’s bearskin rug with the ring on his hand and nothing else. I got mine off too. Thick through the chest and shoulders from forty years of lumber, silver-shot chest hair, silver-shot beard. Hard and heavy against my belly, wet at the tip already.

I reached behind the brass hearth screen. I pulled out a small glass jar. I had pre-positioned it at three-thirty p.m. while Rowan was in town. My partner was a man who kept rags under every surface and jars behind every screen.

I slicked myself. I slicked him. Two fingers from the fire-warmed jar. I worked him open — slow, methodical. He made a small noise when my middle finger found the spot. A third finger. I worked him with three for maybe two full minutes. I knew his body by this point.

“Good boy.”

“Sir —“

“You ready?”

“Yes, please, sir, please, Declan —”

I pushed his knees back. Not over his shoulders. Just up, open, his hands on his thighs holding him spread. I guided myself to him. I pushed in. One long slow slide to the base. I stopped when I was flush. I held.

I put both my hands flat on the rug on either side of his head. I lowered myself onto my forearms over him. “Hand, baby. Give me your left hand.”

I lifted it. I brought it up between us. I looked at the ring. My jaw worked. My eyes got wet. I lowered his hand and put it flat on my own chest. Over my heart. I kept my own hand over his, pressing his ring hand against my chest, the silver band between his palm and my heart.

“Feel that.”

“Yes, sir.“

“That’s what you did to me.”

“Declan —“

I moved. Slow. Long strokes. All the way out to the head, all the way back in to the base. The slow-blues rhythm. The rhythm of every sanding pass in this shop since October. I kept his ring-hand pinned to my chest. My other hand was free. I put it in his hair.

I talked to him the whole time.

“Look at my ring on you, baby.”

“Show me that hand.”

“Mine.”

“My fiancé. Mine.”

“Good boy. Good boy. Good boy.”

“Look what I put on you tonight.”

“Look at my ring on my boy’s hand on my chest.”

He said: “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” He said: “Declan. Declan. Declan.” He said: “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I hit deeper. My cock was so deep in him I could feel him in my belly. I had a rhythm that was patient and brutal at the same time.

“I’m going to come in you.”

“Yes.”

“I want to see my ring on your finger when you come. I want to hear you call me Daddy when you come.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

My jaw went tight. My eyes went dark. I thrust harder.

“Again.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“Say it when you come. I want to hear it when your cock is spilling on my stomach.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

I reached between us — his cock was so hard, so wet — and I wrapped my rough callused palm around him, and I stroked him in the rhythm I had been fucking him, and my ring hand was pressed between us, and —

He came. He came hard. Long stripes up my stomach, onto his own belly, onto the inside of my wrist. Ring hand pinned between us under my hand. Saying Daddy into my mouth.

I came a stroke later. Thumbs under his ears, palms along his cheeks, forehead pressed to forehead. I came inside him deep, and I felt him pulse four or five times, hot and full, and he groaned into my mouth, low, a sound that was half my name.

I did not pull out. I stayed. I lowered my weight onto him. His cock still buried in me, his breath against my jaw.

We lay there. I don’t know how long. The fire popped. Snow kept hitting the window.

After a few minutes I lifted my head. I kissed his mouth. I kissed his temple. I kissed his forehead. I said, against his hair: “Fiancé.“

“Fiancé.”

“Merry Christmas Eve, good boy.”

“Merry Christmas Eve, Declan.”

I pulled out — slow, careful. I lay down beside him on the rug and I pulled the quilt off the back of the sofa down over both of us, and I tucked him against my chest. His come drying inside him. My come drying between us. The silver ring cooling against my sternum. The snow starting to come down in earnest outside the window.

Declan — Second Scene, The Cabin Bed

I lay there with him for two hours. He slept on my chest about forty minutes in. The fire burned down slow. Snow came down steady outside the window.

At ten forty-five I kissed his temple. “Rowan. Bed, fiancé.”

He made a small happy sound against my chest. “Okay.”

I walked him through the cabin to the bedroom.

I had prepared the bedroom. At three forty p.m. I had turned down the bed. Fresh sheets. On the nightstand: a fresh water bottle. A stack of clean for-people rags. The padded leather wrist cuffs from the shop, inspected this afternoon. A fresh jar of lube. And — a small leather collar I had bought in Montpelier last month and had been waiting for the right moment to show him.

Rowan walked in and he saw the cuffs. His breath caught. Then his eyes moved. He saw the collar. His whole body stopped.

“Sir.”

“Yeah.”

“Are we — “

“If you want.”

“The — “

“Collar. Yes. Optional. Same rules as everything else. I’m asking. Would you like me to put it on you.”

“Tonight.”

“With the ring.”

He looked at the collar. Soft brown leather, hand-stitched, no hardware. A single small brass buckle in back. Sized off the same wire tracing Clem had used for the ring.

“For tonight only.”

“For tonight only. Unless you want to put it back on. Later. We can talk about that later. Tonight — the collar goes on at the start of the scene and comes off at the end. Same as the cuffs.”

“Yes, Declan.”

“Green?”

“Green.”

“Safeword.”

“Splinter.”

“Stop entirely.”

“Sawstop.”

“Good.”

“Declan. I want you to mean it when you say Daddy tonight.”

I closed my eyes for half a second. I opened them. “Yes, baby.“

“And — I want the heavy words. The ones you’ve been using. Heavier than that, if you want. I want the version of you that you have been holding a little back. I want it tonight. I can take it. I want to take it. I want you to fuck me like a man fucks his fiancé the night he put a ring on him. Breed me. Hold me down. I want it rough. I want it long. I want you to make me wait.”

“Good boy.”

I sat him on the edge of the bed. I knelt on the floor in front of him. I picked up the collar. “You ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lift your chin.”

He lifted his chin. I put the collar around his neck. I fed the strap through the buckle. I pulled — gently, two-finger clearance — until it sat snug just above his collarbone. I buckled it. I sat back.

He was sitting on the edge of our bed, naked, ring on his hand, collar around his throat. The brown leather against his skin was a specific kind of obscene. He was claimed.

“Fiancé.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How does it feel.”

He lifted his hands. He touched the collar at his throat. He ran his fingers along the leather. He swallowed against it. “It feels like you, sir. It feels like your hand is at my throat all night. Without your hand being at my throat.”

“Good. On the bed. On your back. Hands above your head.”

“Yes, sir.”

He lay on the turned-down sheets. I put the cuffs on him. Padded leather, lambskin-lined, three-inch wide, the kind of cuffs built for a man who could not bear to mark another man. I padded each cuff around his wrist, buckled it, checked the two-finger clearance. I cinched them together with the small clip I used to join them. I guided his cuffed wrists up over his head, onto the pillow, where the weight of his own arms held them in place.

He was pinned, in the soft way. His cock hard and wet on his stomach. The ring visible on his cuffed left hand above his head. The 1962 tattoo visible under his right ribs. The collar at his throat a dark strap between the pale of his jaw and the flush of his chest. Pupils blown wide open.

“Look at you.”

“Sir —“

“Such a good boy.”

“Yes, Daddy —“

“Mine.”

“Yours.“

“Whose are you tonight, fiancé?”

“Daddy’s.“

“Say it fully.”

“I’m Daddy’s good boy tonight. I’m Daddy’s fiancé. I’m — I’m yours, sir. Yours.“

“I am going to take my time tonight. I am going to make you wait. You are going to come when I tell you to come, and not before. You are going to wear the ring and the collar and the cuffs the whole time. I am going to fill you up. I am going to keep you full all night. If you need to stop you say splinter. If you need me to end the night entirely you say sawstop. Otherwise you take what Daddy gives you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

I lowered my mouth.

I started at his ring.

I lifted his cuffed hands off the pillow — just a little — and I took his ring finger into my mouth. Slow. Ring and all. The metal tasted like cold silver and like him and like the fire-warm oil he had on his hands from the log I had fed into the hearth earlier. I closed my lips around the knuckle below the band and I sucked.

He made a noise. A loud one. A high broken noise that came up out of his throat like he had not expected his own body to produce it, and his cock jumped against his stomach, and a small bead appeared at the slit.

I took his finger deeper. I sucked harder. I dragged my tongue around the band of the ring, around the knuckle, around the finger. I made him feel the inside of my mouth the way he was used to feeling my mouth on another part of him, and his hips bucked up off the bed and his cock twitched, untouched, and a second bead appeared at the slit and ran down the shaft.

I released his finger slowly. The ring was wet. It glinted in the lamp.

He whimpered. An actual broken whine.

“Daddy —“

“Shh. Not yet, fiancé.”

I laid his hands back on the pillow above his head. I moved down his body. I kissed his throat under the collar — I licked the skin just above the leather, where the strap was going to leave a faint impression by morning. I bit — gently, just a teeth-press — the pulse point under his jaw. I kissed his nipples each in turn, lingered on the right one, the more sensitive one, rolled my tongue around it until he arched off the bed. I sucked the right nipple into my mouth and held it between my teeth, gentle, warning, pulled back just slightly so he felt the drag.

I kissed down his ribs. I kissed the 1962 tattoo. I put my mouth directly on the number 1 and I sucked a mark into it. A real mark this time. Not faint pink. Actual bruise. A dark purple spot that was going to last three or four days and was going to be visible to him in the mirror tomorrow morning.

“Daddy marked you, fiancé.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“Three days you’re going to see that in the mirror.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“Every morning when you take your shirt off you’re going to see where Daddy put his mouth on you on Christmas Eve night.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

I kissed lower. I reached his cock. It was leaking heavy on his belly. A small pool of clear fluid had gathered at the base of his navel. I did not take him in my mouth. Not yet. I kissed down the underside. I kissed the base. I kissed each thigh. I kissed the inside of each knee. I kissed the small patch of skin on the inside of his right thigh, high up, close to the crease where his thigh met his hip — a spot I had, over seventy-three days, identified as a spot that undid him.

I licked that spot. Long, slow drags of my tongue across it. He writhed. His cuffed hands above his head clenched, the ring glinting.

“Daddy, please —“

“Please what, fiancé.”

“Please take me in your mouth —“

“No.”

“Daddy —“

“Not tonight, baby. Not for the start. Tonight you are going to wait.”

I moved my face down to his cock finally. I breathed against it. Warm exhale directly on the head. He whined. I lifted my face. I went lower. I mouthed at his balls — no tongue, just lips, a slow closed mouth dragging across his sac — and he keened, high and broken.

I positioned myself between his legs. I slicked my fingers from the fresh jar. I opened him.

He was still soft from the bearskin rug, still a little open from my come two hours ago still inside him, and my fingers went in easy. I worked him for what must have been five full minutes, three fingers, pressed up against the spot inside him that made his thighs shake around my shoulders. I did not let him build. Each time he got close I eased off. Each time he got close I moved my fingers away from the spot and I did something gentler, and I watched him come down, and I said, low: “Not yet, fiancé.”

One edge. Two edges — he was closer this time, his whole body tensing, his cuffed hands straining above his head, and I stopped with my fingers still inside him, stopped fully, and I held him, and I whispered into his thigh: “Breathe through it, fiancé. That’s Daddy’s good boy. You don’t get to come yet. We just started. Hold it.”

He held it. I went again. Three edges. After the third edge I pulled my fingers out. I slicked my cock. I lined up. I pushed in slow.

He was open and ready, and I slid all the way to the base on one long push, and he arched off the bed, and his cuffed hands curled into fists above his head, and he said, broken: “Daddy — Daddy — Daddy —“

I stopped when I was flush. I held. “Show me your ring, fiancé.”

He rotated his cuffed hands, awkwardly, so that his left hand — the ring hand — was palm-up on the pillow above his head. The ring was visible in the lamplight.

“Good boy.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“Daddy is going to fuck you hard tonight.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“You are going to keep your hands up there. If you bring them down I stop. You are going to take what I give you. At some point — when I say — I am going to let you come. Until I say — you hold. Even if you think you can’t. You hold.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Good boy.”

I moved.

I moved harder than I had on the rug. Not reckless. I do not fuck reckless. But harder. Longer strokes. Deeper at the base. I took his thighs one in each hand and I spread him wider, and I braced his right knee up against my shoulder, and I hit the angle inside him that I had been, for weeks, calibrating as the angle, and his whole body bucked under me and his cuffed hands clenched above his head and he made a sound I had not heard from him all night.

I hit that angle again. And again. And again.

“Look at you. Look at you. Daddy’s fiancé. Look at you taking Daddy’s cock on Christmas Eve. You’re going to be so full of Daddy’s come tonight, fiancé. All night. Daddy’s going to breed you so deep you’re going to feel it when you wake up tomorrow and you’re going to feel it again on Christmas afternoon and you’re going to feel it at dinner and you’re going to feel it when you get in bed Christmas night because Daddy is not done filling you up with tonight’s load. Every time you look at that ring on your hand tomorrow you’re going to feel Daddy still inside you. You hear me? That’s what a ring on a good boy’s finger means. He’s kept full. Always. By his Daddy.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“Say it.”

“I’m going to be kept full. By Daddy. All night. Every night. Forever.“

“Good boy.”

I fucked him harder. He did not bring his hands down. I hit the angle — one, two, three, four strokes in a row — and I felt him start to come close, and I stopped, fully, deep inside him, not moving, not breathing.

He sobbed. “Daddy —“

“Not yet, fiancé.”

“Please —“

“Not yet.”

I held still inside him for maybe thirty seconds. His whole body shook under mine. I put my hand flat on his lower belly, below his navel, and I pressed gently, and I felt myself inside him through his belly.

“Breathe through it, good boy. I can feel myself in you through your stomach. Feel that? My cock in your belly. Daddy so deep inside his fiancé that he can feel him through the skin. You feel Daddy there?”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“That’s where Daddy lives tonight. Right there. Deep in my boy’s belly.”

“Oh, God —“

The ripples subsided. I moved again. Slower this time. I brought him back up slow. I told him he was mine. I told him I was going to fill him. I told him that the ring on his finger meant that for the rest of his life his finger was going to feel exactly what I had put on it, and that for the rest of his life his body was going to feel exactly what I had put inside it.

“Fourth time’s the charm, fiancé.”

He sobbed. “Daddy — please — please —“

“You close, baby?”

“Yes — yes, Daddy —“

“You ready to come?”

“Yes, Daddy, please, Daddy, please —“

“Show Daddy your ring again.”

He rotated his left hand on the pillow. The ring caught the lamp. I watched it.

“That’s my ring on my fiancé. That’s my ring on my good boy. Forever. You’re wearing Daddy’s ring now, aren’t you.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“And Daddy is about to fill you up. You’re going to come with my ring on your hand, and Daddy’s collar on your throat, and Daddy’s come in you, and you’re going to keep that come in you all night and you’re going to sleep with Daddy still inside you.”

“Yes, Daddy.“

“Come for me, fiancé.”

I reached between us — he was so hard, so wet, he was soaked at the head — and I wrapped my hand around his cock and I stroked him once, twice — and he —

He came. He came hard. He came with his cuffed hands above his head, his ring visible, his body arching off the bed against the collar at his throat, his cock pulsing in my hand in long hot stripes up his own stomach and onto his chest and up to his collarbone and onto the brown leather of the collar itself, and he sobbed my name — “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” — and his body clenched around me so hard I felt my own rhythm stutter.

I came two strokes later. Deep. I buried myself in him to the base and I held, and I came in long pulses inside him, and I put my forehead against his forehead, and I said, into his mouth, ragged: “Mine.“

“Yours.“

“Mine.“

“Yours, Daddy.“

“My fiancé. My fiancé.“

“Yes, Daddy.“

I stayed in him. I did not pull out. I reached up. I undid the cuffs — the clip first, then each buckle. I brought his hands down slow. I kissed each wrist, long. Both wrists. The insides, the pulses. I kissed his ring finger. I kissed the ring. I put his hand flat on my own cheek.

“Declan.“

“I’ve got you, baby.”

“I can’t —”

“I know. Breathe.”

He was shaking. I did not pull out. I held him under me, still inside him, for maybe four or five minutes. His breathing came back. His eyes came back. He smiled, wrecked, small. “Merry Christmas.“

“Merry Christmas, fiancé.”

I eased out of him slow. I kissed the 1962 — where the fresh bruise was already blooming dark under his skin. I got a fresh warm cloth from the nightstand and I cleaned him. Inside his thighs. His belly. His chest. The come on the leather of his collar. His ring with great care, holding his hand, wiping the silver dry with a corner of the cloth. I undid the collar buckle and I slipped it off his throat and I set it on the nightstand. The skin where the leather had sat was the faintest warm pink, nothing more.

I handed him the water bottle. He drank half in one go.

I kissed his temple. “Sleep, fiancé.”

“…you sleep too. With me.”

“With you, baby.”

I got in beside him. I pulled the quilt over us. I tucked him into my chest. His ringed hand went flat on my chest. I kissed the top of his head. He was asleep in maybe ninety seconds.

Rowan — 2:30 a.m. Interlude

At two thirty in the morning I woke up. I lifted my left hand, slow, in the dark. I held it up where the faint orange of the hearth’s embers through the bedroom doorway could catch on the silver.

The ring caught the light. A small thin gleam.

I was a man with a ring on my hand. I had not been, yesterday at four-thirty, a man with a ring on my hand. I had come up a gravel drive in Vermont in October in a truck that died. I had carried a duffel and a toolroll up to a shop I had cut a photograph of out of a magazine when I was fourteen. I had stood in a doorway and said apprentice when a man asked. And now I had become the man who was going to marry Declan Brody.

I thought about my mother. I thought about her bad singing voice. I thought about her making French toast on Saturday mornings. I thought about the way she had, when I was eight, taken me outside on Christmas Eve and pointed at the Christmas star in the sky and told me it was my job, for my whole life, to find the first star on Christmas Eve.

I had not found it this year. I had been in Hollis’s mercantile when the first star came out over the ridge, and I had missed it. But I had — I realized, looking at the silver on my finger in the dark — I had not missed the thing. I had walked into my cabin and a man had given me a ring, and the man had made me my mother’s food for Christmas Eve dinner, and the man had been carrying the ring in his pocket for fifty-three days. I had got the right star tonight.

I shifted slightly, and as I did I felt the warm thickness of his come still inside me, sitting deep, the way it had been sitting deep since nine o’clock at night, and I was — I am not going to lie on this page — I was still full of him. I was still leaking him slow. And he was going to keep filling me in the morning. That was the arrangement we had agreed to, and I was going to carry him in my body until Christmas afternoon.

I kissed Declan’s shoulder. I put my ringed hand back on his chest over his heart. I closed my eyes. I went back to sleep with his come in me and his ring on me.

Declan — Third Scene, Christmas Dawn

At six a.m. I woke up. It was still dark. The fire had died sometime around four. The storm was still going outside, the snow hitting the glass in a steady soft hiss. The worst of the storm had passed in the night.

I rebuilt the fire. I made two bourbon cocoas. I brought both mugs back to the bedroom. I pulled Rowan back against my chest.

“Morning, fiancé.”

“Christmas morning, baby. I have you all day. Nobody’s coming up the gravel till the twenty-sixth. We’re sealed in. Can I have you one more time before the sun comes up?”

“You can have me any time, Declan.”

“Slow this time, sir.”

“Slow, baby.”

“Just — just hold me. Don’t — I want you to stay inside a long time. Like the night we signed. The cockwarming thing.”

“Yeah, fiancé.”

I slicked myself from the jar on the nightstand. I slicked him — a brief pass, he was still open, he had been open for me for twelve hours, and he was still wet inside from the come I had left in him. I rolled him onto his side, facing away from me, back to my chest. His left hand — his ring hand — came around behind him and settled on my thigh. I laced my own left hand through his ring hand. Our ring hand now, I thought. Ours.

I pushed in. Slow. To the base. His body welcomed me easy. He sighed — a long soft sigh, content.

I felt, as I seated inside him, the slippage of my own come from hours ago, still present, now joining the fresh slick. I was pushing through my own come back into him. A man who has been come in and then come in again carries his partner inside him in a way I had not, in thirty-two years of loving other men, fully explored before. I was exploring it now.

I settled into him. I held. I did not move. I put my other hand on his belly. My right arm under his head as a pillow. His ring hand still laced in my left hand, our four fingers intertwined, the silver band between our palms, warm.

We lay. I was inside him and we lay.

Outside, through the window, the first gray light of Christmas morning was starting to come up over the pines. Not yet pink. Just gray. The kind of pre-dawn you only get in Vermont in deep winter, with two feet of fresh snow on the ground and no wind and a silence that was perfectly intact.

“Fiancé.”

“Sir.”

“Can you stay still for a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Like — a long while.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I might fall asleep inside you.”

“Good, sir.”

“I might not come.”

“Good, sir.”

“This is a claim scene. Not a come-scene.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My good boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

I did not move again for maybe ten minutes. I just lay inside him. The sky outside the window went from gray to pale blue to the first faint hint of peach.

At some point I spoke again. I said: “I have been thinking about this morning, in this bed, with you spooned in front of me, with a ring on your finger and my cock inside you and the sun coming up on Christmas morning, for — I don’t know how long. Probably since November. Probably longer. I have been thinking about this exact morning, this exact shape, your ring hand in my hand on my thigh. Looked like this in my head for weeks.”

“Sir.”

“I am going to have this every Christmas morning for the rest of our lives.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Every Christmas morning. This bed. Or — whatever bed we have. This shape. Me inside you. Your ring in my hand. The sun coming up. For the rest of our lives.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Say yes to it.”

“Yes, Declan. Yes. Every Christmas morning. I agree.”

“Good.”

“Declan.“

“Yeah.”

“Move a little. Slow. I want to come. Soft. Not a big one. Just — just a —”

“I know, fiancé.”

I rolled my hips. Small. Slow. I did not thrust — I held inside him and ground, soft pressure in and out a quarter of an inch at a time, the same way I had ground against him on the night of the partnership signing, the same slow claim-in-a-spoon that I had learned was the register of intimacy he asked for when he wanted it soft.

He made a small noise. I rolled again. “Good boy.”

“Yes, sir.“

“There.”

“There.“

I ground. Slowly. I did not go fast. I did not build. I just rolled, small and slow, and I kissed the back of his neck, and my hand on his belly rubbed slow circles, and my hand laced in his ring hand squeezed. My other hand slid down to his cock. He was half hard, quiet, more interested in the feeling of being full than in his own need. I palmed him gently. I did not stroke. I held.

He came. Soft. Barely. A small warm release onto the sheet and my hand — he pulsed twice, three times, softly, in my palm — and his body tightened around me in a small slow clench and he sighed, once, long, against my arm.

I held inside him. I did not come. I did not need to. I did not want to. I just held.

“Thank you, sir.“

“You’re welcome, good boy.”

“That was —”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, fiancé.”

I stayed inside him. The sun came up.

I pulled out at seven fifteen. Slow. Careful. I kissed the back of his shoulder. I cleaned him slow. Inside and out. I cleaned him the way a man cleans a good piece of wood after a hard finish: slow, thorough, unhurried. I cleaned my come off his thighs where it had finally started to run after twelve hours of sitting inside him. I kissed the mark on his 1962 — already blooming dark, a proper bruise, exactly the shade I had wanted to see on him on Christmas morning. I kissed his ring finger. I kissed the ring.

I rolled him onto his back. I kissed his mouth. He was soft and satisfied and ruined-looking in the good way. The silver ring on his hand. The faint warm pink of the collar’s imprint still on his throat.

“Breakfast.”

“…now?”

“Mm-hm. I’ll cook. You come to the kitchen when you’re ready. My flannel.”

I made French toast for Christmas morning. Again. Second time in twelve hours.

Rowan came into the kitchen at seven forty-five in my good flannel — the charcoal-and-cream one — and nothing else. The flannel came to the tops of his thighs and no further, and his legs were bare in the morning light coming through the window and the silver ring was on his hand and he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life in any morning of any year.

He sat at the table. He looked at me. He smiled.

“Merry Christmas, fiancé.”

“Thank you for breakfast. And the ring. And last night. And this morning.”

“My pleasure, fiancé.”

He laughed. Small. He ate. I ate with him.

Through the window behind him the snow was still coming down in the pale blue light of a Vermont Christmas morning with two feet on the ground and no tire track in any direction for miles. Thirty-six hours alone together before the world came back up the gravel.

“Later today I’m going to call Hollis. And Fitz. And Clem. And your dad. I’ll tell them. But right now — right now I want this kitchen for a while longer before the news gets out.”

“Yes, sir.”

He held his ring hand up in the light. He looked at it. He looked at me over the top of his hand.

“Declan. Come back to bed after breakfast. I don’t need you to fuck me. I don’t need anything. I just want to go back to bed with you for a couple of hours. Hold me. Warm. Under the quilt. Nothing. Just — be in bed with me on Christmas morning.”

“Yes, baby. Back to bed. Nothing.”

I reached across the table. I lifted his ring hand. I kissed the silver band.

I said, quiet, to the ring, to his finger, to the kitchen, to the cabin, to Thomas on the mantel with his candles still lit from half an hour ago when I had replaced them, to the storm outside, to the rest of our lives:

“Merry Christmas, fiancé.”

He said: “Merry Christmas, Daddy.”

The End.

Well. The end of Christmas Eve. The wedding in May is in Chapter Fifteen. — Jace Wilder

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