Chapter 8
John moved around the kitchen making dinner. He was humming to himself, a happy sound that made Dean smile. The biker was sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with Misty. He held a fluffy pink feather toy, and he was dragging it across the floor for the kitten to chase. She pounced on it with glee, her eyes big. He laughed as she growled a little at her ‘prey’.
Dean thought about the last few weeks. He and John had fallen into new patterns easily, including sharing a bed and having sex regularly. Their lives had become domestic and homey, a situation that he was finding he didn’t mind at all. He, John, and Misty were becoming a family. And they were forming a friendship with their neighbors, the lesbian couple Cindy and Carol. They’d already had the women and their children over several times since the barbeque, and they’d gone over to the women’s house a few times too. Sometimes Dean forgot that they were living in the Witness Protection Program together, and that they were being hunted by a dangerous South American drug lord. He was glad that John seemed to forget that sometimes too, and that he was relaxing.
Dean glanced down at the gold ring on his finger. Sometimes he forgot that they weren’t a married couple either. John just naturally seemed to fit into the role of his husband, his life partner. He was…content. While he never would have asked for what had happened to him, he couldn’t regret it for a single moment.
“Dinner’s ready,” John called. He got to his feet, scooping up Misty to take her into the kitchen and put her by her food dish.
John was setting a casserole dish on the table with hot pads. He smiled at Dean as the biker came through the door with the kitten in his hands. He deposited her by the kitty food dish on the floor, then stole a kiss from John before sitting down at the table.
“Mmm, this smells great,” he said.
“Thanks. It’s a new recipe I tried, I hope it turned out all right.”
“I’m sure it did. You’re a better cook than you ever claimed to be,” Dean told him admiringly.
He felt pride at that admiration as he sat down in his own seat at the table. He began to spoon some casserole onto his plate as Dean speared a piece of pot roast from the heap on the plate. John had slow-cooked it in the crock pot for several days, and it was tender and juicy. Dean was practically licking his lips. John’s own lips twitched as he pushed the casserole dish toward his lover.
They ate and talked about their day, John’s at work and Dean’s doing some work around the house. He’d also gone over and helped Cindy with a backed up sink, rather than making her waste money on a plumber. John scolded his lover when he caught Dean sneaking a piece of pot roast under the table to the kitten, who was twining around his ankles and begging prettily. “You’ll make her fat,” the former teacher chided reprovingly.
Dean shrugged. “So she gets a little chubby? That’d be cute.”
John sighed but gave up for the moment. Dean winked at him. “As long as you don’t get fat, everything’s fine,” he said wickedly.
John eyed him while eating a spoonful of his casserole. “And what if I did? Are you that shallow, Dean?” he asked in exasperation.
"Nah,” the biker replied good-humouredly. “If you get fat, there’ll just be more cushion for the pushin’, if you know what I mean.”
John rolled his eyes even as he laughed. “You are impossible,” he said severely.
“I know,” his lover replied easily. “You make me that way, baby. You’re too hot and sexy. Makes me all crazy.”
John felt warmth flow through him. “Wretched man,” he said. “Eat your dinner.”
Dean grinned but ate his pot roast, and a comfortable silence fell between them. The only sound in the kitchen was Misty’s meowing because she wasn’t getting any more of the heavenly pot roast. And Dean rectified that situation by sneaking her another piece a few minutes later. John chose to pretend that he didn’t see this gesture…
Dean grunted as he lifted the barbell over and over. His muscles stood out, and sweat gleamed no his half-naked body. John, standing nearby lifting a small hand weight himself, just stared. God, Dean was a sexy beast! He felt lust roar through him as he watched his lover work out. It was the weekend, so he didn’t have to work today. Which was great, since he doubted very much that they’d make it through this entire work-out session together without him jumping on Dean and molesting him. Not that he thought that the biker would be adverse to that. They’d had sex in every room of the house by now, including the laundry room. The dryer made a hot but unstable base for him to lean on while bent over and taking it from behind…
Dean’s hot eyes met his, proving that the other man was aware of his thoughts. Dean’s lips curled upward into a sexy, feral smile .John gulped, wanting to lick all the sweat off of his lover’s skin slowly. His cock was ragingly hard in the pair of sweat pants he was wearing. He started to put down the hand weight and go to Dean, to force the other man to put that barbell down and take something else in hand, but as he did so the front doorbell rang.
John sighed in disappointment. It was probably their handlers, checking in on them as they did once a week. Apparently the F.B.I didn’t get any days off. He said to Dean: “I’ll go see who it is.”
The other man nodded and went back to lifting weights, although he was clearly disappointed as well. Their afternoon sex fest had been delayed, who knew for how long? John padded out into the living room, willing his very visible erection down. Damn it! “I’m coming!” he called, which wasn’t far from the truth.
He checked the security hole, and saw a man wearing some mind of uniform standing on his doorstep. A delivery boy? Puzzled, John opened the door. “Can I help you?” he asked.
The delivery boy smiled in greeting. “Hey. I have a flower delivery for a…John Barrington,” he said, holding out a long silvery box with a bow on it.
“Err…” John was taken aback. Who was sending him flowers? Dean? Maybe a surprise for him? “I’m he.”
“Ah. If you’ll just sign here…” the delivery boy held out a clipboard.
“Of course,” he started to reach for the pen on the clipboard, then froze when he felt something cold and hard pressing into his ribcage over his t-shirt. “Don’t move,” the ‘delivery boy’ said softly. “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
John froze, his eyes wide. The muzzle of the gun twitched a little. “Step back inside,” the other man commanded. “Do it now.”
John somehow forced his watery limbs to move. He stepped back into the living room. The faux delivery boy followed him inside and closed the door behind him. “Where’s Dean Milford?” he asked coldly. “Is he here?”
“No,” John replied through a mouth gone dry as dust with fear, “He’s gone.”
“Then we’ll simply wait for him to come back,” the killer rasped.
So you can kill us, John thought in horror. Escobar Maneta had found them. He was trembling, terror flooding through him. He looked into the cold, cold eyes of the man standing there holding a gun on him, and knew that he wasn’t going to survive this experience. He just hoped that Dean figured out that there was something wrong and ran, or otherwise his lover would suffer the same fate. ‘Please let him live,” he begged the harsh, unforgiving universe. ‘Please.’
Silence fell in the living room. John stood there with his hands slightly raised, his heart hammering in his chest. There was no sound from the exercise room. But there was a soft meow, and Misty came trotting into the living room. The gun swung toward the kitten, and John had to force himself not to cry out and beg the assassin not to kill the kitten. Misty paused, and the killer frowned down at her. But apparently he decided that she wasn’t worth wasting ammunition on, because the gun swung back toward John. He felt relief.
There was a sudden flash of movement from the hallway. John cried out this time as Dean plowed into the assassin, wrestling with the man for the gun. They went down in a heap on the living room floor, both men punching and kicking at each other in a desperate attempt to claim possession of the weapon. John wanted to help, but he couldn’t get near the two struggling men. He danced around them, feeling so scared he could barely breathe.
“Run, John!” Dean yelled loudly. “Out the back door! Get help! Go!”
He didn’t want to leave his lover! But he also knew that he’d be better suited to getting help than fighting. He turned and ran toward the hallway and the back door. He darted toward the door, but before he could reach it the door swung open. He came to a screeching halt in total, utter shock as Carol stepped through it with a gun in her hands! “What’s happening?” she barked as he gaped at her. “John! What’s going on?”
He somehow pulled himself together enough to answer her. “Dean. In the living room. A man with a gun!”
She nodded. “Right. Go outside, John, now. I’ll take care of this.”
Carol pushed past him and headed for the living room. He just stood there for a moment, torn on what to do. But a hand touched his arm. He whirled to find Cindy standing there. “Come outside, John, Carol knows what she’s doing,” Cindy told him.
In a daze, he allowed himself to be pulled out into the back yard. The door in the fence was wide open where the women had come through. “What’s going on?” John asked distantly, feeling shock pulling at the edges of his mind. Too much had happened in the last few minutes for him to properly assimilate it.
Cindy sighed. “Carol works for the F.B.I, John,” she said. “We arrived here a few hours before you did. She was assigned to watch over you, because the threat to your life was considered extreme. There’s a leak in the Witness Protection Program. Somebody has been selling the names of witnesses for a high price to those looking for them. The F.B.I. knew that whoever it was would do the same with you, since Maneta would pay a fortune to get your names and address. This whole thing was a sting operation. I’m afraid that they used you and Dean as bait to draw out the leak and catch him. I‘m sorry.”
He just stared at her. “Where do you come in to all this?” he demanded. “Are you F.B.I. too?”
“Sort of,” she replied apologetically. “I’m not a field agent, however. I’m a psychiatrist. I work with troubled children – kidnap victims, those who’ve been raped or tortured, that kind of thing. But Carol and I really are married, and those are our children. When they asked her to take this assignment, they wanted her family to come along to make it look legitimate. A single woman with no children living in suburbia would have looked odd. She would have stood out. You would have been suspicious. So I agreed to temporarily relocate our family here.”
“Oh, I see,” he replied, although his brain was still reeling.
Before Cindy could say anything else, Carol reappeared in the doorway. “It’s all right, John,” she said soothingly. “Everything’s fine. I have the assassin in custody and I’ve called for back-up.”
“What about…?” he began anxiously.
“I’m okay, John,” Dean said, stepping out from behind her. He was mussed and a little bruised, but otherwise he looked unharmed.
John’s muscles relaxed so much that he almost sank down onto the lawn. “Dear God, thank you,” he breathed.
Dean came over and enveloped him in a tight hug. “It’s okay, baby,” he crooned reassuringly. “Carol explained everything to me. We’re both safe now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
John clung to him, burying his face in his lover’s bare shoulder. Dean was alive, and unharmed. Everything really WAS going to be all right. At least for now, anyway.
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John moved around the kitchen making dinner. He was humming to himself, a happy sound that made Dean smile. The biker was sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with Misty. He held a fluffy pink feather toy, and he was dragging it across the floor for the kitten to chase. She pounced on it with glee, her eyes big. He laughed as she growled a little at her ‘prey’.
Dean thought about the last few weeks. He and John had fallen into new patterns easily, including sharing a bed and having sex regularly. Their lives had become domestic and homey, a situation that he was finding he didn’t mind at all. He, John, and Misty were becoming a family. And they were forming a friendship with their neighbors, the lesbian couple Cindy and Carol. They’d already had the women and their children over several times since the barbeque, and they’d gone over to the women’s house a few times too. Sometimes Dean forgot that they were living in the Witness Protection Program together, and that they were being hunted by a dangerous South American drug lord. He was glad that John seemed to forget that sometimes too, and that he was relaxing.
Dean glanced down at the gold ring on his finger. Sometimes he forgot that they weren’t a married couple either. John just naturally seemed to fit into the role of his husband, his life partner. He was…content. While he never would have asked for what had happened to him, he couldn’t regret it for a single moment.
“Dinner’s ready,” John called. He got to his feet, scooping up Misty to take her into the kitchen and put her by her food dish.
John was setting a casserole dish on the table with hot pads. He smiled at Dean as the biker came through the door with the kitten in his hands. He deposited her by the kitty food dish on the floor, then stole a kiss from John before sitting down at the table.
“Mmm, this smells great,” he said.
“Thanks. It’s a new recipe I tried, I hope it turned out all right.”
“I’m sure it did. You’re a better cook than you ever claimed to be,” Dean told him admiringly.
He felt pride at that admiration as he sat down in his own seat at the table. He began to spoon some casserole onto his plate as Dean speared a piece of pot roast from the heap on the plate. John had slow-cooked it in the crock pot for several days, and it was tender and juicy. Dean was practically licking his lips. John’s own lips twitched as he pushed the casserole dish toward his lover.
They ate and talked about their day, John’s at work and Dean’s doing some work around the house. He’d also gone over and helped Cindy with a backed up sink, rather than making her waste money on a plumber. John scolded his lover when he caught Dean sneaking a piece of pot roast under the table to the kitten, who was twining around his ankles and begging prettily. “You’ll make her fat,” the former teacher chided reprovingly.
Dean shrugged. “So she gets a little chubby? That’d be cute.”
John sighed but gave up for the moment. Dean winked at him. “As long as you don’t get fat, everything’s fine,” he said wickedly.
John eyed him while eating a spoonful of his casserole. “And what if I did? Are you that shallow, Dean?” he asked in exasperation.
"Nah,” the biker replied good-humouredly. “If you get fat, there’ll just be more cushion for the pushin’, if you know what I mean.”
John rolled his eyes even as he laughed. “You are impossible,” he said severely.
“I know,” his lover replied easily. “You make me that way, baby. You’re too hot and sexy. Makes me all crazy.”
John felt warmth flow through him. “Wretched man,” he said. “Eat your dinner.”
Dean grinned but ate his pot roast, and a comfortable silence fell between them. The only sound in the kitchen was Misty’s meowing because she wasn’t getting any more of the heavenly pot roast. And Dean rectified that situation by sneaking her another piece a few minutes later. John chose to pretend that he didn’t see this gesture…
Dean grunted as he lifted the barbell over and over. His muscles stood out, and sweat gleamed no his half-naked body. John, standing nearby lifting a small hand weight himself, just stared. God, Dean was a sexy beast! He felt lust roar through him as he watched his lover work out. It was the weekend, so he didn’t have to work today. Which was great, since he doubted very much that they’d make it through this entire work-out session together without him jumping on Dean and molesting him. Not that he thought that the biker would be adverse to that. They’d had sex in every room of the house by now, including the laundry room. The dryer made a hot but unstable base for him to lean on while bent over and taking it from behind…
Dean’s hot eyes met his, proving that the other man was aware of his thoughts. Dean’s lips curled upward into a sexy, feral smile .John gulped, wanting to lick all the sweat off of his lover’s skin slowly. His cock was ragingly hard in the pair of sweat pants he was wearing. He started to put down the hand weight and go to Dean, to force the other man to put that barbell down and take something else in hand, but as he did so the front doorbell rang.
John sighed in disappointment. It was probably their handlers, checking in on them as they did once a week. Apparently the F.B.I didn’t get any days off. He said to Dean: “I’ll go see who it is.”
The other man nodded and went back to lifting weights, although he was clearly disappointed as well. Their afternoon sex fest had been delayed, who knew for how long? John padded out into the living room, willing his very visible erection down. Damn it! “I’m coming!” he called, which wasn’t far from the truth.
He checked the security hole, and saw a man wearing some mind of uniform standing on his doorstep. A delivery boy? Puzzled, John opened the door. “Can I help you?” he asked.
The delivery boy smiled in greeting. “Hey. I have a flower delivery for a…John Barrington,” he said, holding out a long silvery box with a bow on it.
“Err…” John was taken aback. Who was sending him flowers? Dean? Maybe a surprise for him? “I’m he.”
“Ah. If you’ll just sign here…” the delivery boy held out a clipboard.
“Of course,” he started to reach for the pen on the clipboard, then froze when he felt something cold and hard pressing into his ribcage over his t-shirt. “Don’t move,” the ‘delivery boy’ said softly. “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
John froze, his eyes wide. The muzzle of the gun twitched a little. “Step back inside,” the other man commanded. “Do it now.”
John somehow forced his watery limbs to move. He stepped back into the living room. The faux delivery boy followed him inside and closed the door behind him. “Where’s Dean Milford?” he asked coldly. “Is he here?”
“No,” John replied through a mouth gone dry as dust with fear, “He’s gone.”
“Then we’ll simply wait for him to come back,” the killer rasped.
So you can kill us, John thought in horror. Escobar Maneta had found them. He was trembling, terror flooding through him. He looked into the cold, cold eyes of the man standing there holding a gun on him, and knew that he wasn’t going to survive this experience. He just hoped that Dean figured out that there was something wrong and ran, or otherwise his lover would suffer the same fate. ‘Please let him live,” he begged the harsh, unforgiving universe. ‘Please.’
Silence fell in the living room. John stood there with his hands slightly raised, his heart hammering in his chest. There was no sound from the exercise room. But there was a soft meow, and Misty came trotting into the living room. The gun swung toward the kitten, and John had to force himself not to cry out and beg the assassin not to kill the kitten. Misty paused, and the killer frowned down at her. But apparently he decided that she wasn’t worth wasting ammunition on, because the gun swung back toward John. He felt relief.
There was a sudden flash of movement from the hallway. John cried out this time as Dean plowed into the assassin, wrestling with the man for the gun. They went down in a heap on the living room floor, both men punching and kicking at each other in a desperate attempt to claim possession of the weapon. John wanted to help, but he couldn’t get near the two struggling men. He danced around them, feeling so scared he could barely breathe.
“Run, John!” Dean yelled loudly. “Out the back door! Get help! Go!”
He didn’t want to leave his lover! But he also knew that he’d be better suited to getting help than fighting. He turned and ran toward the hallway and the back door. He darted toward the door, but before he could reach it the door swung open. He came to a screeching halt in total, utter shock as Carol stepped through it with a gun in her hands! “What’s happening?” she barked as he gaped at her. “John! What’s going on?”
He somehow pulled himself together enough to answer her. “Dean. In the living room. A man with a gun!”
She nodded. “Right. Go outside, John, now. I’ll take care of this.”
Carol pushed past him and headed for the living room. He just stood there for a moment, torn on what to do. But a hand touched his arm. He whirled to find Cindy standing there. “Come outside, John, Carol knows what she’s doing,” Cindy told him.
In a daze, he allowed himself to be pulled out into the back yard. The door in the fence was wide open where the women had come through. “What’s going on?” John asked distantly, feeling shock pulling at the edges of his mind. Too much had happened in the last few minutes for him to properly assimilate it.
Cindy sighed. “Carol works for the F.B.I, John,” she said. “We arrived here a few hours before you did. She was assigned to watch over you, because the threat to your life was considered extreme. There’s a leak in the Witness Protection Program. Somebody has been selling the names of witnesses for a high price to those looking for them. The F.B.I. knew that whoever it was would do the same with you, since Maneta would pay a fortune to get your names and address. This whole thing was a sting operation. I’m afraid that they used you and Dean as bait to draw out the leak and catch him. I‘m sorry.”
He just stared at her. “Where do you come in to all this?” he demanded. “Are you F.B.I. too?”
“Sort of,” she replied apologetically. “I’m not a field agent, however. I’m a psychiatrist. I work with troubled children – kidnap victims, those who’ve been raped or tortured, that kind of thing. But Carol and I really are married, and those are our children. When they asked her to take this assignment, they wanted her family to come along to make it look legitimate. A single woman with no children living in suburbia would have looked odd. She would have stood out. You would have been suspicious. So I agreed to temporarily relocate our family here.”
“Oh, I see,” he replied, although his brain was still reeling.
Before Cindy could say anything else, Carol reappeared in the doorway. “It’s all right, John,” she said soothingly. “Everything’s fine. I have the assassin in custody and I’ve called for back-up.”
“What about…?” he began anxiously.
“I’m okay, John,” Dean said, stepping out from behind her. He was mussed and a little bruised, but otherwise he looked unharmed.
John’s muscles relaxed so much that he almost sank down onto the lawn. “Dear God, thank you,” he breathed.
Dean came over and enveloped him in a tight hug. “It’s okay, baby,” he crooned reassuringly. “Carol explained everything to me. We’re both safe now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
John clung to him, burying his face in his lover’s bare shoulder. Dean was alive, and unharmed. Everything really WAS going to be all right. At least for now, anyway.
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