Not Afraid Read online

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  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2014 Elizabeth Monvey

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-036-6

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: Tricia Kristufek

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  Many thanks to my editor Trish, and to all the Evernight Staff.

  NOT AFRAID

  Romance on the Go TM

  Elizabeth Monvey

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter One

  Raleigh bounded up the back porch steps and immediately smelled the delicious supper his grandmother had cooked. His stomach rumbled hungrily, but he ignored it because he was going to have to make a run into town.

  “You’re late,” his grandmom, Berryl, said as he pushed open the porch door.

  “The padlock busted and the cows wandered out,” he explained. “I had to round some of the strays up.”

  “Yes, I can smell it on you,” she replied dryly. “Go on upstairs and wash. As you can see, supper is ready.”

  “I gotta run to Gus’s before he closes.”

  Berryl put her hands on her hips and frowned at him. When he was a child, that look would’ve had him cowering, and truth be told, it still made the little boy inside him cringe a little.

  “I’ve got wire holding it together,” he explained, hating that his voice had taken on a whining tinge to it, just like it used to when he was younger and she would tell him no.

  “It’s not like the cows are gonna stampede,” she pointed out. “They’ll be fine.”

  “I won’t be able to sleep all until I get it fixed.”

  She huffed and turned away. “Well, I’m going to eat. You can heat up your food when you get back.”

  He bent and quickly kissed her cheek, then darted away before she could slap him. He caught the small smile playing around her lips and knew she wasn’t really mad at him. She never was. Berryl Hewes was a rough, tough old lady with a heart the size of the universe. She’d do anything for anybody and asked only for truth in return, and that right there had Raleigh hiding his eyes as he turned to the stairs and ran up them two at a time. He couldn’t give his grandmother the truth, not over the real reason why he needed to go into town. That was a secret he wouldn’t—couldn’t—share.

  He was already shucking his clothes before he’d even made it to the shower, and he took only five minute to wash the cow stench off him. He pulled on clean jeans and a shirt, forgoing his boxer briefs, and slipped on socks and his boots in a hurry to get to town before the hardware store closed.

  “I’ll be back soon!” he called out as he dashed out the front door, heading to his truck. Luckily his grandmom didn’t press for the reason why he cleaned up just to buy a new padlock. He started the engine and pushed the gas pedal down, speeding off. His fingers drummed against the steering wheel impatiently, and his left leg bounced. He wished beaming had been invented already—that would be a helluva way to save time. He was glad the truck wasn’t a stick because he wouldn’t have been able to concentrate.

  His dairy farm wasn’t too far away from town. Only the glow of the street lights bathed Main Street. All the lights from stores and businesses were shut off, except for one—Rains Hardware. He pulled into one of the parking slots and turned off the engine. Just as he ran up to the door, the owner, Augustus Rains, was saying goodnight to his last customer, Mrs. Brumthal, who had happened to be the biggest gossip in their small town of Cherry Falls. The Open sign had already been flipped to say Closed.

  “Evening, Raleigh,” Augustus greeted pleasantly, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “What can I help you with?”

  Raleigh held up the broken padlock. “Please, I just need another.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m closing—”

  “Please, Gus. I won’t be able to sleep if I worried about my cows escaping.”

  Augustus sighed. “All right. Have a nice evening, Mrs. Brumthal.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rains, for explaining how to use this nail gun,” she said, nodding her perfectly coiffed white hair regally. Raleigh waved at her, but all she gave him was a speculative look before going on her imperious way. Augustus closed the store door behind him and locked it. Raleigh watched as he flipped off the outside and front store lights.

  Augustus Rains was a big bear of a man with mocha-colored skin that stretched tight over his corded muscles. His hair, mustache, and beard were the same short length and black as pitch. His dark eyes held a wealth of suppressed emotions, and Raleigh often wished he could read his mind, could get a glimpse of what he was thinking. Augustus fascinated him and had ever since high school. In fact, he’d been masturbating to fantasies starring the big guy ever since he’d realized he was gay.

  “Were you really going to turn me away?”

  “It was Mrs. Brumthal, Leigh. Of course I was going to turn you away.”

  And then Augustus reached out with his big, beefy hands and pulled him flush against his body to claim his lips in a deep, penetrating kiss. Raleigh reached up to hold on as Gus licked and sucked on his tongue, fusing them in a way that made his dick hard as steel. It was always like this with Gus, always this raw and powerful and hot. Christ, Gus was the sexiest thing on two legs, and Raleigh always sported a boner within two seconds of laying eyes on the man. When Gus tried to break the kiss and come up for air, Raleigh practically attacked him back, throwing himself into the hard, muscled body. Gus’s arms hit the evenly stacked paint cans and knocked all them off their perfectly set row.

  “Jesus, Leigh,” Gus muttered as Raleigh pressed kisses over Gus’s jaw.

  “Three fucking days, Gus,” he said roughly in between nips and licks. Gus moaned at Raleigh’s attention. “I’ve been jacking off with mental images of you for three days.”

  He sank to his knees in front of Gus and worked on getting his jeans undone. He carefully eased the zipper teeth over the straining erection and some white boxer briefs poked out, barely able to contain the large girth pushing against them.

  “I’ve dreamed of this cock, of tasting it and sucking it,” he murmured as he yanked the jeans and underwear down far enough to ease out the huge dick. It was a bit darker than Gus’s skin, and the head was bulbous over a long, thick shaft. Gus’s balls hung, large and heavy. Liquid dribbled out of the tip like crazy, and his mouth watered, so he leaned over and licked.

  “Holy shit!” Gus panted. His fingers sank into Raleigh’s hair to either hold him in place or direct his movement. Raleigh didn’t actually care. He was too happy sucking on Gus’s cock to really think about anything else.

  The skin on the head was smooth but swollen as precum leaked steadily. He bent down and licked the tip, loving Gus’s salty essence on his tongue. The big guy moaned and bucked his hips as if demanding more attention, so Raleigh slipped his mouth around the head and traced each curve with his tongue. He licked the hard ridge before using his tongue to tease the bulging vein that disappeared underneath. Slowly, easing his mouth over and then down the shaft, his right hand encircled the base as he sucked the cock into his mouth. Then he held on to Gus’s hips as he started his momentum, in and out on mouth and tongue, trying to control the frantic thrusts as Gus became lost in the delirium of the blowjob.

  “Oh my God, Leigh,” Gus muttered, his voice deep with ar
ousal. “You give the best head.”

  Even though he’d begun the blowjob with short, shallow thrusts, each time he relaxed his throat even more, allowing Gus’s cock to go farther, deeper. In short time he was deep-throating Gus, making him moan and shake with pleasure.

  Little by little, Raleigh increased the tempo, speeding up, and Gus gave a heavy gasp, his hips starting to twitch under the restraint he was holding on to.

  Unable to keep from coming along with him, Raleigh reached down to his own pants, opened them, and let his hand slide in to grip his own dick. It was a tight confine in the jeans, but he knew it wouldn’t take much to set him off. He jerked his cock even as he continued to swallow Gus as much as possible.

  “I’m going to come,” Gus said breathless. “I can’t hold on. Jesus, Leigh!”

  With one more slide of Raleigh’s mouth, Gus exploded, shouting out a set of unintelligible sounds. Raleigh sucked him down, milking him with his tongue, frantically tugging at his own cock. It was so hot feeling Gus’s spunk slide down his throat, and that was all it took. He came, spurting all over his hand and inside his jeans, and he didn’t care because it was fucking amazing.

  And when their shudders ceased and both went limp, Raleigh let Gus go from his mouth and sat back, pulling his hand out of his pants and wiping the jizz on his leg. Gus’s legs collapsed and he pulled Raleigh against his chest. They sat there, in the paint can aisle, while their heartbeats returned to normal.

  “This is the second time this week that padlock has broken.” Gus’s voice rumbled through his chest. “People are either going to think I’m selling you inferior parts or your farm is falling down around you.”

  “I wish,” Raleigh muttered, blowing out his breath.

  He felt Gus’s surprise roll through his body. “Wait, are you saying you don’t want the farm anymore?”

  “I’ve… never wanted the farm,” he admitted quietly.

  “Since when?”

  “Since forever.”

  Gus pushed him back so he could look at him. “Really? Then why are you still working it?”

  “Because it’s been in my family for four generations. Believe me, I hear about my great-grandfather’s hard work every day from Berryl.”

  “Well, if you sold the farm, what would you do?”

  Raleigh shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe I’ll help you run this store.”

  Gus snorted.

  “What? You don’t want me with you?”

  “We’ve been over this before, Leigh. This town isn’t ready for us.”

  “What are you scared of? That people will point at us? Use bad words?”

  Gus pulled away and rose to his feet so he could tuck his half-mast dick back into his pants. “I shouldn’t have to spell it out, Leigh. Two guys, one who happens to be white. We’d be run out of town so fast our heads would spin.”

  Anger coursed through him, and Raleigh got up into Gus’s face. “And that would be bad because why? Why don’t we get out of this town, Gus? You and me, starting somewhere new, where we’re not afraid of being an interracial couple.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Gus practically growled.

  Raleigh sighed got up to zip up his pants as well. He took a few steps away before stopping and pointing. “You are afraid and I don’t know why. I love you, Gus. I just wished you loved me enough to not be ashamed of us.”

  And he walked away, heading through the dark hardware store. He unlocked the front door, and just before he left the store, he reached over and grabbed a new lock. He was so pissed right now that he wasn’t under a bit of petty theft. He loved Augustus Rains so much, had loved him ever since tenth grade, and yet Gus couldn’t even see the love in front of his face.

  Maybe he should sell the farm and leave. Anything had to be better than stolen moments jacking each other off in a dark hardware store. Raleigh wanted to build a life, but the man he wanted to do that with was too scared to even consider the possibility.

  With a heavy heart, he settled into his truck and drove home.

  Chapter Two

  When he pulled up to the house, he saw the living room light was still on, and he cursed under his breath and glanced at his crotch. The thick material was damp, but hopefully there wasn’t a big wet stain anymore. Because even though she was older than dirt, his grandmom wasn’t stupid, and a cum stain was clearly a cum stain.

  He used the back of the couch as extra shielding for the front of his jeans and tried making a break for the stairs, but Berryl wasn’t having any of his sneaking away.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” she asked as she wrote one more answer to the crossword in the back of the TV Guide before looking at him over her glasses.

  He sighed and stopped. “What?”

  “When you left, I started thinking and realized that padlock had broken twice in two weeks.”

  Raleigh held back his groan. Yep, this was turning out to be one helluva night.

  “I hope you replaced it with a better model.”

  He pursed his lips as her words came close to mirroring his own thoughts, albeit in a different way. He held up the plastic-wrapped padlock. “You really think I need to get a better model, grandmom?”

  She cocked her head, studying him. “Why am I thinking you mean something completely different?”

  “Never mind,” he mumbled and turned away.

  “You know I once had a friend, long time ago, named Mamie,” Berryl said, out of the blue, forcing him to pause. He looked over his shoulder in an effort to keep his lower body concealed. “She and I used to lie out on the hood of her daddy’s Ford down by the lake, watching the boys. Only she wasn’t too interested in the boys, at least, not like the way I was. Let me tell you, before I met your grandpa, I was a little wildcat in bed—”

  “Oh my God!” he said, holding his hands over his ears. “I do don’t need to know that.”

  She laughed. “You think your generation invented sex? Boy, where do you think you came from?”

  “Grandmom, please. I’m going to go throw up now.”

  “Wait, wait,” she said. She’d stop cackling like some demented witch, but there was still a shit-eating grin on her face. “I’m trying to say that there’s all types of different people in this world.”

  He waited, but she didn’t say anything more, so he nodded as if he agreed and understood every word. “You’re absolutely right, grandmom. Well then, goodnight.”

  “Aren’t you hungry? I can heat up some food.”

  “No,” he replied wearily. “I’m beat and I’ve got to be up at the butt crack of dawn. I’ll see you for breakfast.”

  “Okay, boy. Looks like a storm is brewing, so have a good night. Might be a lot of rain tomorrow.”

  He hurried upstairs and into his room, closed the door with a soft click, and leaned against it. Talking to his grandmother was exhausting sometimes. As he showered and slipped into bed, his mind went right back to Gus. He’d grown up with Augustus, but they’d only been seeing each other for a year, although he really couldn’t remember a point in his life when he hadn’t been infatuated with the big guy. In high school he’d tried dating a few girls, but nothing had ever felt right being with them. And then, like a clichéd porno fantasy, he’d seen Augustus showering after gym one day and he’d gotten so hard he’d had to go into the bathroom stall and rub one out. He’d been wondering if he was gay, and that little scenario had cemented his conclusion.

  He hadn’t told anyone, of course. After all, he lived in rural Missouri, and the number in the LGBT community equaled zero. Anyway, by the time he was fourteen, it had been just him and his grandmother, and the last thing he could do was come out to someone who seemed like they’d been around during the time of Noah and his ark.

  He’d traveled the two hours to St. Louis whenever he needed to get his rocks off, which was, unfortunately, few and far between. He’d been working the farm since he was teenager, and there wasn’t a chance for breaks or vacations all that much. So he’d w
atched Augustus from afar, using him to fuel his masturbating fantasies over the years, but all of that had changed last year at the Memorial Day picnic the Cherry Falls Chamber of Commerce funded every year.

  As he fell asleep, his dreams went right back to his happy place, which was the first time he and Gus had gotten together. Unlike tonight’s frantic coupling, their first time had been slow and breathtaking, stealing his heart and cementing his love for the big man.

  Chapter Three

  Memorial Day picnic, last year

  “Don’t drop my pies,” Berryl ordered sternly.

  “I’m not going to drop your pies,” Raleigh muttered.

  “You dropped it last year,” she reminded him.

  “Good God, Mayor Bradley was drunk and crashed into me,” he said defensively. “How could I not drop it?”

  “Well, this one is cherry and that one is strawberry rhubarb, and I plan on winning a blue ribbon for one of them, so don’t drop them.”

  “Then tell me if Mayor Bradley is around.”

  She harrumphed as they entered the pie tent. The Memorial Day picnic was held every year, and each year it got bigger and bigger. Last year had been the first time they’d had a pie contest, which Berryl had lost to her old rival, Mrs. Brumthal, because he had dropped her pie. When he sat the pies upon the counter, he let go of the breath he was holding, glad he’d not fucked up again this year, even if it hadn’t been his fault in the first place.

  “I see you’ve made it to the competitions,” Mrs. Brumthal’s screechy voice called out, and he and his grandmom turned to see the old biddy walking toward them with a gleam of menace in her narrow beady eyes. “That’s my prize-winning lemon meringue over there. Took me all day to whip up the froth.”