We Wander Far from Home Read online

  Evernight Publishing ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2014 Lilith Duvalier

  ISBN: 978-1-77130-954-7

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: Laurie Temple

  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.

  WE WANDER FAR FROM HOME

  Lilith Duvalier

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter One

  Another peal of slightly drunken laughter sounded from the house as Will stepped out of the stuffy parlor and into the fresh night air. Will had been stuck at the kitchen table while the men in his family discussed who Will’s cousins were courting, teased Will about his attachment to Annie Lancaster down the road, and unloaded their advice about women onto Will’s older brother Robert, until the talk about women slowly faded into talk about the Confederacy’s much deserved problems. The switch from domestic conversation to war stories gave Will an excuse to slip out.

  He had never been farther south than the Iowa border and had absolutely no desire to listen to his uncles drunkenly discuss “them bastard Confederates” and liken General Lee to “the devil his own self” with his older brothers, while his cousins, Jacob and Joshua, agreed as though it were gospel, even though they were both two years younger than Will, who had still been too young to be sent to war when Robert came home three years ago.

  Will especially didn’t want to hear the uncles after they really got to drinking. When they would start slapping Robert on the back and talking in husky, sincere voices about the “sacrifice” of his right leg, as though Robert slipped the limb off and burnt it on an altar to save the Union, rather than downed a bottle of whiskey and let a barber with a medic bag chop it off in a field hospital in God-forsaken Kentucky.

  Will padded through the yard and down the dirt path that lead out to the barn, relieved that Momma had been grateful for him suggesting he sleep out in the barn while the family stayed with them.

  A wave of warm air, imbued with the clean smell of hay and the sharp smells of old wood and chickens, rolled out over him as he tugged the barn door open. The only sound out here was the blank clucking of the chickens as they bounced along the floor, scooting out of his way as he strode to the ladder in the middle of the barn. He climbed the ladder carefully, kerosene lamp held in one hand and his other arm pulling his blankets and a pillow tight to his body.

  The hay bales were stacked like stair steps all the way up to the large hayloft door, where they created a plateau underneath it. Will climbed up to it, then hung the lamp on the hook on the side of the door. He pulled it open and let the cool, almost cold, spring air into the stuffy barn.

  Far across the yard he could see the bright, square glow that meant the kitchen light was still on. The rest of the house was dark, but Will would bet that his sister-in-law Patience, Aunt Caroline, and Momma were still wide awake, cursing his uncles in the same politely evasive manner they’d used all week while trying to not say out loud that his cousins were spoiled.

  Will rolled his blankets out over the hay, straightening the edges before he went to the corner of the barn, out of the circle of light the lantern cast. He pulled up a bale of hay, hopped into the hole it left, then dug his hand down against the wall, searching blindly for the feel of cheap muslin. His fingers finally found the rough cloth, and he grabbed a fistful of it, tugging out the bag that he and Annie kept hidden up here. He dumped the contents out onto the hay floor, two blankets, a better pillow, a spare dress, a bottle of witch hazel, and a plain pine box with a latch.

  Will unrolled the extra blankets over the ones that he brought up, then set the pillows at the top of them to create a makeshift bed and dropped down onto it with relief. He felt slow with beer and exhausted by having company in the house, and wanted to lie here. To enjoy the luxury of his little refuge out in the barn, and the peace, solitude, and lovely breeze it offered. He turned over and caught sight of the small pine box he left on top of the sack with Annie’s extra dress.

  Peace and quiet and solitude, he thought, the beer haze in his mind warm and encouraging. He inched himself up on his elbows, thought better of it, and laid back down, then changed his mind again. He reached out for the box and pulled it over to the bed.

  Logically, he was aware that he was a solid two hundred feet and three doors away from anyone. If he started screaming, anyone in the house may still be too drunk to notice. He stilled his breathing as he opened the latch of the box anyway.

  The white back of a picture looked up at him out of its tight pine frame. With a little shiver of guilt, Will got up and closed the hayloft window again. It cut off the comfortable breeze, but ensured complete privacy.

  If Momma were ever to find this sack, he would be able to explain the blankets and the pillow. He would try to avoid explaining the witch hazel and the dress, but if he needed to explain it, he could. And that would probably be okay. But he couldn’t even imagine beginning to explain this box.

  First of all, he stole it. When Great Uncle Amos died, Robert and Will’s oldest brother, Allan, had been away fighting the Confederates, so Momma sent Will to Crookston to collect their inheritance while she ran the ranch. When a couple of his great aunts went out with the lawyer to totter around the garden, Will decided to poke around the house that he only half remembered.

  For a reason that he still couldn’t explain to himself, he opened up Great Uncle Amos’s dresser drawer, saw the pine box, and dropped it into his sack without even opening it. He brought it home and hid it up in the hayloft with Annie’s things before he had even gone inside to tell Momma that he was home, and then waited until after Momma went to bed before he snuck out to the barn to look through the box.

  It was full of pictures. Most of them were of ladies in sitting rooms covered in expensive wallpaper and fancy rugs. In some of them, the ladies’ skirts were hitched up so that their private parts were visible, or their shirts were unbuttoned so that their breasts peeked out. In most of them, the ladies were completely naked, maybe holding flowers or a birdcage, or sitting on a settee, legs spread wide. Some of them were alone, some of them were smiling with a few other ladies, as though they were having a pleasant visit and had simply forgotten to get dressed. Will had looked through them curiously that first time. He had never seen a lady without her clothes on before. He had actually never seen a lady in anything less than the full skirts and high collars that every woman he had ever known always wore.

  There were men in a few of the pictures too. In a couple, a woman with no clothes, or who was in a mish mash of flimsy clothes that were beginning to fall off, was kissing or being touched by a dapper city man with a dark mustache, dark coat and trousers, and beautifully combed hair. The kind of rich gentleman that sometimes came out from a big city like Mankato to look over Momma’s herd. When they were younger, Will and Annie always went out to the field to watch them picking through the dust and manure, their shiny black clothes making them glint like ravens in the sunshine.

  And in the pictures that used to cause, among other things, a dirty flush of shame, the men didn’t have any clothes on either. In the picture that Will found the most fascinating, an older gentleman, his carefully combed hair more gray than black, his face cold, his eyes angry, sat on a stool wearing a crisp white shirt, all buttoned up except
for the bottom few buttons. His bare legs were spread out on either side of him and his cock stood straight up between them, balls hanging underneath it, plain as day. A woman, fully clothed, hung over one of his thighs, with her mouth sliding over the tip of his cock.

  Will had shown Annie his secret box one time. She looked over the naked ladies dispassionately, admiring their neatly arranged hair, or their luxurious silk stockings, tracing her finger around their full curves with muted envy. The picture of the woman kissing the man’s cock made her go real quiet and start to cry. Will hid the box away as quickly as he could, stammering out his apologies for upsetting her. Usually, when Annie came over to sleep in the Kearney’s hayloft, she asked Will to sleep up there with her. That night was the only night Annie ever sent him back into the house. In the morning, before sunrise, Will crept back out into the barn with breakfast for her. She tried to explain why the picture upset her so much, but Will had figured it out. Neither of them said it out loud, but Will offered to teach her to shoot. She could say she wanted to hunt rabbits. He gave her a couple lessons, shooting at the stuffed chicken target that Robert had used to teach him to shoot after their father died. But then Robert came home from the war, and Will didn’t have the time or the privacy to keep teaching her.

  But tonight, Will had the hayloft to himself. He pulled the stack of pictures out of the box and shuffled through them, looking for the one he wanted. With one quick, paranoid look to make sure the hayloft door was closed and latched, Will set a pillow up against the wall and tucked the corner of the picture into the hay so that it stood up, clearly visible from where he sat. The lamplight flickered over it, almost making it look like the figures were moving. Indecently dressed people doing bad things in front of man with a camera.

  This picture featured a young city gentleman with slick black hair, splayed back over a sort of long chair. He was wearing a white shirt, unbuttoned all the way. The side facing the camera dripped down over the chair, revealing his slender chest. Black trousers lay in a heap near the end of the chair and the man’s long legs ran all the way down to its edge. A woman knelt over him, her body hanging over his. Her coy, smiling face hovered over his as though she were about to kiss him. She was naked too, except for stockings and boots, and she held his large, full cock in her delicate white hand. One of the man’s large hands was on her full breast, the other at his side, tightly squeezing the side of the chair.

  Will only noticed that a few weeks ago. He had wondered why the naked men in the pictures always looked so cold and angry, but when he saw that hand desperately clenching the cushion he realized that they were trying to hold in their desire, hold still while the picture set.

  Will was starting to come up against a lot of desires he needed to hold in, but tonight this wasn’t one of them. He set his hand against the inside of his thigh and ran his palm up to below his groin, then back down and up again, spreading his legs a little wider. His cock was already stirring in anticipation.

  Years ago, when Robert was a few years younger than Will was now, Momma caught him doing this. Will could still remember the hiding that his brother got for it, and his own confusion at what exactly Robert had been doing. He figured it out soon enough, and while the threat of what Momma might do to him if she found him doing the same thing, especially with the pictures, still hung over him, Will couldn’t help himself.

  The fly of his trousers began to stretch around his cock as he worked his hand over the fabric, letting the canvas drag over the sensitive flesh. Will popped a couple buttons to ease the strain and set his gaze back on the flickering picture.

  The man clearly hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open while the picture was being taken. They were dark and blurry. Will squeezed himself over his trousers and his own eyes involuntarily snapped shut at the sensation it sent through his body. He opened his eyes again and smiled at the picture-man over their shared habit.

  With the window closed, the hot, musty air was a little suffocating. Small beads of sweat broke out across Will’s skin as he continued to brush his hand over the outline of his cock. He took his hands reluctantly from his groin and unbuttoned his shirt. The four buttons of the worn, hand-me-down Henley slid easily out of their buttonholes. A flicker of the lamp brought Will’s eyes back to the picture, to the woman’s small hands on the man’s shaft. He pictured those hands undressing the man, popping button after button of his crisp white shirt open until the one side had fallen away to reveal his white chest, slender with a hint of muscle across his stomach. Will pulled his own shirt off with relief and quickly ran it over his forehead, mopping up the sweat there.

  He set his hand at his collar and ran it down his own chest, more muscular than that of the man in the picture, the whisper of hair over his skin light brown instead of black. He slipped his hand back under his trousers, giving his cock a couple of gentle strokes from tip to root, ringing his thumb and forefinger around the foreskin and sliding it over the head before bringing his hand back up his body.

  With the lantern set to one side of him, half of his body was in shadow and all he could see was a hand connected to nothing, meandering promisingly over his chest and stomach. It was easy to imagine it was someone else’s hand. Still rough and broad like his own, nothing like the tiny, ivory doll hands of the woman in the picture.

  He pulled his trousers down to his knees and let his cock spring free. A gasp of relief popped out of him before he set his head back against the barn wall and ran his hand over himself slowly. He let his eyes flutter closed. He never got the time or privacy to do this right. He didn’t want to rush to the end. He brought his hand to his mouth, spit in it, and resumed his stroking. His half-mast eyes dropped back down to his cock, and he watched the head, reddish in the amber lantern light, disappearing and reappearing out of the disembodied fist that he could almost pretend belonged to someone else.

  Damn, he wanted to know what that would be like.

  His hands clinging to the sides of a chair, fuck, even the edges of this blanket balled up in his fists while a warm body hung over him, strong callused hands running over his cock like this, collecting pre-come in their palm and using it to slick their grip like he was doing now. Stroking faster, gripping tighter. Maybe they would even kiss him. Warm, open, inviting kisses, like the time he caught Sarah sitting in Robert’s lap and they made him promise not to tell.

  Will felt his balls churn. His breath hitched and he clenched his eyes shut, trying to call this imaginary person into being before he came without them. An image fluttered in his mind, mutating with each flicker of the lamp light against his half closed eyes. The woman in the picture hung over him, with her exposed breasts and soft stomach and dark, menacing lips…now her blonde hair was dark, now her flimsy shirt was crisp and white…her shoulders broadened, and her round, flushed cheeks hollowed until the picture reversed in Will’s mind. The dark handsome gentleman was hanging over him, his blurry eyes drinking in Will’s exposed body, stroking him harder and harder, squeezing him, whispering his name in a rough, low voice.

  Will sucked in a breath of the warm, hay scented air, but it turned to cologne in his mind and he couldn’t call the picture of the woman back to him. The city gentleman leaned down to kiss him, his dark mustache waxy against Will’s clean-shaven face. His own whimper turned to the other man’s in his mind and suddenly the man was moving down his chest, kissing his way toward Will’s groin. Warm hands and warm mouth all over him, devouring him.

  Will popped so fast he hardly realized he had until he felt a splatter of come land in a warm streak across his stomach. He opened his eyes and the city gentleman was gone. All he saw was his own hand wrapped around his spent cock, his empty chest heaving up and down, and the black of the hayloft ceiling high over head.

  His cheeks already felt red, and even if they weren’t, he would have had trouble calling up a blush. Every time he took out the box of pictures to do this, his mental image of who was there with him shifted like that. Last time he was in a
hurry and didn’t even bother trying to picture the woman first.

  He wiped the come off his stomach with his palm and reached out for the muslin sack to wipe it off.

  “Will?” a woman’s voice called out of the darkness.

  Will felt like he’d taken a hoof to the stomach. He dropped the sack and reached down to yank his pants back up.

  “Will, are you done now?”

  Will’s thumping heart slowed down, but barely. It was Annie. He was humiliated, but not in trouble.

  “Uh…yeah,” he called out. “Were you— How long you been there?”

  “Since you took your pants off,” the dark answered back in Annie’s voice. “I was sitting down at the bottom of the ladder. I didn’t watch you.” A vague outline of her body fidgeted at the edge of the lantern’s reach. Will grabbed his shirt and hurriedly threw it back on. Annie came into the light in front of him, a little blonde ghost of a girl in a red and white gingham dress, standing at the edge of the darkness. Will hurriedly buttoned his shirt and Annie came to sit on the blanket beside him, ice-blue eyes flicking over him in a calculating way.

  “I wish you’da made a noise or something, Annie. Shit,” Will said, embarrassed at how breathy his voice sounded in his ears. “You don’t need to hear me do that.”

  Annie shrugged. She reached across him and plucked the dirty picture out of the hay, looking at it while Will pulled himself together. He wiped more sweat from his forehead and tucked his shirt into his trousers, hiding a whimper when he accidently nudged his recovering cock.

  “Will,” Annie started, stopped, then started again, in a quieter voice, “Will, how come every time you…touch yourself you only look at the pictures where the girls are…doing things?”