Cowboys Down (24 page)

A moment later, they were almost ripping clothes off each other until they were left naked, panting on the bed. They sat face-to-face, balls to balls, Jasper’s legs tucked under Calum’s, hands on their own cocks. Jasper tucked his toes around Calum’s back and Calum did the same to him. They kissed again, pressed tight against each other, cocks rubbing side by side between them. They writhed and bucked and rocked and every touch against his cock, against his balls, against Calum’s skin felt as if he’d dived from cold water into hot to make his entire body tingle.

“Want to suck each other off at the same time?” Jasper bent his head and licked Calum’s nipple. It crinkled and tightened, and Calum felt an ache grow in his balls.

“Sounds good.”

“Like to see my party trick?” Jasper asked. “Not that I’ve ever done it at a party.”

“That sounds good too.”

They untangled themselves and Calum stared at Jasper’s heavily veined cock, rising from a nest of dark curls. Christ, he was beautiful. Jasper lay on his back, head and shoulders on the pillow. He put his arms behind his knees and—
oh fuck
. Calum’s jaw dropped as Jasper folded up and licked his own cock.

“How the hell can you do that?” Calum asked. “I’m jealous.”

“Long cock, bendy spine and years of practice,” Jasper gasped. “Just don’t expect me to talk at the same time.”

“Fuck that is so hot.” Calum licked his lips as Jasper took the top inch of his cock in his mouth and sucked.

“Now all the rest of it,” Calum said.

Jasper laughed and uncurled. “I’m too tall really. It’s not comfortable. Not as good as—”

Calum planted his mouth on Jasper’s, tasted salty-sweet pre-come and moaned. They swiveled round and lay on their sides so their faces were in each other’s groins. As Calum took the head of Jasper’s cock into his mouth, Jasper made a long slow lick up the center of his fragile sac, and Calum trembled. One hard press by Jasper’s mouth on the skin between Calum’s balls and his hole and Calum’s brain melted.

Taking a deep breath, Calum dragged himself back into gear and played on Jasper’s crest with his tongue, flicking, licking and laving while his mouth watered and pre-come coated his lips. His mind drifted again as Jasper pulled one and then the other of his balls into his mouth while his fingers wrapped around Calum’s cock and squeezed.

Calum moaned against Jasper’s cock head. He struggled to remember he was supposed to be making Jasper come too. He struggled to do anything other than feel. Concentration eluded him. It was like trying to lasso a cloud. Not going to happen.

Copy Jasper.
The idea was good one. In practice not so easy. White-hot sparks danced along Calum’s veins, his entire body preparing to ignite. When Jasper shifted Calum’s leg and dropped his mouth onto the stretch of skin behind his balls, Calum’s nerves took control of his brain. Somehow he managed to keep sucking Jasper’s cock, but as a warm, wet tongue ringed the entrance to his body, Calum felt himself lurch toward lift off. His hips rocked as Jasper licked him, and Jasper’s hips bucked too, driving his cock more deeply between Calum’s lips.

Please, please, please.
Calum wanted to come. Didn’t want to come. Jasper pressed into his slit with the tip of his tongue and as he felt Jasper’s cock swell in his mouth, Calum’s balls detonated. Come flooded up his shaft and spilled into Jasper’s mouth, as Jasper emptied himself into Calum’s. Calum sucked and swallowed and swallowed as he shook in the grip of an orgasm so exquisitely mind-blowing, he thought it was a good thing he was lying down.

Jesus.
He’d never done that before, come at exactly the same time while he had a guy’s cock in his mouth. He licked Jasper clean as Jasper did the same to him, and then Calum turned and crawled up to wrap him in his arms.

“You taste good,” Jasper whispered.

“So do you.”

“You taste better.”

Calum laughed. “I needed that.”

“The laugh or the blowjob?” Jasper licked Calum’s nose.

“Both.” He took a deep breath. “I want…” Calum looked into Jasper’s dark eyes and sagged. The words had log jammed in his throat.

“What?”

Calum’s mouth opened, but he closed it again without saying anything.

“Shall I guess? You want a drink of flat, slightly disgusting champagne? Your father to tell you he’s okay with your being gay? A way to cast bronzes? To fuck me?”

“You to fuck me,” Calum whispered. “Only…”

Jasper’s jaw twitched. “We were fine until the ‘only’. Tell me.”

“Did you kill your brother?” Calum blurted.
Fucking hell. Am I a complete asshole? Where the hell did that come from?

Jasper stiffened in his arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Calum mumbled.

“No. I didn’t kill Ben. In a way, my father did when he hit his horse with his car. I can’t imagine how he must have felt when he realized what he’d done. Then my father sort of killed Ben again when he committed suicide five years after Ben came home from the hospital. He sat at the kitchen table and put a shotgun under his chin. I found him and that killed something inside me too.”

“Oh fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push.” Tears welled in Calum’s eyes.

Jasper put his finger on Calum’s lips. “It’s okay. It’s my past. It’s what happened. I can’t change it. I have to live with it. Though seeing my father…yeah, well that was hard. I had to keep my mother from going into the kitchen. It was after that, Ben asked me to kill him. And I couldn’t.” Jasper brushed a tear from Calum’s cheek. “He died in the operating theatre having an operation I’d talked him into that might have let him breathe on his own. I knew Ben hoped he wouldn’t come round from the anesthetic. He said goodbye to me that morning and I think…we both knew it was the last time.” Jasper took a deep breath. “Want to tell me what happened to you?”

Calum closed his eyes and released a shuddering sigh. Jasper had opened his heart, now he had to do the same.
Say it, say it, say it.
“Two guys raped me,” he whispered. He’d never told anyone that before. His squeezed his eyes tighter shut. His entire body tensed. Why had he told him? He’d kept quiet all these years. Why now?
I’m so stupid.

“Oh God, Calum.”

He felt Jasper’s lips on his eyelids, kissing him. Jasper’s arms tightening around him and he couldn’t breathe. Nothing would be the same now. The rape would always be there in Jasper’s head.
I should have kept quiet.
Calum jerked away, scrambling for his clothes.

“Don’t feel fucking sorry for me,” he snapped. “It happened. I got over it.” He yanked on his jeans and grabbed his shirt.

“Calum—”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”

Jasper caught his arm. “Don’t run away.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He took a deep breath. “I need a minute. Okay. Just let me get my shit together. Sorry.” Calum fled.

Jasper stared at the closed door and sighed.
Shit.
He had a feeling Calum had never told anyone he’d been raped, and he could guess what it had cost him to say it. But Jasper had just confided the darkest secrets of his own life and if the bastard cowboy thought he was going to get away with running from this, he had another think coming. Jasper pulled on his clothes. He’d begun to despair of the cab ever arriving and now he didn’t want it to.

When the door opened, Jasper expected to see Calum standing there looking sheepish, but two men burst into the room, black hoods over their faces. Stunned bewilderment wrecked Jasper’s chances of escape. In the couple of seconds it took him to react, they were on him. Propelled backward onto the bed, the bigger of the two wrapped an arm around Jasper’s throat and slapped a hand over his mouth.

Fear galloped through him and Jasper thrashed and kicked out. He tried to bite the hand plastered on his face and received a thump in his side that sent such a sharp pain shooting through him, for a moment he couldn’t move. Their hold on him slipped as he went limp and by some miracle Jasper managed to wriggle free. He fell onto the floor, opened his mouth, but before his scream for help was voiced, something hit the side of his head and the room lost focus. Jasper lurched to his feet, stumbled toward the door and this time he was whacked on the back of his head. The next blow targeted his stomach and the air rushed out of his lungs. As Jasper tried to straighten, a fist connected with his chin and he fell back onto the bed wheezing.
What the fuck?
Were they trying to kill him?

“Not his face,” one of the men hissed.

That voice…

Jasper saw a piece of wood arcing toward him and tried to roll out of the way, but it hit him and pain radiated through his skull.

Note to self: Don’t lose con—

Chapter Fourteen

Jasper came back to awareness slowly. He was moving, more accurately he was being carried, his wrists and ankles tied, a gag over his mouth. His head pounded and his stomach ached.
Oh God, and my jaw.
He lay across someone’s back, the guy had an arm looped around Jasper’s neck, the other hooked around his knees. Jasper felt more and more nauseous with every jolting step. Except being sick wouldn’t be wise when he had something tied around his mouth. The only good news was that he could still get some air through the material.

Oh Christ, what are these guys going to do to me?

He was reluctant to open his eyes fully. Better that whoever held him thought he was still unconscious, but he couldn’t stop himself taking a quick peek. Jasper thought they were still on the ranch, but he couldn’t be sure. Suffocating fear rose alongside his fury and fear won. Whatever these two wanted, it couldn’t be good. That voice—it had sounded like Pete. Was this Calum’s father’s doing? The guy wanted him gone? But Jasper had been trying to leave all bloody day. Well, most of it.

The guy carrying him was panting.
Good.
Jasper would have made carrying him a damn sight more difficult if he could, but with his ankles bound, and arms tied behind his back, even if he wriggled free, he couldn’t run. Where were they taking him? If they wanted him dead, wouldn’t they have killed him already? Jasper clung to that faint hope.

In a sudden brainwave, he twisted his hands until he could get his fingers on Angie’s bracelet. He tugged hard to break it, gathered as many beads as he could in his fists, then let them fall one by one.

Jasper heard the sound of a door being opened and then closed, and then he was dropped to land on his back in the dirt. The fall knocked the air out of his lungs. The pain in his hands and his back made him arch in agony.

“Oh shit, he’s seen my face.”

He hadn’t, but idiot that he was, Jasper looked up.
Ring. Oh God.
Somehow that wasn’t a surprise. The hood over his head must have come off as he’d dropped Jasper. The other guy sighed and pulled the cover off his face.
Pete.
A foot landed in Jasper’s side, rolling him onto his face and he groaned behind his gag.
Christ that hurt.
Had he heard a rib snap? It felt like it. It hurt to breathe. Jasper kept his fists clenched and the remaining beads hidden.

“Stop fucking kicking him,” Pete whispered.

Jasper lay facedown in the dirt, struggling to drag air through his nose and inhaling dust.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A foot rolled him back again and Jasper blinked in the dim light. They were in a barn he didn’t recognize. Pete held a rope with a noose at the end.
Oh shit.
Jasper tugged at his wrists, desperately trying to get free, but he was bound tight. Same with his ankles. When Pete tossed the rope over a beam, Jasper’s entire body chilled. His fear escalated and his breathing grew more frantic.

“He’s got blood trickling down his face from two places. This isn’t going to work,” Pete said. “It was supposed to be one tap on the head to knock him out. Fucking fag’s got a thick skull.”

The rope slithered down to land beside Jasper. He didn’t dare feel relief. They’d planned to hang him. And they wanted it to look like suicide.
Oh fuck.
Jasper didn’t think that was too much of a jump in logic. He wished it was.

The two men stared down at him, no hint of concern on their faces.
What have I done? I was leaving. For fuck’s sake. Please. Please. Please.
Only Jasper knew there was no point pleading, even if he’d been able to. One way or another, they intended him to die. It pissed him off that he didn’t know why. Because he was gay? Because of his relationship with Calum? Or had some megalomaniac partner at his London office arranged to have him killed?
Oh God, oh God.
He’d done nothing to deserve this.

“If we don’t have him hang himself, what we gonna do?” Ring asked.

Pete kicked Jasper’s ankles. Jasper cried out behind his gag as a steel toe cap made contact.

“Make Calum responsible,” Pete said. “They had some sort of fight out here. Calum accidentally kills him and then dumps him. Actually, that’ll work better. I should have thought of that earlier.”

Jasper was stupidly incensed they hadn’t even taken the trouble to work this out.

Pete smiled down at Jasper. “Don’t you be thinking a cab company’s going to turn up. You called to cancel.”

Oh fuck.
Jasper sent a mental plea for Calum to come back to his room, find his luggage, come and look for him.