Nowhere Ranch (11 page)

“Word of advice: don't call her a filly to her face unless you want your ears blistered.” But he was smiling. “You looked good, singing with her. I never knew you could let go like that.”

Me either. In fact, now that it was over and I was starting to sober up a little, I felt awkward about it, like I'd exposed myself too much. Talking about it was only going to make it worse, though, so I found a patch of silence and wrapped myself in it until we got home.

The road from town back to Nowhere was narrow, and I realized I hadn't experienced it in the dark until now. The joke is that Nebraska is flat, but that's like saying western Iowa is flat. Sure, in parts. Especially the parts they put the interstate through, and I don't know why it never occurs to anybody that they'd go looking for those places because they'd be the least amount of work for putting in four lanes of road. I mean, our farm back home was nestled in the hills and had a little creek bed running through it. The hills were full of trees, and I don't care if it was spring or summer or fall or winter, that place was so beautiful sometimes it hurt me to look at it. The way the sun cut across the land, the way the grass rippled in the wind, the way all those thick green leaves sounded when a gust blew through—there's nothing else like it. I don't care what you try to show me, what ocean or mountain. There's a beauty to a quiet place like that you can't get anywhere else.

The road to Nowhere made me think of that. During the day you could see the hay fields rolling on either side and the scrubby brush and grass in the ditch. There was a dry creek bed on the east side of the road, eroded deep and full of gnarly roots and rocks and mud from the last gully washer. There was the fence below that, marking the edge of the cattle's grassland. The road was gravel, single lane, and it was one of those that had the ridge of grass growing down the middle, which I loved. The road rippled and rolled over the hills and wound around with the dry creek bed all the way to the outbuildings and the edge of the sheep pasture and the tree line that took you out to the ridge.

In the dark, though, all you could see was black and the gravel and sometimes the branches of trees or brush along the side of the road. It felt like we were driving into nothingness that kept expanding just in time for us to get there. Probably some of that was the alcohol. Some of it, though, was the surreal twist my night had taken. I was supposed to be sitting braiding a leather and listening to the radio with my belly full of roast, but instead I was full of beer, throat raw from singing at the top of my lungs, riding along with Travis on the way back to the ranch in the dark to go have hot animal sex. The world was spinning and strange and wild, and in that moment, I felt wild too.

I said, “I want you to tie me up again.”

He glanced briefly at me. “That didn't go so well the last time.”

“I know. That's why I want to do it again.” I turned and looked at him, taking in his profile in the glow of the dashboard lights. “I told you then. It wasn't the tying up that did it. It was my head.”

He didn't say anything, just kept watching the road. So I pushed.

“Come on. You know you want to.” When he didn't answer even then, I started to lose some of my confidence. “Well, unless you don't want to.”

“Oh, I want to.”

His voice was quiet but weighted, slithering around me and making me still again.

I wasn't sure what was going to happen when we got to the ranch, so I tried to let myself float again, tried to let the darkness swirl around me and make everything go away. It did, but I was very aware now of Travis beside me, of his hands on the wheel. I was aware of his scent, of cologne and beer and the stale, vague smell of bar that clung to us both. I remembered the other times we'd had sex, remembered the feel of his big arms. I wanted him and everything he might do to me so much that it scared me a little. It was the same want that made me run the last time, but I tamped it down. I wasn't going to make an idiot of myself this time. Not this time.

It started out well enough. By the time we pulled into the drive, my blood was already humming. I sat in the dark, silent cab, waiting for his lead. When he reached over and put his hand on my leg, I opened for him. I held still while he ran his hand up the seam of my jeans, while he traced the outline of my erection through my jeans with his thumb. When he undid the fly, I lifted my hips to help him. When he slid my jeans and underwear down over my hips, I quivered, but I held still and let him take my cock in his hand.

So close. It was so close in the cab of the truck. I could feel his breath on me. I could feel his hand on me. I felt the clinging vinyl under my ass, felt the rough brush of jeans against my thighs. His cologne was a fog around me now, and I could smell sex: sweat and precum and cock, my cock, stirred up by his hand. I knew this was just the opening act, knew I would face tomorrow sore and raw and spent, and I was ready. Ready for rough. Ready for the ride.

I was not ready for his kiss.

Not like he gave me. Not like that. I could have handled him grabbing my chin, forcing me open, and diving inside. Hell, he could have spit into my mouth, and I'd have shivered. But it wasn't that kind of kiss.

He came in slow. Real slow, real fucking slow. He had his eyes on me the whole time. They were hard and strong, which was the only thing that kept me from turning away. Until the last second I thought he was going to do something kinky, like bite me or lick my lips. That would have been fine. But after he bent down, after hovering a few seconds, feeling my unsteady breath against his mouth, he just kissed me. Soft. Sweet. Achingly gentle. And then he did it again. And again. It made me feel jangly and strange. It made me ache. It made me hurt. It made me want to turn away, and I started to.

That was when he opened his mouth over mine, sealed our lips together, and stole inside.

Not forced. That would have been okay. He snuck in there. Teased his way in. When I started to fight him, he lured me back. When even that became too much, I tried to pull away again, but that was when he dragged me onto his lap.

Then he got smart. He kept kissing me, kissing me deep and tender like a lover, but his hand molested me with a roughness that gentled me. Real quick I figured out that if I wanted dirty, I had to give him sweet. If I kissed him back, if I let my mouth fall open and my body go soft for him, and above all if I didn't flinch away from sweet, drugging kisses, eventually he would slide over and nip at my chin or pinch my nipple or let his hand slide back along my taint. He had me feeling so crazy, like any second I was going to blow up, nervous and excited and uneasy all at once.

Eventually he stopped kissing me, and he spoke into my ear, whispering and nuzzling, all the while with his hand working me over below.

“The thing is that, much as I want to fuck you, much as I want to tie you down and get out the crop and smack you until you're beet red all over your body—much as I know you want that too, that you'd be game for all of it—I can't shake the feeling that the more we do this, the more likely you are to leave Nowhere. That the more I take you to rodeos and out to dinner and invite you to use my kitchen, the more likely it is that pretty soon I'm going to be looking for another ranch hand who knows something about sheep.” He paused for a beat, his finger pressed against my opening. “You want to tell me I'm making this up?”

Fifteen minutes ago, this discussion would have made me feel panicked and trapped, but all I could think about was how if I was good, I could get that damn finger. “I won't leave,” I vowed.

The finger teased but didn't enter. “You lyin’ to me, boy?”

“No, sir.” I shut my eyes and tried to press down on him. “Please.”

He wasn't going to relent, though, not until he was sure. “I've got your number, cowboy. You just want a fuck. You want an escape. You want a job, and you want some sex on the side, maybe. You'd rather the job and the sex weren't in the same place. But they
are
in the same place, Roe. And I want to be your friend too. I'm not asking you to move in. But yeah, I expect you to take care of my cattle and sheep and occasionally have conversation with me as well as let me tie you up and fuck you blue. You man enough to deal with that, or are you going to run as soon as we finish tonight?”

My head was spinning, and my body ached, it was so taut. But Jesus H, he had my balls to the wall.
Man enough
. He'd said that on purpose to get my goat. This was
bullshit.

But it was good bullshit. He had me dead to rights, which was why I answered him honest. “I don't know.”

His hand at my shoulder gentled. “I say you are.”

I shook my head, keeping my eyes shut. “You don't know me well enough to know that.”

His chuckle surprised me and put me oddly at ease. “Oh, I do. Better than you can imagine. And I say you can cowboy up and do this, Roe.” I didn't answer, just stood there as he stroked the sweaty skin of my neck. When he bent down and nipped at my ear, I shivered, but when he spoke, I went still. “You're worried I want to make you my lover? Well, I don't want one, Roe. I don't want a partner. I don't want a husband. I want a boy. I want a little slut I can order what to do. I want you in boots and spurs and chaps and nothing else, sucking on my cock with a tail hanging out of your ass.” I shuddered, but when he bit the soft flesh of my lobe, I went slack. “I want you to work for me and cook for me and talk with me. And then I want to fuck you, Roe. I want to fuck you so good I ruin you for anybody else. I want to make you mine.
Mine
. I want to brand you like the cattle. Not because I'm in love with you. Because I want you, and because I don't want anyone else to have you.”

I went through so many mental somersaults while he said all that to me I lost track of what I actually felt. Relief. Fear. Hope. Terror. Arousal. Disappointment. Joy. Suspicion. I didn't even have a clue as to what triggered what. I just felt it all in waves that came one on top of the other. I had no hope of speaking. I was sure he was going to make me say something—I was waiting for him to demand I say I wasn't going to run, and I was terrified of that, because I knew I couldn't. I couldn't say that. And then he'd be angry, and this would be over, and then I'd have no choice but to leave—

—and the thought made my chest get so tight that I hunched forward against the pain.

But he didn't say anything more. He just grabbed my chin and tipped my face toward his with a force that made me open my eyes and look at him.

We were tangled on the seat, my jeans sagging down, my shirt rucked up and half-open, my chin in his hand. For a second all I could think of was that we looked like some clutch on one of those romances my mom bought at Walmart, except Walmart was never going to have two guys. And I never read any of those books, but I'm pretty sure the heroes never wooed the women by swearing they were just after them for sex and a sense of ownership.

But I kind of felt like one of those women on the covers anyway, and not just because he was holding me like one, though that helped. Nobody had ever held me like this. Nobody had ever gripped me like Rhett Butler and demanded some kind of accounting out of me. A couple of guys had tried to ask about having a relationship, but it had been a hesitant asking, which had terrified me as much as the word “relationship.” This wasn't any asking. This was claiming.

I wasn't sorry. And I wasn't feeling like a sissy. I was feeling like all that crazy sea inside me was settling into a calm. He had drawn it all out of the bottle I kept it in, but when I looked up at him like that, it settled, because if my wild insides were a sea, those gray eyes were the world's biggest fucking bowl, and they held me. Caught me and held me and bore me up.

I let him. I eased back, lifted my open mouth to his, and I let him claim me, let him inside my mouth, relaxed my ass even before he pushed inside there too. I let him have me, and for the first time since I could remember, I made love to a man without thinking of how I was going to get out of it after or how I was going to give us some distance once we were through. I just let him have me, let him make me feel good.

Which means I claimed his claiming, which, let me tell you, takes a fuck lot more of man.

He took me not to the house but to the horse barn, to the stalls underneath my apartment.

There were about fifteen stalls here but only three horses. The horses we hands used were all out to pasture next to the sheep. The other stalls were empty.

He shut me in one.

Travis took my hands and placed them on the grill beside the door, and he tied my hands to the bars with stout rope. He took care to wrap it around my wrists at my shirt cuffs so it didn't chafe, but he tied it tight. I wasn't getting out.

Then he dropped my jeans to my ankles and gave my legs the same treatment, spreading them as wide as the denim would allow. After that he swatted my ass and left.

He was gone a good twenty minutes. I stood there, blood humming, cock at half-mast. We were gonna fuck. I mean, we were gonna
fuck
. The roughness of the rope he'd used excited me. The cooler evening air against my bare ass reminded me how exposed I was and made me want to hump at the wall. He kept me waiting on purpose, I knew, but it didn't freak me out at all. It made me more eager. By the time he finally did come back, all I wanted to do was suck on various parts of his body to show him how fucking happy I was with this. But then I saw what he had hoisted over his shoulder.

It was some sort of bench, but it was crudely made. Part wood, part metal, part cushion, it had been designed and fashioned to someone's particular details and not by an expert hand. To my mind it looked just right for leaning over while you got your ass reamed.

Fuck, yeah.

I craned my head around to watch as he set it up in the middle of the stall. He was setting up just beyond my line of sight, which I figured was on purpose. I could hear him clicking and banging on things, and I saw several flashes of rope, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. And then, with no warning at all, a knife was slashing the ropes holding me, and I tumbled backward into Travis's arms. I shook a little from surprise and anticipation, but he held me close a second and said, “You okay?”