Wild Horses (7 page)

Kai slumped against a sliding door to an empty stall. “Is it always like this?” he asked May, feeling parched and tired, his senses straining under the load of new information.

“Yeah. Get used to it.” Hal’s voice sounded from the tack room where he was lathering saddle soap onto leather straps and wiping it off again. Kai noted he wasn’t called any names this time.

“I’ll step it up.”

“You better.” The expletives might have been gone, but the antagonistic tone was still in residence.

Kai followed May into the viewing room, which had a window into the indoor arena, air conditioning, and an assortment of various drinks. The room was packed with parents who were trying to escape the summer heat and used the viewing room’s window to watch their children trot their horses over logs on the ground with varying degrees of skill. Kai peeked out the window. Some of the kids weren’t yet old enough to know how to read, but they sat their horses, and he experienced a faint pang of envy. Had he the opportunity to ride early in life, who knew where he would be now? Had he parents like these—interested in him… not dying young, like his father, or remarrying a bigoted moron as his mother had—well then, he might still be living in his small hometown and be on speaking terms with most of his relatives. He might not have ended up homeless. He might not have turned into a thief.

“Here. Drink this.” May pressed a reusable water bottle into his hand. “Gatorade. You need to keep drinking in heat like this.”

He met her bright, green eyes. She smiled at him, holding his gaze and prolonging their contact the way women tended to do when they were interested. He dropped his gaze all the way down to his boots, bypassing her chest on the way. “Thanks.”

He had no intention of revealing his sexual preference; that’s what got him kicked out of his mother’s house to begin with. There was no reason to hurt May’s feelings. She was not only nice, she was also an invaluable fount of knowledge, and he could tell he’d be going to her with his questions a lot more than he was inclined to go to either Mr. Keleman or his two nephews. Hal was as friendly as a pebble in a shoe. Brent was nice, but Kai didn’t want to talk to him with Hal around. And Mr. Keleman…. Kai wanted to ask him all kinds of things, but once he was in the man’s presence, his thoughts fled and his carefully prepared words got stuck in his throat. Kai had never felt tongue-tied around others before, yet Mr. Keleman’s opinion mattered to him. He was still all too aware of his transgression. To make things worse, he had to pass out from the heat. Few things were more embarrassing than passing out and losing control. And then there was the issue of Kai still feeling the touch of the older man’s arm around his shoulders. It had felt warm and comforting. He sighed at the memory, nipping his hunger for more warmth and comfort in the bud. Attila Keleman was lily-white, pure, untouchable. Some things were simply unattainable and best forgotten.

K
AI
sprawled on his back and enjoyed the way the cool, shady concrete of Attila’s patio drained his body of excess heat. The number of tasks that needed to be done for the animals before the people could attend to their own needs felt staggering to his novice mind. All the horses were unsaddled, curried, and combed, and their hooves were picked before they were let inside their stalls. Then there was the daily mucking out, feeding, making notes of problems or signs of injury, hauling new deliveries of hay into the loft, answering scheduling questions of both the students and their parents… and the phone would ring every so often, just to keep things interesting. His reward was the soft noses aimed right at the feed baskets full of hay mounted in the corner of each stall, the horses’ attention diverted only by the sound of grain pouring into the feed buckets. Their equine focus was single-minded. Not even Vermillion would be distracted by Kai’s gentle whistle.

Kitchen sounds broke the silence, drifting to Kai as he lay sprawled behind Attila’s house: the opening and shutting of the refrigerator door, the hum of the microwave, running water in the kitchen. Kai hauled himself off the cold concrete slab and headed for the kitchen through the sliding door of Attila’s bedroom. He made his way to the kitchen, feeling guilty for not thinking to offer his help. “Mr. Keleman?”

Attila froze as though startled. Then he looked up from the cutting board. “Yes?”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Attila gave a rare, wry smile. “You can call me by my first name. No need to be that formal, Kai. After all, how would you feel if I called you Mr. Alewright?”

Kai, too, broke into a shy smile. “My dad was Mr. Alewright,” he said. Then he frowned and let his eyes slide toward the window, as if something outside had captivated his interest. “He died… when I was fifteen.”

Attila focused on slicing a large tomato. “I am sorry,” he said, not looking up.

“It’s okay.” Kai let his eyes wander around the slightly outdated kitchen, tracing the yellow, painted cabinets until he anchored on the steady action of Attila’s hands. “I wanted to know if I could help with anything… Attila.”

The calm, silent man nodded, not breaking the somber mood. “Plates and bowls are in the cabinet next to the refrigerator. Utensils are in the drawer next to me.”

“Okay.” Kai busied himself with setting the table.

When Attila finished putting a salad together, he placed two defrosted stuffed cabbages in a ceramic baking dish along with two sliced potatoes. Then he sealed the dish with aluminum foil and put it in the oven. “This will take forty minutes to bake. I usually soak in the pool while dinner is cooking.” The orange light of the slanting sun illuminated Attila’s face and made his eyes look sapphire blue.

K
AI
brightened at the prospect of water; Attila knew that the sweat of the day would itch. His own shirt was almost stiff with drying salt.

“Okay.” Kai said. “But I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“About that….” Attila’s jaw tightened, betraying discomfort. “I’ll see what I have that you could use, so you don’t have to go in your underwear.”

“I used to swim in the river naked with the guys when I was a kid,” Kai said, nonchalant. “No problem—but I can wear something if you want.”

Kai’s revelation did not put Attila’s mind at ease. On the contrary, he reminded himself, once again, that getting involved with a transient hand would lead to no good. He then applied himself to finding a suitable garment that would fit the somewhat larger Kai.

K
AI
paced by the pool, unaware of the picturesque sunset that tinted the landscape around him with a crimson hue.

Naked.

He thought he would go blind. His active mind supplied him with many an imaginary glance of Attila’s body, teasing him with all its potential. It had been a long time since he had been with anyone; in fact, his brief affair with Nelby punctuated a series of anonymous hookups, and that just about summed it up for the past few months. He suppressed the painful memories, thinking instead of Mr. Kel—no, of Attila, and his strong shoulders and long muscles and fine-boned wrists. He wanted to kiss the inside of those wrists, brush his dry lips over their vulnerable skin, then let his tongue flick out, tasting. And Attila would most likely punch him for it and throw him off his property, and rightly so. Kai was, after all, nothing but a homeless nuisance, allowed at the stables by Attila’s sufferance alone. Anyone could have mucked the stables, swept the floors, fed the horses, and filled their water buckets. Anyone could have climbed up to the hayloft and tossed the rectangular hay bales down, providing extra feed. Anyone could have….

“Here…,” Attila said, interrupting Kai’s anxious train of thought. “I am very sorry, but these boxers are the only thing that will fit you. Unless you want to go in your underwear, this is it.” He presented a small rectangle of gray cloth, dotted with yellow and orange paisleys. The design was reminiscent of little flames.

“Uh, sure, thanks…” Kai fingered the fabric. “That’s great, thanks!” Kai strode to the guest bedroom to change. The fabric was shiny, feeling whispery-soft against his thighs as he pulled the garment up. It fit pretty well—a bit tight but not overly so, and a bit shorter than a standard bathing suit. He emerged from his lair, seeing Attila had already changed as well.

“Alright, we have a bit of time before dinner is served.” Attila led on, plunging into the water. Never a good swimmer, Kai followed feet-first, unsure of the small pool’s depth. He bounced off the bottom and looked around, seeing his host only a few feet away.

“So what do you usually do, swim around?” Kai asked.

“No. There isn’t a lot of space for swimming laps. I just float around and relax. The work we do, Kai, it’s hard on the body. You’ll find you’ll need smaller pants in about a month, and your shirts will feel snug in the sleeve.”

“You think?” Kai glanced at the other man. He now had a legitimate reason to actually observe his body.

“No doubt. And I love to just stretch out. The water is very relaxing. It helps me think about the parts that are tight, and when I’m done soaking, I get out on the wooden deck on the other side and do some stretches.” Attila’s gray eyes fixed Kai with a stern gaze. “Stretching is essential, Kai. It prevents injuries.”

“Okay, okay.” Kai laughed. “I’ll float and think about my tight spots and then I’ll try stretching out a bit. Happy now?”

“It will do.” Attila kicked off the side of the pool, stretching his arms in front of him, and floated to the other side, looking relaxed and languid with his face in the water.

Kai held on to the short diving board, stretching his arms and shoulders against it. As he pulled himself up and down, working the kinks out of his upper back, the slithery fabric of his makeshift bathing suit wisped in the water against his thighs and his buttocks, soft as a breeze. “Hey, Attila! What sort of shorts did you give me to wear? I don’t think I’m familiar with this type of fabric.”

“Oh that… it’s silk.”

“Silk?” Kai thought hard. “Isn’t that supposed to be expensive or something?”

“Yes. Not very practical in the barn, though. If you like it, keep it.”

“For real?” Kai’s voice betrayed an eager undercurrent, as though anything that originated from Attila must have been good.

“Of course. I am glad it is being used.” The timer in the kitchen beeped, and Attila rolled his shoulders, wincing. “We can stretch later. I have to go rescue dinner now.”

“Let me help,” Kai said, pulling himself out of the deep end of the pool. The thin gray silk was plastered to his wet skin, revealing the curve of his ass and molding against a generous bulge on his front.

Attila averted his eyes.

They sat outside by the very picnic table Kai had used instead of a mounting block when he was still recovering from heat stroke, with Vermillion in attendance. The table triggered a memory and Kai wasted no time to ask a burning question. “So when do I get to ride Vermillion?”

A
TTILA
shrugged. “He needs to be trained. That one crazy bareback ride—I still shudder thinking about what might have happened. But he was willing to carry you without bucking you off. He doesn’t like the saddle nor the bit. If you can convince him to carry something on his back while he is with you, even a saddle pad, it will help him adjust. You need to earn his trust first, though. That book you asked about… I have several. We can look after dinner and see what would suit your reading style.”

“I had books of my own, it’s not like I don’t read. Too bad they burned in the fire with the rest of my stuff.”

“What did you lose?” Attila asked, his eyebrow cocked with curiosity.

“Eh… it wasn’t much, but it was all I had, y’know? When I used to work for Med-Toc, I was doin’ okay. I had my own place—just one room and a shower and a small kitchen, but it was mine. And the job was okay—until Med-Toc outsourced all of its medical-device assembly out to Malaysia, oh, two years ago? I couldn’t find anything similar. I even looked outside of Pittsburgh, but my job was just a quality-control technician, checking devices and taking apart the ones that didn’t work to find out why, so… yeah. The apartment had to go. That’s when I realized how much stuff I had accumulated. You can’t go couch surfing with boxes and boxes of books and sheet music. I sold most of it to a secondhand bookstore, and I kept the sheet music and my guitar and the few books that were special to me….” Kai’s eyes were fixed on his empty plate.

Attila gave him a while, but when no more information was forthcoming, he prodded some more. “That’s terrible,” Attila said. “Were you hurt?”

“Nah, I wasn’t even there. I don’t really know what happened.”

Attila saw Kai’s pained expression, but chose to press for more information regardless. “So, about the fire. Did you lose anything besides your guitar and the sheet music and the books?”

“I worked as a dishwasher at JoJo’s for some time, which was good ’cause I could eat there,” Kai continued as though he’d never been interrupted. “Then JoJo’s went out of business, and the local joints had plenty of summer help already so jobs were hard to come by, but I was ready to try just about anything, you know?” He glanced at Attila, making sure he wasn’t boring him. Attila nodded.