Authors: RJ Scott
Jack attempted to lay out the blanket he’d grabbed as he saddled Solo, but a naked Riley jumped him and tackled him to the ground, and he knew this wasn’t going to be gentle lovemaking. This was going to be raw, and Jack needed the connection like he needed his next breath. He always did.
Riley covered him, pressing him into the grass and the rucked-up blanket, and kissed him. The kisses were more of the same—hot, messy, deep, with no words. This was heat and fire, and Jack rolled so he was on top. He needed something; he wanted Riley in the worst way.
“I want you to fuck me,” Riley demanded.
Jack nearly lost it there and then. Riley asking him to push inside and—
Jack kissed and bit Riley’s nipples, laving them as they pebbled, sucking marks of possession into Riley’s tan skin. In answer, Riley arched up into Jack and, with his nails, dug biting crescents into Jack’s back. They were nothing but sensation, and Jack wanted to claw his way inside Riley.
He swallowed Riley’s cock with no finesse, no gentle licks, nothing soft and slow. Only when Riley slapped at him with a protest that he was close did Jack release the sucking. Without hesitation, he pressed his lubed finger against Riley.
“Tight,” he ordered.
Riley clenched, then released. They’d worked this out—that clenching the muscle was enough for it to loosen. They knew each other that well. Jack pushed in the first finger, letting Riley adjust, waiting until Riley rocked against it, and he never moved it once. More lube, a second finger, a third, and Riley was begging now. Jack swallowed his cock again, as deep as he could, pinning Riley to his fingers and scraping his teeth gently against Riley’s soft skin. Riley pushed him up, forced him away, and curled his spine. Jack went to his knees, using his thighs to position Riley, then pushed inside his lover. The sight of Riley near slamming his head back on the grass and wool, exposing his neck with a groan of pain and need leaving his mouth, was almost too much.
“Riley, fuck,” Jack gasped. He thrust inside, walking a little closer on his knees, stones pressing into his skin. He didn’t care. He was the other part of Riley; they fit like they were meant to be. He didn’t move again but let Riley press, move and writhe and Jack stole kisses all the time. “I love you, I fucking love you. Riley… shit….”
Riley reached up above his head and grasped at tussocks of grass, holding his upper half still, forcing himself down on Jack’s cock his eyes open and intensely focused. “Touch me,” Riley begged when it was obvious he was close.
Jack balanced himself on one arm, reaching for Riley’s cock. The tightening of Riley’s muscles, the ebb and flow of pressure, and Jack was fucking into Riley’s heaving body with a shout of completion. He stilled as Riley groaned, cursed and shot white stripes over his chest.
“I love you, Jack,” Riley forced past his kiss-bitten lips. “Love you.”
They stayed joined, kissing and exchanging heated words of love, until Jack softened enough to pull free. He used his discarded boxers to wipe at the come, knowing that Riley would need more than that after Jack had come inside him. Riley wouldn’t be comfortable, but it didn’t look like he cared for now. He was blissed-out, flat on the ground, half on the twisted blanket and half on the grass.
“I needed that,” Jack murmured. He flopped to lie next to Riley, tugging at the blanket so they were at least both on it. He held Riley’s hand, “You think it will ever stop?”
“What? This?” Riley gestured with his free hand. “Making love under the blue sky in the middle of the morning?”
“No,” Jack said thoughtfully.
Riley turned his head to look at him. “Then what?”
“The burning. To be with you, to want you, to look at you. Think we’ll ever stop?”
Riley smiled, and the smile reached his eyes, which were more green than brown today. “It burns in me as well.”
“Always?”
“Yeah. All the time. It isn’t only making love. It’s sleeping next to you, looking at you, seeing our kids. It’s everything.”
Jack squeezed Riley’s hand. “Hetboy, you’re my everything.”
“Back at ya, cowboy.”
CHAPTER TWO
They lay there for maybe thirty minutes, then laughed and joked as they collected the trail of clothes. It was only as they got dressed that Jack recalled something he’d meant to do before. They could do that
something
, seeing as they were this side of the ranch.
“Can I show you something?”
Riley twisted his hands around Jack’s neck and locked them in place. “You already did,” he smirked. “Wanna go again?”
“I’m not sixteen anymore,” Jack said, but he kissed Riley and enjoyed the feeling of holding and kissing.
“So what did you want to show me?” Riley finally asked.
Jack climbed onto Solo’s back, and Riley followed suit onto Alex. Together the two men left their little haven of loud sex, and Jack joined a trail up and over to the acres beyond. They came to the stone building quite suddenly. Over a rise in the ground, nestled in a grassy hollow, was the house Jack had called the Ghost House when he was young. He’d done that to freak out Beth, and only because Josh had done the same thing to him, but the Ghost House was what it remained.
“What is it?” Riley looked left and right. “This is still DD land, right?”
Jack tied off Solo. “Yep, all ours.” He waited for Riley to dismount. “Let’s go look.”
The house looked as solid as Jack remembered. “It has its own access road of sorts,” Jack explained with a wave to an overgrown area to the front of the house. “It was the original ranch, or so we think. I’m pulling the records to find out for sure, but it would be way back before the land belonged to my family. Me ’n’ Josh called it the Ghost House.”
“Does it have a resident ghost, then?” Riley teased. “A grizzly old cowboy with chewing tobacco and a six-shooter?”
“We only did it to tease Beth. Didn’t want her up in all our boy’s business when she was little.”
Riley huffed a laugh. “Seriously? Poor Beth.” He stepped closer to the nearest wall and examined the stones. “Seems to me this would be exactly the right place for a ghost.” He looked through the space where there had been a window. “It’s kind of spooky.” He wiggled his fingers at Jack and let out a ghostly
wooh
, edged with laughter. Jack couldn’t help himself, he immediately pulled Riley close and held him tight. When Riley laughed and teased, Jack fell more in love with his husband.
Riley got with the plan, closing his arms around Jack and holding tight. They stood that way in the place for the longest time until Riley released his tight grip and kissed Jack deeply. They kissed and hugged, and Jack relaxed into Riley’s embrace.
“You okay?” Riley murmured.
Jack nodded. “Just an awful lot of memories in this place, y’know. Sometimes Dad would come out to find us, back when we were real tiny, and he’d play cowboys with us. I remember those days as happy.”
“Before he….”
“Yeah,” Jack finished. “Before the Hayes shit got inside his head and wouldn’t leave him.” Riley stiffened next to him and Jack immediately regretted his words. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Yeah,” Riley began softly. “You did, and it’s true. I wish there could be a way I could rewind everything and make it right.”
Jack frowned. What he and Riley had? That
was
making it right. All of it.
“Riley, we made it right the minute you said you loved me.”
Riley said nothing for the longest time, but when he finally spoke, his words were filled with emotion.
“If there had never been a Hayes-Campbell feud, we wouldn’t be together.”
They kissed again, and this time Jack pushed Riley back against the solid wall and made the kiss mean way more than
I love you.
He pressed his weight against Riley and felt the exhalation of Riley’s satisfied sigh against his lips. When they finally separated, Jack was so hard, it was like they hadn’t just made love under the trees. He wanted more, and it seemed like Riley did too, judging by how hard he was.
“I can never get enough of you,” Jack said.
Riley cradled Jack’s face. “And I can’t get enough of you.” He looked down at the ground around them. “We could….”
Jack grimaced. “I like the idea of a mattress this time.”
Riley snorted a laugh. “Thank fuck. I was wondering how my knees would survive.”
Jack kissed the laughter from Riley’s lips, then with reluctance he pulled back.
“So tell me about the place,” Riley asked.
“Don’t think it had a dramatic past. Nothing more than it got too small for the family, or they decided they wanted the flatland by where the ranch house is now.”
Riley pressed a hand to the stone. “But it’s old?”
“Yeah. But built to last.” They stepped farther inside, and Jack could see the sky where the roof had long since disintegrated into piles of kindling on the floor. “A new roof, utilities—we could make something of this.”
Riley leaned against an internal doorjamb where once there would have been a door hanging. “Make something of it? You mean us moving here?”
Riley sounded intrigued rather than concerned.
“Not exactly.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Jack worried at his lip. He’d been having thoughts about this building for a long time. Niggling thoughts that wouldn’t leave him alone. “It’s difficult to explain. Well, not difficult, but it would need investment, maybe more than the riding school, even.”
Riley didn’t appear worried by that. “Go on.”
“You remember when I was in Laredo for the court case?”
“Yeah, of course.” Riley looked puzzled as well he should. Jack was starting this story a long way back.
“I met three men there. Actually one was still a boy. They were the witnesses that were in the dock with Liam in the case against Hank Castille. I put some finances in place, started myself down the road for helping them. Only, it didn’t happen.” This was the difficult part. How would Riley react to what he said next? Jack had dropped the ball because he’d been so wrapped up in Riley and the kidnapping; so much so that everything had gone cold and he’d lost contact with two of the boys.
“Because you had me to worry about.” Riley’s insight into what had happened meant Jack didn’t need to explain. Riley didn’t sound pissed or guilty or any one of a million emotions Jack had considered. He should have had faith in his husband, known that Riley would be above all that now.
“Some,” Jack said.
“I get that. So what do you want to do now?”
“I can’t stop thinking about them. About why, when they were thrown out of their own homes, did they end up at the Triple K? Why had they been drawn to a ranch, then put in such a vulnerable position with Hank Castille, when they were just kids?” He took off his Stetson and ran his hands through his hair. It needed a cut; it was long and ever so slightly irritating. “Clearly they wanted to work on a ranch, and okay, it may have been because ranches have casual help, I get that. But, those three men and Liam, they loved the ranch. So I’m not saying I can fix the whole damn world, but I thought we could offer them a place here.”
Actually that was what he’d been thinking for a long time. Sitting in that courtroom had scarred him. Hank’s abuse of those young men had left a legacy in each of them that had to be so hard. Thankfully Hank had been found guilty and was serving his time. Jack never once hoped that Hank had it easy in prison because he’d grown fond of Liam, the fourth boy he knew had been hurt by Hank. Liam was working on the ranch now, and surely the other three could have work here if they wanted.
“The three men from the trial? There’s always room for more at the D,” Riley said.
Jack nodded. Sometimes he felt like Riley could read his thoughts.
“Maybe those three,” Jack said. “Maybe others. I haven’t thought this through as much as I should have.”
“You mean you want somewhere for kids who have nowhere else to go. A place like the one Steve works at.”
Jack glanced at Riley, saw the thoughtful expression in his hazel eyes. He could do this without Riley because he felt that strongly, but having him backing this play would make Jack’s life a lot easier. No, that wasn’t right. Having Riley love him and support him was what Jack craved.
“I thought we could maybe work with Steve, offer places. I know we give money, but that’s easy for us. I want to do something more proactive and concrete.”
Jack stopped. He thought that maybe he sounded like a bit of an idiot, as if voicing the proactive stuff made it seem like what he could do would make a difference?
Kinda arrogant, actually.
Doubt crept into his thoughts, and Riley would pick up on that. So he forged ahead positively.
“I got the impression from their testimony that all three wanted to work on the ranch, that’s why it was so easy for Hank to take advantage. They thought they’d landed on their feet, and look at them all now, scarred by what happened to them.” Jack could remember the three witnesses. The oldest, with the ill-fitting clothes, who’d had to be helped from the stand; the middle guy in a designer suit; and the kid who left with Family Services, his expression bleak.
“I don’t know how they survived,” Riley began.
“I’m not sure any of them have. The oldest, Kyle, is working minimum wage, living in this tiny pay-for-the-night room. He won’t take any money, and he won’t talk to me. The other two have disappeared entirely. I only have an address for Kyle.” He shrugged. Gabriel was evading all searches, and Danny went off the grid as soon as he turned eighteen a couple of weeks back.
“Okay, I’m not going to pretend I don’t worry. Have you thought about talking to Steve at the shelter? Maybe get him to use his contacts?”
“Already done. I asked for his help tracing the three of them, and he gave me the name of a couple of PIs, and also put feelers out. They have so many resources already in place.”
“What did Steve think of your ideas?”
Riley still sounded wary. “He calmed me down a lot, talked me out of an all-singing, all-dancing place with answers for everyone. He said to start small and keep him in the loop.”