Texas Fall (15 page)

Instead Marcus was
smiling. “Last I saw, Vaughn was over at the barn with the horses.”

Darren thanked him and
climbed back in his own car before making his way down the long road to the
ranch. His confidence in what he was doing steadily grew, but everything dropped
as soon as the ranch came into view.

Doubts assailed him and
had to count back from one hundred before he got out of the car.

“You okay?” a voice said
from behind him. Turning on his heel, he was faced with Jack, who evidently was
worried that Darren had taken so long to get out of his car.

“Yeah.” That was an easy
answer.

“You looking for Vaughn?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I just talk to you
quickly, be honest with you?” Jack began. Darren nodded, he wanted honesty. “I
don’t know what y’all are planning, but Vaughn is happy here. And I offered him
the position permanently.” There was no warning in his voice or any element of
advice; he was merely making a statement.

“I think I could be happy
here too,” Darren answered with a grin. “Sorry, Jack, gotta go.” With a bemused
Jack staring at him, Darren turned and left for the barn. His steps quickened
until he was nearly jogging to the place he knew Vaughn was working. He reached
the barn and tripped his way over the entry seeing Vaughn, then just let
everything in his head out.

“I had the interview,
didn’t get the job, but it doesn’t matter ’cause I didn’t want it anyways, and
I could set up myself and we won’t have much money, but we could rent a place
with a spare room and I could work from home on accounts for ranches, and I
could cook dinner, and you could work here and come home to me and we could get
a place with a porch and maybe a view of something, I don’t know what,
anything, I love you and I want to be with you and maybe get a dog or
something, and…” Suddenly he ran out of breath, and he knew he was grinning
from ear to ear.

A cough from next to
Vaughn made Darren realize that Robbie was standing right next to his lover. He
wasn’t embarrassed that his speech had been overheard, but Robbie made his excuses
and left the barn. Finally it was just him and Vaughn.

“Our own place,” Vaughn
said slowly. He didn’t sound as excited as Darren. That small thought pushed
its way insistently into his enthusiasm, forcing a chink in the absolute
perfect plan. Did Vaughn maybe not want this? Was this his way of saying they
were done? Or that Darren was freaking him out?

“A small one, or maybe we
could rent, or I could rent and you could visit…” Darren could hear the
pathetic in his words.

Vaughn tilted his head,
and his face held a thoughtful expression. “We can get a dog?”

Darren felt his mouth fall
open. Just like that Vaughn had listened and accepted everything Darren had
said. “Really?”

“Not a yappy dog, a big
one.”

Darren closed his mouth. In
an instant he was on Vaughn, climbing the bigger man like a monkey and pushing
him back against the wall. They kissed until neither of them could breathe and
they had to part for air.

“Fuck, Vaughn, this is
serious,” Darren whispered.

Vaughn rested his forehead
on Darren’s. “Deadly. I need to talk to Jack about his offer of making it
permanent. Someone needs to earn the money,” he joked. More seriously he added
the words that Darren needed to hear again. “Love you.”

Darren clung harder, until
his muscles ached. Somehow, someway, they had made it to this point and hell,
it rocked.

“I love you too.”

“Now, can you get down off
me?” Vaughn deadpanned. “I think we’re scaring the horses.”

Riley wasn’t sure what was
more exciting, the fact that he was having his cast removed or that he and Jack
had a night in Dallas to celebrate. Well, not the whole night, there was the
pesky issue of a business meeting first, but after that he had Jack for the rest
of the night. He needed it more than he’d thought he did.

The removal of his cast at
Mercy left him on a downturn; the cast left pale skin behind and his leg ached
like a bitch, and then the business meeting he’d felt pressured to attend was a
complete loss.

“I fail to see why you won’t
back the project.”

Riley inhaled sharply. He thought
the past ten minutes had explained exactly why he didn’t feel it was right for
him to carry on backing a project that Jeff had started ten years before.

The scholarship was
nothing more than an excuse to hand money out to those that certainly didn’t
need it. Every single student on the list was from Hockaday or St. Mark’s, and
endowing more money on these kids was a waste of money.

“I’d rather the money went
to kids who couldn’t fund college at all.”

The two men he was talking
to, Bill and Adam Jenkins, cronies of his brother and cruel teasing bastards
when Riley had been a kid, were blocking out his reasoning.

Bill, glassy eyed and just
a little too loud for this restaurant, leaned forward in his chair. He even
smacked a hand to the table in emphasis as he laughed.

“You’re not going to get
the best for the college places by trawling every Hicksville in Texas. What do
you want? Some kid who speaks with an accent and fucks horses?” Bill’s
intentional crudeness was clearly aimed with a very personal target, and it
wasn’t Riley with his privilege and his education.

Next to him Jack stiffened
at the words, but to his credit he sipped at his beer and concentrated on his
steak.

“Where you come from means
jack shit if you don’t have the hunger to learn,” Riley pointed out.

This time Adam joined in
with the laughing, and Riley could feel temper replacing the iciness of his
control. Jack stopped eating and placed a hand on Riley’s knee, a warning and a
comfort.

“Jesus Christ, Hayes,
you’re as soft as your sister. Who’d’a thought being gay would fry your
brains.”

Riley bit his tongue.

Bill interjected his own
take. “Jeff would be rolling in his grave to see what you were doing.”

“Doing?” Riley asked,
deceptively calm. These two idiots might well be friends of the Hayes family,
but they weren’t Riley’s. Or Eden’s. Or, come to think of it, Sandra’s. Any
connection they had to Hayes had gone when Jeff, then Gerald had died.

Bill continued. “Ethical
this and fair that. You’ve clearly had the kill fucked out of you.”

“Ass fucked,” Adam added
with a snort of laughter. Adam and Bill seemed to think they were sharing a
huge joke with Riley. How the hell Riley didn’t take a knife and stab it in the
nearest hand he didn’t know. Instead he took strength from Jack.

Riley interrupted the
laughing. “Hayes will not be renewing the funding of the private members’ scholarships
with you,” he said in his most definite tone. His leg ached, and he really
didn’t want to be there.

Adam downed the rest of
his whiskey. “Your loss, but this won’t go down well with the other families,”
Adam said with a shrug.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,”
Jack said abruptly and stood up. He indicated Riley should stand. “My
husband
and I have some making up for lost time to do.” Then, leaning back down to Bill
and Adam, he added in a lower tone, “He really needs to fuck his aggression out
before he shoots you both.” He didn’t elaborate, but Adam frowned and Bill’s
mouth fell open. “Dinner’s on us,” he said.

Riley didn’t argue, just let
himself be led hand in hand through the restaurant. Jack talked to the maître d’.
Then he guided Riley to a seat behind some palms and told him to sit before
disappearing for five minutes. When he came back, he offered his hand again, and
together they went directly to the elevator. Jack pressed the button for PH and
slid a room card into the card reader.

“We have a room?” Riley
said. He was still in shock; that had to be the reason for this. And the
penthouse? At this hotel? Fuck, Jack couldn’t afford this kind of shit, and he
knew it, and Jack knew it, and what about the kids? They hadn’t been due home
until ten anyway, but if they stayed here… He shifted his weight to his good
leg.

“You can’t do that,” Jack
said sternly. “You need to be using your leg now. You heard the doctor.”

Riley blinked. “We have a
room?” he repeated.

“On your credit card, oil
man,” Jack said. “The kids are good, Carol is there, she has Robbie on speed
dial, and the extra security you placed out there is at full capacity. We’re
going up to this damn seven-thousand-a-night suite, and we are fucking each
other until we can wash our heads of that crap at dinner and what happened in Nuevo
León and the spreadsheets, and we are goddamn connecting.” By this time the
elevator had stopped and Jack was right up in his space with his hands on
Riley’s biceps, curling into the muscle and gripping tight.

Riley felt dizzy with it,
the control and the lust and the anger and the temper and all the other crap
that circled in his brain. Was there anything Jack hadn’t taken care of?

The doors slid open to the
private lobby for the suites. Jack dragged him out of the elevator and to one
of the three doors off the landing, and in seconds they were inside the room.
Riley had never stayed there before, and just stepping inside this place, this
point of absolute luxury, had him stopping dead at the threshold.

“Riley, get your ass
inside.”

Jack moved to the windows
and appeared to be checking out the view of a neon-lit Dallas, but then he
depressed a button and every single blind turned until the view of the night
was blocked.

Riley still didn’t move,
like there was a brick wall or something and the brick wall was called
decadence. He didn’t do this anymore. Think of all the kids he could feed for
the money it cost for one night—

Jack tugged him in, and he
stumbled forward, not getting his feet steady under him as Jack closed the door
behind them.

“We can’t,” Riley
insisted.

“One night, Riley. You,
me, a bed, and nothing between us. No drama or secrets or trials or kidnappings
or you in tears in my arms.”

Riley felt shame wash over
him. Jack was right; he always was. Nothing about Jack/Riley had been smooth
for the past few months, always something getting in their way. They hadn’t
even been out to the barn since God knows when. And yes, Riley had cried in
Jack’s arms.

“The room,” Riley
protested.

“Is an early birthday
present to you,” Jack said. “Even if it is on your credit card.”

“Yours,” Riley insisted.
“It’s not my money, it’s our money.”

Jack grimaced. “Our money,
then,” he said, even though Riley knew Jack was having none of that. Stubborn
idiot. “Get in the shower.”

Jack stalked through a far
door, then came out just as fast to go in another door. Riley would have
laughed at Jack’s muttering about how many bedrooms did one hotel room need. Only
it wasn’t funny. Something here between them was deadly serious.

Riley heard the sound of
water and swallowed when a completely naked Jack appeared at the door. There
was absolute perfection in his cowboy; toned and tanned and solid as a
mountain, Jack had a dusting of hair on his chest that Riley loved to touch,
two cinnamon nipples that Riley wanted to tug and taste, and the happy trail
down to a beautiful cock. Perfect. Just at the sight, Riley was harder than
he’d been in a long time. Why didn’t they do this at home? Why didn’t Jack get
all toppy and loud and demanding?

Because we have kids,
because I’m tired all the time.

“In. Now,” Jack ordered.
Riley pulled off his suit jacket, his shirt, and tie, toed off socks and pants
and finally his boxers until he was as completely nude as Jack was. Then he
joined Jack in the space-age shower room that had a whole beautiful room with a
bench, double showerheads, dials and switches for rain and mist and fuck knew what
else.

Jack closed the door to
the room behind them and pulled Riley under the water. Riley relaxed as the
water hit his shoulders, just the right temperature, not too hot. They stood in
a close embrace in the waterfall of it all and held tight.

“Sorry,” Riley offered in
a small voice.

Jack sighed and hugged him
tighter. “What for?”

“For those idiots
downstairs and their crap. I’d forgotten what assholes they were.”

“You never need to
apologize for people that are too much like your brother was. They’re nothing
to me.” Jack stepped back and with a gentle shove had Riley with his knees back
to the bench area. In shock Riley sat down, and Jack nodded approvingly.

“Rest your leg,” he said
with a smile. Then he dropped to his knees, using Riley as a support, and
nudged Riley’s knees apart. “Too long,” he said as he closed his fist around
Riley’s erection and moved it slowly from tip to base and back, all the while looking
into Riley’s eyes.

“Sorry—”

“If you say that again…” Jack
warned with a sharp tug. He didn’t specify what the punishment was, but Riley
squirmed in his hold. Jack bent to pay attention to Riley’s cock, and the touch
of Jack’s tongue was like coming home. Jack knew every inch of him; from that
very first messy blow job in the car years ago to this moment, Jack had learned
what made Riley close to coming in minutes.

Jack was right. It had
been too long for the two of them together. Since the kidnapping, the
atmosphere between them had been a little awkward, and that was putting it
nicely. There had been messy frotting, a couple blow jobs, but nothing that
lasted long, and the connection was loose and uncoordinated. Jack slid a hand
behind Riley’s balls, and Riley instinctively edged forward on the seat,
allowing access and glorying in the firm touch of Jack’s fingers searching and
pressing and fuck… He was so close.

“Jack…” he said a little
helplessly.

Jack released the suction
on Riley’s cock and sat back in a crouch. “I want to make love to you,” he said
over the noise of the running water. “Later.”

He dipped his head again
to Riley’s cock, and Riley lasted maybe three seconds before he was arching up
into Jack’s mouth, pushing into him and coming hard. Jack licked and sucked
until Riley was too sensitive, then scrambled to stand, his cock erect and just
at the right height.

“Suck me,” he said with a
strained tone. Riley took exactly what he was offered and swallowed him whole,
relishing the weight of Jack and how he was being pressed against the wall. He
had nowhere to go; Jack controlled the whole thing, and Riley was merely along
for the ride. Riley placed both hands on Jack’s firm ass, digging and kneading
the muscles as Jack used him.

Jack had his own hands
pressed against the tiles and was staring down at Riley with such intensity,
his gaze fixed and focused. Only when he was coming did he close his eyes and curse
as Riley swallowed his spend.

Both sated, they showered
together, a little of the tension eased. “We don’t let this happen again,”
Riley murmured when the water was turned off. “It’s my fault, I know—”

“Don’t say sorry,” Jack warned.

Riley felt the smile
inside him before it hit his lips. Jack had done that. He was the one who made
Riley smile from the heart just by getting bossy and up in his face.

They dried off, and Jack
rummaged in the various cupboards around the room. Complimentary this, free
that, and he had a comment on each one. The robes were thick and fleecy and
wrapped around Riley twice even though they ended well above his knees. Jack’s
robe seemed to fit him way better, and Riley was so fascinated at the shape of
his lover in toweling that he only half heard the call Jack was making to room
service.

All he did hear were the
words
extra bacon
, and that was enough for his smiles to break into
laughter. Just the mention of
bacon
was enough for his tired mind to
make all kinds of connections.

“You remember the salad?” Riley
managed between laughs.

Jack smiled at him, but
his forehead wrinkled in a frown. “You want salad? I can call back.” He glanced
at the menus like he was looking for a selection of greens. Riley knew it would
kill Jack to order one of the fancy side salads that he absolutely hated.

“No, you remember the
benefit, the night when you first sucked me off in the car, when you got all
hot and grabbed my dick and told me that you had a contract and it belonged to
you.”

Jack blinked for a minute,
and he had that expression he got when he was attempting to make sense of a
situation. Riley could see the exact moment that recollection hit Jack because
his expression morphed into a wolfish grin. He knelt onto the bed next to Riley
and leaned over to kiss him.