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“No, I’ll talk to him tonight. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Dane said with a chuckle. “Because I’m going to make sure Jax and I are nowhere to be found when you tell Emma.”
I laughed at that and damn, it felt good. I knew it wouldn’t last, but I felt like riding the high. “Hey,” I said to Dane and he stopped to look at me. “I’m going to run back to the house to get my shorts. A swim actually does sound like a really good idea.”
Dane nodded and took the cooler from me and before I could give it too much thought, I turned and hurried back towards the house.
One battle down, an entire war to go.
* * *
“Shit…son of a bitch!”
Those were the first words I heard when I walked into the barn after taking the last horse out to the paddock. My eyes quickly adjusted to the dim interior of the barn and I saw Brody at the end of the aisle. It looked like he was leaning against something.
“You okay?” I called as I hung the lead rope I was carrying over a hook on one of the stall doors.
“Can you give me a hand?” I heard him ask and I quickly made my way to him.
It had been almost a week since Quinn and I had gotten all fifteen horses moved from the CB Bar to the resort in Clear Creek. It had been nearly the same amount of time since I’d moved my stuff from Jax and Dane’s house to my new, albeit temporary, digs in the staff residence building.
My conversation with Jax about moving had gone much better than expected, but I couldn’t say the same for the talk I’d had with my fathers about the move. They hadn’t expressly forbidden me, but by the time we’d gotten done talking, I’d found myself agreeing with them that maybe it wasn’t for the best. When I’d gone to bed that night, all the sense of accomplishment I’d felt, along with the excitement that had come with my newfound independence, had disappeared and I’d felt the black cloud that had haunted so many of my days threaten to return. But the next morning when I’d gotten up, there’d been a text from my dads to video call them when I was up. I’d waited until a reasonable hour since they were an hour behind me and had called them from the CB Bar during my first break. Both of my fathers had looked terrible and I’d instantly known they’d gotten no sleep.
But before the guilt could even settle in, they’d told me they’d changed their minds and that if I wanted to live at the resort, it was my decision. I’d known how hard it had been for them to come to that decision and I’d been half-tempted just to forget the whole thing so they wouldn’t have to suffer any more sleepless nights, but the need to experience the sliver of independence had been just too great and I’d found myself promising them everything would be okay instead.
Moving into the staff building had gone off without a hitch and my new home away from home was far more comfortable than I would have expected. Of course, it wasn’t like I had a lot of time to enjoy my newfound freedom since I was so physically exhausted from work each night that I barely managed a shower before collapsing on the wonderfully soft queen-size bed. I was finally at a point where my muscles didn’t scream in protest anymore when I woke up and I’d become comfortable enough around the horses that Quinn didn’t need to stick around to supervise me when I was handling them.
Which I was sure Quinn appreciated since he made himself pretty scarce whenever he could. We’d meet up every morning at exactly eight o’clock so he could give me my instructions for the day, then he’d saddle up one of the horses and disappear. I’d see him throughout the day interchanging one horse for another, but we barely spoke beyond him asking me to wash down the horse he’d been riding while he saddled up the next horse.
The minimal contact with him should have been ideal.
It wasn’t.
And then there was Brody.
I saw him every morning too and while he was always polite and friendly, he too was keeping his distance.
It was what I should have wanted.
But just because I wasn’t interacting with either man very much, didn’t mean I didn’t notice every little thing about them. Or that my body didn’t violently react when I was around them. I was in a perpetual state of being half-hard all day as I was tormented with memories of the night in the club and all it took was the sound of their voices or one of them saying my name a certain way for my cock to stand at full attention. I’d resorted to jacking off every night in the shower as I imagined their big bodies surrounding me, our slick, heated flesh pressed together, their mouths on me, their cocks filling me. But inevitably, the moment I spurted all over the shower wall, my fantasy lovers disappeared and the memories of the past assailed me until I found myself curled up on the shower floor, overwhelmed with guilt and shame for giving in to my baser needs once again.
As I neared Brody, I pushed away the disturbing reminder that despite the fact that I was doing okay with Adulting 101, deep down I was still the same person and that a temporary respite from my normal life didn’t make me normal.
“What can I do?” I asked Brody as I took in the situation. It looked like the stall door had come partially off its rails because Brody was holding the door in a way that only the top portion of the door was correctly attached.
“Can you stand on this side of me,” – Brody motioned to his right – “and guide the rollers into the rail on the bottom?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, as I moved around to his right side. I used my hand to position the door as Brody moved it and when it was lined up I said, “You’ve got it.” Brody slid the door all the way onto the rails. My gaze fell to the muscles of his arms which flexed deliciously as he moved. He was wearing a T-shirt so I could see the definition of his huge biceps. A light sheen of sweat clung to him and I found myself licking my lips as I wondered what it would taste like if I were to run my tongue over those muscles.
Jesus, what the hell was wrong with me?
“Thanks,” Brody said.
“No problem,” I murmured. I hated the fact that it felt like I was being dismissed with the simple response. I needed to just turn around and get back to work. Brody and Quinn had made it clear that we were just three guys who happened to occupy the same space for a certain number of hours a day. Yeah, we’d had one mutual fucking session and there’d been that weird moment in Quinn’s truck last week where it seemed like we’d been connected or something, but none of that meant anything.
The reminder that I’d once again been nothing more than a good fuck caused a dead weight to settle in my stomach.
My skin itched as the need to escape warred with my need to take control. But one look at Brody and I knew that just like with Quinn, I wouldn’t have control. It would just be an illusion and in the end, I’d feel that same forbidden pleasure.
