by Cameron Dane
“Grizzled old man.” With a chuckle, Alex slipped on his glasses. He rarely wore his contacts when he came home. “I’m gonna go make us some dinner.” He got up and made his way to the kitchen. “What do you want?”
“For you to go back to Montana!”
“I love you too,” Alex shouted back. Smiling secretly, he said in a much softer voice, “Liver it is then.”
Commotion ensued as Mack jerking his wheelchair into position mingled with a string of choice words. “What the fuck crazy-ass lunacy made you buy liver?”
Mack joined Alex in the kitchen to explain exactly what they would make for supper. Mack took charge, and Alex quietly beamed with pride and love.
His strong bull was back.
* * * *
“Thank you, Rand.” Alex clapped the shoulder of his right-hand man. He hadn’t intended to bring Rand Gainer to Quinten originally, but once Mack had become ill and Alex knew he would need to make multiple trips out of state during the crucial beginning stages of this Quinten project, he hadn’t felt comfortable leaving anyone else in charge during his absence. “You’ve done a fantastic job, as usual. Now get the hell out of here.” Alex eyed the man’s perfectly cut and combed black hair, as well as his neat, dark suit, and marveled that not only couldn’t he see a smudge or hair out of place but couldn’t detect a hint of darkness under the man’s eyes either. Just because Alex couldn’t see exhaustion or a chink in the man’s armor didn’t mean it didn’t exist. “I know you haven’t slept since I left.”
Rand shrugged. “I have a weird body clock. I don’t need much.” As they exited the partially gutted farmhouse, he turned and walked backward, a stack of files tucked under his arm. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get you up to speed on the Miami and Austin projects? I doused a lot of little fires and took progress reports while you were gone.”
“Tomorrow.” Alex veered toward his car while Rand backed to his. “Get a good night of sleep, and we’ll dig into everything in the morning.”
Rand dipped his head. “Yes, sir.”
With a grin, Alex paused with his hand on his door handle. “One day you’re gonna start calling me Alex.”
“Maybe, sir.”
Five years into Rand’s employment and Alex could not find a source for the man’s formal nature. “Maybe in another five years, huh?”
“Perhaps, sir.”
“Understood.” Sighing, Alex knew he would not trick answers out of this keen and insightful man. “Go home. To your own trailer,” Alex clarified. “Don’t think I don’t know you’ve been sleeping on site while I’ve been away.”
“Good night, sir.” Before sliding behind the wheel of his vehicle, Rand added, “It’s good to have you back.”
Alex inhaled a lungful of crisp, clean air, and it was as if millions of little dots of light illuminated inside him. “It feels good to be back.” Hopefully even better as soon as I see Hunter. Anticipation made those sparks of brightness hum. “Bye.”
With one eye on Rand’s car -- making sure he actually headed toward his trailer -- Alex let himself truly start to fantasize about showing up at Hunter’s apartment in just a short while. He’d been in Quinten for about half a day, but work had required his immediate attention. Aside from that, Alex didn’t know if he would be able to keep his hands off Hunter when they crossed paths again, and so had decided maybe heading straight out to find him at Forrest-Hawk wasn’t the wisest plan. At his apartment however… Immediate strands of arousal tied themselves around Alex’s cock and balls, stirring blood and swelling flesh. Alex moaned softly in the privacy of his car as he pictured Hunter throwing him on a bed, tearing off their clothes, and coming down on top of him in an explosion of lust. Yeah, mmm.
Wait. Alex reached for his phone. Not yet. He had to call and check on Mack first. Reaching farther across the passenger seat for his cell, Alex came up empty.
“Crap.” He’d taken his phone inside the house with him. After making a call and then sending a text, he hadn’t picked it up again. Maybe he needed to take his own advice to Rand to go home and get some sleep first.
No. As Alex climbed out of his car and went back into the house, every nerve ending and pleasure center in his body screamed a rejection of going home to a lonely trailer. Even in the midst of exhaustion, Alex wanted Hunter. He craved a long night of tangled nakedness and multiple cries of completion more than he did an evening of rest. Alex did need and welcome a soft mattress under his back, but his thickening cock told him he needed Hunter in that bed too, spreading Alex’s legs wide open and plugging his newly needy hole.
Fucking shit. Inside the gutted house, Alex flipped on a temporary switch and lit a dozen mechanical lights hanging from the exposed rafters, flooding the empty home in a warm yellow glow. He took the stairs two at a time and found his phone on a windowsill, exactly where he knew he’d left it. After pocketing the device, Alex loped back down the steps to the door, and then pulled up short at the entry, his breath trapped in his throat.
Oh my.
Hunter filled the open doorway, his big frame somehow fiercer and harder than ever. His face looked chiseled out of stone. Alex had never seen his eyes darker, yet no man had ever appeared more beautiful in Alex’s eyes. And oh so untouchable.
Alex took a step closer anyway. Then another. Something volatile and dangerous thickened the dry air, but Alex couldn’t process anything but the hunger mixed in too. It matched the desperation Alex had lived with since the last time they’d come together.
One more step put Alex close enough to feel Hunter’s uneven breathing. He’s like an untamed animal. The thought flitted across Alex’s consciousness, but he curled his palm against Hunter’s cheek anyway.
Hunter flinched just as Alex whispered, “I missed you.”
In a split second, Hunter’s nostrils flared. He locked his hand around Alex’s arm and slammed him into the wall.
CHAPTER NINE
The second Alex had opened his mouth, a red mass of swirling rage consumed Hunter’s entire being. I missed you, the guy had the fucking nerve to say. In Hunter’s mind, Alex had just looked him right in the eyes and lied, making any plan of an apology fly from Hunter’s thoughts. Hunter growled and grabbed Alex’s cock through his pants. Yeah, right, you missed me. Savage emotions ripped through Hunter and shoved every last bit of his original good intentions to talk aside. Seeing Alex again, listening as the lies so easily left his mouth, pushed Hunter’s darkest, most base needs to the surface. Those raw places took over, dictating his actions once more.
Hunter licked up the side of Alex’s face to his ear. “What did you miss?” he hissed, pleased when Alex shivered. “Did you miss this?” Hunter squeezed and pulled on Alex’s dick without any gentleness. Alex immediately gasped and thickened in Hunter’s hand, and his skin began to flush with color. Fucking bastard. “Did you discover you like it a little rougher than you thought and decide to come back for some more?” Hunter crudely rubbed Alex from root to tip again, and he bared his teeth when his own erection pushed with excitement against his jeans. No. Don’t. He couldn’t help himself, though. Need overrode all else. Coming mattered. Getting Alex rock hard and begging mattered. Making Alex admit to the truth of the raw chemistry between them -- more than he could possibly have with any other man -- spurred Hunter’s every move.
“Fucking take off your clothes.” Hunter ripped at Alex’s shirt, tearing fabric and sending buttons flying in his desperation to have this person naked again. Eye contact, seeing the open lust blurring Alex’s emerald gaze, triggered the rest of Hunter’s basest desires. He tugged at Alex’s belt and shoved his pants down his legs. Licking the man’s mouth, Hunter savagely said, “I need inside your ass again.”
“Yes. Yes.” While kicking off his shoes and toeing off his socks, and then stepping out of his pants, Alex pressed dozens of kisses all over Hunter’s face. “I was just about to come looking for you.” He threaded his hands into Hunter’s hair and gently tugged until their fore
heads touched. His eyes glittered as he sipped from Hunter’s lips. “I wanted you so much while I was gone.”
I wonder if Mack knew that? Staring into Alex’s unwavering gaze -- fucking liar -- fueled the heat already coursing too hot through Hunter. Guided by unfettered, punishing, sexual need, Hunter dragged Alex next to a window and grabbed a thick extension cord hanging nearby. Visions of Alex with this secret Mack person stabbed at Hunter’s mind’s eye, torturing him, yet he still could not douse the fire of need burning inside him for this man. The memory of what Hunter had overheard still seared itself into his psyche, and had been festering there since that day. It had complete control and ruled Hunter’s world. Hating himself for wanting Alex even though Alex had just come from being with another man -- a man Alex obviously cared about based on instruction when he went to visit him -- Hunter shoved Alex’s arms over his head anyway, knotted the cord around his wrists, and looped the other side around a hook drilled high into the wall next to the window. Alex struggled for a moment, and his pupils flared, but his erection didn’t dwindle one bit.
Hunter ran his hands down Alex’s stretched arms to his shoulders and then over his smooth, scar-free chest and flat belly, all the while absorbing the man’s warmth and marveling at the line of goose bumps he left everywhere he touched. “It’s good to know you wanted me. I wanted you too.” He teased the tips of his fingers over Alex’s narrow hips and firm runner’s thighs, smiling with power when Alex jerked and a fat drop of jizz squeezed out of his slit.
“Did you want me blowing your cock again?” Quickly dropping to his knees, Hunter inhaled Alex’s musky, sweaty scent, humming as the man’s distinct aroma tagged his nostrils and sank into his pores. Unable to hold back, Hunter swirled the flat of his tongue up and down Alex’s length, licking along burning hot, granite-hard flesh, tormenting himself with a preview that wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy. He cursed how much he ached for this person, but breathed in deeply and opened his mouth for more anyway. Closing his lips around the fat cockhead -- fuck, yes -- Hunter sucked gently but relentlessly. Within his mouth, he flicked his tongue repeatedly until Alex moaned. The man punched his hips forward, silently pleading for more, and streamed a salty line of precum onto Hunter’s waiting tongue.
The urge to take Alex’s cock all the way down his throat and to force the man to come at his will thrummed throughout Hunter’s body, pushing him to bob faster and deeper up and down Alex’s length, to taste as much of Alex’s cock as he could. Hunter gloried in having Alex’s rigid flesh scorching every corner of his mouth; he twisted his head side to side and skimmed his tongue over a blood-engorged vein that ran up the underside of Alex’s penis to his tip. The leaking head called for Hunter to suckle it again. When he drew the fat mushroom cap past his lips and licked up all of Alex’s early seed, Alex cried out and begged Hunter to do more.
His blood boiling, Hunter looked up at Alex, letting the man’s dick slide from his mouth. “What else do you want?” As Hunter rubbed Alex’s cock all over his face, his gut churned with the knowledge that another man might have done this very thing to Alex yesterday or the day before. The thought of Alex letting another person touch him so quickly after they’d had sex sickened Hunter, yet he hated himself even more because he could not walk away. “Do you want to come in my mouth?” He grazed Alex’s slit across his parted lips. “Or maybe it’s the thought of me reddening your ass again that is turning you on?” Hunter spun Alex around and smacked his pale, tight buttocks with the flat of his good hand, groaning as his palm made contact with the man’s flesh. Each spanking Hunter delivered deepened Alex’s cheeks to the most arousing dusky pink color. “On those dark, lonely nights” -- Hunter scowled and nipped Alex’s buttocks, tugging on the flesh with his teeth -- “did you dream about everything I did to you?” Hunter picked up Alex’s expensive leather belt and ran the cool material across the man’s smooth ass.
“Yes, everything. Ohhh God…” Alex gasped and shuddered as Hunter slipped the length of leather between Alex’s cheeks and rubbed the edge back and forth over his hole. “I want everything you want to do to me.” His arms stretched above him, Alex pushed his face into the wall and thrust his ass into the soft swish of the belt. Moaning, he uttered, “Anything you need.”
Jesus, yes. Hunter’s cock swelled to painful proportions. Without conscious thought, he shot up and lashed the belt across Alex’s ass, streaking the pinked skin with an angry line of red. Alex’s hoarse scream echoed in the empty house, but at the same time he kept his legs locked and his ass firmly in place. Hunter didn’t for one second miss the splash of precum hitting the floor either. Hunter snapped the leather across Alex’s buttocks and upper thighs in quick succession again and again and again. Alex cried out with each sting of the belt against his skin. His rich, strong voice, hovering somewhere between pain and ecstasy with each crack of the belt on his flesh, drove Hunter to open his jeans and free his straining cock. Again Hunter flicked his wrist and watched the black strap make contact high on Alex’s ass. This time, though, Alex’s moan in conjunction with the growing strip of red streaking his skin didn’t pump a satisfying fuel into Hunter’s blood. It’s not enough. Breathing heavily, Hunter noticed a fading scratch under the skin he’d just whipped. He ran his fingertip over the pale line, the final evidence of his previous branding, and his cock surged to straight out and heavy, full of blood.
The belt slid from Hunter’s hand. He kissed his way up Alex’s spine. With each touch of his lips to the man’s warm skin, powerful forces inside him pushed him to bite as much as graze, lick, and sip. He swirled the tip of his tongue around Alex’s ear and then poked into the opening. Alex trembled, and adrenaline spiked in Hunter’s system.
Hunter reached down and smacked at Alex’s inner thighs until the man spread his legs wider. “Feel what the thought of branding you all over again does to me?” He fit himself into the space he’d just created and rubbed his erection over Alex’s taint and balls. “I have fantasies where every inch of your body is covered with marks I put there. Do you understand that?” Having Alex so close and naked in front of him, his scent consuming Hunter’s senses, dragged base honesty from Hunter’s core. “There would be nowhere you could look where you didn’t see my mark and think of me.”
Alex writhed in front of Hunter. He struggled against the cord binding his arms. Somehow he managed to step back into Hunter even closer and rub his nudity into Hunter’s nearly fully clothed front. “I want it.” Alex’s chest heaved. He turned his head enough to kiss and lick Hunter’s jaw. “God help me. I don’t understand it” -- he wiggled his ass right into Hunter’s cock, clearly searching for penetration -- “but I want everything with you.”
With a raw shout of his own, Hunter latched onto Alex’s neck and sucked with everything he had in him. Desperate to pull blood to the surface that would show tomorrow, Hunter didn’t care what kinds of marks he put on Alex as long as he made them himself, and as long as Alex wore them for days to come. Hunter scraped his fingers up Alex’s sides, around to his chest, down his stomach, and then back again, scratching in the same tracks a second and third time. As tiny drops of blood left moisture on his fingers, Hunter growled and bit his way across Alex’s nape to the other side of his neck, hungry to leave a big angry love mark there too. Alex immediately shifted his head to give Hunter greater access, which only put tinder to the flame already burning too high inside Hunter.
Hunter wrapped his arms around Alex and sent one hand diving to the man’s cock and the other to his chest. He closed his good hand around Alex’s dick in a vise-tight hold and began to tug with ruthless intent. At the same time, he scratched across sweat-slick skin to pinch and twist Alex’s nipples, first one and then the other, brutalizing the little mauve discs until he made them burn as hot and as red as the man’s buttocks. Hunter milked Alex’s cock with full, suffocating strokes, drawing fat bead after fat bead of early seed out of the man’s crimson-colored cock, straight into Hunter’s waiting hand. Hunter d
ipped his hand between Alex’s thighs but forewent tugging on the man’s balls the way he knew Alex must so desperately want. Instead Hunter pressed on Alex’s taint with his slick fingertips, massaging the soft, thin patch of skin. Alex made the hottest fucking whimpering noises the entire time, and he could not seem to stop churning his hips. Each little noise Alex made screwed with Hunter’s mind, merging his unbearable need to fuck Alex with the lava-hot spits of revenge still coating his very being.
Everything Alex did -- the way he moaned, the hot swish of his ass into Hunter’s crotch, the scent he gave off that Hunter absorbed and claimed as that of his mate, the inconsequential tugs against his bindings that conveyed he wasn’t entirely comfortable at Hunter’s mercy -- threw more and more gasoline onto an already out-of-control blaze.
Hunter licked and sucked behind Alex’s ear, the man’s subtly sweet taste mainlining sugar straight to his cock. “What else do you want from me?” Shifting, Hunter buried his nose in the man’s hair and breathed in the warm scent of sandalwood. “Should I get into that tight little ass of yours?” he asked, his voice husky. Hunter stung the outer curve of Alex’s left buttock with a hard smack. The contact made his balls pull so hard he spanked Alex’s other flank too. “Is that what you want? You like someone stretching you so much it hurts?”
Twisting within the cord binding his wrists, Alex turned sideways. Nuzzling his face into Hunter’s cheek, he whispered, “I do when it’s you.” He lifted his face out of hiding, and his grass gaze held beautiful glints of morning dew. “Fuck me.” His lips brushed the edge of Hunter’s mouth. “Please.”
“Shit.” Slipping fast, Hunter reached across the breadth of the window and yanked at a sawhorse. The wood legs screeched against the stripped floor as he dragged it to them. A number of items resting along the narrow beam flew by the wayside, but Hunter didn’t give a fuck about destroying this job site in his quest. He got the construction piece wedged in behind Alex, the back legs pushed up against the wall, and lifted Alex onto the thin bar of wood smack in the center. Alex immediately adjusted as if he couldn’t bear to wait a second longer either. He parted his thighs and bent his legs, hooking his toes onto the wood to hold on as best he could.
