by Jayne Rylon
“Just a delivery truck going by. They restock the grocery store across the street at the ass crack of dawn every Tuesday. Ignore it.” Vaughn waved him away. “Be here fully. Stay with me, Bryant.”
It was a sign of Bryant’s desperation that even while fooling around with the sexiest boyfriend a guy could ask for, he was—somewhere in the back of his mind—still dwelling on his project. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just get over here and let me help you forget about all that.” Vaughn tugged Bryant closer, his erection brushing the seam of Bryant’s lips.
Bryant parted them and licked the warm, satiny skin in front of him.
After groaning, Vaughn said, “I wish you were as obsessed with me as you are with that damn thesis.”
“I am. Believe me, I am. I swear. Here, let me show you.” He leaned in and took Vaughn’s cock in his mouth. Soon enough, he forgot all about the clock ticking on his assignment. There’d be plenty of time later to finish it up.
Time when he didn’t have utter control over his boyfriend’s pleasure. Maybe that was why he loved going down on the guy so much. He knew that in these moments, he was in charge. Sure, Vaughn might be fucking up into his mouth, or holding his face where he liked it, but Bryant was the one driving him wild. He experimented with different grips, various motions of his tongue, and the addition of his fingers playing with Vaughn’s balls until he found the perfect recipe. He could draw things out or make Vaughn come quickly, whatever he liked.
Right then, he chose to extend the moment so that he could look up at the hard plane of muscles flexing and bulging while Vaughn’s head was thrown back. The hitch in his breathing and the rock-hard quads that cradled Bryant between them were all thrilling.
He got off on bringing his partner so damn much pleasure.
His own cock throbbed beneath him, begging for the relief he knew Vaughn would be generous in returning once he’d recovered from what Bryant hoped was the most amazing blowjob of his life.
Without thinking, he slid his hand between Vaughn’s legs and below his tight sac. He ran his finger between Vaughn’s ass cheeks and was surprised when the other guy didn’t tense. Instead, he spread his legs farther and gave Bryant better access, which he used to both their satisfaction.
He’d barely begun to prod Vaughn’s ass, rubbing circles around it in between forays into forbidden territory, when his partner froze. Without the usual warning he gave, he drew Bryant’s mouth down his entire length, then shot hard and fast, glazing Bryant’s tongue with his come.
The intensity of his reaction impressed Bryant. It also turned him on. To know he could do that to Vaughn. He flexed his hips, rubbing his cock on the sheets a few times, surprised when his own orgasm overtook him without anyone even touching his dick.
Bryant unloaded on the bed while Vaughn murmured reassurance that it was okay to lose control. They fed off each other, and that would never be a bad thing. When the spasms subsided, Bryant collapsed with his head on Vaughn’s torso and the other man’s cock still in his mouth.
He suckled it gently until it softened, loving the way Vaughn stroked his hair and rubbed his back the entire time.
Eventually Bryant stretched, prepared to climb up so he could snuggle into Vaughn’s open arms and make good on his promise to sleep the day away.
Until he heard something that didn’t make any sense.
Bryant paused, but this time the sound of dripping water only got louder. “Is the faucet leaking or something?”
Vaughn’s eyes widened, triggering Bryant’s alarm. He froze momentarily before bolting from bed and dashing to the windows to rip aside the blackout curtains. Outside, rivulets poured across the glass, the sky gray and unfriendly behind it.
“It’s raining!” The moment Bryant had been waiting for had come, at exactly the wrong time. “Fuck! We’re not ready! The system isn’t complete, the circuit isn’t closed. We’re not capturing any of it.”
He grabbed his jeans from the floor, then started hopping into them as he made his way to the door. He didn’t even have his boots all the way on before he grabbed his keys out of the little bowl he’d gotten used—too used—to storing them in on Vaughn’s counter, then stumbled down the staircase.
What had he done?
Had he missed his chance because he’d been too busy fooling around to finish the job?
“Bryant, wait!” Vaughn yelled into the storm from the doorway.
“I already waited too long. Fuck, thanks to you…I’m even more fucked than when you’re buried in my ass.” He snarled as his brain flipped into the old pattern it had been stuck in for so long. Once again his dick had led him straight down a path of horrific decision-making.
When the hell would he learn?
Then Vaughn was there beside him, grabbing his shoulders. “I’m sorry. Let me help you fix this. If we go now, maybe we can seal up that last section of pipe before it stops.”
“I’ve got it.” Bryant wrested his shoulders free of Vaughn’s grasp and began running. For the truck, for Compass Ranch…anything away from the mess he’d made. “You helped enough.”
Vaughn looked as though he might argue, standing there drenched, his bare chest glistening with the rain they’d needed so badly. But just then the downpour abated, trickling off to a shower, then a drizzle, and lastly a few lingering spatters in a matter of moments.
“Son of a bitch!” Bryant threw his hat at his truck. This couldn’t be happening. He watched a gush of water swirling down the storm drains, completely wasted.
“Bryant—” Vaughn tried one last time to convince him this wasn’t a complete disaster. It was futile.
“Go take care of yourself, Vaughn. You think I didn’t see those negative reviews your system emailed in last night from the out-of-town friends who couldn’t get appointments? You’re spending too much time with me and neglecting your business.” They’d been foolish, both of them, and risked too much. It might be too late for Bryant’s project, but he wasn’t about to take Vaughn down with him.
If the guy couldn’t do the right thing for himself, then Bryant would do it for him.
Because, despite everything, Bryant cared. A hell of a lot. It sucked that that wasn’t enough to matter sometimes.
Vaughn nodded slowly. “Come back when you’re finished. Okay?”
Rather than lie, Bryant didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t even look at Vaughn when he hopped into his truck and headed for home.
The silence as he drove back to Compass Ranch alone for the first time in what seemed like forever gave him a lot of room to think. He tried not to recall Vaughn’s laughter, or the way he sang along to the radio most mornings, or how they’d had to pull over for a quickie a couple times because even a few hours with their hands off each other seemed like far too long most days. He snarled at the rainbow that appeared in front of him, unable to enjoy it without Vaughn to share it with. It just didn’t seem the same. None of it did.
How hadn’t he realized how entangled their lives had become? And how dangerous that could be?
Bryant slammed his truck door when he reached the project site, then grabbed his tools. He was about an hour in when his dad popped his head through the access panel into the area where he was connecting the last of the PVC pipes.
“I’m guessing that grimace means you didn’t catch the shower?” Sam sighed.
“Sorry, Dad. I should have—”
His dad slapped his hat on his thigh. “That wasn’t an accusation, son. You’ve been busting your ass on this thing for weeks. Sometimes nature doesn’t cooperate with a rancher’s plans. We’ll get the next one.”
Bryant nodded. “Can we make it another few weeks without rain?”
“Yeah. After that we’ll have to start letting some of the hay go to keep the animals safe.” Sam shrugged as if that wasn’t another huge financial hit when they’d already outlaid a ton of cash for Bryant’s work. “But what about your school stuff?”
He shook his head. “
It’s due at the end of the week. I’ll have to hand in what I have and hope that’s good enough.”
Acid bubbled in his gut at the thought. They’d already given him a two-week extension. He couldn’t ask for more. Hell, graduation was only ten days from now and he still had to defend his work. In person. His time on the ranch was short. Maybe it was for the best he’d put some space between him and Vaughn now.
“It’s good enough for me and your mom, your uncles, and everyone else around here. You remember that. No matter what happens.” Sam put his hand on Bryant’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re doing your best. That’s all I’ve ever asked of you.”
Bryant thought of Vaughn’s face as he’d stood there, dripping in the rain while Bryant shouted at him. After all he’d done to help, he hadn’t deserved that. It definitely hadn’t been one of Bryant’s finest moments. But if he wasn’t ready to handle those tough times, maybe he shouldn’t be screwing around with Vaughn either.
He was a mess. Still broken inside, no matter how much he’d tried to hide it these past several weeks.
Once he’d had time to calm down, he realized that the brief shower wouldn’t have been enough to prime the system, even if they’d already finished it. But still, the reminder of his poor judgment and the lengths he’d go to just to get off was a solid kick in the ass.
Bryant finished taking pictures, documenting the last of the installations. He saved them and shot them off in an email to the head of his department. That was it. They either accepted his work and granted him his doctoral degree, or they’d send him packing.
Either way, his college career was over.
He’d lost a big part of how he’d defined himself, and it was making him testy. His thoughts and emotions were scattered and confused as he suddenly found himself adrift.
Which was why it sucked extra bad when he realized he’d missed about a dozen calls and texts from Vaughn, his phone on silent while he’d completed his work. As he should have done early that morning. He wasn’t Vaughn’s bitch. He was a fucking scientist. One who should be able to think straight, even when his mind was being addled by hormones.
If he couldn’t do that, then maybe he needed to take a step back.
They needed to take a break until he could think clearly again.
Bryant stood, dusted off his jeans, then headed over to Sterling’s cottage to pack his stuff. He was going back to school to defend his thesis and finish what he’d set out to do. Maybe then he could be confident enough, independent enough, man enough to handle being Vaughn’s partner.
13
It was an even longer, disturbingly quiet drive from Compass Ranch back to Bryant’s university.
Although Vaughn had sent a text offering to ride with him, he’d ignored it. He needed to do this on his own. Finish what he had started. Claim the title he’d dedicated the last half-decade of his life to earning. Make his family proud. Make Jake proud. Damn it, make himself proud.
Vaughn couldn’t afford to neglect his shop either.
Bryant hadn’t been away from school all that long, weeks compared to the years he’d spent on campus, but already he felt like a foreigner in his dusty truck and well-worn cowboy hat. Before he’d last headed home, he’d packed up all his belongings and sublet his apartment to another grad student, so he didn’t even have a place to freshen up before heading to the school’s science complex. He walked into the hydrology department a cowboy, ducked into the bathroom, and emerged as a doctoral candidate, complete with a tailored suit and tie. His other life tucked neatly in his rolling laptop case.
It was sort of like being Superman in reverse.
He stared down at his dress shoes, missing the comfort of his broken-in boots.
Suddenly he wasn’t sure he fit anywhere anymore, in limbo between his academic stomping grounds and the home he’d never be able to fully run away from. He tried to get his head on straight so that he could present his work in the best possible light.
Given the incomplete experiment and his lack of results, he was going to have to fight hard.
He thought of Vaughn and how he’d built Cowboy Ink from the ground up, how tough it must have been for an outsider to establish himself as a legitimate business owner in their tiny country town. Bryant wished he had a little more of that grit right then. He thought of his father, the investment he’d been willing to wager on this, and—of course—he thought of Jake.
Bryant loosened his tie a bit, jammed his hands in his pockets, and mustered some Compass spirit. While he acted like nothing could stop him, he didn’t exactly feel the same way when he approached the department chair’s office and Dr. Burgess’s assistant ushered Bryant into a conference room full of the most brilliant minds in his field.
“Welcome back, Bryant.” Dr. Burgess, his favorite professor, stood and shook his hand. “The labs haven’t been the same without you there twenty-four-seven.”
He supposed he had been a fixture in the study spaces for years now. And all that effort was now riding on the line. “I had to leave the nest sometime. I can’t wait to show you all what I’ve been doing and how my research has translated to the ranch environment.”
“We’ve had a look at the supplemental materials you submitted and would love to hear your full presentation.” Dr. Burgess leaned forward, giving Bryant his rapt attention for the next hour and a half. Like always, when Bryant got caught up in his work, everything else faded away.
It was how he’d lived in denial, and isolation, for so long.
When he’d wrapped up his research, he delivered his conclusions. He suppressed a wince when he said, “And so you can see that as soon as it rains, Compass Ranch will be in a greatly improved position. I anticipate that we will consume half as much water as before, recycle a large portion of that, and sustainably store enough reserves to keep the system primed for two years without any additional precipitation.”
It was only a couple phrases different from what he knew would have guaranteed victory, but if he could just have had concrete evidence instead of more conjecture, he’d have felt a lot better about his efforts. Fuck anyone who said climate change wasn’t real. If anything, this situation only reinforced the rising importance of the technology he’d developed.
He prayed his professors felt the same way.
Dr. Burgess beamed as he said, “I want you to understand how impressed we are with what you’ve done here, especially in such a short amount of time. It’s truly remarkable.”
“I had a lot of help. From my family, and…guys on the ranch. I couldn’t have done it alone.”
“Even still, your thesis project is extremely ambitious and profoundly impactful—or at least it will be when it’s complete, if it functions as expected.” To hear that from a scientist as respected as Dr. Burgess pumped Bryant up.
He stood straighter. “Thank you, sir.”
“In fact, we believe it will be some of the most valuable work to come from one of our alumni. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it earns you several awards and recognition in the field at large. Your record shows that the likelihood of success is almost certain.” Dr. Burgess smiled, as the other professors nodded their agreement, while flipping through the images of the new landscaping, the empty retention ponds, and the pipes for the intelligent irrigation systems.
Alumni! Bryant barely withheld his sigh of relief. He had imagined this moment for so long he could already hear the words about to come out of Dr. Burgess’s mouth. Congratulations, Dr. Compton.
Except instead, he said, “All of this combined explains why we’re extending your project timeline once more to allow it to come to fruition instead of flunking you for handing in an incomplete project.”
Dr. Burgess steepled his fingers, then stared down his nose at Bryant over the top of his glasses. His disappointed gaze hit Bryant in the gut along with his verdict.
“An extension? But graduation is less than a week away, and there’s still no rain in the forecast.” He tipped his head, f
eeling denser than ever in his life before.
“Commencement is Saturday for students with successfully completed and approved thesis projects.” Dr. Burgess turned stony-faced. “You won’t be taking part in the hooding ceremony with the rest of this semester’s successful candidates, I’m afraid. Finish your project properly over the next several months, or however long it takes, and I’m sure you’ll be valedictorian of the next class.”
“Next—?” Bryant blinked.
They weren’t passing him. He wasn’t graduating. Not now, and maybe not ever.
Dr. Compton? Fuck no. He was just Bryant. A loser who hadn’t lived up to his potential.
His entire world shattered again, like it had the day in the barn when he’d learned that he wasn’t as strong as he thought. Or like it had the day Jake had died, when he learned he didn’t have as much time as he thought. Or like it had the day he’d walked away from Vaughn, and learned he wasn’t as independent as he thought. Today, he wasn’t as smart as he’d thought.
And that was the only thing he’d felt sure about in his life.
He was lost.
Bryant stumbled from the room, ignoring the voices calling out for him to return. He staggered down the hallway of the place that had been his refuge and was now just another hell.
What would he tell his family?
What would he tell Vaughn?
Bryant swallowed back bile when his phone buzzed in his pocket. On autopilot, he took it out and peeked at the screen.
As if he was still as connected to Bryant as he had been when they’d shared a bed, Vaughn reached out again. How did it go?
Bryant figured Vaughn would get the picture if he simply didn’t answer. Besides, he didn’t have the words to express how epically he’d crashed and burned. Come so close, then fucked up right at the finish line.
Where he’d been starting to doubt his decision to walk away from Vaughn and what they’d been building together, now he knew he’d done the right thing.
The fact that he wanted to run back to the guy, even now, cemented his conviction.
