by Amy Lane
“Dammit! Stop trying to go downhill!” Preston burst out about a half an hour in. “What do I have to do?”
“Be relentless,” Damien called, his best, most brilliant grin crossing his face. “You know, same way you talked me into bed!”
Preston stared at him for a moment, outraged, and then he realized Damien was teasing him. “You don’t seem sorry,” he said, trying to gauge how true that was.
Augh! Another look Preston couldn’t fathom. It was like Damien had sprouted a whole new host of expressions since their conversation the day before, and Preston had to plow through the weeds of Damien’s errant emotions before he got to the truth.
“Are you?” Damien asked, and Preston snorted.
“Are you serious?” He’d been reliving the night before during the truck ride, every moment of it playing back in his head like his favorite movie. And then, when the credits had rolled on that, he thought about that morning, when Damien had come to him. Had initiated their touching, stroked Preston’s thighs, pulled Preston’s cock into his sweet mouth because he’d wanted to taste.
It had been everything Preston had ever dreamed about their coming together—with the exception of Preston’s dumb-shit brother being missing so they had to leave the hotel room to come ride a one-ton idiot animal.
“Never mind,” Damien said, turning away.
“Really?” Preston so didn’t get people. “You’re going to have this conversation when—dammit, Chewie, I said don’t go there!” He gave a tug of the reins in frustration, and the horse, contrary to everything he’d done previously, went exactly where Preston had indicated and even cantered a little to catch up to Damien and SnakeEyes.
Now Damien was looking over his shoulder and laughing. “Well, you’ve managed to master the horse, at least.”
Preston was done with wordplay. “I mastered you too,” he said shortly. “I told you—that’s not our last time. And the next time won’t be the last time, and the time after that won’t be the last time. Do you want me?” He didn’t mean just for sex, but he was on the back of a horse, and he could only do one thing at a time.
“Yes,” Damien said, and thank God for a straight answer. Damien and Glen could take their words and shove them up a horse’s ass.
“Then we will find a way to be together.” Chewie tried to stop, because apparently there was a tuft of grass that had to be eaten right now. “Sometime when we’re not riding these idiot animals!”
Damien burst out laughing. “Idiot animals?”
“My dogs are smarter,” Preston said resentfully.
“Very probably,” Damien told him, “but a horse is not a dog.”
“Thank God,” Preston said with feeling. Augh! Fuck this horse and fuck this heat! “Because then it would be a gigantic fucking idiot dog!”
“Not a bad way to describe a horse, really,” Damien said, patting the side of his mount’s neck. “But I like them.”
Preston had the feeling Damien was amused. Well, Preston might be amusing, but Damien was apparently not leaving him behind. Not even on horseback, where Preston really did not want to be.
“It wasn’t a one-time thing,” Preston reiterated. God, look at Damien, smiling, graceful, considerate, and yes, tough. Tough enough to haul them through the mountains of Nayarit to find Preston’s asshole brother. Tough enough to come back from a helicopter crash that probably would have scared Preston enough to keep him grounded for life.
Tough enough to go up in the air almost daily, when it still scared him.
Whatever Damien thought of the night before, of this conversation, of their future, Preston needed him to acknowledge this. Their being together wouldn’t go away. If Preston could make the idiot horse do what he needed it to, Damien should have the good sense to go the way Preston needed him to without jerking on any reins.
Damien grinned at him, his body as fluid on the horse as he used to be in the air, his perfect mouth turned up at the corners. “If I concede to that, are you ready to pick up speed?” he said.
Preston looked around for Preacher and saw him a few feet ahead on the trail, looking like he could run easily for at least an hour.
“Sure,” Preston said. “Let’s make some time.”
The quicker they got to Glen, the quicker they’d get home and Preston could see what noises Damien would make when he wasn’t afraid people would hear.
THE break they took in two hours wasn’t long enough. Preston could barely move as he swung himself off Chewie’s back, and his ass felt like it had sweated through his shorts to stick to the saddle. The horse had apparently learned who was boss during their first stint, though, because he stood docilely and allowed Preston to lead him to the muddy shore of the tributary where Damien had already brought Sunshine and SnakeEyes.
Damien drank deeply from his canteen, and then, to Preston’s surprise, pulled out a little testing kit for the water in the stream, staring at the results for a minute before shaking his head.
“We’ll have to use some of Sunshine’s bottled water for now,” he said, pulling out another, larger soft-sided bottle to fill. “We can filter and boil this tonight and use it to fill up all the bottles.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Preston looked at the three different papers that Damien had dipped into the sample he’d taken.
“Pesticides and E. coli,” Damien told him. “The E. coli won’t affect the horses, and the pesticides are light enough for the moment, but we’ll want to give them fresh water tomorrow. Sometimes when there’s an earthquake, bacteria is stirred up from the bottom of a water source, and sometimes things that are stored nearby break and filter into the water. This is flowing down into the Grande de Santiago. I think there’s a small dam upstream and a filtration plant, so whatever is here is new, probably less than fifty miles or so.”
“You’re thinking the pesticide is from those gardens you saw in the satellite,” Preston deduced.
Damien shrugged. “It’s a possibility. Just makes me curious.” He pushed himself up from his squat by the stream and grunted, his face screwing up in pain.
“What?” Preston asked. “What hurts?”
Damien grunted. “My leg,” he said shortly. Then he pulled a strained smile that Preston knew was for his benefit. “My ass,” he added, like he was trying to be funny.
“Does your ass really hurt?” Preston had wondered—somewhat guiltily—if getting on the back of a horse was such a good idea after their activity the night before.
“A little,” Damien conceded. “But not as bad as my leg after being on a horse.” He took a deep breath and fished out a familiar plastic bottle of over-the-counter pain medication, which he washed down with water from his canteen.
“I can rub your leg,” Preston told him, thinking that Damien probably had to be in a lot of pain to admit to feeling a little.
“Two more hours,” he said, looking at the sky. “Two more hours, we can take a slightly longer break, and then after another hour we can make camp. It won’t get dark until late tonight. We can make up a lot of ground.”
Preston stretched his body from feet to fingertips and tried to suppress a groan. Everything hurt, and he was sweating like a sponge. “Horses,” he said darkly. “My brother has a lot to answer for.”
Damien smiled slightly and then pulled a surprise out of the food bag that Buddy had given him. “Here—have some. It’ll cheer you up.”
He opened a large can of trail mix and offered Preston a handful. Preston took a bite and munched, the sweetness easing his worry a little. “We can eat our apples at the next stop,” he said.
“I think the horses will appreciate that greatly.”
Damien, standing so close, smiling and relaxed—and happy, for all the pain he must have been in—was just so… so damned pretty. For a moment there was only that smile, the sound of the stream, and the hot wind coming down from Zacatecas smelling of pine and oak and creosote bush.
But mostly pretty Damien.
Presto
n leaned into Damien’s body, hoping he was reading the quiet moment right. “I want to kiss you now,” he said softly. “Don’t startle.”
Damien’s eyes went wide and his lips parted, and Preston paused for a moment, because that could have been surprise and that could have been yes, and he needed to know it was yes.
“Okay,” Damien whispered. “You can kiss me now.”
Their lips touching under the sunshine were almost as sweet as trail mix. Preston tasted him enough for Damien to be the dessert, and not the nuts and chocolate.
Preston pulled away from the kiss, breathing surprisingly fast. It was like he could taste Damien’s laughter, his sweetness, just from his lips. “I always want more,” he complained.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Preston beamed at him. “Excellent.”
Damien’s soft laugh was their signal to start packing up.
Over Hill
DAMIEN’S leg was on fire, and it was weak enough that every other part of his body was burning in sympathy, particularly his stomach, back, and other leg.
His ass was a little sore—that was the truth—but the burning of his weakened leg was painful enough that he couldn’t hide it at their second rest stop, and Preston was the one who called a halt to their final ride of the day.
“I can hear you,” he muttered, after telling Damien to stop. “You’re making these little grunting sounds every time you post. It hurts me to listen. Get off the horse and let me make camp.”
“Fine,” Damien muttered. “I’ll take care of the horses.” Preston had put on a good face, and he seemed to have reached a rapport with his mount—and he’d relaxed considerably as the temperature had dropped—but SnakeEyes was, in fact, piss mean, just as Buddy had warned. She’d tried to take a piece of Damien a couple of times, and part of the reason Damien’s leg hurt so bad was that she’d been actively working to throw him. He’d had to put a lot of pressure into his knees and thighs to show her who was boss, and the effort had taken its toll.
“Are we going to tie them to a tree or something?” Preston asked, searching their clearing nervously. The ground was dusty, and scorched grasses made up the ground cover under the pine and oak of the mountains.
Damien held up a hand and listened, hearing the tributary that had run roughly parallel to their trail tinkling about twenty yards away.
“Let’s make our way to the stream,” he said thoughtfully. “The horses can drink, and maybe we can find a place to make a fire pit where the grasses won’t threaten to catch in the slightest breath of wind.”
“And we can tie them to a tree,” Preston repeated, glaring at Chewie while the horse munched dry grass at Preston’s feet.
“We can tie SnakeEyes to a tree,” Damien muttered, glaring at his mount, who glared back. “The others won’t want to leave once she’s settled. Come on, let’s find a good camp before night falls. I don’t want to suddenly find a rattler or something who’s not excited about making friends.”
Preston grunted. “We have snakes on the ranch,” he said, which didn’t surprise Damien. He’d seen plenty of them while working the property with Glen in their younger years.
“I know it. You still hiring a wrangler when you can?”
“Yeah, but sometimes they’re just close up to the dogs, you know?”
Killing snakes always struck him as cruel and pointless, unless they were a direct threat to man or livestock. They were truly awesome animals, but they could be really dangerous too.
“I know,” Damien consoled, taking SnakeEyes’s reins in one hand and Sunshine’s in the other. “Let’s go make sure we don’t have to kill a snake now.”
They found a flat spot that was all clear, with enough river rock nearby to build a fire pit. Damien left Preston to that job while he rubbed the horses down with a cloth from his saddlebags, then brushed them and picked their feet. One misplaced pebble could reduce their giant, graceful modes of transportation to a giant, treacherous liability. Damien had to keep the horses healthy or his and Preston’s quest to bring back Glen was doomed.
By the time he was done tending them, his hands were shaking with exhaustion and pain. Preston appeared at his elbow, escorting him to the small fire he’d started, and he helped him settle down on a fallen tree.
Damien looked around at the rapidly encroaching night, the small campfire, even the makeshift seat, and gave a dry chuckle.
“What?” Preston asked, stirring some soup in a tin pot that he’d rigged over the fire.
“Last time I roughed it like this, I was in a snow shelter and Mal and Tevyn were trying to keep me alive.”
Preston grunted. “What did they do?”
“I was pretty out of it, but when my leg got infected, Mal almost died getting firewood. Tevyn was busy making poultices, I guess, and he looked up and realized Mal had fallen in a hole and decided to take a nap. Scared them both pretty bad.”
Preston gave a deep sigh. “I’m so jealous of them,” he said. “And yes, I know. It’s irrational. I wanted to be there. I wanted to rescue you. And the guy you’d been crushing on rescued you instead. And then we got back and the three of you were your own little club, and you only smiled with them. It wasn’t fair.”
Damien regarded him quietly, watching as he stood and dished the stew into two plastic bowls that had been in the kit on Sunshine’s back. Preston handed him a bowl and a spoon, and Damien took a bite. It was lukewarm, but that was okay—he was starving. Preston had probably pulled it early so he could put the biggest pot on the fire to boil water for the morning. They ate in silence for a moment, but that didn’t mean Damien wasn’t thinking about what he said.
After a few bites, he patted the tree he was sitting on. “Come sit.”
“Why?” Preston asked, but he was moving.
“So I can lean against you.”
Preston laughed and did as asked, taking Damien’s weak side. “Finish your food, and I’ll rub your leg, just like you rubbed down the horses,” he said, and Damien nodded, tired and in pain and not willing to argue. It was like last night. Preston wanted to take care of him, and he was warm and strong, and Damien trusted him to do that.
“I miss horseback riding. I should do it more often. The leg might heal faster.”
“Why don’t you?” Preston asked, putting his hand, warm and capable, on Damien’s thigh. He squeezed slightly, and Damien felt some of the tension drain from his shoulders, like the night before.
“Busy,” Damien mumbled. “Keeping the business afloat. We keep getting new clients.”
“You guys should hire someone else,” Preston said, making more sense than Glen or Damien ever did, truth be told.
“You and your logic,” Damien said, laughing a little. Preston increased the pressure, kneading at a knot in his lower thigh. “Yeah. It gets… lost, in the daily demands, I guess. This was supposed to be our weekend. I had to turn Mal and Tevyn over to another contractor to be here.”
“Why’d Glen take the contract to find this kid, then?” Preston set his bowl down on the tree and moved in front of him to concentrate both hands on Damien’s calf, and for a moment Damien’s vision blurred, the relief was so acute.
“Couldn’t tell you,” Damien said, and that was the truth. “We were going to spend two days by the pool, ordering takeout.” He yawned. “I miss that plan.”
Preston paused. “But then we wouldn’t have had sex. Are you sorry?”
Damien blinked and took a breath. That was the second time Preston had asked, which meant he needed reassurance. He reached down and took Preston’s hands in his own, rough and capable, and waited for Preston to make the eye contact he usually avoided.
There. Ah, there. Preston’s eyes were even blue by firelight. So pretty and pure. Damien smoothed his thumbs over Preston’s knuckles and did what he always had done with Preston—told the truth.
“No. I’m glad we….” He stumbled. He couldn’t just say “had sex,” because with Preston it felt so much larger than that.
That’s why Damien had avoided it for so long, and then been afraid of it for a little longer. “Made love,” he finished, and this time he looked away. “I’m glad we did. I… I have no promises, Preston, except that I always want to be in your life. But I’m glad that… that for at least that perfect moment, we got to be together.”
“Okay. Then we can do it again, and you won’t be sorry.” Preston smiled smugly, and Damien had to laugh.
“Okay,” he said, conceding. His shoulders eased up, a weight of tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying trickling away. Had he been worrying about how it would end? How he and Preston would stop being lovers and still continue to be friends? He must have been—that must have been what had been hanging on his neck all day. But Preston saw straight to the heart of things—he always had. And it was such an easy way to look—they would be together again. They both wanted it. It had made them happy.
As Preston’s hands kept working their magic on Damien’s leg and Damien sank further and further into his own spine, melting into the hard bark of the tree, he thought there were worse things in life than the thing that made him happy.
Preston left him a few moments later to rinse out their dishes and set up their bedrolls, and came back with the bowls to put in the pack on Sunshine’s travois. The pan on the fire was boiling, and Preston set that one aside.
“I’m going to boil a second pot on the embers,” he said. “That’s not enough for the horses.”
“Good idea.” Damien yawned. “I’ll stay up to keep an eye out until it dies completely.”
Preston snorted. “No. Go brush your teeth, then lie down and make all your noises. I’ll be there when you’re ready.”
Damien opened his mouth to protest, but Preston was already handing him a water bottle. Damien did as he was told, settling himself on his side so he could watch Preston prepare everything but the fire. There was something soothing about that big figure silhouetted against the brutally black night sky, doing simple domestic things to care for the both of them. He didn’t want to close his eyes or he might miss the way Preston still looked like a fallen angel by firelight, or the sound the trees made when the wind hit them. Miss the smell of the campfire, or pine trees, or the earthiness of oak. Once upon a time, he’d loved camping. He didn’t smell the salt and flowered perfume of Kahua Nui-Makai here, but waiting for Preston like this brought back that same joy.
