Gideon decided that now was a great time to take it away again, with a long, deep kiss that ended with his tongue in Jed’s mouth and his hands struggling to untie the damp leather tie of the thong. For his part, Jed had positioned his knees on either side of Gideon, and Gideon could feel the press of Jed’s erection as it ground against his own.
He twisted, levering himself and then rolling so that Jed was under him. The thong came loose, and Jed grunted as they rolled and twisted against each other. When Jed rose above him, Jed managed to get his hands between them and tug Gideon’s pants open, and for a while, Gideon did no thinking at all.
But when Jed slid down, urging Gideon on top, Gideon’s body cooled just enough for his brain to start working again. He looked down into Jed’s eyes, starlight reflecting in the wide pupils. “This means a lot to me,” he said, searching for words that he’d never used before, not with a man or a woman. Words he wasn’t sure he should be using now, not just because Jed was a man, but because the words seemed so important. Binding. San Francisco wasn’t so far away anymore, and they’d be parting ways there. Words, meaningful words… there seemed no point to it, except for the need inside Gideon to say them.
“I know,” Jed answered, his voice low. “I feel for you, too.”
Gideon smiled down at him, the words warming parts of him that weren’t connected to his balls. He leaned down and kissed Jed, slow and warm, letting the heat of passion cool just enough to give them both back a little control. “Want to give you something,” he said as he drew back. And Gideon did; he wanted to give Jed his heart, but that seemed big, too big, and the other offer was easier to face. “Want to let you get inside me this time.”
Jed blinked and his breath caught, a choked sound in his throat. His hands tightened their grip on Gideon’s shoulders, his fingers hooked into the fabric of Gideon’s shirt. “What?” he asked, his voice passion-thick and rough with desire that was familiar now, and so damned welcome.
Gideon swallowed, but he didn’t back down on his offer. He didn’t even want to. “You been the one doing the most giving,” he said. “Reckon I’d like to be giving you some back.”
Jed held his gaze for several seconds before taking a slow breath. “I—I can’t. Not now. I am too impatient. You would have pain.”
Gideon kissed him on the lips, a soft touch. “I ain’t afraid of you,” he said as he pulled back. “And I ain’t a virgin—I’ve had men before.”
Jed smiled, his teeth white in the darkness. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “But for now, I like it better the way we have been doing it.” To emphasize his words, he spread his legs and hooked his ankles behind Gideon’s knees. “I want you again tonight.”
The relief Gideon had felt earlier came back, but this time, he chided himself for it. Jed had every right to ask for and get the same thing he offered to Gideon so willingly. And Gideon wanted to give it. But as Jed arched his back, pressing his hips up against Gideon, Gideon was glad that the hot column of flesh bruising his belly wasn’t going into him tonight. He always had been called selfish, and he wouldn’t deny that. Not about this.
Jed really was impatient, and he barely gave Gideon time to find some grease to ease the way. By the time they were joined, he was pushing up against Gideon, using his legs to lever his groin up off the bedroll, rubbing himself against Gideon’s belly as much as he could while Gideon pushed deeper and deeper inside him. As much as Gideon liked talking, there just wasn’t anything that needed saying when they were like this. He resisted the pull of Jed’s ankles, resisted his own wants enough to get inside slow, until he was buried to the balls. Once he was seated he rested on his elbows and looked down at Jed’s face, trying to make out what few details he could from the flickering firelight, but he had the feeling he’d get his ass kicked—literally—if he didn’t hurry up and get moving. Still he waited, until Jed’s tight-clenched eyes opened, and Jed looked up at him, until Jed’s urgent movements slowed just a little, and he thought Jed might be frowning at him.
“What?” Jed asked him.
“Nothin’,” Gideon replied, and pulled almost all the way out of the tight-clenching flesh, then thrust back in. The movement made Jed’s head push back into the ground and his neck arch, made Jed’s chest push up a little as he responded to the pleasure Gideon could give him.
Gideon got plenty of pleasure in return, the passage slick and tight, warm and so smooth, and he gave up trying to control this thing and just rode it, letting Jed lead as much as he could, even though he knew it was going to make him spill sooner than he wanted, make this end sooner than he wanted it to. He focused as much as he could on Jed, to try and take his mind off that tight, slick glove around his shaft, but it was a lost cause, and soon enough, he was grunting, sure the end was coming at him like a freight train, keeping the pace Jed seemed to crave with an effort that made the urgent pleasure surging in him all the better for not letting it get rushed any more than it already was.
“Jed, I’m—” he panted.
The strangest thing happened: Jed, whose arms had been around his waist, moved one down to his ass and poked a finger into him, dry, startling him a little, and moved the other up to his arm, gripping his biceps hard. Jed didn’t even say anything, and Gideon just kept thrusting, getting maybe a few more in than he would have otherwise, from that little pain of Jed’s finger in him and the other pain of Jed’s fingers so tight they might leave bruises on his upper arm. He thought of them marks there, and felt how each thrust forward tightened his hole around Jed’s slim finger, and when he came, he felt like his body was getting shaken apart. Every piece of it felt like it was coming: his ass where Jed’s finger barely moved, his balls, his buried, overwhelmed cock, his belly, his throat where some kind of sound wanted to climb out, his clenched teeth, his arm where Jed’s fingers branded him. Hell, it felt like the roots of his hair were quaking and shaking right along with the rest of him.
He panted and shook, and Jed just lay there, legs gripping around the backs of Gideon’s thighs, and when Gideon could, when the pleasure waned a little, and he had some kind of control over his body again, he hunched back just a little to make a space between their bellies. He didn’t pull out of Jed’s ass—he wasn’t dumb about things like this—he just made enough room to reach between them, using the arm Jed didn’t have that death grip on, grabbed up Jed’s hard, hard cock, and stripped it fast, three times, four, five—the come slammed through Jed just like it had Gideon, the muscles of his ass clamping so tight ’round Gideon’s sensitized cock that it almost hurt, his body arching and rolling and making this ride as rough and wild as any spirited bronc could, but so much better. So damned much better.
Slowly, Jed’s grip on his arm loosened, and slower still Jed’s arched body relaxed back onto their bedrolls.
“Ahh,” he said, a damned noncommittal sound for all the pleasure Gideon knew they’d each just had. It made him smile, though, and after a second he slid his hand down Jed’s arm, encouraging him to ease his finger out. He used the same hand to reach even more awkwardly behind himself and unhook Jed’s ankles from around each other, and only then did he pull out of Jed. The sound, soft and wet, sent a last lurch of pleasure through his groin, and he smiled some more as he finally rolled to one side of Jed and stared happily up at the blanket of stars.
“One day,” Gideon said, “you’re gonna fuck me like that.”
The silence stretched on for a couple of minutes, broken only by their calming breaths, the crackle of the small fire, and the sounds of night critters—crickets mostly, and mice or rabbits or gophers rustling the dry grass around them. Jed’s hand bumped Gideon’s hip and felt around for his hand, clasping it tight. “One day,” Jed agreed.
Gideon figured he could die right now, and he’d be satisfied with his life, short as it had been so far. He didn’t have to look at Jed to strengthen that feeling. He wasn’t sure this feeling could get any stronger, this satisfaction that reached far past his loins, up to his he
art and his head and into his soul. For the first time this trip, he decided that California, and San Francisco, weren’t nearly far enough away.
Chapter 6
THE next two weeks flew by and so did the landscape as they left the northern edges of the Great Plains far behind. Somewhere along the way they’d crossed the Continental Divide, and Gideon thought he could tell by the different climates out here that they were in the Pacific region now, where the weather was influenced more by the great ocean than by the Great Plains. They passed through Owhyee and didn’t spot another living soul until they reached Winnemucca, past mining towns big and small until they reached what a woman in dungarees told Gideon was the Humboldt River.
“You ain’t far from home, are you, ma’am?” he asked. She rode astride, which plenty of women did out where city folk weren’t around to judge ’em. In this part of the country, the cities weren’t much to speak of anyway.
Her hand dropped to the rifle that hung from a strap on her saddle’s pommel. “Don’t matter to you how near or far I am,” she said, frowning.
Gideon chuckled, trying to be polite about it. “We’re just headed west, thought if you wanted some company we could move along at a pace for a time, if we’re going in the same direction.”
“We ain’t,” she said, but the words were gentler now. She was moving west, her horse’s gait enough slower than Star’s that Gideon realized again just how much Jed had managed to push the pace for them. A wide track peeled off by a creek, a shallow tributary to this pretty, meandering river. “Our family’s place is up that way. Good day to you, boys,” she said, and reined aside.
“See, Jed?” Gideon whispered before she’d gotten too far away. “Another decent enough white.”
“I believe that many white people are decent, Gideon. Some, much more than that,” he said, and the sideways glance he slanted made Gideon’s mouth stretch into a wide grin. “It is the whites who are not that trouble me and my kind. There are many of those, too.”
Gideon couldn’t hardly argue, so he didn’t. Instead he struck up a conversation even Jed seemed willing to warm to, about their first gals: first time seeing a woman naked, first fucks—first kisses, which Gideon already knew was his. What they liked and disliked about women carried them the whole day and blended seamlessly into what they liked and disliked about men. Here, Gideon was more hesitant about spelling things out. It still seemed strange, having a man he was comfortable enough to talk to about the subject. He’d bedded—or at least been blown by—enough men, it oughtn’t to feel strange talking about it. But Gideon realized there’d only been one boy, back when he was barely a teenager, he’d felt close enough to want to ask, and even to want to explain how strange and scary and rich all this lust for men felt. So they shared some silences, too, with just the clomp of Star’s hooves, shifting stones, rushing water, and the wildlife that thrived along this river’s edge.
They shared each other, every night. Some mornings now, too, when Gideon could interest Jed in the notion.
The big mining towns, they gave wide, wide berths. They steered clear enough of Rose Creek and Tungsten, Mill City and Rye Patch, towns that were marked more by the smoke from the smelting plants and the track that crisscrossed the land, rail lines that brought in coal and timber, food and equipment, and hauled out ore. After he and Jed passed a big, beautiful blue lake, some of the land they crossed was dry enough that it barely supported crickets and scorpions, much less sheep or cattle. Dry salt flats caught sunlight like mirrors, making his eyes squint and his skin tan darker. Jed’s, too, he thought, which surprised him. For some reason he’d thought Jed’s skin was as dark as it could get the day they’d met in Livingston.
Worthless land made for lonely land, which suited Gideon just fine. Jed, too, by the look of him. They spent their nights on shared bedrolls, sometimes with a fire and sometimes without, sometimes dressing after their loving and sometimes just rolled close together, skin on skin, sure they were far enough off the paths of any but the most determined or desperate trappers that the risk of getting run across was small. Or maybe they just didn’t care. Gideon was sure that would be him doing the not-caring, that Jed looked out for them always, and he was glad Jed knew this wild land well enough to know when they could afford the pleasure of sleeping naked together. Some days were hard walking, and some days Star slowed them down when they went too long between finding rivers or streams and thirst bothered her. Gideon worried about that a little, but Jed seemed to feel it without Gideon having to say, or recognize it in Star’s plodding steps, because soon enough he’d find sign of a spring or a creek, even just a burble of water coming up from the ground to make a pool plenty big for refilling canteens and letting Star drink her fill.
He’d thought he’d gotten to know Jed well enough from nursing him through that time of infection and fever, but he’d learned so much more of the man on the trail: his strengths in the wild, his way with hunting and foraging and caring for Star. He had such quiet ways, but sometimes, something would drive him to talk, to share a story of his own. The Shoshone had respected him and how he looked in that dance… he knew his own body well, and he had learned Gideon’s plenty fast. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—they’d stop on the trail when they ran across water, and if the weather was nice and there were trees or shrubs along the bank to keep them from being visible through a spyglass, Jed would just drop to his knees, or into that familiar native squat right in front of him, open his pants, and suck him dryer than the salty ground they trekked over.
He almost never let Gideon pay him back, not in the middle of the day like that. But sometimes, less often, if Gideon woke when Jed roused himself, Jed would let him suck him before they started their day. Those mornings were Gideon’s favorites, and he thought Jed walked with a smoother, lazier gait when he’d allowed Gideon to tend to him.
It was on a sunny afternoon after one of their more pleasurable mornings that Gideon was reminded that not everything was as tame out here as it seemed. They’d stopped at a trickle of water that might, in a few months when the weather turned and snow was falling on the mountain tops, be called a creek, but for now it was just a faint line of water running along the ground. Star sucked it in as best she could, and Gideon was standing with her, his back to the sun, when something niggled at the pit of his belly. He turned, looking for Jed, who he found on his knees nearby, his pack on the ground in front of him, but his head turned so that he was staring at something in the scrub.
Maybe it was his unnatural stillness. While Gideon was now accustomed to his friend’s taciturn nature and his spare and necessary movements, Jed was so still that Gideon wasn’t certain he was even breathing.
Or it could have been the strange sound he heard, one that had slowly crept into his awareness over the past few seconds. It was low and fast, like the buzzing of a nest of bees, but more distinct, and it didn’t take his brain but a second to identify the noise.
He stepped away from Star, taking two steps toward Jed. Jed didn’t move, but he said in a hiss, “Gideon, don’t—”
Gideon ignored him, drawing his pistol unthinkingly as he saw the threat: coiled in the faint shade of the scrub bush was a snake, its tail shaking its bone rattles, its head raised on a long arc of body. It hissed at the same time that Jed did, and drew back, ready to strike.
Gideon didn’t give much thought to firing, save that Jed was damned close to his line. Not too close for comfort, though, not with his shooting skills. Gideon blinked, giving himself a few seconds to look around in the aftermath, searching for any other signs of danger. The snake lay several feet away, its long body uncoiled now, blown backward by the impact of the bullet that had shattered its head. The tail still rattled as the body twitched, but the sound was less ominous now.
“You all right?” he asked as he walked over and nudged the severed snakehead away with his boot. There was still enough venom in that mouth to do either one of them in, and he wasn’t going to risk one of them stepp
ing on it. Jed’s silence drew his head around in worry. “Jed?”
Jed pushed to his feet, moving stiffly, and his voice was also different, dull and a bit breathless.
He swallowed before he spoke. “The snake spirit—”
“Was too close to my Indian spirit,” Gideon cut in, annoyed.
Jed was staring at the snake, his eyes wide and his face pale. But he nodded. “Yes, it was too close. I—thank you, Gideon.”
They stood for a time, just staring at the snake as its death twitches slowly subsided, until Star broke the tension with a whoof and a stomp of one of her hooves as she dug into the small puddle of sandy mud. Gideon looked at her and the strong emotion drained away. What a damned fool way of almost losing Jed, after all the effort he’d put in to keeping him alive in Livingston.
He was still holding his pistol, but the barrel had stopped smoking. Carefully, he slid it back into its holster and stared at his right hand. He’d always been proud of his skills for the show and for the odd hunting trip, but he’d never been quite this grateful for them before. He rubbed his hand along the side of his pants to wipe away the sweat.
“You are a skilled marksman,” Jed said quietly. He had moved to stand beside Gideon, and he reached out slowly, taking Gideon’s hand in both of his. He used his fingers to spread Gideon’s hand open, and rubbed at the palm with his thumb, causing an altogether unseemly reaction to course through Gideon.
“I’ve told you how many stories, and you’re only now believin’ me?” he asked, trying to sound aghast. But most folks loved to talk, and very few could have made that shot.
Well Traveled Page 13
