Page 41 of The Banker and the Blue Collar Man

I wanted Jake to know what that meant to me. To be the one he looked at. The one he kissed. The one he touched. To finally see his smile. That was pure gold.

As for his past, from everything I’d heard and seen, it had been more than rocky. Would he accept my support? Would he want to continue what we had started?

If he wanted it, whatever he wanted, I’d give it to him with both hands. With everything I had. With my heart.

I just hoped he’d give me a chance so I could see that smile again.

Brushing my teeth, I couldn’t quite focus on my own reflection in the mirror. Instead I saw Jake. The way he’d looked when he’d asked me to go on that walk with him. Shy but confident in what he wanted. And on the walk, the feel of hishand. The way we’d gone beneath that cottonwood tree, that enormous cottonwood tree, and the bit of a smile I’d seen there. The laugh in his throat. The way his body felt when I’d moved close, my head on his shoulder. His fingers in my hair. Those amazing eyes looking at me as though I was worth looking at. Someone worth being with.

Could what we had turn into more than one night together? I wanted it to. My feelings had done a complete one-eighty since my first impression of Jake Colter, when I’d arrived at the ranch three short days ago, my ears ringing from over two hours of teenage mirth. But that was all right. I was a man fully grown, and I could change my mind.

I had changed it. For the better. For Jake.

I could convince him that this was a good thing, and I would. A quiet moment was all I needed.

Chapter 14

Jake

The rain let up, but the work didn’t. I herded cattle out of the lower pens and up to higher pastures. Head bent forward, rain running off the brim of my hat.

Jesse had loaned me a yellow slicker, and the other fellows wore theirs, and we glowed like yellow lamplights in the gray-shrouded night. It was cold, as well, for mid-July, but that was to be expected at the beginning of Colorado’s monsoon season. If we could get all the cattle to safe spaces, then figuring out better drainage for the lower pastures could wait until the storm passed.

One of the fences, the long fence on the very northernmost pasture, had gone down. When I last checked it early in the spring, it had been fine. What had happened since then was unclear: a tumble of rocks, maybe, or runoff on slanted ground. Either way, now, in the dark, it marked dangerous passage for the cattle.

I volunteered to stay behind to make sure that the cattle didn’t run through the gap in search of greener grass. Beyond the gap was a small canyon and rough ground where they could get hurt or trapped by mountain lions. It was best they stay where they were safe.

Straight wire you could loop to your saddle. Barbed wire you could not. Once the rain stopped and the ground dried, we could bring in the ATV with rolls of barbed wire and make proper work of it.

Malcolm and Jesse rode back to the ranch for coils of straight wire and nails. Hammers. Thicker gloves.

Buddy and I were left on that hillside, standing guard in the dark. The rain sliding down his dark mane, making lace of it. Along his fetlocks and the back of my neck. Across my cheeks. Making me feel wet through to the bone.

It was too dark to see much, but I had a full-sized Maglite that I could turn on and pass over the backs of the cattle, the dripping grass and rocks, the gap in the fence. Looking for the flashback of predator eyes. Guarding the broken places in the fence line with my body. With Buddy.

I might have been miserable, operating into the night, if not for the recent memories sifting around me, settling like a blanket. Keeping me warm, tucked in my heart. Keeping me company.

The innocent walk along Snow Creek that I had proposed had not turned out as I had expected. Not to my disappointment, but to my pleasure.

I wiped the back of my hand against my mouth as though I could still taste his sweet lips. The salt of his skin. The bitter salt of his cum that had filled my mouth all at once.

I remembered his mouth on me in the glade of cottonwoods as the sky grew dark with rain. He’d been so bold. I’d been surprised, but not displeased.

I had thought more hand-holding would be in order. That I’d have to court him slowly. But maybe his being a city boy had made him braver than I.

The feel of the ribs of that cottonwood tree had been branded into my back in long stripes. The first touch of his hand on mybelly, a revelation. The sigh of his breath over the head of my cock before he licked me, a spell.

There’d been something magic in that glade. That spot in the bend of the river where the cottonwoods grew.

Then, in my bunkhouse, I’d been able to see to him. To suck him off on my familiar bed in the soft darkness, on my bed in a nest of pillows, quilts, and cotton sheets. With him sprawled out naked before me in the semidarkness. Willing. Tender. His skin soft beneath my rough hands.

If not for cattle and fences and dire tasks that needed tending, I would have fucked him. He would have been willing, then and there, to let me fuck him, but I’d delayed, all for the want of something soft to ease my way into his body. Or his into mine.

Either way would be fine by me. Either way, I simply wanted as much time with him as possible before he had to go back to work in the big city.

He’d have been willing to stay the night. I’d sensed it in his languor, the way he curled in my arms, our legs tangled, his head on my shoulder, his hair soft as eiderdown against my neck.

We’d been interrupted, but those memories lingered. Kept me company.