Chapter Seventeen
MATT
He woke sometime later, disoriented and with a dry mouth. It took him a moment to remember, but Jesse’s face pressed against his arm as he let out snuffling breaths just the right side of snoring quickly reminded him.
Not wanting to disturb Jesse, he gently moved the hair back from his face so he could look at him, see how peaceful he looked without that ever-present wariness.
And when he wasn’t running his mouth. Though actually, Matt was kind of missing the constant commentary and complaining that went along with Jesse’s presence.
Jesse woke. No slow blinking awake like Matt had done, but one moment he was asleep—the next fully alert. He looked at Matt, and his eyes filled with happiness before he rolled over onto his back to stretch. Long and lazy like he had all the time in the world—and promptly elbowed Matt in the side.
“Damn it, Turner, you always this violent?”
Jesse huffed. “Only when I’m being stared at.” He squinted at the window. “What the hell time is it?”
Matt glanced at his watch and groaned. He had work to do. “Late. We should eat.”
Jesse raised his eyebrows in unmistakable invitation, and somehow lunch got put back until Jesse had come, shuddering and crying out, on Matt’s fingers deep inside him.
It didn’t take him long to recover, and after giving Matt another mind-blowing orgasm, he rolled out of bed. “Believe someone said something ‘bout lunch,” he said, bending down for his jeans and then staggering enough he had to grab the dresser for balance.
Matt smirked. “Something wrong?”
“You know damn well, Urban.” Jesse shot him a withering look.
Matt laughed as he got up and headed toward the shower. “Come on, then,” he said. “I’ll wash your back.”
The shower was brief, mostly because of Jesse’s mutterings about the fact he didn’t intend to die of starvation just cause he’d gotten laid.
Matt shook his head and let Jesse steal the towel.
* * *
Finally dressed and in the kitchen, Jesse took the coffee Matt handed him. “You ever think you might have an addiction?” he asked. “Don’t think I’ve seen you without a coffee since I arrived.”
“Better than bourbon,” Matt said, with a little too much truth. “Anyway, you haven’t refused one yet.”
He got out the eggs, bacon and ingredients for pancakes—about the extent of his cooking skills—and it was only once he’d started heating a pan that he realized Jesse hadn’t said anything further.
He looked around to see Jesse leaning against the counter, barefoot in frayed jeans, layered t-shirts hiding what Matt now knew was a whipcord body, lean and strong.
But Jesse wasn’t really seeing the kitchen at all. Something distant was in his eyes, that old watchfulness slipping back like a shadow. Like everything was a threat.
“You with me, Turner?” Matt asked as he cracked eggs into the pan.
Jesse started slightly. “Yeah,” he said. “Just thinkin’.”
“Dangerous habit.”
Jesse snorted, but didn’t say anything. He took a sip of coffee and watched Matt cook.
“You do this every day?” he asked.
Matt raised an eyebrow. “Eat? Yes, Jesse, I eat every day.”
“No, I mean this.” Jesse waved his hand around, possibly encompassing Matt at the stove, or possibly indicating the entire town of Elk Ridge. “Just feels weird.”
“I could put on a frilly apron if that’d make it less weird,” Matt offered. He didn’t know how to deal with Jesse’s statement that a home-cooked meal was out of the ordinary.
Jesse snorted, and then he put his coffee down to steal across the kitchen on silent feet, a predatory grace in his movement.
“Might just hold you to that,” he said, getting right into Matt’s space and reaching up to kiss him.
Matt intended to keep one eye on the pan, but Jesse curled his fingers into his belt loops and yanked. And suddenly the pan, the stove, the whole damn world was a distant second to Jesse.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, drawing back at last from the kiss and looking satisfied. “Definitely going to hold you to that.”
Matt had to scrape the burnt mess out of the pan and cook more eggs, but by the time they were ready, Jesse had plates ready to go and silverware on the table. He’d also found the maple syrup. Without waiting for the pancakes, he’d poured some onto his fingers and was sucking it off.
How the hell Matt didn’t burn the second lot of eggs, he’d never know. But Jesse wasn’t actually trying to kill Matt—it appeared it was just a continuation of his love affair with sugar.
“You ever think you might have an addiction?” Matt asked, watching Jesse stir sugar into his coffee.
Jesse shot a glance at him, equal parts amusement and annoyance, before very deliberately helping himself to another spoonful of sugar.
“Least this ain’t gonna keep me up at night.
” He paused, dragged his finger through the maple syrup on his plate and sucked it off.
And this time, he meant it suggestively, his eyes holding Matt’s. “I mean, isn’t that your job?”
Reluctantly, Matt pushed his chair back. He could stay here all afternoon watching Jesse, but he had work to do and the day was passing. “I’d better get to the chores,” he said.
Jesse groaned theatrically but forced himself to his feet. “God damn, don’t you ever stop?”
“Didn’t you get the answer to that earlier?” Matt asked, and had the enjoyable and, he suspected, rare experience of seeing Jesse Turner blush.
JESSE
“Hey, Jesse!”
Jesse didn’t think anyone had ever looked as genuinely pleased to see him as Tristan did.
Tristan and Bryce had come into the kitchen, where Matt and Jesse were having another coffee.
They were sitting next to one another, though there was less touching than before and no kissing, because Jason was busy cooking.
That hadn’t stopped Matt’s fingers sliding against his as he’d passed him the sugar bowl.
Hadn’t stopped Jesse seeing the smile in Matt’s eyes, and wanting warm things, impossible things.
“Good day?” Tristan asked. “What’d you get up to? Think we could swing by Missy’s pen again?”
The questions came fast enough to make Jesse’s head spin.
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing onto the easiest one. “You want us to put the horses up for the night while we’re there?” he asked Matt.
Matt nodded, but absently. For the first time all afternoon, his attention wasn’t on Jesse. It was on Bryce.
Bryce held Matt’s gaze, a world of meaning in his expression, and Jesse wasn’t part of whatever silent communication thing they had going on. He set his jaw. Didn’t matter.
Following Tristan out the door, Jesse got him to sit down on one of the wooden benches under the tree. To his surprise, Tristan had evidently paid attention to the previous day’s lesson—he calmed his breathing and his body within a couple of minutes.
Jesse would need to learn not to underestimate Tristan just because he talked a lot.
The stream of consciousness from his mouth should have been a clue.
His topics jumped all over the place, but there was always a thread tying them together—Tristan’s brain simply moved too fast for Jesse to keep up.
They walked together up to the barn, and Jesse tried hard not to sink into this.
Not to feel how it filled a need he didn’t want to have.
It was a dangerous need, to believe he could sit with someone, talking about horses and think they wanted him here.
None of it would last. Look at how quickly Matt’s attention had turned away from him.
Wanting wasn’t the same as having. He’d forgotten that earlier, but he remembered it now.