eighteen
Ramon turned onto the hard flat sand of the beach and let Ferro have his head.
If the air when they’d saddled up at the car park an hour ago had been heavy with the smell of the Delta’s salt and mud, out here at land’s furthest reach—la Platja del Trabucador, a thin sandspit curving for miles out into the Mediterranean—the prevailing sea breeze carried only salt and wildness.
They had ridden out along it, walking and trotting their mounts by turns, or cantering along the hard sand of the beach, then taking them through the shallow surf.
Ferro loved to play with the waves, pawing at them with his hooves, and giving startled little skips of shock when a larger than usual crest broke above his knees.
Ramon let him. He was an old hand of a police horse, far too responsible to do anything to try and throw or dislodge his rider.
But since he’d been retired, he’d been finding a playful streak within himself.
Davey was a natural rider, loose and easy on Desdemona’s back.
His posture was straight and his hands were relaxed on the reins, guiding the filly mainly with his knees.
After riding the horses for around forty minutes out toward the sandspit’s tip, they turned their heads for home.
It was the signal both horses had been waiting for.
“Now you’ll see some speed,” Ramon warned. “Nothing gets between Ferro and his dinner.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
They took the horses out of the water and up onto the hard sand, where they could see any rocks or other obstacles on the beach more easily, and let them have their heads.
Ramon barely needed to apply the slightest pressure with his knees for Ferro to be off at a canter.
Behind him David whooped, digging his heels into Desdemona to encourage her to follow suit.
They caught up to Ramon and both horses broke into a hard gallop, thundering across the hard sand that stretched before them for miles.
If before this, the animals had been racing nearly at their fastest, now, with the promise of home pastures and a decent feed in their minds, both horses bolted full pelt, stretching out their necks in a flat gallop as the wind whipped back their manes.
Once heading for home and a feed, there was nothing that could have pulled the horses in, and it was all Ramon and David could do to hold on, crouching flat along their withers, hands clasping the reins loose beside their horses’ necks, grinning across at each other as they rode, smiles breaking irrepressible across their faces, the wind whipping their hair back behind.
They made the return leg in barely half the time it had taken them to ride outward.
Once the horses had run themselves as hard as they could for ten minutes or more, the two riders began leaning back and reining them in, slowing them to a canter, then a more sedate trot, and finally a walk, giving them ample time to recover their wind before they got back to the car park.
There were also other people on the beach now, families with small children running up and down between the water and their picnic site, so they had to take more care.
“How was that?” Ramon asked.
“Brilliant!” David’s face was a wreath of smiles. “I haven’t ridden like that since… so long!”
Ramon noticed his hesitation, and change of tack, but refused to ask him about his past. Not today.
There’d be time. Things had been good, better than good, great…
terrific! Amazing! He couldn’t stop smiling himself.
Life didn’t get any better than this, did it?
Here he had David beside him riding out on the Trabucador.
After breakfast, they’d spent more time making love, so when they’d finally got around to doing the chores that had to be done around the place, it had been really late.
He could still taste David in his mouth, after a long drawn-out tongue-exploring kiss they’d shared before getting out of the car and de-floating the horses.
He carried the image of David even now present in his mind, ankles resting on his shoulders as he’d fucked him again, David smiling up at him, even through the pain.
Though he’d tried to be gentle, and he had.
But once he was inside him, David himself had been more insistent, wanting it harder, deeper, more aggressive.
And all the time they’d been gazing into each other’s eyes.
He’d got lost in that blue, that need and desire in his eyes as they’d surfed together up the back of that huge wave of their passion, surfing on its peak for timeless, never-ending moments, which nevertheless had come achingly, despairingly to a close as they’d tipped over the edge and come crashing down together, all the cum surging up from their balls at the same time.
As he’d come deep inside David, he’d felt his lover spurt his hot jizz over his stomach.
And they’d stayed like that, glued together in hot sticky wetness for long minutes as they kept kissing, not wanting it to be over, not wanting to come unstuck, or break the spell.
But all things eventually must end. Even so, the magical moment had lasted.
It had held them together enmeshed in each other’s bodies under the hot shower, then dealing with the chores that wouldn’t do themselves, before spending a further lazy hour in the pale spring sunshine, just lounging on a bench outside the masia and kissing non-stop, trying to get inside each other’s soul through their mouths.
David had wanted to pull him back into the bedroom, and he would have gone, but finally Ferro had whinnied in impatience, and Ramon had phoned the neighbor to see if they could borrow Desdemona, a young chestnut filly with come-hither eyes and a large white blaze down her face.
Ramon had changed into his weekend riding clothes—an old pair of gray jodhpurs and a heavy red-check bushman’s shirt.
David was wearing more or less what he would wear around the stables, except that Ramon had lent him a charcoal-colored pair of jodhpurs that set off his ass spectacularly.
His gaze kept sliding down there as they rode, wanting to get back in there as soon as they dismounted. Patience.
Soon the car park came into view, with Ramon’s pickup and the horse float poking head and shoulders above the other cars.
They walked their mounts up the beach and into the car park.
Tying them up to the horse float, they unsaddled and removed their tack, before rubbing them down.
On the far side of the car park was a toilet block with a tap.
Ramon took a coiled hose and a horse scraper from the back of his pickup, and they led the horses over to the toilet block.
There they hosed the animals down, scraping off the excess water with the metal scraper.
“There’s a café up the road. We can stop there for lunch before heading back?” Ramon suggested.
“Lunch? Almost getting on for dinnertime where I’m from. It’s nearly five o’clock.”
“I always eat late on the weekends.”
They watered the horses once they were sure they’d thoroughly cooled down, and then loaded them up into the float, where Ramon attached a feed bag to each horse’s muzzle.
“That should keep them happy for the return trip.”
As they got into the pickup and buckled up, it felt to Ramon like they’d been doing this together their entire lives.
Looking after the horses, they worked as the perfect team, helping and complementing each other with the feeding and grooming.
Ramon had known David was good with horses, but he’d never seen him ride before.
David was a natural, as if he’d been born in the saddle.
How could this not be the perfect life? This was the one, he knew it.
He was going to make this work whatever it took.
La Guingueta was a sort of beach shack set back among the dunes, with a wide terrace that looked like it had been tacked together from driftwood, while no two tables or chairs in the whole place matched.
As they drew into the car park, David was feeling more relaxed than he had in months, literally glowing.
As if a fire had been lit inside him, one that was shining out, lighting up the world, and everybody could see how happy he was.
He hadn’t felt like this in years—maybe even forever.
Part of it was getting back on a horse and having a decent gallop, sure.
He’d never got much of a chance to take the horses at the stable out riding.
In Barcelona, his life had been mainly working—mucking out, feeding, and helping to break in Boira.
And there was nowhere on Monju?c, or even throughout the city where you could gallop the horses like they’d just done.
He’d been missing that sort of hard riding without really realizing it.