Chapter Two Dust on His Mouth #2
“You are bleeding,” Drew said.
Hank touched the corner of his mouth. His thumb came away red where Drew’s teeth had caught him.
“So are you.”
A shallow cut crossed Drew’s shoulder where the steer’s horn had torn cloth and grazed skin.
Hank touched it with two fingers.
Drew shivered.
“Ride beside Carter,” Hank said. “If you feel faint, you tell him.”
“I am not going to faint.”
“You tell him.”
Drew stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Is that concern or an order?”
“Both.”
The answer changed Drew’s expression. For one brief instant, the teasing certainty disappeared, leaving something unguarded.
Then another rider called.
They climbed from the creek bed separately.
The drive continued.
Nothing between them returned to what it had been.
Every time Hank gave an order, he remembered Drew beneath him in the dust. Every time Drew answered, his mouth seemed to retain the pressure of Hank’s kiss. The crew noticed the split in Hank’s lower lip. Sam studied it, studied Drew’s torn shirt, and wisely asked no questions.
Near sunset they found a sheltered place to camp between two low ridges. The herd settled slowly, tired cattle bunching around the remaining grass. Sam organized the watches. Cookie served beans, salt pork, and coffee strong enough to remove paint.
Hank ate apart from Drew.
He failed to ignore him.
Drew sat beside Will, one knee raised, listening to a story that did not appear interesting. His shirt had been mended badly at the shoulder. In firelight, he looked less like a gentleman and more like the man he might have been without wealth arranging every choice.
Will leaned close to say something.
Hank’s grip tightened around his tin cup.
Sam sat beside him. “You are going to crush that.”
“It is tin.”
“It remains hopeful.”
Hank set the cup down. “Assign White to second watch.”
“I assigned him third.”
“Change it.”
“So the two of you can avoid each other at the same time?”
Hank looked at him.
Sam sighed. “Second watch.”
Drew disappeared before the fire burned low.
Hank noticed because he had been noticing everything.
He waited five minutes, then ten. When Drew did not return, Hank checked the horses and followed a faint line of footprints beyond the wagons.
He found Drew kneeling beside his saddle beneath a cottonwood, a folded map spread over one thigh. Moonlight silvered the paper.
“What is that?”
Drew folded it instantly.
“Nothing that concerns the herd.”
“Everything you do concerns the herd.”
Hank held out his hand. “Give it to me.”
Drew stood. “No.”
The refusal was quiet, but it landed between them like a drawn weapon.
Hank stepped closer. “You agreed not to touch another man’s gear. I did not imagine I needed to tell you not to carry secret maps.”
“It is mine.”
“Of what?”
“Country north of here.”
“Why do you have it?”
“I told you. I needed to go north.”
“You told me almost nothing.”
“And you kissed me anyway.”
Hank’s body responded to the reminder before his mind could stop it. Drew saw. His own expression changed, anger giving way to that dangerous, focused hunger.
“You use desire whenever I get close to the truth,” Hank said.
“Does it work?”
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised them both.
Drew’s hand tightened around the folded paper. “Then perhaps the problem is not mine alone.”
Hank could take the map by force. He could dismiss Drew before sunrise. Both choices would be sensible.
Instead, he caught the front of Drew’s shirt and pulled him close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.
“Second watch,” Hank said. “Do not be late.”
He released him and returned to camp.
Drew remained beneath the tree, the map trembling slightly in his hand.
Second watch came beneath a sky crowded with stars.
Drew rode the western edge of the herd. Hank took the eastern side, though there was no reason for the trail boss to ride at all. Night sounds carried between them: the low complaint of cattle, the creak of saddle leather, a drover singing softly near the rear.
They completed one circuit without speaking.
On the second, Drew left the line.
Hank followed.
They rode beyond the ridge to a narrow arroyo where the campfires disappeared from view. Drew dismounted first and tied Ghost to a mesquite branch. He did not turn when Hank came up behind him.
“Did you bring the map?” Hank asked.
“No.”
“That does not mean I have forgotten it.”
“I know.”
“Then why are we here?”
Drew faced him. “Because neither of us has forgotten the creek.”
Hank got down from his horse.
For a moment they stood apart, two men with every opportunity to return to their assigned positions.
Drew removed his gloves.
Hank took off his hat.
The small actions felt more intimate than undressing.
“You said games were safer,” Hank said.
“They are.”
“This does not feel safe.”
“No.”
“Tell me to go.”
Drew crossed the distance between them.
His hands went beneath Hank’s coat, palms flattening against his ribs. Hank inhaled as Drew’s thumbs found the scarred place along his side, then moved upward. Their mouths met without anger this time.
The second kiss was slower and far more dangerous.
Hank opened Drew’s shirt one button at a time. Beneath it, the man’s skin held the day’s heat. Drew pushed Hank’s coat from his shoulders and learned the shape of him through his work shirt, lingering where muscle tightened under his hands.
They looked at one another whenever the dark allowed it.
That was what undid Hank—not nakedness, not the desperate friction when their bodies met, not even the visible proof of Drew’s arousal beneath opened clothes.
It was the way Drew watched him. No man had ever looked at Hank as though strength and need could exist in the same body without canceling one another.
Hank pressed Drew back against the warm wall of the arroyo.
Drew yielded for three breaths.
Then he caught Hank by the belt, turned them, and reversed their positions.
“You command all day,” Drew whispered.
Hank’s heart struck hard against his ribs.
“And now?”
“Now you decide whether you trust me.”
“I do not.”
Drew’s mouth brushed his. “That was not what I asked.”
Hank could have stopped him.
Instead, he let his head rest against the earth and allowed Drew to set the pace of their kiss, their touch, and the slow surrender of distance between them.
He discovered that giving up control did not feel like weakness when Drew held it carefully.
Drew discovered that Hank’s roughness concealed a tenderness he offered only when he believed no one could see.
They learned each other without haste.
The night narrowed to heated skin, unsteady breath, and hands that asked before taking. Desire rose between them until thought became impossible. When they finally crossed the last boundary, it happened with Hank’s name against Drew’s mouth and Drew’s hand locked with his in the dust.
Afterward, neither man moved for a long time.
The stars continued their indifferent wheel above the arroyo.
Hank found his bandanna and dampened it with water from his canteen. Drew watched in silence as Hank cleaned dust from his cheek, then the faint blood at his shoulder.
“That almost resembles tenderness,” Drew said.
“Do not spread it around.”
“Your reputation would never recover.”
Hank sat beside him, shoulder touching shoulder. Their shirts remained open. Cooling sweat made the night air feel sharper than before.
“Who taught you to ride?” Hank asked.
“My mother’s brother.”
“Where?”
“Different places.”
“That answer was designed to end the question.”
“Yes.”
Hank folded the bandanna. “Do not lie to me about anything that can kill my men.”
Drew looked toward the dark outline of the ridge. “And everything else?”
“I will discover it eventually.”
“What happens when you do?”
“That depends on the truth.”
Drew’s face turned toward him. “What happens to this?”
Hank had no answer that did not feel like a promise.
“No claims,” he said at last. “No demands after daylight.”
Drew’s expression closed a fraction. “And no questions.”
“I did not agree to that.”
“You agreed when you came here instead of taking the map.”
Hank stood and fastened his clothes. Drew was right, which made leaving easier than staying.
At the mouth of the arroyo, Hank looked back.
Drew sat against the bank, shirt open and hair disordered, the composed stranger from the stockyard gone. He looked younger, but not innocent. Nothing about him was innocent now.
“Second watch ends in an hour,” Hank said.
“I know.”
“Do not make me come looking for you.”
Drew’s smile held no mockery. “You already did.”
They returned separately.
Before dawn, while Hank slept, Drew rode to a broken fence post half a mile west of camp. A railroad courier had marked it with three shallow cuts.
Drew placed a folded report inside the hollow wood.
Herd condition strong.
Route north follows Rourke’s private survey to Red Mesa.
First water source insufficient; alternate crossing required.
Leadership disciplined. Men loyal.
He had written nothing about the pooled mortgages.
Nothing about the deadline.
Nothing about the places Hank touched him when he trusted the dark.
Drew closed the post and rode back toward camp. The sky behind the herd was turning gray.
He told himself the omissions were temporary.
He told himself his loyalty still belonged to the father whose name he carried.
But the lie had begun changing shape.
Drew waited after the courier vanished, listening until the hoofbeats dissolved into the open country.
The folded report had been shorter than Warren requested.
Route confirmed. Herd strong. Water adequate.
Rourke commands loyalty. No mention of the mortgages, the neighboring ranches, or the desperate deadline at Copper Ridge.
He returned to camp by a path that kept him downwind of the remuda. The arroyo encounter remained on his skin: dust at his knees, the rough drag of Hank's hands, the unexpected gentleness of the damp bandanna across his face afterward. Every stride awakened a new point of soreness and a new memory.
The crew slept around two low fires. Drew found his bedroll untouched.
Hank sat on it.