Chapter Four Night Riders #2
“You made me wait.”
Drew shifted in the saddle, desire already unmistakable beneath the worn denim. “You enjoyed it.”
“I intend to discover whether you do.”
They rode into the cottonwoods.
Moonlight lay across a shallow hollow hidden from the herd. Hank dismounted and tethered his mare. Drew followed, every movement measured now.
Hank removed his gloves. “Sit.”
Drew leaned against a fallen trunk instead. “I am not one of your hands.”
“No. You are the man who agreed the winner chooses.”
Drew held his gaze, then sat on the trunk.
Hank approached.
He took off Drew’s hat and set it aside. He did the same with his own. Then he stood between Drew’s knees without touching him.
Drew waited.
Hank let the waiting lengthen.
He traced one finger along Drew’s lower lip, the same lip he had split against his teeth in the dry creek. Drew’s mouth opened beneath the touch, but Hank did not kiss him. He moved to the angle of his jaw, down the warm column of his throat, and stopped at the first button of his shirt.
“Still enjoying the wager?” Hank asked.
“Yes.”
Hank opened the button.
“And now?”
“Yes.”
Another button.
Drew’s chest rose beneath Hank’s hand. His composure had become very thin.
The visible pressure in his trousers was impossible to mistake, but Hank ignored it deliberately, directing all attention to slower places: the pulse in Drew’s throat, the line of his collarbone, the sensitive skin beneath his ear.
Drew’s hands closed around the edge of the log.
“You made me wait,” Hank said again.
“I remember.”
“You watched me surrender.”
“Yes.”
“Now you wait until I decide what I want.”
Drew’s eyes darkened. “And if I already know?”
Hank leaned close enough for their mouths to brush without meeting. “You know what you want. You do not know what I do.”
Drew turned his face, chasing the kiss.
Hank stepped back.
The sound Drew made was half frustration and half laughter.
“You are vindictive.”
“You challenged me.”
“I will make better decisions in the future.”
“No, you will not.”
Hank finally kissed him.
He took Drew’s mouth slowly, refusing every attempt to hurry. His hands opened the rest of the shirt and found the skin beneath it. Drew’s body was hot from riding, marked faintly at the shoulder where the steer had grazed him.
Hank kissed the healing cut.
Drew’s head tipped back.
The urge to possess surged through Hank, but he remembered the barn that had not yet happened, the future argument neither of them could foresee. Tonight possession was not what he wanted.
He wanted the man to stop hiding.
Hank sank to one knee before him, not in surrender but attention. Drew went still as rough hands moved along his thighs and stopped short of the place his body demanded them.
“Hank.”
“Not yet.”
Drew’s fingers entered his hair. He did not pull. The restraint of that hand nearly destroyed Hank’s own.
When Hank rose, Drew caught his face between both palms and kissed him with all the hunger Hank had cultivated. The struggle for control returned, familiar and thrilling. They pushed at one another’s clothing, mouths breaking apart only for breath.
Then Drew’s fingers found the scar along Hank’s ribs.
Hank flinched.
Drew stopped immediately.
The change was so abrupt that Hank felt it more sharply than touch.
“Did I hurt you?” Drew asked.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Old damage.”
Drew opened Hank’s shirt farther and examined the pale line curving across his side. “From what?”
“A horse fell on me when I was twenty-six.”
“You nearly died.”
“I did not.”
“You answer concern as though it were accusation.”
Hank tried to close his shirt.
Drew prevented him with one hand, not forceful, merely present. Then he bent and pressed his mouth to the scar.
The kiss held no provocation.
Hank’s breath caught.
Drew followed the old injury with slow tenderness, touching the part of him Hank regarded as damaged without pity or fear. Desire remained hard and insistent between them, but it was no longer the only thing happening.
Hank put one hand on the back of Drew’s neck.
“Look at me,” he said.
Drew lifted his face.
Hank kissed him differently.
The urgency softened. He tasted Drew as though time had ceased to be a threat. They lowered themselves into the grass without breaking contact. Drew’s shirt became a pillow beneath Hank’s head. The roughness of their bodies meeting remained, but beneath it ran a current of care neither man named.
They gave one another pleasure without competition.
When the moment overwhelmed them, Hank held Drew close rather than turning away. Drew stayed with his face pressed to Hank’s throat, their hearts beating against each other until the rhythm slowed.
For the first time, neither reached immediately for clothes.
Drew traced the edge of Hank’s scar again.
“Who was he?” he asked.
Hank knew what he meant.
The past rose before him: a smaller ranch, a younger body, a man with soft brown eyes and an easy promise for every fear.
“His name was Daniel Price,” Hank said.
Drew waited.
“He kept my books. Rode beside me for four years. Slept in my house for three.”
“Did you love him?”
“Yes.”
The word still hurt, but differently now. Like a scar touched carefully.
“What happened?”
“He sold our winter route to rustlers, emptied the payroll box, and left while I was in town trying to keep three hands from being arrested. By the time I understood, he was across the border.”
Drew’s hand stilled.
Hank looked at him. “That frightens you.”
“It should.”
“Why?”
“Because you trusted him.”
“And?”
Drew sat up, reaching for his shirt. “And I asked a question I had no right to ask.”
Hank caught his wrist.
The black bandanna remained tied there.
“Do not retreat every time you learn something real,” Hank said.
Drew looked at him with an expression Hank could not read.
“What if the real thing is worse than you imagine?”
“Then let me decide what to do with it.”
Drew’s eyes shone briefly in moonlight. He leaned down and rested his forehead against Hank’s.
They remained that way until a metallic clatter sounded beyond the trees.
Both men froze.
Another crash came from the southern side of the herd, followed by shouting.
Hank was on his feet before the echo died.
They dressed as they ran.
The cattle exploded into motion.
Hundreds of animals surged north, frightened by a line of clattering cans dragged through the grass. Hidden riders shouted from the dark, cracking whips and firing pistols into the air.
“Stampede!” someone yelled.
The word disappeared beneath thunder.
Hank reached his horse and mounted without a stirrup. Drew swung onto Ghost beside him.
“Take the east flank!” Hank shouted. “Turn the leaders!”
Drew rode.
The herd became a moving wall of horns. Dust erased the moon.
Hank forced his mare along the western edge, shouting the old trail calls, trying to bend the cattle rather than stop them.
A stampede could not be halted by force.
It had to be turned inward until the leaders circled and the animals behind followed.
Sam appeared through the dust on the far side.
Hank saw Drew ahead of them.
Ghost ran nearly shoulder to shoulder with the lead steers. Drew leaned low over the roan’s neck, one hand on the reins, the other waving his hat across the cattle’s vision. A horn passed within inches of his leg.
Hank’s heart seized.
“Drew!”
The name vanished into noise.
He pushed his mare harder and reached the front quarter. Drew looked across the leaders at him. No words passed between them. They had worked together long enough to understand.
Hank angled left.
Drew drove from the right.
The leaders resisted, then turned a fraction. Hank held pressure. Drew closed the gap. The herd began curving across the plain, first a shallow bend, then a widening arc.
A steer stumbled. Another went over it. Men shouted warnings.
Hank saw a hidden rider emerge near the ridge, dragging a rope strung with tin cups and wire. The man cut the rope and fled.
Drew saw him too.
“Stay with the herd!” Hank called.
Drew did.
Together they tightened the circle until the running cattle spiraled inward and slowed. The thunder became individual hoofbeats, then bawling, then the harsh breathing of exhausted animals.
Hank counted riders.
All present.
One man had a broken wrist. Another bled from the scalp. Seven cattle were down, two beyond saving.
It could have been hundreds.
Hank dismounted with shaking legs.
Drew came through the settling dust. He slid from Ghost and crossed the distance between them.
Neither spoke.
Hank seized the back of his neck and pulled him close. Their foreheads met exactly as they had in the hollow, but now the contact was desperate, almost violent.
“You stayed with the herd,” Hank said.
“You told me to.”
“I thought you would chase him.”
“So did I.”
Hank closed his eyes. “Thank you.”
Drew’s hand pressed against his chest, directly over his racing heart. The touch, public enough to be dangerous, lasted only a second.
Sam called for Hank.
They separated.
While Hank organized the injured and ordered the dead cattle marked, Drew walked to the place where the saboteur had abandoned the noise line.
He found new wire in the grass.
Not ordinary fencing wire. This was smooth steel telegraph wire, expensive and recently cut. Around one end, someone had wrapped a strip of leather stamped with a small letter B.
Briggs.
Drew knew Luther’s equipment. Warren’s enforcer marked every saddle, case, and coil because he trusted no employee not to steal from him.
Drew closed his fist around the leather.
Hank approached through the dust. “Find something?”
Drew’s heart pounded.
The truth was in his hand.
Behind Hank, men tended one another beneath a lantern. Sam supported the rider with the broken wrist. Ghost stood trembling, foam on his chest.
Drew thought of Daniel Price.
He thought of the way Hank had said, Then let me decide what to do with it.
He opened his hand—but not enough to reveal the mark.
“Wire,” he said. “The rider cut it loose.”
Hank took the clean end and examined it. “Telegraph wire.”
“So it appears.”
“You recognize it?”