Chapter Six Red Mesa #2
Hank stepped back. “Who was the man?”
Drew removed his coat. “You intend to begin with interrogation.”
“I intend to begin with truth.”
“Calvin Morse works for my father.”
“At the railroad?”
“Yes.”
Hank’s eyes sharpened. “What did he want?”
Drew folded the coat over a chair. “Information.”
“About?”
“Me.”
It was a lie arranged around truth.
Hank knew.
Drew saw the recognition and crossed the room before Hank could speak. He placed both hands against Hank’s bare chest.
“This is not an answer,” Hank said.
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“Something true.”
He kissed him.
Hank resisted for one breath. Then his arms closed around Drew with punishing strength. The kiss became an argument conducted without words, Hank demanding honesty, Drew offering desire because desire was the only truth he could give without destroying everything.
Hank broke away first.
“You do this whenever I get close.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because when you touch me, I am not his son.”
The confession emerged without planning.
Hank’s anger shifted.
Drew rested his forehead against Hank’s shoulder. “I spend every hour deciding which part of myself belongs to whom. On the trail I work for you. In town he reaches through walls. I wanted one room where he did not exist.”
Hank’s hand moved slowly up his back. “Then do not bring him into it.”
Drew lifted his face. “Let me wash you.”
The request surprised Hank.
Drew went to the bath and tested the water. Still warm.
“Sit,” he said.
Hank looked toward the bed.
“Not there.”
Drew knelt beside the tub.
For a moment the trail boss remained motionless, caught between suspicion and hunger. Then he removed the rest of his clothing.
Drew looked.
He made no effort to hide it.
Hank’s body was as weathered as his hands, powerful without vanity, marked by sun where clothes ended and paler skin beneath. His arousal was unmistakable, yet he did not cover himself. Trust and challenge existed together in the act of being seen.
Drew’s own body tightened painfully beneath his trousers.
Hank noticed.
“You are overdressed,” he said.
“This is not about me.”
“That appears optimistic.”
Drew smiled. “Get in.”
Hank lowered himself into the bath. The tub was too small for his frame. His knees rose above the water, and one arm rested along the rim.
Drew removed his shirt and rolled his trousers to the knee. He knelt beside the tub with soap and a clean cloth.
He began with Hank’s hair.
Water darkened the silver at his temples. Drew worked soap through the thick strands, massaging until the hard line between Hank’s brows eased. He rinsed carefully, shielding his eyes with one hand.
No one spoke.
Drew washed his shoulders next. Dirt clouded the cloth. He followed muscle and old scars, touching each without question. Hank watched him with an intensity that made the simple care feel more intimate than the barn.
“You have done this before,” Hank said.
“Bathed?”
“Taken care of someone.”
“My mother was ill for two years before she died.”
Hank’s expression softened. “How old were you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Your father?”
“Employed nurses.”
“That was not what I asked.”
“No. It rarely is.”
Drew washed Hank’s hands, turning each palm upward. The hands that commanded men and handled rope lay quiet in his. He traced a scar near the thumb.
“When did anyone last do this for you?” Drew asked.
Hank looked toward the window. “I do not remember.”
“Daniel?”
“No.”
The name remained between them.
Drew brought Hank’s knuckles to his mouth and kissed them.
Hank’s arousal shifted visibly above the bathwater. Drew’s own response strained against his clothing.
“I thought this was not about you,” Hank said.
“It is not.”
“Your body disagrees.”
“My body has developed poor judgment.”
Hank reached over the rim and hooked two fingers inside the waistband of Drew’s trousers.
Drew caught his wrist. “Wait.”
The word changed the air.
Hank’s eyes darkened with memory of the spring. He let his hand fall.
Drew continued washing him, slow enough to become an exquisite test of restraint. The cloth traveled over his chest, along his ribs, and across the scar Drew had kissed in the moonlit hollow. When Hank’s breathing deepened, Drew slowed further.
“You are cruel,” Hank said.
“You like waiting.”
“I liked it once.”
“You will like it again.”
“What did you win?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why do you choose?”
Drew leaned close. “Because you came to room seven hoping I would.”
Hank’s hand closed around the back of his neck and pulled him into a kiss.
Water spilled over the tub.
Drew laughed against his mouth, then lost the sound as Hank deepened the kiss. The trail boss rose from the bath, water running down his body. Drew backed toward the bed under the force of him.
Hank stopped before touching the mattress.
“You still have clothes on.”
“You seem offended.”
“I am considering options.”
Drew opened his trousers and let them fall.
Hank looked at him with naked concentration. The visible evidence of Drew’s desire left no room for distance or performance. His body had been waiting since the door opened.
“You wanted one room where your father does not exist,” Hank said.
“Yes.”
“Then look at me.”
Drew did.
Hank kissed him while removing every remaining barrier between them.
The encounter began with hunger left over from the alley, the railroad pin, and a stranger’s hand on Drew’s coat.
Yet jealousy did not control it for long.
Drew guided Hank back to the bed and knelt between his knees, drying water from his shoulders with a towel.
Hank took the towel away and used it on Drew instead.
They tended and desired each other in turns.
Drew learned the rare expressions that crossed Hank’s face when he was not guarding them: surprise when kissed gently, relief when allowed to rest, fear when tenderness lasted too long. Hank learned how Drew’s composure dissolved when someone asked what he wanted and waited for the actual answer.
“What do you want?” Hank whispered.
Drew looked at him.
The truthful answer was impossible in daylight and dangerous even here.
You beyond the drive.
You after my name becomes a weapon.
You when there is nothing left to hide behind.
“For you not to leave this bed tonight,” he said.
Hank’s eyes held his. “That I can give.”
They lay down together.
What passed between them was prolonged, unhurried, and deeply physical. They explored without competition, listening to breath and touch rather than rules. Hank’s strength became gentleness; Drew’s control became permission. When urgency returned, it built gradually until both men shook with it.
They reached for one another again before the first intimacy had entirely settled.
Later, sweat cooling between them, Drew lay on his side tracing the line of Hank’s shoulder. Hank’s hand rested at his waist. The room smelled of soap, damp wood, and their joined heat.
Outside, saloon music traveled up from the street.
Hank’s eyes closed.
Drew watched him.
Sleep made the trail boss look less severe. The silver at his temples caught the lamplight. His mouth, so often flattened around an order, remained soft from kissing.
Drew nearly spoke his real name.
The urge rose with such force that he sat upright.
Hank opened his eyes. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Do not lie in bed with me.”
Drew looked away.
Hank touched his back. “Tell me something else, then.”
“Something true?”
“Preferably.”
Drew considered.
“My mother called me Andrew only when she was angry. Every other time, I was Drew.”
Hank was quiet.
“That is why you chose it,” he said.
“It is mine.”
“And White?”
Drew’s throat tightened. “Borrowed.”
Hank sat up behind him. His chest touched Drew’s back. “From whom?”
“A man I once knew.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Would he object?”
“He would not know.”
Hank kissed the back of Drew’s neck. The touch sent a fresh visible response through Drew’s body.
“You are difficult to question like this,” Hank murmured.
“That may be why I keep coming back.”
Hank’s hand moved across his stomach, stopping before desire turned explicit. “You are not the only one.”
They slept.
Drew woke in darkness with Hank’s arm across him and the shocking comfort of another man’s breath against his shoulder. For several minutes he remained still, allowing himself to imagine that the room existed outside time.
Then Hank woke and reached for him without speaking.
Their second encounter was quieter than the first. No jealousy drove it, no wager shaped it. Half asleep, they held one another close and let intimacy become language. Drew pressed his face against Hank’s throat to silence the name he almost confessed.
Near dawn, a sound came from the alley.
Drew rose and went to the window.
A figure moved below, leading a horse.
By the time he pulled on trousers and reached the street, the alley was empty.
His saddlebag hung open in the livery.
The false bottom had been disturbed.
The main route map was gone.
The red survey stake and Briggs’s stamped leather remained, either overlooked or deliberately left. A strip of gray wool had caught on the buckle.
Calvin.
Drew closed the bag and felt the trap narrowing.
Hank entered the livery behind him, shirt open beneath his coat.
“What happened?”
“Someone went through my things.”
“What did they take?”
Drew looked at him.
He could say the map. He could give Hank Calvin’s name and explain the railroad’s plan. The night they had shared should have made honesty inevitable.
Instead, fear chose for him.
“Money,” Drew said.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
Hank’s face became unreadable.
He stepped closer, reached past Drew, and lifted something from the bottom of the saddlebag.
A small brass crest.
Whitaker Railroad.
Drew had never seen it before. Calvin had planted it, or it had torn from the map case. Either explanation led to the same place.
Hank turned the crest between his fingers.
“Your family acquaintance,” he said. “He works for them.”
“Yes.”
“What does the railroad want from you?”
Drew’s pulse struck hard.
“I told you. Family matters.”
Hank closed his hand around the crest. “You told me not to bring your father into that room.”
“I meant it.”