16. Every Empty Room
Every Empty Room
For the next day, Harris and Jay behaved exactly the way they had agreed to behave, which turned out to require considerably more effort than Harris had anticipated.
Around other people, nothing changed. Jay worked with Priya and Eli while Harris moved between the barn and pastures, and when they crossed paths they kept it ordinary.
That mattered more now that his family knew Jay dated men; Harris had become painfully aware of how often the two of them disappeared together.
Keeping it ordinary was one thing. Feeling ordinary was another.
Harris could pick Jay’s laugh out of the yard without trying.
He noticed whenever Jay came through a doorway, whenever his hair came loose from its tie, whenever they passed close enough that touching him would have required only a few inches of bad judgment.
Apparently admitting what he wanted had removed whatever useful mechanism had previously allowed Harris to pretend he didn’t.
Jay did not seem to be having an easier time.
Harris caught him looking more than once, and by lunch their attempts at discretion had acquired the strained quality of two men concentrating much too hard on not doing something.
They had agreed this would stay private.
What neither of them had accounted for was how difficult privacy became when wanting someone made every empty room look like an opportunity.
Harris was checking the stitching on a breast collar after lunch when someone entered the tack room behind him.
He knew who it was before Jay spoke.
“Is this one of the places where you pretend to be busy until I leave?”
It took more effort than it should have for Harris to keep his attention on the leather. “Actually busy.”
“That must be nice.”
Jay came farther inside. The tack room was cooler than the barn aisle, though not by much.
Leather and saddle soap held the day’s warmth, and dust moved through a strip of sunlight near the doorway.
Outside, Noah was talking near the wash rack while one of the wranglers answered from the stalls.
Close enough to hear. Close enough to walk in.
Harris set down the breast collar. “You still mad?”
“Yes.” Jay leaned one shoulder against the wall.
“All right.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something defensive, perhaps. You’re depriving me of an argument for which I prepared extensively.”
“Sorry.”
Jay stared at him long enough that Harris felt the corner of his mouth threaten him.
“That was upsettingly close to sincere,” Jay said.
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
The familiar rhythm eased something that had been sitting tight beneath Harris’s ribs all morning, though Jay’s expression remained more serious than his words.
“I’m not angry that you were inexperienced,” he said. “I need you to understand that.”
“Do.”
“I’m angry because you decided what I was allowed to know before touching me.”
Harris glanced toward the open doorway. Nobody had appeared there, though the voices outside remained an irritating reminder that anybody could.
“Know that too.”
“And?”
“And you were right.”
That quieted Jay.
The admission was not easy, but Harris had spent the previous night saying harder things. Apparently honesty did not become pleasant simply because he had agreed to try it more often.
“I should’ve told you,” he said. “Won’t do it again.”
“Lie to me?”
“Pretend I know when I don’t.”
Jay studied him. “That’s a more ambitious promise.”
“Yup.”
“Are you sure you can keep it?”
Harris considered lying about that too and decided the irony would be excessive. “Nope. Can try.”
The last of the tension in Jay’s face eased.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Temporarily acceptable.”
Harris nodded toward the doorway. “Meeting adjourned?”
“Almost.”
Jay pushed away from the wall and came toward him.
There was nothing ambiguous about the direction he was headed, but he moved slowly enough to give Harris every chance to object. Harris stayed exactly where he was.
“You sure?” Jay asked.
The question was about more than a kiss. Harris knew that now.
“Yup.”
Only then did Jay close the remaining distance.
The first contact was restrained, almost careful, which Harris tolerated for perhaps three seconds before sliding a hand behind Jay’s neck and pulling him closer. The low sound Jay made against his mouth went straight through him.
Whatever anger remained sharpened the kiss without turning it cruel. Jay’s fingers caught in the front of Harris’s shirt, pulling as much as holding, and Harris answered by walking him backward until his shoulders met the saddle rack with a muted knock.
“Quiet,” Harris said against his mouth.
Jay pulled back just far enough to give him a look of bright, offended disbelief. “You put me here, asshole.”
Harris kissed him before he could elaborate.
Jay came fully against him this time, chest and stomach and thigh solid against Harris’s body until every point of contact registered at once. A horse struck one hoof against a stall door outside. Noah laughed somewhere farther down the aisle.
The ranch continued around them, oblivious and much too close.
Harris knew he should step back. Instead, the awareness of where they were seemed to sharpen everything—the heat of Jay’s mouth, the hand at the back of his neck, the pressure when Jay dragged him down and met every bit of force Harris gave him with more of his own.
Harris was learning that about him. Jay pushed back. Not against Harris exactly, but in answer.
He liked that quite a fucking lot.
Jay’s hand slipped beneath the back of his shirt, warm fingers spreading over his lower back before finding the waistband of his jeans. His palm disappeared beneath it, gripped Harris’s ass, and pulled their hips together hard enough to leave no question about what either of them wanted.
Then the touch changed.
Jay’s fingers moved into the crease of Harris’s ass, and every muscle in Harris’s body went still.
Jay felt it immediately.
“No?” he asked quietly.
Harris could hear his own breathing in the small room.
Nobody had ever touched him there. He had understood abstractly that Jay might eventually want to, but thinking about the possibility had required nothing from him.
Feeling Jay’s hand there was different—unfamiliar enough to raise every instinct Harris had for caution, while beneath that uncertainty something warmer pulled in the opposite direction.
Jay began to withdraw.
Harris caught his wrist before he could.
“Didn’t say no.”
“You stopped breathing.”
“Still breathing.”
“Hmm. That’s debatable.”
Harris held his gaze. Saying what he needed should not have felt this difficult after everything they had already done together.
“Slow.”
Whatever Jay saw in his face wiped away the teasing. His attention settled completely on Harris.
“Okay.”
He kissed him again, softer now, while his hand stayed where it was. There was no push for more, only the steady warmth of Jay’s palm and one fingertip tracing slowly along the crease. Harris felt his body begin to loosen by degrees.
Jay waited for it.
Only then did the touch shift, brushing deliberately across his opening without pressing inward.
The sensation itself was small. Harris’s reaction was not.
His fingers tightened behind Jay’s neck as heat shot low through him, startling enough that for a second he could think about little except the fact that he had liked it.
Jay paused against his mouth. “Still okay?”
“Yup.”
The second pass came just as slowly.
This time Harris’s body answered before his head could interfere. His hips shifted into the touch, and the sharp breath Jay drew against his cheek told Harris he had felt the movement too. Jay’s hand tightened at his side.
That reaction made everything hotter.
Harris still could not have said whether he wanted more. The question felt too large and too far ahead. Right now, he knew only that he did not want Jay to stop, and he was beginning to understand that he could let that be enough.
His hand found the front of Jay’s jeans.
Jay’s head fell back against the saddle rack with a rough, immediate “Fuck.”
Then footsteps sounded in the aisle.
Harris locked up so fast it hurt.
Voices followed, close enough that he recognized Evan before the words became clear. Someone else was with him—Pete, maybe—but identifying the second voice immediately became the least important problem Harris had.
Jay’s hand vanished from his jeans.
Harris moved back too quickly and caught a hanging bridle with his shoulder. The bit struck the wall with a bright metallic clink that sounded, to Harris, approximately as subtle as a rifle shot.
“—should have the new hinges Friday,” Evan was saying.
Shit.
They were still coming.
Jay grabbed the nearest saddle blanket and held it up as though he’d devoted his entire professional life to textile inspection.
Harris turned toward the workbench, retrieved the breast collar he had abandoned, and tried to force his breathing into something that belonged to a man performing ordinary tack maintenance rather than one who had just had another man’s hand down the back of his jeans.
Evan reached the doorway with Pete from the neighboring ranch beside him.
His attention moved from Harris to Jay.
Harris kept his expression still, though Christ knew what the rest of him looked like. Jay’s hair was wrecked, his mouth red from kissing, and one side of his shirt had worked loose from his jeans. Harris could still feel the heat of his hand on skin nobody else had ever touched.
Evan glanced at the saddle blanket. “What are you doing?”
Jay looked down at it as if only then discovering what he had grabbed.
“Harris was explaining saddle-pad construction.”
Harris nearly closed his eyes.
Evan blinked. “Why?”
“Visual literacy.”
Silence settled over the tack room.
At least Pete seemed deeply uninterested in whatever bizarre production discussion he had interrupted. Evan was less helpful. His eyes moved back to Harris.
Harris lifted the breast collar. “Stupid production question.”