Nowhere Ranch

by Heidi Cullinan

  I didn't even make it to the hallway.

  He grabbed me around the waist, and when I tried to fight him, he pulled me back and wrestled me to the floor. I kicked and clawed and swore, but he held me down. He pressed his body against mine and held me against the carpet, held me down and waited, stared down at me while I shouted and cursed and tried to fight, held me until I stopped fighting.

  I turned my head to the side and stared at the far wall, at the bookshelf with all Travis's books lined up there. I was tired and numb, and I just lay there, waiting to see what happened next.

  Eventually he said, “I may have done this poorly.”

  I shut my eyes and willed him to shut up.

  He groaned, shifting his weight against my body, and then he laughed, a funny, sad sound. “Riley would laugh his head off at me just now. He'd say this is exactly what I deserved.”

  I willed him to shut up harder.

  “Explain it to me, Roe. Explain why you don't want to go home.”

  I opened my eyes but didn't look at him. “Because it won't work.” I didn't really know what I was saying. It was like I was talking and listening to myself at the same time. “Because they want me to be a Roe I can't be, and it will only hurt everybody more if I go back.” I paused. “But it's hard to hear him asking and not answer.”

  It seemed so damn simple when I said it like that. Why the hell it had to tear me up so much, I will never know.

  “What's the Roe they want that you can't be?” he asked.

  I was still staring at the wall, but it was fading, turning to gray mist. “Straight.”

  His sad sigh ripped me up almost as much as the letter did. “I'm sorry.”

  I gave a curt nod. But when he brushed a kiss against my cheek, I shut my eyes.

  “Do you want me to call Tory and cancel tomorrow?” he asked.

  That brought me out of my funk in a hurry. “No. I said I would cook. I want to cook.” I tried to sit up, but the room was spinning, and I had to brace my hands against the floor to keep from falling over. “I just got to get my bearings again.”

  I felt his hand on mine, and all that strength came rushing back. “Let me help you.”

  No, I tried to say, but the same part of me that wouldn't let me go home kept my mouth shut and made me nod.

  And he did help me. He was a real good help. He helped me get organized and basically kept my head from wandering off. He wouldn't let me get worked up over the stockpot and pointed out you could still soak a bird in it with a dent on the side, so we did. He helped me put the oranges and things in with the brine, even though he did leave the damn stickers on half of the fruit. He carried it to the fridge and shoved everything over to make room for it too.

  After helping me organize my recipes for the morning, he made me get in the hot tub. We didn't talk, just sat there and soaked. It felt good. And after, he took me to bed.

  I had thought I wanted a rough fuck, but it ended up being tender, just rubbing cocks with a lot of kissing. Afterward we lay stuck together, the semen drying like glue between us, which usually he hates, but tonight nobody seemed able to move.

  Eventually he said, “I haven't done anything but send my mom Christmas and birthday cards for five years. And my father died with the last words between us being him telling me to get my stinking faggot ass out of his house.”

  “I don't even do cards,” I confessed.

  “Is that easier?” He seemed to be genuinely curious.

  I shrugged and stared up at the ceiling. “Dunno.”

  “You were close to them? Before?”

  I nodded. “When I was twenty, they found me out. It wasn't pretty. I tried to stay around town, but that only made it worse, and that was how I ended up in jail. When I got out, I left. It was better after that.”

  “And you just kept moving. So they couldn't find you, or so you didn't get attached?”

  I couldn't say anything to that. It made me feel funny, the way he said it. Kind of shitty too. And lonely.

  He laughed softly. “You really do hate talking.”

  I turned to look at him. He looked funny in the dark, his face all full of shadows. “I'm just trying to do right,” I said. “Trying not to hurt anybody. Trying to stay out of trouble.”

  I felt fluttery and strange when he stroked my face. I shut my eyes, swimming in the feeling. It went on a long time, though, and when I opened my eyes again, he had the damnedest look on his face. You would have thought I had used the crop on him well past “no.”

  “If you need, now or ever, to go back home, I don't want to be in your way.” His fingers fell on my lips. “But outside of that, I'd really rather you didn't leave.” His thumb stroked my chin and he added, “Ever.”

  He looked like he was going to be sick now. I frowned at him, but that only made him worse. “You okay, Travis?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” he whispered. “Are you going to run?”

  I tried to prop up on my elbow to get a better look at him, because he made no fucking sense at all, but he reached up and grabbed my arm so tight it hurt, and I figured it out. And yeah, for a second, I panicked. But I was getting used to these two parts of me, the fluttery top part that felt guilty and wanted to get away from Travis, and the part underneath that seemed to have a better handle on everything. And it was getting stronger, because it held me in place until I calmed down enough to speak.

  “So you're telling me you're getting serious on me?” I said at last. “That this is more than fucking after all?”

  He really, really looked scared, but now he was angry too. “Roe, you sleep in your own bed at best once a week. Your toothbrush is here. You get dressed in your apartment, and occasionally you shower or go over there to ‘get some space.’ This has been more than fucking for months now.” He held on to my arm like he was afraid that now as he'd pointed it out, the bubble would burst.

  Well, he had a valid fear.

  I lay back down and stared at the ceiling. I should have been scared, but somehow I wasn't. Surprised, yes. And yet, not really. I thought about how the idea of leaving had torn me up, about how my feet hadn't so much as itched since forever.

  “Well,” I said at last. I shook my head.

  He did not let go of my arm or even let up. “Roe?”

  I turned my head and gave him a severe look. “So what is it you're suggesting, exactly?”

  He got pissed again. “I'm not suggesting anything! I'm just telling you that you had better not fucking leave!”

  “Well who said I was leaving?” I thought of my birthday whipping and his threat after. Hadn't we already had this conversation?

  Apparently we hadn't had it enough, because he was serious. “You get this look about you sometimes. If I go into town, I spend the whole time watching to make sure your car doesn't peel off down the highway. They've figured out to sit me near the window at the cafe. I just know one of these damn days I'm going to come back, and you'll be gone, and I'll have no fucking way to find you. It makes me want to tie you up in my basement and never let you out, ever.”

  I tried to pry his hand off my arm. I didn't say anything, because I didn't know what to say. It had never occurred to me that somebody would get that bent out of shape over me leaving. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, either. Good, I guess, but kind of panicked too. Which I guess he knew, which was why he was cutting off circulation to my arm.

  Which was why he had held me down so hard on the floor.

  Which had been smart, because if he hadn't, I seriously would be gone.

  I thought of my brother, asking me point-blank to come home, telling me with words that he needed me, and I felt bad that I could ignore him. I felt awful about my dad. I felt lousy about the no granddaughters and my mom's pain and how overwhelmed Bill was, but I couldn't go with them even if Bill came himself and got down on his knees.

  I don't know why I could ignore that but could have Travis just say, “Don't leave” and that was it: I wasn't going to leave.
>
  I turned into his arms, and I kissed him. I slid my body against his, and when the kiss turned deep and made me dizzy, I lifted my knee and wrapped my leg around him, hugging him close and opening myself at the same time. I grabbed his hand and slid it over my hip, back toward my crease. I knew there would be no fucking now because we were too tired, but I needed to let him know he already had me, that I wasn't going. I needed to remind him that I let him into me in ways I didn't let anybody else. I needed him to feel that this was his body as much as mine. I needed him to get that, even though I had been slow about it, I had understood in my own way too this was more than we had been pretending. That even though it scared me, I was holding on.

  I needed him to get that I was glad he'd been there to catch me when I fell apart, that I was glad that he fought me when I told him I didn't want to be caught.

  Dinner the next day was good. It wasn't quite as joyous as it would have been if I hadn't had the letter, and Haley asked me several times what was wrong. But Travis eventually told her to let it go, and she did.

  The turkey was not bad. Everybody seemed to enjoy the meal, and I was glad I didn't let Travis cancel it. I wished I hadn't felt so disconnected, wished I hadn't kept thinking about the Thanksgiving my family was having back in Iowa. But it was still good.

  That night we had the first snow of the year. Once everyone was gone and the dishes were cleaned up, Travis and I sat in the hot tub, wrapped in each other's arms, and watched it fall.

  I was going to have to answer the letter eventually, I knew. I couldn't go home, but I couldn't not say anything, not when I knew what it had cost Bill to write all that. But I wasn't going to write him yet.

  I leaned back against Travis's shoulder. I felt the warmth of his body, the protective circle of his arms around me as we sat in silence and stillness and steam, and I felt okay again.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  It was right before Christmas that we got the dogs.

  I had been going round and round with Travis about how he needed dogs for the operation. I pointed out we'd have an easier time herding and that they could be an extra line of defense against predators, and when we needed to do a quick roundup for emergencies, we wouldn't have to call in as many hands. I said I sure could have used them for the calving. I even did the research with Haley's help on local border collie breeders who had cowdogs for sale.

  Travis, as usual, put all his faith in his fence. Which I had to admit, it was good fence when it worked. The truth was, I wanted the dogs for the sheep, but I kind of wanted them for myself too. We always had dogs at the farm, and they were usually more than a little bit mine. One of them even ran off trying to find me when I left. Obviously I hadn't had a dog since then, with all my traveling. But Travis didn't want the fuss of puppies. He pointed out that border collies were hard to train and that he'd have to get on some damned long list to get them and pay through the nose for the privilege of having to do all the work to train them. He was right. I knew that.

  It's just that I really did want a dog.

  Tory had a real sweetheart of a pup, an ungodly mutt in at least ten directions, I swear. Polly was a brown and white patched little lover whose main gene pool seemed to be terrier, and she always came up and gave me kisses when I stopped by the house. Having a real kitchen and people to feed was inspiring me, especially with Christmas coming on, and Travis started making me farm the food out so he didn't get fat. I tried to tell him he could just get off Chaucer and walk a bit more and eat what he liked, but that just got him cranky, so I started taking things over to Tory's place. It wasn't long before I kept a bag of dog biscuits in my car so I could slip a few to Polly when I came by.

  I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it, and I did my best to keep my yen for a dog to myself. I was having plenty of fun on my own. We did up a tree too, just a small thing that we cut down from the north pasture. Travis liked that it was from his property, I could tell.

  That was the thing with Travis. He didn't get out of his office much, but he did love his spread. He really liked running it even. I could never keep all that in my head like he could. I need to get my hands in it, like Haley says. But Travis actually doesn't do well in real time. Which is why we don't make a bad team, in my opinion.

  Ranching, I mean.

  Anyway, we were doing up the holidays like nothing else. Cookies, cakes, stews and roasts, and little twinkly lights in the windows. Haley got into it too, bringing over these big gaudy red plastic bows to hang on the stall doors, and I admit, they looked nice, though the horses sure didn't care. Travis took me on a lot of what Haley teased me were “romantic rides.” In theory we were checking his precious fence, but mostly, yeah, we were just taking a nice ride. He was always on Chaucer, of course, and I ended up on Pepys.

  It took me three weeks to figure out his name was not spelled “Peeps.” It turns out Pepys was some old diary writer who liked to fiddle under his maid's skirts. Chaucer had rung bells too, so I Googled. Apparently it was some important classic in Middle English. Travis said they were sometimes a little rude too.

  “I thought you were a math guy, not a story guy,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Riley was an English major. His horse was Rochester.” A smile flickered on his lips. “He liked to find the ‘naughty bits’ in literature, as he called them.”

  I didn't care much for that smile, but I told myself to get over it. “You miss him? Riley?”

  Now the smile flashed at me, for me, and the sore spot in my midsection eased. “Not lately, no. I'm content to be the ‘chatty’ one for a change.”

  He found that funny, that I said he was chatty. But goddamn, he was.

  Anyway. I was telling about the dogs.

  I'd resigned myself to not having one. In fact, I reasoned, it was better. Because despite Travis's telling me he wanted me to stay, I wasn't some dummy thinking nothing was ever going to come between us. Something would. We were, I knew, in “a relationship.” But lots of things could tear it apart, and eventually one of them would succeed. It'd be hard enough not to be with Travis, and the thought had driven me to braid many, many leathers. I surely didn't need to be missing a dog too.

  But then one night when Haley and I were working, Travis stuck his head into the kitchen and told me we were getting up early in the morning and to get my ass to bed.

  “Where are you going?” Haley asked, covering a yawn as she packed up her computer.

  “I don't rightly know.” I watched a second yawn follow, bigger than the first, and I frowned at her. “Listen here, if coming over here is making you tired—”

  She waved a hand at me and shook her head. “It's these classes that are killing me. That and the cold. At least it's not supposed to snow again tomorrow.” When she rose, she bent over and kissed me on the top of the head. “You two be safe wherever you go, okay?”

  Haley was always kissing me on the top of the head. It was ridiculous how much I liked it. “Will do,” I said.

  I headed upstairs, where I knew Travis was waiting for me. Haley wouldn't have known what that extra little growl in his voice had been about when he told me it was time to go to bed, but I did. Before I headed to the bedroom, though, I hit the bathroom at the top of the stairs, did some business and some prep, and headed down the hall to meet him.

  As I knew he would be, he was on the bed, lounging, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. He doesn't look particularly hairy when he's dressed, because he shaves close and generally wears long sleeves, but he's actually more than a bit of a bear. His gray-brown hair curls in a thick pelt across his chest and down his arms, and right then it caught the dim lamplight and made me want to jump onto the bed and bury my face in it. His right hand was tucked casually under the pillow, but that just thrilled me more, because I knew why he was hiding it, knew what he was wearing there. He had figured this out last week, and now he hid it to ramp me up.

  I undressed without
being asked, but I did it slow and extra clumsy, letting my eagerness and my nerves show, because I knew that ramped him up. But I was nervous, yeah. Because I saw the canister on the bed stand, and I saw the towel draped over the bed.

  When I was naked, I went over to lie down on that towel. I waited a second, looking him in the eye, and then I pulled my legs back, held them open, and waited.

  He pulled his hand—cased in a glove—out from its hiding place and reached for the grease.

  It turned me on when we did this all silent, no questions, no instructions, just looks and sounds, but it freaked me out too. For him it added to the wickedness of it all, that he was greasing up with Crisco to shove his fingers way up my ass. I lay there, still and quiet, looking into his eyes as he worked the first finger into me. He watched my face for the first few thrusts, but because he couldn't help himself, pretty soon he looked down and watched. I did then too. It was fucking hot. He'd propped up a few pillows behind my head, but I leaned forward as much as I could to see his slicked-up fingers—two now—going inside me.

  “We really are leaving early in the morning.” He kept his eyes on his work, speaking casually, like pushing his fingers in and out of my ass was just something he had to get done before he went to bed. It made my blood hum.

  “Where we headed?” I wasn't able to be casual. My voice was thick, and my words were raspy. He liked this too.

  He added a third finger, and I moaned.

  “East.” He pushed his fingers in deep and twisted. “Going to check on something to see if it will work out.”

  And that was all the information I was going to get about our errand tomorrow.

  His pinky worked its way in beside the others, and I gave up, lay back, and sang.

  He had not properly fisted me yet, but the mindfuck was that he could have, because my body and my mind were both ready. I was so fucking ready it wasn't funny. This game would end tonight, I knew, as it always did, with me red-faced and straining, looking up at him in a haze as I begged in slurred speech for him to please put his hand inside me and fuck me. I would tell him how much I loved his fingers scraping inside me. I would describe my insides with crude and ridiculous terms both, because he liked that—why the hell he got turned on by me saying I wanted him to stroke my velvet channel I don't rightly know, but Jesus did that make him bite hard on my lip. And let me tell you how I wanted that, no matter what you called it. I wanted so bad to look down and just see his wrist or even forearm showing. I wanted to know he was in me. I wanted to feel so vulnerable and safe at once. I wanted it like I had never wanted anything else.