With his legs in the air, Brent just lay there, helpless, undignified and disoriented, and took Joe’s exploration of his ass and AJ’s enthusiastic ministrations to his cock as if they were his due as either sex slave or king of the world. Or both. Inside he was floating, curiously hollow and light. For the last couple of days, hurt had weighed him down with a force that was almost physical…and now it was gone.
Joe hadn’t slept with another guy last night. He’d gone out cruising, there was no way he hadn’t. Maybe he’d passed up an offer, or maybe he’d struck out, but either way the end result was the same—
Shit, I’m in love with a man.
AJ got a little too enthusiastic, and he squeezed out, “AJ, teeth.”
She jerked to a halt and then Brent felt Joe mouth a demonstration on his balls. Good old Joe. AJ quickly followed suit by covering her teeth with her wet lips before bobbing on him again, and within minutes, Brent was tense and poised to blow. He groaned when AJ pulled off him, but then Joe moved, and sudden fierce suction from a hot, unyielding mouth had him bowing off the bed, yelling at the top of his lungs as he came. He felt Joe’s every hard swallow on the head of his cock and nearly wept at the relief.
When AJ slid off to the side and laid her head on his heaving chest, Joe stood up, still fully dressed and sporting a hell of a bulge in his jeans.
“Apology accepted?” he asked. “Are we even now?”
“You have to ask?” Brent said roughly.
“Good. Then I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” He walked out and closed the door behind him.
Brent heaved a tired sigh and pulled AJ closer, feeling as though they’d just stepped back from the brink of Armageddon. Now that Joe had evened up the blowjob score—like they were ten-year-olds exchanging Indian burns on the playground—he probably thought their relationship would settle back into the game of cat and mouse they’d been playing for years. Maybe it would. Maybe it should. Brent didn’t want to go back to the way he’d felt the last couple of days, and he sure as hell didn’t want to lose Joe. But he also hated the idea of going back to the sidelines and watching Joe fuck everyone but him.
What are you afraid of, Joe? AJ’s challenge earlier in the evening suddenly took on new significance. Exactly what was Joe afraid of, and how did AJ manage to pin him down so neatly?
If Brent didn’t know better, he’d almost say Joe was afraid of him.
His heart beat faster. Shit, that was exactly what it felt like—as if he had turned into the aggressor and Joe was on the defensive.
As if he were the hunter and Joe was the prey.
What are you afraid of, Joe Remke?
Brent had a feeling that if he wanted to find out, he was going to have to start pushing. Hard. But he had to be prepared for that fact that when he did, Joe would either push back or he would flee, and either one could put both of them in a world of hurt.
“What are we going to do with that idiot?” AJ asked.
“When you figure it out, tell me,” Brent said, stroking her silky hair, “because I have no idea.”
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Brent woke to the sound of rain slashing against the windows. According to last night’s weather, which he’d watched while eating a bowl of homemade ice cream with Aunt Val and Uncle Stu, the big, slow-moving low pressure system was supposed to linger for a couple of days. That meant it would probably be at least three or four days before it was dry enough to get back in the field.
He was ready to climb the walls just thinking about it. If the season were over and they were back at his place outside of Goodland, he’d happily spend the duration in bed with Joe and AJ. Now that the status quo had been somewhat restored, they could probably find all kinds of kinky ways to fill their time.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t get away with that during the season. The crews always used weather downtime to perform routine maintenance on all the equipment, and everybody would notice if the three of them spent a few days rocking the RV. That wouldn’t be good for any of them.
But a trip west might. Taking a few days off with Hake and Mandy always relieved the tension between him and Joe for a good month at least.
Joe appeared in the doorway, naked in the dim gray light. His hair was rumpled and his eyes heavy with sleep, but his body was plainly ready for action as he slipped under the covers on the other side of AJ. She shivered but didn’t wake up when he snuggled up against her backside.
“You up for a piece of Mandy’s pie?” Brent asked in a low voice.
Joe looked surprised. “Always. What brought this on?”
“Well, since Hake’s getting rained out, too, it seems like a shame to waste three or four days hanging around here greasing zerks, changing oil and adjusting chains when we could be…” he raised a brow, “…greasing and adjusting other things.”
“I like your thinking.” Joe glanced down at AJ. “I assume we’ll take her?”
“Hell yes. I’m sure she’d like to meet Mandy, and since she’s stuck working with men all the time, giving her a girls’ weekend would be the perfect excuse. The guys are already used to us taking a time-out in Garver, so it only makes sense to get it out of the way now.”
“Nothin’ that says we can’t stop again on our way back, though.”
Brent grinned. “I like your thinking.”
“When do you want to leave?”
“No time like the present.” Brent kissed AJ awake. She protested a little and tried to snuggle back into her pillow until he said, “Ariel Jane, how would you like to take a little road trip this weekend?”
Her eyes popped open. “Really? Are you serious? I thought it was my turn to change the air filters and blow out the radiators.”
“Dietz can handle the dirty low-man jobs this time. Maybe that’ll make him think twice about clearing clogs without turning off the rotor.”
She noticed Joe behind her and gave him a quick smile. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, I thought maybe we’d head up the interstate and get you some boots in Sioux Falls, then head west to Garver to visit my cousin Hake and his wife. We were planning on stopping there on the way back, but with the weather holding us up, I thought it might be nice to get away today. Maybe stay a couple of nights if the rain keeps up.”
Joe nuzzled the side of her breast, apparently intent on starting the day with something more exciting than breakfast, but AJ was having none of it. She swatted him away and scurried out from under the sheet. “I need to take a shower!”
She was almost to the door, naked as the prettiest jaybird he’d ever seen, when she stopped in her tracks and turned around. “Wait. What are you going to tell your cousin about me?”
Brent grinned. “Why do I have to tell them anything? There’s no law that says you have to tell everything you know.”
She chewed her lip for a second and then said, “Okay. I guess that’s true.”
He and Joe looked at each other and grinned.
“What?” she demanded. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothin’,” Joe said. “You’re just cute.”
She scowled at them and then disappeared through the door.
“So apparently you’re not going to tell her everything you know, either,” Joe said, bunching AJ’s pillow up under his head. “You gonna call first?”
“Nah. They can all be surprised.”
“Interesting. You’re thinking of expanding AJ’s horizons even more?”
“Why not? I know Mandy’s still got a million fantasies, and I imagine Hake must have a few too. Come to think of it, what about you? You’ve got to have a fantasy or two.”
Joe’s look darkened. “I don’t have fantasies,” he snapped. Then he took a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m still a little tired. Told you I need my beauty sleep,” he added with a weak grin.
“I’ll drive so you can sleep if you want.”
“Nah, I’ve never been able to sleep in a moving vehicle.”
“Not a bad thing for a
man who has to spend fourteen hours a day behind the wheel of a tractor.”
“You got that right.” Joe sighed and closed his eyes. “Wake me up when everyone’s done with the shower.”
Brent sighed, too. Yeah, it was definitely time for a trip to Garver.
An hour later they were on the interstate, with AJ between them again, handing out breakfast sandwiches from the McDonalds drive-through. She would probably have been more comfortable in the backseat but they’d had to pile their bags there with their jackets to keep them dry.
Contemporary country music filled the silence while they ate, and it wasn’t long before Brent relaxed and started to enjoy the drive. Turning down the radio a little, he asked, “So did you always go by AJ or was that something you picked up along the way?”
“I went by both for quite awhile,” AJ said, scooting her feet from the hump in the floor to either side of it. “Dad called me AJ because he wanted another boy. Mama called me Ariel because she wanted a pretty little china doll she could dress up and show off.”
“Let me guess—neither of them got what they wanted.”
“Give the man a prize.”
Well, that explained a lot about Ariel Jane Pender. “And how did they handle that?” he asked.
AJ thought about it for a minute. “Dad handled it better than Mama because he already had his boy and I was her only daughter. She tried not to let it show, but I could tell she was disappointed that I was more interested in tinkering with tractors and caring for animals than sewing and baking and doing all the other crafty little things she liked. About the only interest we really had in common was horses, and Dad thought they were a huge waste of time and money so we never had any.”
“That’s too bad,” Joe said. “Every girl should have a horse.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” AJ said with a small smile. “But you know, I think once she saw what a help I was to Dad, Mama mostly got over her disappointment. After my brother Kevin enlisted and I took over the day-to-day care of the cattle, she let me off the hook for household chores with barely a whimper.”
Brent grinned. “Stoic farm wife.”
“She was that,” AJ said in a somber tone. “Which is probably why the cancer got such a foothold before they found it. I didn’t even know she was having problems until she went in for a hysterectomy my junior year, and by then it was way too late.”
“What a waste,” Joe said darkly.
AJ nodded. “It really was. I was kind of mad at her for a few years after she died,” she added with a sigh. “When prom rolled around, I finally had a boyfriend I wanted to impress, and she would have loved helping me get all dolled up. She deprived us both of that experience by refusing to go in for annual exams.”
He laid his hand on her knee. “I’m sorry.”
“I am too. I still miss her.”
“So what about your brother?” he asked. “Is he older or younger?”
“Kevin is three years older than me and he went into the service right after graduation. It was a real shocker for Dad. He’d always thought his only son would follow in his footsteps, but Kev wanted to see the world, so he became an army mechanic. Dad finally started accepting more help from me in my senior year, but I don’t think he ever gave up on Kev coming home and taking his rightful place.”
The melancholy look on her face made Brent want to dig the old man up and kick his ass.
“He still in the service?” Joe asked.
“No, he’s an airline mechanic in Chicago now. I haven’t seen him since the funeral. But enough about me,” she said briskly. “It’s your turn to talk for a while. Where are you both from? How’d you get into custom farming?”
Neither of them answered at first, and they challenged each other with expectant looks until Brent sighed. “I’m from Goodland, Kansas, and farming runs in my family.”
She gave him a reproachful look. “That’s all you’ve got to say after I spilled my guts?”
“What?” He gave an exaggerated shrug. “My dad and two of my stepfathers were farmers.”
“Two of your stepfathers? How many did you have, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Four. So far.”
“So far?” she parroted again. “Are you expecting another?”
“With Mom, it’s always a possibility. I hear the last one died a few months ago and she’s not one to let grass grow under her feet.”
The dark, rainy weather made the atmosphere inside the pickup seem even more intimate. When she squirmed in her seat again, Joe shifted his arm from its spot along the top of the backrest and pulled her against his side. After a quick glance up at his face, she turned and settled back into him.
“Did you move around a lot as a kid?” she asked Brent.
“Yeah. It was good conditioning for running a custom farming outfit. I’m not sure I’d know what to do if I was planted in one place for more than a few months at a time.” Not that he didn’t have a place to plant himself should he feel the urge. Besides his home place, he’d invested in a lot of farm land in and around Goodland over the past twenty years, most of which one of his brothers rented. When and if he was ever ready, he could settle down and farm for no one but himself.
“What about you, Joe?”
He looked out the window for a second before saying, “Midlife crisis.”
She leaned up and turned to look at him. “What kind of crisis?”
“The kind where you sell off everything you own and go see the world.”
“You guys drive me crazy,” she said, flopping back against him with a grunt. “I can tell what you’re not saying is way more important than what you’re telling me.”
Joe looked down at her disgruntled face. “Guess your mama didn’t raise no dummies, did she?”
“No, she did not.”
“My wife divorced me,” he finally said, “and I didn’t feel like hanging around drinking beer and staring at an empty house for the rest of my life.”
Brent’s chest constricted. That was more than Joe had ever told him. Oh, he knew Joe had been married—he’d let slip something about his wife when he’d had a few shots one night, but he’d never anything more than that.
“I’m sorry,” AJ said softly. “I’m divorced, too. It sucks.”
Joe gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Bad one?”
“Not really. It happened a long time ago, and it was a mutual decision, no fighting or anything. But it’s never easy when the future you see for yourself gets derailed by things that are beyond your control.”
That explained even more about her. Brent would have liked to fish for details, but he hadn’t been too forthcoming himself, and really, it wasn’t any of his business. Joe looked grim, but AJ snuggled back against him and soon drifted off to sleep.
At first Joe held her almost gingerly, afraid that he’d wake her up if he moved. But after almost an hour of sitting in the same position, his joints and muscles started to ache. Taking care not to jostle her any more than he had to, he ducked out from under the shoulder belt and turned to lean against the door and pulled her more comfortably against him, letting himself enjoy this small taste of intimacy and trust. Letting himself pretend for just a little while that he was worthy of a woman like this.
When they drove into Sioux Falls, he declared it was his turn to buy lunch and he wanted steak.
Yawning and stretching, AJ pointed out, “It’s been a while since I bought you guys lunch. It should be my treat today.”
“Forget it,” Joe said. “You’re saving every penny.”
“Well, I can at least buy my own.”
“Quit arguing, AJ. I’m buying today.”
She gave him a narrow look that said she didn’t appreciate his domineering ways but let it slide as she grabbed her down vest out of the backseat.
Lunch was uncomfortably quiet, but that’s what happened when you tried to keep your business your own—nobody wanted to put anybody else on the spot for fear of being next. If AJ ha
dn’t been there, he and Brent would probably have been making kinky plans for Hake and Mandy. As it was, he mostly sat there trying to anticipate AJ’s reaction to their involvement with the Stivers, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. For a farmer, she was sure an unpredictable little thing.
After lunch, they pulled into the gas station right next door to the restaurant. Brent went inside to pay and make one last pit stop while Joe filled the tank. As he stood there with his hand on the nozzle, a beat-up sedan pulled in on the other side of the pump and a pimple-faced young man in baggy jean shorts and a hoodie got out, leaving the engine running. When he reached for the nozzle, Joe tensed. For Christ’s sake, he had a sleeping toddler in the backseat!
“What are you, stupid?” He pointed at the sign plastered to the canopy’s column. “Turn off the engine.”
The kid gave him a “screw you” look and picked up the nozzle.
“Are you trying to get us all killed?” Joe growled, his chest tightening as his heart began to pound in his ears. “Turn it off. Now.”
Acting as if he hadn’t heard a word, the kid shoved the nozzle into his tank. Before he could lift the lever, Joe was on him. Shaking with rage, he shoved the scrawny little bastard aside and opened the driver’s door to turn off the ignition.
“What the fuck!” the kid yelled, grappling against his back. “Get the hell away from my car.”
Joe took the keys and slipped them into his jeans pocket.
“Give me my fucking keys!”
“You can have them back when you’re done filling up.” He went back to the other side of the pump, but AJ had already hung up the nozzle and replaced the gas cap.
“You can’t keep his keys, Joe,” she told him quietly.
“Watch me.” He leaned back against the pickup door, his arms crossed over his chest. “Someone’s got to keep that little girl safe.”
“Listen to her, old man. You can’t keep my keys.” The little prick pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “I’m calling the cops.”
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