“Got it.”
“Good. I’m on my way.”
During the endless drive across the field, he called Greg Hunnicutt and let him know they’d be the only team running the rest of the day. Joe was just driving in with a couple of full wagons and Brent flagged him urgently as he drove by. When he reached the end rows, he powered down, burst through the door and cleared the ladder without touching it.
Joe was right behind him, and once in the pickup, they tore through the end rows at a bone-jarring pace.
“What happened?”
“Dietz got caught in the fucking corn head.”
Joe swore. “That little bastard. How many times have you warned him about clearing clogs without turning off the rotor?”
“Not enough, apparently.”
They fishtailed onto the gravel road and headed south. When he blew through a stop sign, Joe snapped, “It won’t help anyone if you kill us getting there.”
Ignoring him, Brent floored it, and two minutes later they pulled into the field. He headed straight for the combines and tractors gathered near the east end, bumping over the rows and praying he didn’t tear out a brake line on the stalks.
The sight that met his eyes weakened his knees and nearly made him toss his lunch. The corn head was splattered with gore, the ground and stalks beneath it were soaked with blood, and pieces of boot leather and faded denim hung in the chains between two snoots. Out to the side, in the stubble, Seth lay unconscious on his back. Eric was on his knees, keeping a belt cinched just above his left knee, and Tim was using his flannel shirt to staunch the bleeding, keeping pressure with both hands on what was left of the leg while tears streamed unchecked down his face. Keith was doing the same to Seth’s right leg, which looked to be bloody but intact, at least. God dammit, Tim was too young to have to deal with this shit. They all were.
He stripped off his jacket, but instead of adding it to the pile spread over Seth’s torso and upper legs, he laid it over Tim’s shaking shoulders.
“How are you holding up, son?” When Tim just nodded, he asked, “Do you want me to take over there?”
When he shook his head in an emphatic negative, Brent turned his attention to AJ, who knelt at Seth’s head. “You doin’ okay, babe?”
She sniffed but nodded, stroking Seth’s deathly pale face and rough, reddish hair with tender fingers. “You’re going to be okay, Seth. Tim’s got you and he’s not going to let you go. You got that? You’re not going anywhere.”
“Damn right, you’re not going anywhere,” Joe growled, crouching down beside AJ, “because I’m going to kick your stubborn, stupid ass into the next county as soon as you’re out of the hospital. You hear me, boy? I’m not leaving your side until the doc tells me you’re out of the woods and ready to take an ass-whupping for not following the fucking rules.”
The ambulance arrived, along with a sheriff’s patrol and a couple of volunteer fire trucks, so they all moved back to let the paramedics take over. AJ’s tears finally started, and Brent held her against his chest and rubbed her back while he and Tim answered the deputy’s questions. He wished he could do the same for Tim, who looked lost and was obviously suffering from shock himself. Joe wasn’t any help—he stood there wearing the darkest expression Brent had ever seen on him.
When the deputy had finished his report, Brent couldn’t take it anymore. He reached out and hooked a hand around Tim’s neck, pulling him into their hug. The boy’s shaking increased, so Brent slid his hand up into his hair and pulled his head down on his shoulder.
“What are we gonna do, Brent?” Tim groaned. “Shit, what if he dies? Seth is all I got left.”
Both their parents had died in the last few years, their father of a heart attack and their mother in a car accident.
AJ shifted to slide her arm around Tim’s waist, and Brent suddenly felt a kind of peace he’d never known. He squeezed her hard in gratitude.
“He’s gonna get through this, Tim,” he said. “I can feel it. But no matter what happens, you’ve got a home with us, so don’t you worry about anything right now except getting him well.”
“Thanks,” Tim whispered.
They all looked up at the sound of a helicopter. It seemed to take forever for it to land, but once on the ground, the paramedics quickly prepared Seth for the flight and loaded him up. One of them waved Tim over.
“You go on with Seth,” Brent said, turning him loose. “We’ll secure things here and then follow in the pickup.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Eric said. “You go ahead.”
Brent looked at Joe. “You comin’?”
Joe gave a short nod and turned toward the pickup without a word.
Nine long, tense hours later, they arrived back at the camper. Seth had been transferred to a Sioux Falls hospital for surgery, and Tim accompanied him. Brent had already arranged for Eric and Keith to take up the Dietzs’ pickup in the morning so Tim would have a way to get around, and they’d driven through a Burger King on the way back so supper was out of the way. Now all he wanted to do was fall into bed and hug the people he loved close.
When he tugged AJ toward his bedroom, she followed willingly. He stripped down to his jeans and then kissed her as he undressed her, worshipping her body with his lips and his heart. Then he urged her onto the bed and covered her with the spread.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “I’m gonna find out what’s holding Joe up.”
When she nodded sleepily, he added, “Don’t go to sleep or I’ll have to kiss you awake.”
Her smile squeezed his heart painfully.
As soon as he stepped out of the bedroom, he heard the shower running. He leaned against the wall outside the door and waited, desire tightening his groin as he imagined Joe soaping his big, hard body under the running water. Dammit, the time for dancing around whatever hovered between them was over—no matter how it ended, he loved Josiah Remke every bit as much as he loved Ariel Jane Pender, and he needed to settle this thing now, tonight. The shock of seeing Seth lying there broken and fighting for his life had fired conflicting emotions in his chest—sorrow for the young man who’d lost his leg and stood to lose so much more, and guilty gratitude that it wasn’t Joe or Ariel lying there fighting for their life. In that moment, he’d known with dead certainty that if he went to his grave without having made love with both of them, his whole life would have been tragically wasted.
And though Joe had barely said two words all afternoon, Brent was convinced he felt the same. Yeah, for some unknown reason he was fighting it for all he was worth, and yeah, he’d probably try to leave after they’d slaked their lust a time or two. But Brent intended to fight him every step of the way. After all, he had Ariel now, and with her, he felt as if he could handle just about anything life—or Joe—threw at him.
When the door opened, Joe stopped short, wearing nothing but a towel slung around his neck. “Brent.” He hesitated for a second and then walked into the bunkroom.
Brent grasped the overhead doorjamb with both hands and watched as he dug out a pair of navy briefs and stepped into them. “Really think you need those?”
“I’m tired and my head hurts,” he said. “Think I’ll pack it in for the night.”
Brent watched him for a heartbeat, anxiety tightening his gut. “You can sleep if you want to, but I’d like it better if we were all together tonight. You don’t have to perform for anybody. It’s been a pretty hard day all the way around and I don’t think any of us have much energy.”
“You know we all sleep better when I’m in here,” Joe said evenly as he tossed back his blanket and sat on the edge of the bunk.
Something told Brent this was a fight he had to win.
“You belong with us.”
Joe stiffened and leveled a flat stare at him. “Look, boy, I think you might have got the wrong idea here. I like you both, I really do, but I’m not looking for anything besides an occasional fuck. If you think there’s more to it than that then it’s probab
ly best if we don’t take this any further.”
“Oh, we’re taking it further.” Brent dropped his hands to unbutton his fly and stepped into the bedroom. “You want a fuck? Well, so do I, and I’m not leaving this room without it.”
Joe stood up and propped his fists on his hips. “You gonna throw down with me, Brent?”
Brent’s mouth turned desert dry. Not only was Joe older, meaner and a hell of a lot more experienced at most everything, but he outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, all of it hard-earned muscle.
“Go ahead, try it,” Joe prodded mockingly. “I could knot you up like a pretzel with one hand and you know it.”
Shit, this was gonna hurt. But it had to be done.
“I love you, you stupid son of a bitch,” he threw out.
Joe’s smile was more of a sneer. “I think that makes you the stupid one, boy.”
Brent ground his teeth. That was it.
He took a deep breath and charged him.
A crash loud enough to rock the RV jolted AJ out of a sound sleep. A second one made her sit up with a gasp.
“What the hell?”
She rolled out of bed and reached for her clothes, hurrying when the grunting, shouting and banging of what was clearly a brawl intensified. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she breathed as she tugged on her jeans and yanked her T-shirt over her head with shaking hands.
Bracing herself, she rushed into the living area and then leaped barefoot onto the couch with a yelp when two big, half-naked bodies flew her way. Already bruised and bloody, Brent landed on top and pulled back to deliver a punch, but Joe deflected the blow then wrapped his forearm around the back of Brent’s neck and delivered two short punches to his face.
“Joe, stop it!” AJ screamed.
“He started this,” he grunted. He grabbed a handful of Brent’s hair and pulled his head back. “You had enough, boy?”
“Fuck you,” Brent spat, depositing a spray of blood on Joe’s chin. Pulling out of the bigger man’s grasp, he staggered to his feet, breathing heavily. “I love you, asshole, and you love me. Admit it.”
Joe stood, too, keeping his body in the loose stance of a fighter ready to strike.“I don’t love. I fuck. Period.”
“Why?”
“Who gives a shit why?”
“I do, you stupid motherfucker!” Brent threw himself at Joe hard enough to send them both crashing onto the bedroom floor.
AJ hopped down from the couch and went after them. “God dammit you two, stop this right now!”
“Stay out of it, AJ,” Brent grunted as the idiots kept right on wrestling, their hands grappling for purchase on each other’s sweaty, bloody flesh.
Joe finally worked himself into a dominant position, shoving the side of Brent’s face into the floor and twisting his arm up behind his back. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you, boy?”
“I’m not quitting until you fuck me,” Brent gasped, his face contorted in pain.
“You still wanna fuck?” Joe released his arm and stood up, dragging Brent’s nearly limp body along with him. “Fine. Let’s fuck.”
Chapter Seventeen
He tossed Brent facedown onto the bed and yanked his already loose jeans down his hips and off his bare feet. Then he did the same with his shorts. Planting a knee on the bed and a hand in the small of Brent’s back, he stared at the tight, round cheeks of his ass.
“AJ, hand me the lube.” When she hesitated, he pinned her with a look. “Now, or I’ll fuck him without it.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Now.”
“Dammit!” She grabbed the bottle of lube out of the nightstand and handed it to him.
“The applicator, too. Screw it onto the top.”
She obeyed with a venomous look. “I’m not watching this.”
“Fine. Run and hide somewhere, little girl.”
“Gutless, Joe,” Brent muttered. “You’re fucking gutless.”
His chest tight and his throat aching, Joe spread Brent’s cheeks and jammed the applicator into his asshole without comment, squeezing the bottle hard enough to fill his rectum with the slick lube. Then he pulled it out and squirted a ton of gel up and down his crack. Tossing the tube onto the floor, he slicked his fingers up and pushed one against that puckered flesh he’d longed to breach for so many years.
“The harder you push out, the less this’ll hurt,” he advised before shoving it in a little too quickly for Brent to fully obey.
Brent grunted and struggled to accommodate his thick finger. Aside from the tonguing he’d given him last week, Joe was pretty sure the only anal penetration Brent had ever experienced was one of Mandy’s slim fingers during a blow job, and he relished the almost painful tightness gripping his knuckle.
“You want my cock up there, you’re gonna have to push a lot harder than that, boy.”
“Can’t even call me by my name when you fuck me, can you, Joe?”
“Who needs a name? You’re just a shiny new asshole to open.”
“Cruelty now,” Brent grunted. “Must have hit a nerve, huh?”
To hell with preparing him. Joe was going to fuck the little shit into unconsciousness just to shut him up.
He yanked out roughly, smeared his slick fingers up and down his cock and then notched the head against that barely opened hole.
“If you can’t even find the guts to call me by my name, you sure as hell can’t work up the guts to look me in the eye when you fuck me, can you, Joe? What is it you’re so scared of?”
Pulling back with a frustrated growl, Joe picked him up enough to shove him up the bed and then rolled him to his back. He grabbed Brent’s ankles and bent his legs out and back, then knelt at the altar of his virgin ass.
“You asked for this, Brent,” he said, glaring into his face. “Remember that.”
He reached down briefly to position his cock again and then held both Brent’s ankles and leaned on him, forcing the head into his ass without mercy.
“Christ,” Brent squeezed out between his gritted teeth, his eyes closed tight as he twisted big handfuls of the bedspread.
“Push.”
His eyes opened, liquid brown and luminous. “I love you, Joe.”
“Well, I don’t love you.”
“Why not? Tell me why you don’t you love.”
Joe forced his cock in an inch, drawing another curse from Brent. “Because,” he grunted. “Love. Sucks.” Another painfully tight inch. “It sucks when you love, ’cause then you go and do something stupid, like get married and have a kid.”
Another inch, and then another. Brent’s hard-on had withered between their bellies, and a couple of tears leaked from the corners of his eyes but they remained stubbornly open in spite of the pain Joe was inflicting.
“It sucks when your kid is driving home from school and runs a stop sign on a country road.”
He shoved his cock all the way in and Brent arched, shouting, “Ow, fuck!”
Joe let go of one of his ankles and grabbed his chin with cruel fingers, forcing him to look at him.
“And it sucks when you hear that sickening screech of metal on metal and you know your kid is due home any minute. It sucks, Brent,” he snarled, “when you’re the first one on the scene and you find your kid’s car mangled almost beyond recognition under the wheels of a goddamn semi.”
He realized he was practically shouting, but he couldn’t help it and he couldn’t stop. Ten years of bottled-up fury was erupting without his permission.
Tears spurted from his own eyes as he leaned harder into Brent’s ass, his mouth just inches from the beautiful sculpted lips that were pulled back in a grimace of agony. “It sucks when you have to call 911 before you can pull his lifeless, broken body out of that mess, and it fucking well sucks when your fifteen-year-old son, the son you love more than your own worthless fucking life, can’t hear you tell him you love him because he’s already dead!” The breath he sucked in was more of a sob. “He’s dead in your arms in the fu
cking weeds on the side of the fucking road for more than ten minutes before the ambulance gets there, and all you can do is beg him to not to go, to come back!”
He pulled back halfway and rammed in again. Ignoring Brent’s choked cry, he closed the gap between them and bit that plump lower lip hard, barely aware of the hot rain flowing down his cheeks.
“And like that doesn’t all…suck bad enough,” he panted, grinding his cock as deep into Brent as he could get, “it sucks when the woman who’s been your wife for sixteen years, the woman who swore to love you to the grave and beyond, shuts you out and can’t stand the sight of you and divorces you, and you never see her again after the judge signs that fucking paper that says your marriage no longer fucking exists!”
He took another painful, shuddering breath. “It sucks, Brent. Do you get it now? Love fucking sucks, and I don’t want anything to do with it ever again!”
In response, Brent grabbed his head with both hands and pulled him back down. Staring into his eyes, he croaked, “Then fuck me, Joe. Just fuck me.”
Joe stared back, his thick, dark lashes glistening with tears. “God dammit, why are you making me do this?”
Brent couldn’t think of a single thing to say except the truth. “Because I love you.”
Joe squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Then he looked down at Brent again. “Dammit,” he whispered.
He leaned down with a groan and kissed Brent in a clash of lips and teeth that made him taste blood for the second time that night.
Brent’s heart cracked in his chest, breaking with love and grief and anger for all that Joe had lost. Joe. Jesus, he loved the man almost more than he could stand, and yes, it sucked because maybe Joe would lever let himself love back. It sucked to put his body and his mind and his heart on the line and know that none of them would probably ever be whole again.
But this kiss…Joe’s kiss… It was nothing like he’d dreamed it would be, and yet everything he’d ever dared to hope for. There was more than fucking in this kiss. More than the ruthless, polished seduction he’d seen Joe use on males and females alike. There was desperation and hope and longing, and dammit, there was love. He couldn’t be wrong about a kiss like this.
Carnal Compromise Page 17