Nathaniel

by Jan Irving

  He froze when he saw a nude Nate sitting on the blanket, looking up at him.

  “Look at you!”

  Aaron fought the need to cup a hand over himself.

  Anyway, it wouldn’t be adequate because he was…. Nate stared at him with something like awe.

  “You’re definitely not a baby,” he said. He lifted a hand and Aaron took it, a little scared, but burning now, burning so that he couldn’t do anything but let Nate burn him to ash.

  Nate pulled him down, and they immediately crushed together. Their arms wrapped around each other, sliding over backs. Nate dared to reach down and touch one of Aaron’s snowy buttocks and squeeze it. He gave a little snicker when Aaron jumped.

  Aaron liked the sensation it caused him, making his cock flex. He definitely liked having his ass squeezed by Nate.

  “Lie back on the blanket, Aaron,” Nate encouraged. “It’s a little cold, but we’ll warm up when we….”

  Panting, Aaron obeyed, staring up at Nate.

  “Don’t be afraid.” Nate cupped his cheek. “I only want to make you feel good.”

  Aaron nodded vehemently at that idea so Nate laughed again.

  “Spread your legs.”

  Feeling more vulnerable than he ever had in his life, conscious of the wind and sun on his bare body, exposed in so many new ways, Aaron obeyed Nate’s gentle prompt, sitting up on his forearms to watch the other man crawl between his legs. The same wind that touched Aaron stirred Nate’s brown hair.

  Then Nate bent down and licked Aaron’s cock.

  “Uh!” Fire again.

  “I keep wanting to channel kindness or intention or some goddamned thing into touching you, the way I tried at first, the way my mom taught me,” Nate said, looking up to meet Aaron’s eyes. “But I short out whenever we touch. It’s like when I was in Hawaii once, and I would swim into the big waves and they’d catch me, and I’d roll over and over again until I struck beach. Touching you is like that.”

  “I have never been to Hawaii,” Aaron said. Please touch me again. Please put your lips… oh, there! Oh, yes!

  “Mmmmm.” Nate purred as he opened his mouth and took the tip of Aaron’s cock in his mouth. “I love sucking you.”

  Aaron yelled, fists knotting in the blanket, his body arching up so Nate was forced to take more of him, deeper, surrounding him in tormenting heat. “Nate!”

  Nate pulled away as if to ask Aaron a question, but Aaron couldn’t hear or understand him. There was only the roar of his blood, the need, and then he released, he released on a long groan and saw his spend hit Nate’s lips, his chin, his neck and chest.

  Panting, sweaty, confused, feeling close to tears and close to shouting with the joy and power of it, Aaron stared, watching as Nate’s tongue came out and tasted Aaron’s come on his lips. The sight incited him again, so he grabbed Nate’s arms, tugging him up. He rolled on top of the other man, bodies sliding, wet where Aaron had marked him, and then he crushed those wonderful, delicious lips under his.

  Chapter Seven

  “YOU liked that?” Nate asked, feeling a weird trace of anxiety. He had Aaron’s come on his lips, but Aaron acted so untouched, so different from anyone Nate had ever been with. His heart thudded as he waited to hear from Aaron.

  “I…. There are no words,” Aaron said, sitting up. His pupils were blown and he pushed his hips against Nate every now and then, as if still helplessly in the aftershock of climax.

  “I love how you taste,” Nate said. “I love sucking cock.”

  Now Aaron frowned. “Mine. My cock.”

  Nate’s eyes widened at this sign of possessiveness.

  “Okay.” He guessed he could live with it. He’d dated because he’d thought there was no hope of ever being with Aaron, but all his fantasies had been focused on him. It had been so hard sometimes, but Nate had valued his time with Aaron and Sam and hadn’t wanted to fuck it up. He’d felt their isolation, wanted to help them both.

  “But what about you, Nate?” Aaron shifted, exposing where Nathan remained hard and needy.

  “Aaron, I don’t want to scare you,” Nate said, feeling that pinch of fear in his belly again, when Aaron didn’t immediately do or say anything. Shit, he was acting foolishly, but he couldn’t help it.

  “I am not scared of your cock, Nate,” Aaron chided, looking up to give Nate a patient look. “I have one also.”

  Put that way, it did sound silly. Nate found himself grinning. “Prove it.”

  “Oh ho, you challenge me?” Aaron’s dark brows lifted.

  “Aaron, just one thing. I— Touch your beard against it.”

  Nate flushed at admitting something he’d wanted for months. “Against the tip, oh God….” The last he whispered as Aaron moved down his body and, after a brief hesitation, did as Nate asked. “Fuck, it’s so soft! I’ve had so many fantasies about you between my legs and that beard.”

  Aaron put large, warm hands on either side of Nate’s thighs, and Nate jumped a little by reflex, so wound up. He blew out a breath, recognizing he had to relax or he’d make Aaron afraid to explore. “I want to look at you,” Aaron said. “I like to take my time and look and think, Nate. You know this about me.”

  “I do know.” Aaron liked his thinking time. Nate just hoped he didn’t die from the pleasure of it as he imagined Aaron seeing all of him, his distended cock, his balls, his opening. What was the other man thinking?

  Nate sat up on his forearms, his pulse crashing through his body as he watched Aaron studying him, occasionally grazing a curious finger over some part of Nate’s sex. Nate couldn’t stop from groaning when Aaron’s finger stroked over his dimple. He wanted… oh, shit, he couldn’t say it. He didn’t want to frighten Aaron, however bold the other man was acting.

  “This is all mine now?” Aaron asked him in an absent voice.

  Fuck, that was a sexy thought. “Yes,” Nate agreed.

  “You will let me do what I want?” Aaron’s breath against his balls, and then, oh, and then he made contact, his lips brushing softly, his wonderful beard.

  “As long as you promise not to shave that beard,” Nate groaned, looking up at the lattice of pine branches and thinking he must look like some kind of male sacrifice, splayed out, Aaron playing with him how he wanted.

  “You like it? I thought….” Aaron blinked up at him through heavy lids, as if what he did to Nate aroused him. “I thought to shave it off for you.”

  “No, oh, no, please don’t,” Nate begged.

  “But most of the other men don’t have one. It is… old-fashioned.” Aaron grimaced.

  “So? I live on a ranch. I like old-fashioned,” Nate said. “I like you. Your suspenders, the way you button your shirt all the way to the top, that floppy hat you wear in the garden. By the way, I could really get into gardening after watching you tend yours all summer. When you bend over, those trousers you wear really show off your, um….” He let his voice trail off. Was Aaron ready to hear this?

  “You were looking at my ass? I thought so.” Aaron didn’t look shocked, but smug. “Sometimes this summer I would catch your eyes on me and you would blush.”

  “Yeah.” Nate remembered. God, the thoughts he’d had about what he wanted to do to Aaron on his knees.

  “I always thought you were a wonderful rider, and one day I saw it for myself.” But now Aaron’s expression darkened a little.

  “What do you mean?” He heard something in Aaron’s tone.

  “I was stocking the fridge in the bunkhouse, and I heard you groaning. I thought you were in some kind of distress, so I went to your room, knocked on your door. It opened a little, so I saw you were sitting on someone. I couldn’t see who it was. Back then I thought it was a woman.”

  “Oh no.” Nate remembered a couple times getting it on with his rodeo friend Sean when the place had been deserted. Ironically he’d been trying desperately to purge himself of his need for Aaron. “Aaron.”

  “I’ve tried not to think of it, what you looked like, yo
ur head thrown back, the way you were rocking as if you loved what you were doing.”

  Nate licked his lips. “I did like it. I like sex.”

  “Apparently you do.” Aaron’s voice sounded cool.

  “Hey, it’s not like I knew you’d ever want to be my boyfriend!” Nate retorted. He chewed his lip, feeling a little bit of uneasiness, since he knew Sean, the guy Aaron had seen him with, had been hired on full-time recently; he’d be living in the bunkhouse soon. How would Aaron deal with that?

  “I do want to be your man friend.” Aaron nuzzled between his thighs and then put his lips against Nate’s opening. “I want you to be on top of me, Nate.”

  “Ah!” Nate couldn’t hold back. His hands forked through Aaron’s hair as Nate’s head twisted from side to side. If Aaron kept this up, he’d come all over the other man before he ever sucked Nate’s cock.

  “You make louder sounds when I touch you here,”

  Aaron mused, touching Nate’s opening with tentative fingers.

  “That’s because I need you there, Aaron. God, I need you there so much!” Was that his voice, confessing his most secret desire to his friend? “Please.”

  Aaron gently pushed a finger into Nate, and all Nate could do was tremble, loving the penetration, at last. He’d needed Aaron to fuck him for so long. “Put… put your mouth on me while you finger-fuck me,” he directed. “I love that.”

  He blinked. “If you, ah, want, that is….”

  Aaron tentatively sucked on the tip of Nate’s cock, spearing Nate with a second thick callused finger, pushing now a little deeper so Nate felt the full feeling, the burn as Aaron played. Nate pictured himself riding Aaron as he had Sean, Aaron’s thick cock deep inside him, his hands on his hips, urging Nate to take him all.

  “Aaron, pull back!” he gasped.

  But Aaron only sucked him harder, and Nate cried out, arching up, giving Aaron his spend in long, luxurious contractions that wrung him out. For a moment he could only lie there, Aaron’s hair fisted in one hand, the other man solid between his legs.

  “Oh my God, are you okay?” He still huffed, but he sat up and cupped Aaron’s cheek. He could see his come on the other man, so he used his T-shirt to wipe it off his lips, chin, and where it had dripped. Aaron obviously hadn’t been able to swallow it all.

  Aaron cocked his head at him, as if still in his thinking mode, before pulling Nate into his arms. He was large, warm, and muscled with that little bit of white blond hair between his nipples that Nate couldn’t resist trailing a finger through.

  He smelled faintly of the herbs he was harvesting now in his garden. Nate laid his head against Aaron’s shoulder, still shuddering from the intensity. Aaron patted him, a little awkward, as if he wasn’t sure another man would want affection.

  Chapter Eight

  AARON had saved the last of his first biscuits from scratch for Nate. They had no chemicals in them. They were studded with late-fall strawberries he’d saved from the frost. He fussed by the stove, satisfied the other hands were enjoying breakfast but fretting over where Nate was. Why did he not come? Aaron wanted to see him, to watch him interact with the other people, to smile into Aaron’s eyes. He was never late for breakfast. It had become their time together since they lived under two different roofs.

  Aaron hated that, hated saying good night to Nate. Was it wrong that he wanted him to climb the stairs up to the loft with him every night, to listen to the woodstove crackle below, and to huddle under the wedding ring quilt on Aaron’s double bed?

  Instead, Aaron had to sneak kisses with Nate in the barn late at night before watching him go back to the bunkhouse. And with the last bit of harvest to attend to, the hay to put up, and the horses to move to other pastures, there hadn’t been time to be alone since that day on the bluff.

  It was too cold to return there now.

  Samuel brought some of the dirty plates to the sink, silently assisting him, and Aaron felt his throat tighten with guilt as he looked down at his son. Mrs. Henderson had come by recently and brought him more information on sign language, reminding him that time was moving forward.

  After the coming holidays Aaron would have to sit down with his son and let him know he wouldn’t be allowed to close himself off any longer, but Aaron was afraid. What would Samuel do if Aaron pushed him? Would he pull further away from his father?

  “Hey, I’m Sean, the new hand here, just off the rodeo circuit,” a tall brunet said, interrupting Aaron’s thoughts. He smiled as Aaron scooped out breakfast for him by reflex. “I’m a friend of Happy Nate’s.”

  “Yes, hello.” Aaron looked into the other man’s hazel eyes, and suddenly he wondered if he’d been the man who had lain underneath Nate. It was a stupid thought, he knew.

  Nate had many friends. He didn’t sleep with all the men on the ranch. Nevertheless, Aaron couldn’t get the picture out of his head.

  “Hey, watch out!” Nate finally appeared, flushing as Aaron stared from him to the new man, Sean. “You nearly dropped the eggs, Aaron.”

  Something in Nate’s tone, the way he stood close to Sean…. Aaron swallowed thickly as he doled out more for Nate’s friend.

  Nate’s forehead crinkled. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something.

  “How do you know Nathaniel?” Aaron asked Sean.

  “Just friends, you know, though he is why I thought I’d winter on this ranch this year,” Sean admitted.

  Aaron looked at Nate again, who was shaking his head at him. What did that mean? Why was it that Aaron was only just finding out that this Sean had moved in with Nate into the bunkhouse?

  He reached up and wiped his forehead. What was wrong with him? He’d never felt so….

  “Hey, any more pancakes?” Sean asked.

  “No,” Aaron said, even though there were more.

  “Sean.” Nate pulled the other man’s head down so he could whisper something into his ear. Aaron could see only Nate’s lips close to another man, lips he’d kissed the night before, until he’d felt drugged on the sweetness of Nate.

  He swung away, staring out the window.

  “Aaron?” Nate asked. He touched Aaron’s shoulder gently.

  Aaron jerked away. “No more food today,” he rasped.

  AARON used an old plow and Gitty, a placid Belgian draft horse, to dig up and turn over the remains of his vegetable garden. There were tractors and other equipment on the ranch, but this was familiar. Aaron needed his thinking time.

  When he’d come to fit Gitty out into harness, his hands had been shaking. He’d had to calm himself because he didn’t want to stir up the horse.

  Even now, an hour later, as he looked in satisfaction at all the recycled bits of stalks mixed in with the soil, his eyes pricked. He could see only his Nathaniel with that man Sean, whispering to him.

  They would be sleeping under the same roof this winter.

  Nate would see that Aaron was boring, old fashioned. He’d never been with another man, not in the same bed.

  When a small hand banged his thigh, Aaron jumped, looking down to see Samuel wanted to show him another of his drawings of the wild horses. It was a familiar picture of a foal and mare, the mustang with her head bent close to her baby as they fed on grass near the road that led to Samuel’s school. Aaron’s forehead crinkled, and he was confronted with how frustrating it was to try to communicate with his son. He sensed the boy wanted to ask him something with all his pictures lately of the horses, but Aaron had no idea what it was.

  “Very nice, Samuel,” he said. “Did you finish your homework?”

  Looking a little subdued at his father’s answer, Samuel nodded.

  Aaron cleared his throat. “Did you get the eggs safely to Mrs. Henderson?”

  Again the boy nodded before turning away, as if to drift off, shutting his father out.

  No. Aaron couldn’t bear it. He tried to think what Nate would do, how the cowboy would laugh and tease and somehow bring Samuel out of his shell. “Would you like to
ride Gitty?” Aaron asked, hitting on something that Nate had used to reach Samuel before.

  Samuel swung around and nodded enthusiastically.

  “I have to take her harness off first, free her from the plow,” Aaron said. “You could work on your drawing while I do that.”

  Samuel approached the fence that protected the blossoming vegetables and flowers from raiding deer. He leaned against it as he raised his pencil and continued sketching.

  From time to time Aaron watched him as he carefully detached Gitty. The horse dipped down to munch on weeds still green from the richness of Aaron’s carefully tended soil, and at last Aaron went to his son. “I will lead you around on her,” he said. “You will be all right without a saddle?”

  Samuel nodded but then continued to stare up at his father, swallowing.

  “Sam, what is it?” Aaron asked, very gently. The shortened name just slipped out, the one Nate always used.

  Nate had been changing him, changing even the way he saw his son.

  Samuel handed him the drawing, and Aaron saw he’d written under it.

  I see these horses sometimes on the way to school, and I’ve wanted to tell Nate because I know he has been looking for them. I want to tell him things all the time. Him and you.

  Papa, I know we are poor. I know what that means because we don’t have stuff. But if I do extra chores, if I work hard, real hard for you this winter, do you think I could have a horse?

  Please.

  Your son, Sam.

  Aaron blinked, automatically about to say no because he’d only had this job a short time and he had not put enough money aside for something like a horse. They couldn’t possibly….

  He looked into his son’s eyes, and he couldn’t say it.

  Soon he would have to tell him about the sign language Mrs. Henderson was pushing. It might be that Samuel would have to attend another school just when he was beginning to feel more at ease at the one he attended now.