Texas and Tarantulas

by Bailey Bradford

  A second, larger bear came out of the house. Streaks of silver stood out in his dark coat.

  Mahon kept roaring, even though he understood that he might be in serious trouble now. He could take out the younger bear. The older one was stronger than them both. Combined.

  This was going to be a problem.

  Especially since both bears charged at him together.

  Mahon sent up an apology to Trent. It looked like he was going to leave the man after all. He hoped Trent would forgive him.

  He went in like he intended to win. The best of intentions could amount to nothing, but trying counted in his book. He wouldn’t be an easy victory for either of his enemies.

  Victor, the elder bear, who had delivered many painful lessons to Mahon in the past, let the younger bear take the lead.

  Mahon swung at him, just missing his target. He dodged a return swipe and followed it up with a shove that involved his whole body. The other two bears scrambled back, the younger one stumbling.

  Mahon took advantage, letting the anger take him over. These shifters had turned him into something almost irredeemable. Worse, much, much worse, they’d come here with the intention of killing Trent and Joe, and forcing Diego back into a horrible situation.

  It pissed Mahon off. He struck out with that fury and ripped into the bear he’d been trained with. It wasn’t a fatal blow, but it was a painful one.

  Mahon roared at him. “Stop this and help me kill the other. You don’t have to live this way.”

  He could sense the younger one’s hesitation. “You don’t want to die,” Mahon vocalized. They didn’t have a language, but certain sounds held meaning. He was getting the gist of his point across.

  Unfortunately, the older shifter saw that Mahon was succeeding.

  Mahon pushed past the wounded one and went after the elder. He hoped turning his back on the younger one wasn’t a mistake. Mahon met the elder in the air, both of them on their hind legs bellowing, promising death.

  Only one of them would deliver it.

  * * * *

  Trent ran faster than he ever had in his life. Every strike of his boots on the ground jarred him and spurred him to move, move, move.

  He never should have let Mahon go alone. They should have stayed together. His hands were sweaty, his grip on the shotgun not the best. It was stupid to run like he was with a loaded gun. The ground was uneven, panic was fueling his race. It’d be easy to fall and shoot himself when he did. Shit like that happened to people all the time.

  It wasn’t going to happen to him. Fuck that. He had a lover to save, a brother and friend to save.

  Trent put more effort into his running. It wasn’t long before he saw the bears—three of them. He blinked to get the sweat out of his eyes as he skidded to a stop. Trent brought the shotgun up.

  The gray and brown bear roared at him and shoved another bear into the sights.

  Trent didn’t fire.

  Which one is Mahon? My Mahon?

  Time slowed, his heart did the same. Trent followed the fight, three big bears tangling into a knot of frenzied beasts. Blood and spit flew, claws and teeth slashed. One of the younger bears tore open the other’s flank.

  The older bear ripped the wounded one’s throat out.

  Trent’s heart broke.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  That wasn’t his Mahon lying there bleeding out.

  It wasn’t. If it was, why did the old bear and the other one still fight?

  The old one had tried to fuck with his head.

  Trent would fuck with the geezer bear’s in return. In a permanent way.

  He waited for the shot he wanted then pulled the trigger—and nothing.

  “No,” Trent rasped, trying to squeeze the trigger again to no avail. The shotgun had never jammed on him, not in all the many years he’d had it. He didn’t shout or cuss. If the older bear knew the gun didn’t work—well, it would be best that he didn’t know.

  Trent held the gun steady and walked toward the duo. “Listen up, fucker,” he called out. “Yeah you, elder bear-y.” Well, he thought it was funny. “I’ll put a bullet in your goddamn brain on the count of three. You got one chance, because I am tired of killing. Just one. Take it—or die.” He paused to give the words more leverage.

  “One.”

  The bears continued to fight.

  “Two.” Trent tried not to gulp. He was so fucked now.

  “Three—” He ran into the fray, swinging the butt of the shotgun as hard as he could at the old bear’s head. He bashed in the right eye socket. Nasty goop spurted out.

  Trent pulled the gun back and hit him again, even as the thing roared and swiped at him.

  Mahon caught the paw in his mouth and crunched it.

  Trent hit the bear a third time.

  A gunshot rang out—not from his shotgun. The old bear didn’t go out loudly. He whined and went down like his bones melted inside him.

  Joe stood on the porch, Diego behind him. “They couldn’t get us in the attic. We had the ladder up.”

  “And the attic door covered with a big chest.” Diego stepped around Joe. “We have to—” He put a hand on his brow and looked out. “What’s on fire?”

  “More like what exploded. My place.” Trent looked Mahon over. He didn’t see any obvious injuries. “Come on and let me look at you. I can’t tell if you have cuts or what with all that fur.”

  For one heart-stopping second, Trent feared he might have been wrong.

  Then Mahon shifted and reached for him. “Beating a bear with a gun? Bad idea. I should—”

  “Why did your house explode?” Joe demanded to know.

  Trent hadn’t even noticed his brother moving. Now Joe was close to being in his face. “Calm down, badass bear killer. We were attacked this morning, too. There’s a… I had to kill one of them while he was in human form. It’s— We have to call Sheriff Kenzie. I don’t want another body buried out here.”

  “But the bears,” Joe said.

  Mahon nudged one with his toe. “I’d offer to shift and drag them off, but that’s not going to get rid of all the blood.”

  “We’re going to have to tough this one out.” Trent was almost relieved at that. He didn’t want to lie about anything if he could avoid it. Except… “Obviously we don’t mention the shifter thing. Hey.” He looked toward the house. “Where’s Bill?”

  “I haven’t seen him after that boyfriend of his got out of the car. Diego scented him as a bear right away. That would be the old guy, I guess,” Joe said.

  “We need to find him and to call the sheriff. We’ll have to stick with the ‘I don’t know what the fuck these crazy people were doing’ line, but if we take out the whole shifter part of it, it should hold up.” Trent shrugged. “I think.”

  Joe looked around. “Unless Bill screws it up for us.”

  “Okay, we need to find him. If he’s in the trunk of his own car, he could be dead from the heat.” Trent ran over to it. The trunk was open. “Eh, never mind. He’s got a dart in him.” Trent pulled it out then felt for a pulse. “He’s alive. Go on and call Kenzie. It’s going to be a long, long day.”

  * * * *

  Sheriff Kenzie closed her eyes and rubbed them. “Jesus, y’all—this is the weirdest crap I’ve ever heard, which means it’s true. No one can make up this stuff.” She left off messing with her eyes and opened them. “Plus, we all know y’all. Everyone in town knows Bill’s been here looking for critters, and they knew he’s on the slutty side, no offense to him. To each their own and all of that. He’s told everyone who’d listen that his boyfriend was coming out to teach y’all a lesson about turning him down. That was only about two people, by the way. No one wanted to talk to him.”

  Trent would have asked Bill about that but the guy was in the hospital, still fucked up from the tranquilizer. From what he’d heard, Bill was lucky to be alive. “Yeah, well he didn’t mention that part to us. Just said he’d missed his boyfriend or something.”


  “Mm. The thing is, there’s no ID on the boyfriend. All we have is the first name you gave us. Maybe Bill will fill us in once he’s coherent. Can’t believe some idiot kept bears as pets or…or trained assassins.” Kenzie shook her head in disbelief.

  Trent, Mahon, Joe and Diego didn’t say a peep. Kenzie was closer to right than she’d ever guess.

  “You know you need to come in tomorrow and give a formal statement, Trent. You were within your rights to do what you did. Hell, if I were you, I’d have shot that jerk a few times. Don’t worry about that part. I’m sorry, kiddo. I know you’re a gentle soul under the sarcasm.” She patted Trent’s arm.

  Trent let her comments go. She was five years older than him and had never called him kiddo before. He wasn’t a gentle soul, either, but whatever kept him out of jail. He had been within the boundaries of the law, though.

  Kenzie left along with her deputies and all that was left to do was dispose of all the bears.

  Joe grimaced as he looked at the two by his house. “I am so sick of dragging these fuckers to the silo.”

  Trent grunted.

  “If we don’t, you’ll have scores of neighbors deciding to drop by just to gawk,” Diego said. “Well, that’s going to happen anyway. People like y’all, and people are also nosy.”

  “It’s all going to come out in the paper anyway. We need to get rid of the bears before the stink gets too bad. Anyone shows up, we’ll put them to work helping us.” Seemed like a good plan to Trent.

  * * * *

  Hours later, when it was almost midnight and the last visitor had left, Trent looked at all the food piled onto Joe’s table. “I don’t understand how food is supposed to make up for my trailer being blown up and me losing my things, but I like the concept.” There was a freshly baked peach cobbler he was going to dive into as soon as he wasn’t so stuffed.

  “I’m really sorry about your place. You know, you and Mahon can always stay here.”

  Trent smiled at his brother. “Yeah, thanks. I don’t care that I lost everything in the trailer. I still have the important things—my partner and my family.”

  Joe returned his smile. “That’s sweet. Wish you’d had insurance on the place, though.”

  “It wasn’t worth nothing. Uncle Mike bought it new back in the late eighties, right? Something like that. All I really had of value was the guns and—” Fuck. “Pictures of Mom. I took them that day, when Dad told us she was gone. Remember, I was going to make you copies, just never got around to it. Damn it.”

  “I’ll make you copies of the ones I have. They aren’t the same, but it’s something.” Joe looked at Mahon. “The day Dad told us Mom was gone, he bagged up everything of hers, including the photo albums she’d kept with pictures of us in them. We tried to get him to let us keep them, but damn. He took a belt to my hide and Trent, lucky dog, got off with a day locked in his room.”

  “But I went out the window and ripped open one of the bags. I just managed to grab a handful of pictures out of a photo album before Dad came outside. I thought I was busted. I ran and hid in the barn until I heard him drive away. Saw him heading off the property. He dumped all her stuff somewhere. That was after he’d talked to the sheriff, I guess.” Trent didn’t know what happened at that part of the story. His dad had sent them to school in the morning and had told them about their mom when they’d got home on the early release day.

  “I’d snuck out too. Me and Trent both stole some pictures. Guess Dad was too pissed off to notice the holes in the bags.” Joe tapped the tabletop with his fingers. “Sure wish I knew where he dumped her stuff.”

  “I wish I knew if he killed her,” Trent blurted out.

  Everyone looked at him.

  He got a little defensive. “It’s not like I’m the only one thinking it’s a possibility. I wonder it enough that I even dream about it.”

  Joe sat up a little straighter. “What do you mean, you dream about it?”

  Trent tried to dismiss the question. “Aw, you know how your brain is, doing weird shit when you’ve been fretting over something. That’s all. I guess it doesn’t matter if he did kill her. He’s not going to be punished for it now.”

  “I want to know,” Joe said. “She was a good mom. She didn’t deserve to end up buried out on this place, lost to us all those years. When did you start having the dreams?”

  The question caught him off guard and he answered immediately. “After seeing her bones.”

  Joe nodded, watching him. “Guess that makes sense. We know it was her no matter that we have to wait on the DNA results. Are you sure they’re dreams?”

  Trent wasn’t up to this. He got up. “I’m sure that I killed more shifters today, and one in particular is going to haunt me. I want to go to bed, but I’m afraid to close my eyes. I don’t want to see that image, but I will. I’ll see it until I can get past doing what I had to do.”

  He wasn’t angry. He was tired. Too much had happened too fast, and he wanted to escape it all for a while.

  Joe got up and reached for him. “Trent, I’m sorry. I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking. I don’t want to think about what I did today, either. I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Trent gave him a one-armed hug. “It’s fine. We all need to stop talking about it and stop focusing on it.” He hoped Mahon understood his message.

  * * * *

  Once they were in their room, Mahon showed him that he did understand, very much. Mahon washed him in the shower then had him lie down on the bed.

  “I’m going to try and give you a massage. I’ve never done it before, so tell me if something doesn’t feel good.” Mahon straddled his thighs.

  “Feels damn great so far.” Trent wiggled his ass.

  Mahon scooted up and the tip of his hardening dick poked Trent’s butt. “Behave and let me do this.”

  Trent managed to look over his shoulder at Mahon. “You can do whatever you want to me tonight.” Then he closed his eyes and let Mahon treat him to a massage that left him melted into a relaxed, horny puddle of man.

  Mahon rolled him onto his back and kissed him tenderly. While he did so, Mahon framed Trent’s face with his hands and rubbed his temples.

  There was a new current between them, along with the strong, pulsing sexual one. Mahon reinforced the newer one when he whispered, “I love you.”

  Trent added more power to it. “I love you, too. I meant what I said. Even losing Mom’s pictures. As long as I have you and my family, I’m happy.”

  Mahon kissed him again. He left a trail of purple marks down Trent’s neck and Trent didn’t care. He’d never cared for proprietary displays before, wouldn’t have let anyone scatter hickies all over him. He sure as hell would never have let anyone bite him like Mahon did.

  “Only you,” Trent thought he said. The words might never have escaped from his head.

  Mahon held Trent’s hands at his sides while sucking on his nipples, then minutes later, Trent’s cock.

  Trent had never been interested in bondage, and he wasn’t now. What Mahon was doing to him wasn’t bondage. Mahon was comforting him, making sure Trent knew he was there for him.

  The warm, wet rippling throat muscles around his cock almost undid Trent. He tried to buck up, to get more of Mahon.

  Mahon let go of his hands and pushed Trent’s legs up so that his knees were on his chest. Mahon left off sucking and went back to licking, taking a path down Trent’s shaft to his balls.

  There Mahon suckled, working Trent’s whole sac into his mouth.

  “G-Gawd,” Trent wailed, grabbing onto his legs and losing himself in the sensations spreading up from his nuts. He rocked his hips and found that the mild tug was good. Very good.

  Mahon laved Trent’s balls and jacked his cock.

  Trent couldn’t be still. He felt so much, more than any one body could hold.

  Mahon dragged a thumb over his asshole then pressed it in.

  Trent came so hard his teeth clacked together.

  Mahon exc
hanged the thumb for a finger. He massaged Trent’s gland and released his balls to return to sucking on his dick.

  It never went soft.

  Trent hadn’t wanted to think, and there wasn’t a chance that he could.

  Mahon played his body to perfection, stretching Trent patiently, then sliding his cock deep into Trent’s body, where he held still for so long, Trent had to beg him to move.

  Trent clenched around Mahon’s length, wanting him to stay deep, wanting him to thrust. “Mahon, fuck me,” he finally managed to put together.

  Mahon did—short, gentle, hard, fast, everything in between. Mahon put Trent’s legs up on his shoulders and slammed into him with a breathtaking thrust.

  Trent could only grab at Mahon’s shoulders and try to hold on.

  Mahon pulled out and put Trent on his side, then entered him that way, straddling Trent’s lower leg and pushing Trent’s other leg up.

  “Good,” Mahon said, sweat dripping down from onto Trent. “So good.”

  Trent would have agreed but he was too busy jacking his dick to get a word out.

  Mahon pushed Trent’s shoulder down, and seconds later, sank his teeth into Trent’s flesh.

  Trent jerked from head to toe as he came again.

  Mahon growled and snarled, primitive grunts escaping him as he fucked Trent even harder. The sounds Mahon made served to amplify Trent’s own pleasure. It was almost more than he could handle, and for one moment, he feared passing out completely.

  But he didn’t. Trent stayed conscious and aware of every bit of bliss he felt. When it finally ebbed, exhaustion and a warm, comforting joy blanketed him.

  Trent sank into the peace coming for him. He slept, and that night, he had no dreams at all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mahon woke Trent up with a blow job. It was a treat for them both, especially when Trent told him to get his dick up there.

  Mahon wiggled around and got to push into Trent’s mouth. He moaned and sucked harder.

  Trent fingered Mahon’s asshole, pushing a dry finger in.