by Jan Irving
A hot slap of excitement jolted his body fully awake.
Chace cried out, writhing on the table and Trin laughed. He squeezed again and Chace whimpered, looking up at Trin with absolute trust.
“Dammit!” Trin shoved him. The images vanished like a popped soap bubble.
Chace fell on his ass. Panting, he stared at Trin, unable to process. What the hell?
“Don’t do that,” Trin growled. “Don’t you ever touch me.”
Hurt bloomed like a bloody flower.
He couldn’t look at Trin, didn’t want to see revulsion in those steady grey eyes. Trin must want him gone, out of his house.
The rustle of his clothing and the creak of his bones as he got to his feet screamed in his ears. His face burned.
“Chace, wait!” The chair fell with a clatter. Trin was following him, probably to tell him everything was all right.
“Fuck off!” Chace yelled, frustration boiling up.
“Chace, you don’t understand.” The voice was soothing as Trin reached out.
Chace elbowed Trin.
“Oof!”
Trin was holding Chace so tight that not even a breath of air separated them. The silence of the kitchen gave way to harsh breathing, to wild feeling hanging silent in the room.
“You’re stronger than you look.” Strained amusement in Trin’s voice.
“I’m strong? I can’t break your grip.”
Chace swallowed. Trin hadn’t sounded as if he hated him.
“Chace, I know I fucked up but I need to hear what happened between you and your father.”
Chace frowned, still not ready to look at Trin. “Why would you need to know? I figure it’s a pain in the ass, always hearing about my shit.”
“I’ve stayed here all these years because of you,” Trin said. “He didn’t hit you again?” His voice had gone hard.
Chace met Trin’s steady gaze.
“No.” Not this time. The last time his father had struck him, when Chace was fifteen, Trin had visited the big house. Chace wasn’t sure what he’d done, but Chace’s father had never hit him again. In fact, Alec had avoided him for days after that, taking to drinking alone in his study. He’d acted as if he was afraid to be in the same room with Chace, which was weird.
Trin scrutinized Chace as if looking for bruises.
“Trin, I’m okay.” As okay as he could be, standing so close to what he wanted and knew he would never have.
Trin’s gaze fell to Chace’s mouth.
What would Trin do if Chace stood up on his toes and brought their mouths together?
Trin cleared his throat. “I’ll make you some breakfast. Have you even had coffee yet?”
Chace grimaced. “Your coffee is like tar. I’ll make it, uh…” He looked at that single glass on the table.
“It’s all right. I’m glad you’re here with me,” Trin said. “It’s where you belong.”
Following old habit, Chace rinsed out the old grounds in the metal coffee pot while Trin pulled out a blackened frying pan. Chace went to the fridge and found eggs.
“I got those free run eggs you prefer.” There was no condemnation in Trin’s voice over Chace’s diet, which was something else that Chace’s father couldn’t seem to tolerate in his son.
Alec had once locked Chace in his room and refused to let him eat anything but steak. Chace had chosen to go hungry until Trin had shown up, face as hard as the granite cliffs in the nearby Rockies, and brought him back to his cabin. At first Chace had thought he was going to insist Chace eat meat like his father, but when he’d entered Trin’s kitchen, the counters had overflowed with green vegetables, plus exotic fruits like star fruit, kiwi fruit and passion fruit. There were whole grain breads made with honey, cranberries and nuts. Trin had said he’d done some reading and found out Chace would need to take a good iron supplement and eat beans and nuts to balance his nutrition.
Trin had then gathered the bounty and taken Chace riding in the foothills, managing to grill tofu on a skillet over the fire. The tofu hadn’t been very good—nothing like the fancy vegetarian restaurants in New York Chace had tried whenever he visited his mother’s family—but he’d eaten every bite.
If Chace hadn’t loved Trin before, that afternoon would have cemented it.
Remembering Trin’s acceptance, words fell out. “Trin, I’m gay.”
He waited, heart pounding, gut knotted so he thought he would vomit. He wished desperately he could take those words back. Don’t let Trin turn away, anything but that. Chace could take anything but that.
“I know,” Trin said calmly. He dropped slabs of quivering white tofu into the frying pan, adding teriyaki sauce. He cooked it better than he had at first. He’d bought a vegetarian cookbook, the Moosewood Cookbook, and had even experimented with vegan brownies. “I’ve always known.”
Chace’s eyes stung. He focused on the heap of fresh coffee he was measuring.
Trin gave him a moment while he added parsley to the onions and other good smelling things in the skillet. “Is that what this latest fight was about with your father?”
“No.” He let out a deep breath, still feeling light-headed. If Trin had turned away from him, he’d have wanted to die. “I’m going away, Trin. I’ve booked a ticket to Rome, Italy. You know I’ve wanted to go there for so long, to see the paintings, sculpture. I need… I just have to go.” He desperately needed to get away, to be his own man, to give full expression to his art and also to meet someone. It was time to take care of the embarrassing problem of being a virgin. Time to stop yearning for Trin.
Trin calmly put down his spatula. “So when do we leave?”
Chace blinked. “Huh?”
Chapter Two
Trin had himself a problem.
It—he—was a familiar problem, one he’d lived with for a long time and one he also couldn’t live without.
Chace Davidson, five-nine, with unruly blond hair, Bambi-soft brown eyes and so tortured, so needy for someone to love him. The shit of it was it could never be Trin.
Trin was not only too old for Chace, but he wasn’t even a regular wolf shifter. He had dreamt sometimes, when the moon was full and he was forced to transform, that he hunted Chace. Trin could see himself, half man, half beast, terrible claws and teeth gleaming, trailing the slender young man through the woods.
He could see fear and horror in Chace’s dark eyes as he got a glimpse of the thing that lusted for him, that wanted to pull him down in the dirt and fuck him.
Sometimes his bloody dreams were just flashes of Chace’s bruised wrists under his hands as he covered him. Sometimes he penetrated Chace, felt all his warmth, his caring, surrounding the beast, soothing it.
“Shit,” Trin muttered, remembering how he’d felt when Chace had burst into his kitchen like a mini tornado. He was getting harder and harder to resist.
“Something on your mind, Trin?” Tom asked, taking off his leather gloves as he finished unloading the special blend of feed he’d delivered along with two new horses to the Lazy L. Trin had come out to the barns to inspect the stock, one of his duties as foreman, but he would have found a way to show up anyway, since he was never easy with another shifter in his territory so close to Chace, not even Tom.
“Chace is going to Rome.”
Tom blinked and then he grinned. “Roma?”
Trin frowned. “What?”
“It’s Roma in Italian,” Tom said. “But you’ll find out.”
“How do you know I’m going?”
Tom just smiled.
Cass stepped out of the storage shed to join them. “What’s up?” He wiped his brow.
“Trin and Chace are going to Italy.”
Cass’ green eyes widened. He automatically moved closer to Tom, who relaxed slightly. Trin knew Tom instinctively wasn’t comfortable with another shifter too close to his mate. It was written into his DNA, so Trin didn’t take offence.
“I wasn’t sure about travelling,” Cass told Trin earnestly. “I was�
��scared when we went to Italy. I felt like a bumpkin.”
“A bumpkin?” Tom echoed, disbelief in his eyes. “I thought we dealt with your lousy self-image.”
Cass coloured. “Um. Italy helped.”
“Yeah, all the hot Italian gay men helped,” Tom growled. “They all wanted my Cass.”
Sweat broke out on Trin’s hairline at the idea of attractive Italian men trying to hook up with Chace.
“I didn’t even see these guys you keep goin’ on about.” Cass shrugged and Trin could believe the shy man hadn’t noticed all the attention his size and good looks had attracted. But Tom sure as fuck would have. “What I found hard was going someplace where they didn’t speak English and being afraid I wouldn’t understand all that art and stuff.” Cass sighed. “But it was okay. I especially liked the Riace Bronzes. When we got to Reggio Calabria, the museo was closed, so I thought we wouldn’t get to see them. Tom always said…” His colour deepened.
“That you resemble one of the bronze warriors—a man, not a pretty boy,” Tom purred. He didn’t reach out and touch Cass where any of the hands could see them, but Trin could feel the bond that joined the two men, a shifter and his human.
“Well, turns out a woman cab driver told us the bronzes were under restoration and she drove us up to see them,” Cass continued. “They were lying in a big glass room. Tom said it was climate controlled, and they were really something.” He studied Trin. “I bet that’s why Chace wants to go to Italy. Tom told him all about it and Chace is always drawing stuff. He even took my pictures of the warriors and did some sketches, made them look like me. Tom had them framed.”
“So I have you to blame?” Trin growled, looking at Tom. “You couldn’t have talked to him about the Grand Canyon or somethin’?”
“Travel is good for the soul,” Tom said, looking unapologetic. “It’s good to get out of your rut.”
“I like my rut fine. But Chace…” Trin shrugged.
Tom frowned. “He’s your mate. You need to claim him.”
Trin’s hands fisted.
“Trin, what’s the problem?” Tom pushed. “Even I can feel how he is meant to belong to you. You’ve let him grow up, protected him, and now he’s ready for a lover.”
“Not me,” Trin said. “When I was studying with the wolf shaman, I saw Chace in a vision quest. But he was young and human and I’m a…” He cut himself off but he could tell from the flash of understanding in Tom’s eyes he knew Trin would have finished his sentence with monster.
“The bond is there.” Tom was insistent. “He’ll need sex.”
Heat sizzled through Trin. He knew. He could feel Chace’s aching need to lie under him, but Chace would have no idea why he felt that way, that it was just the natural urge of a human to belong to his shifter mate.
“Do your duty. Chace needs you to take care of his sexual needs. He’s confused. He’s hurting.”
“And I’d scare him.” Trin’s voice was raspy.
“Trin—” Cass began.
“Take the horses out to the west pasture.” Trin broke off the painful conversation. He didn’t want to talk about this, or about his plan of letting Chace be with another man. When the time came, somehow he’d find the strength to stand back, to let Chace be with someone else, but he didn’t have to fucking talk about it.
* * * *
Chace couldn’t go back to the big house, not after Alec had thrown down the gauntlet, ordering him not to go to Italy, or else. His father hadn’t got round to telling him what the ‘or else’ was, but Chace was afraid it might be firing Trin. Alec had held that threat over his son’s head for years, ever since he’d realised how much Trin meant to Chace.
Chace rubbed his forehead as he paused a moment in his trek farther into the tree line above the Lazy L.
Why couldn’t he be who his father wanted him to be? Chace’s mother had died shortly after she’d given birth to Chace, leaving him alone with a father who seemed to loom over him like a shadow on his life.
When Chace was eight, he’d fought a battle with bone cancer localised in his left heel. He’d suffered surgery after surgery. He’d spent a long time in the hospital or at home, recuperating alone in his room, sometimes so worn out that eating and breathing had seemed like too much effort.
The cancer could be the reason he hadn’t grown to be a big man physically like his father, though his mother had been small, so the delicate build Chase had always been self- conscious about might have come from her.
By the time he was twelve, he was used to spending time alone in his room with his drawing pad. He was afraid to ride, another source of disappointment to his father.
But that failure had brought Trin into his life. Alec hired Trin because he had the reputation of a real horse whisperer, good with gentling horses. Trin never called it ‘breaking’ them. He was also good at schooling nervous riders.
Chace remembered how he’d been afraid he’d fall because his bum left leg was still weaker than his right one, scarred from the skin grafts into something that looked like twisted prairie wood.
Trin had shown up in Chace’s room every afternoon, settling comfortably into the handmade Mission chair. He’d spent time cleaning tack, sorting and repairing bridles, saddles and other paraphernalia until Chace had put down his sketching and asked him questions about the horses they kept.
A few days later, Trin had failed to show up and Chace had become restless, irritable. Finally he’d left the big house and gone looking for Trin, finding him in the barn, looking after a mare close to giving birth.
Chace had watched Trin run his hands over the mare’s swollen sides and felt useless.
“Stay here,” Trin said, as if he read Chace’s intention to go back to his room. “You can do this.”
You can do this. It had seemed a strange thing for Trin to say but those words had vibrated under Chace’s breastbone.
He’d stayed, spending a long day with Trin, winding up covered with afterbirth, with blood. But Chace could do this. He could help Trin, watch a foal slide free of its mother’s body and then lie in the straw, legs quivering.
The next day, leaving the house had been easier. Trin had Chace shovelling out stalls, rubbing down horses, feeding and watering them. And within two weeks, he was riding in the ring.
He experienced freedom on the back of a horse. He could go anywhere now, up into the foothills to camp like other boys from the school he’d been too sick to attend for years.
Trinity had given him that freedom.
Chace had worshipped Trin, wanting to be just like him—cool, calm and capable yet gentle, never impatient. But then one night when Chace had just turned eighteen he woke up with his sex hard, throbbing. He’d had a confusing dream about Trin… He’d been horrified. What was wrong with him?
He remembered the first time he’d seen Trin after that night, the way his dark head had swung sharply in his direction and his nostrils had flared. He’d taken a step back from Chace. No way could Trin know about his weird dream, could he?
Shortly after that incident, Trin had started dating a waitress from the diner. Chace had been miserable. He couldn’t understand himself. What did it matter if Trin had a girlfriend, took her home with him at night? Chace should be happy for Trin. He was so alone.
When the gossip in town had Trin engaged to the waitress, Chace took his horse into the foothills, wanting to lose himself in the mountains and never go back. He’d been gone three nights when he woke to find Trin grilling eggs, just as if nothing had changed between them.
Chace had blinked at him. “What are you doin’ here?” he’d asked.
“Making you breakfast.” Trin hadn’t talked about his new girlfriend or asked Chace why he was behaving like such a freak. He’d just fed him and went riding with him.
Now, as Chace skirted the west pasture and climbed into the branches of hills that eventually became the sharp peaks of mountains, he looked back on the golden prairie below. He still couldn’t make sense
of his relationship with Trin, as if he were missing the pieces he needed to truly understand it. But standing with the wind blowing, teasing his hair, he felt himself calming.
When do we leave? Jesus, Trin had been serious. He really intended to come with Chace to Italy. But how would Chace rid himself of his virginity with some hot guy if Trin came along?
Chace sat on a shelf of rock, wrapping his arms around his knees. Laughter broke into his thoughts, drifting up like smoke from a camp fire. He spotted Cass and Tom, splashing naked out of a stream below him. Their bodies were brown and silky with the water. Chace’s throat dried up as he watched them.
God, he wanted a lover in his life. He was so fucking alone.
Tom looped his arms around Cass and Cass lifted him easily, so much larger than his lover, stalking towards a nearby tree.
Chace sprang to his feet, meaning to head deeper into the woods, but if he did, the two cowboys were sure to spot him. His cock was aching, heavy with arousal as he watched Cass’ teeth flash as he nipped Tom’s neck. Then they were fighting, wrestling so that muscles stood out in relief, faces strained.
Chace’s heart raced.
Cass got on top of Tom, reached down to his erect cock. Tom’s neck arched.
Tom’s legs wrapped tight around Cass’ hips.
What would that feel like? Chace stifled a groan as he imagined a hard penis shoved inside his body, imagined his legs tight around Trin as Trin fucked.
“Harder!” Tom growled. “I won’t fucking break.”
Chace couldn’t stop himself from reaching down, stroking his throbbing length through his jeans. He needed… He tore his clothing free with relief, whimpering as he stroked himself, unable to keep from watching Tom and Cass.
Chace was so excited he thought his head would blow off. The two men bit and clawed each other in their race to come. His hand worked faster. His balls tightened and his nipples pulsed, his whole body on edge.