I hoped Roxie wouldn’t give up on me. I really did want that french toast. “I’m not afraid of you, but I don’t like being near you either. It’s complicated.”
“You’re still not over that I didn’t send you any messages? But that was years ago. And I apologized for ignoring you. I thought we were all done with that.”
Seriously? He wanted to recall our one-night stand now? In this diner? When I hadn’t even had breakfast yet or so much as a sip of my quickly cooling coffee? Fuck that. “I’m not still upset about that,” I hissed at him as quietly as I could. “Now go away.”
“Fuck, you’re an asshole,” Trent grumbled at me. But at least he was walking away when he did so.
I rolled my eyes and plastered my best smile on my face for Roxie. “French toast please.”
To her credit, she looked completely unconcerned with what Trent and I had been talking about as she wrote down my order in a little notebook she then put right back in her apron pocket.
“It’s not my business—”
I held back my groan and tried not to let my smile slip while I waited for her to say whatever she thought she had any right to.
“—but Trent needs a good kick in the pants once in a while. His momma was my best friend, and I miss her dearly, but Caleb can only do so much to help him now. So if you’ve got something to say to him, I suggest you do it. He’s not a bad boy, but he’s got his moments where I wonder why he bothered getting out of bed at all if he’s going to be in such a sour mood. You have my full permission to give him what for whenever you feel like it. Now, my Thomas on the other hand, he’s a sweet boy. You see him walking around with a little girl and you best be nice to them. His boyfriend plays football. He’s good too so you watch out if you think of being anything but nice to them. That is, if you’re planning on sticking around here for more than just a bit of breakfast.”
I stared at her as I nodded. So this was where all the gossip in town probably originated. Right here from a woman who looked like she was in her sixties and could still easily clobber me with a rolling pin if I crossed her.
“Thanks for the warning, but I don’t plan to be in town long enough to really get to know anyone.”
She shrugged and tapped the counter in front of me with her neatly manicured fingers. Which were painted pale pink and had little white hearts on them that were so crooked I thought a child must have painted them. Maybe the little girl she warned me about being nice to.
“Okay, sugar. You take it easy, and I’ll be right back with your breakfast.”
“Thank you.” As she walked away, I took out my phone and began looking through my messages, most of them unfortunately from Hot Guy Hook Ups. Mason wanted to know if they’d caught the guy who had beaten me up yet. They probably won’t. I didn’t give them much to go on, I told him. It wasn’t a complete lie. I really needed to get more friends because forty-two of my emails were from guys wanting to have sex with me, and my one text was from Mason. Well, hmmm, not all were from guys wanting me immediately at least. There was one from Grayson. Good morning. I hope I didn’t wake you when I left this morning. I’ll schedule my planes later in the day from now on, he’d said. And he’d sent it around four that morning. That sounded like a miserable time to be awake unless I was going for a sunrise ride, like we sometimes did at the rescue.
Were we at the stage where we said good morning to each other? I was living with him, on an extremely temporary basis, so maybe we were. And yet that felt weird. Like it was too much and too fast and way too soon for me to be doing all this mushy crap with him. I didn’t do this with anyone. Not even with Mason, and I’d known him for years. But I also didn’t live with Mason.
But then again I also didn’t have sex with Mason, and I hadn’t spent a good chunk of last night curled up against his chest like I was a damn child in need of some serious comforting. Which I pretty much had been. It had been nuts and I’d felt crazy as I’d gone upstairs just to get some much-needed space to be able to think for a little while.
I could do this, I decided as I stared down at my phone. I could text him and not just message him through the app like we had always done before. I wasn’t going to say good morning to him, but I could at least give him something more intimate than making our only way of connecting to each other sending messages with a damn hookup app. So I said hi and sent him back my phone number. Then my french toast arrived, and I dug into every sweet bite of it. After I covered it with maple syrup of course. The diner even had the good kind. The real stuff that wasn’t watered down. I was practically ready to lick the plate by the time I was done eating my breakfast.
I left Roxie a big tip as I paid for my food, then headed out of the diner. My next stop was the grocery store. I had two more days at Grayson’s before I decided if I wanted to stay with him for the rest of the month. I wasn’t going to think any further ahead than that, except to remind myself how much I really needed to start saving up. Brent had given me a break on the rent, and Grayson was giving me another, but I had to take care of my own stuff from now on. I hated relying on other people, and this was already too much for me.
At the store I got a box of cookies and some stuff to make sandwiches. I knew how much was in my bank account, and I could have afforded real food. Plus Grayson had left me a few hundred in cash on the island. But I hadn’t even touched that. Maybe if I stayed there more than the three days that he’d be gone, I would buy some food for him with his money. But I saw no reason to use it for just myself. And more than that, I didn’t want to use it either. He didn’t need to be buying me food. I could do that on my own. I just had to eat cheaply until I got my own place again.
By the time I got back to Grayson’s house, I still had three more hours to kill before I needed to leave to get to work. It would take me about an hour and a half to get to Parker from Thornwood, but I was sure that Evaline wouldn’t mind if I came in earlier. I could work as much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t get paid for the extra hours. I didn’t mind. The horses were the only ones that I was ever really comfortable around. I made myself a turkey sandwich, then left it wrapped up in the fridge so that I’d have it there when I got back to Grayson’s house for a quick dinner. I was scheduled to be there until eight, so I knew I probably wouldn’t get back until after nine. And I was scheduled for an early evaluation in Longmont the next morning. It was going to suck, but I really didn’t mind it. Whatever would help the horses, I would always do for them.
I DIDN’T get back to Grayson’s house until close to midnight because of an accident on I-25. I probably could have figured some way to go around the highway, but I really didn’t know of any other way to get to Thornwood. So when I stumbled into his house, I was exhausted and cranky after a long day at work and a horribly long drive. I had enough time for a hot shower before I didn’t bother to close the bedroom door behind myself.
THE NEXT morning I was still tired, since I’d had to get up at five to be on time for the adopter evaluation, but this time Mason was shadowing me, so it wasn’t so bad. He’d had the previous day off work, and he hugged me as we got out of our cars and headed up the street to the potential adopter’s house. Hugging each other wasn’t exactly professional, but at seven in the morning, I was a bit too tired to care.
The adopter lived in Piney Creek Ranches, which was a subdivision I would have loved to own a house in because it was maybe twenty minutes from Denver, but everyone had a big house and a few acres of horse property. I could never afford to live in a place like this, though.
“Rich horse people,” Mason quietly said as we walked up the side of the road and past a shiny white vinyl horse fence. A bay quarter horse was watching us as we passed by him. If he’d been closer, I would have reached over the fence to pet him. It wasn’t good to pet strange horses, since they could and often would bite, but being bitten didn’t bother me anymore. I’d been thrown, I’d broken bones, I’d been kicked, I’d been bitten, and I’d been stomped on lots of times. Horses
could be dangerous and unpredictable. I was used to that. But I still loved them so freaking much anyway.
Mason hummed as he walked beside me, and I rolled my eyes even as I was smiling. “Cut it out when we get up there,” I told him.
“Uh-huh. Your face doesn’t look quite so awful today.”
That was almost a compliment. “Thanks.” We came up to the house, which looked like something I would have expected to see in Santa Fe, not in Colorado. A red tile roof complemented the white stucco and numerous arches. I thought it was pretty, but I much preferred the green pasture and the red barn beside it. I had my clipboard out, and I was already taking notes.
“What do you see?” I asked Mason, checking if he was picking up on the same areas that needed to be improved on the property. It wasn’t a lot, but there were a few things that needed to be looked at before they could be approved to adopt from Green Acres. Which meant that if they wanted to still adopt that horse, I’d need to come back out. I hated making return trips, especially since I had a whole list of common problems to look out for on the website. I wanted the horses to get adopted, but if people couldn’t follow even the simple directions that I put up to help them and the horses out, I started to get annoyed. I didn’t like wasting my time, and I already knew that I’d have to come back to do a recheck if they still wanted to adopt from us.
“Holes in the pasture need filling in,” Mason started.
I’d noticed the three of them already. “Why?”
“Dangerous to the horses. They could trip and fall and break a bone or go lame from stepping in one of them.”
I smiled. Mason was young, but he wasn’t dumb, and he cared about the horses too. He also didn’t try to talk over me or treat me like a moron because I was just twenty-five, and most of the people at the sanctuary were much older than me so they thought they ruled the world, or at least the little part of it that gave them full control at the rescue. The problem for those people was that I had the most seniority at the rescue because Evaline trusted me most and liked me and my work. That’s why, when she wasn’t there, I was in charge. And she was gone a lot, working with other rescues and bringing back horses from slaughter auctions around the country.
“The barn’s roof is also missing a few shingles,” Mason continued on.
I actually hadn’t noticed that. “Good job. Now let’s go meet them.”
Meeting the Johnsons went well. They wanted a horse for their teenage daughter, which I never really liked, since the horses often ended up back with us after the kid went to college, but they also had an eight-year-old son who wanted to ride too, so he’d get the horse after the daughter went to college. I was horrible with names and didn’t even really try learning them. Horses I was good with. People were a different story. Mason, though, didn’t have that problem. He was a natural with them, and I liked having him there as my backup. Especially when I was as tired as I was that morning, because by the time the assessment was done, and we’d spent three hours in their house and walking around their property and talking about what kinds of horses would be best for their family and the light trail riding they wanted to do with the horse, I was ready to go back to bed.
AS I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep despite the bright sunlight coming in through the window beside me, Grayson called me. At first, since I was barely awake, I thought it was Mason, but then I realized he hated to call. He was a texter, just like me. So I answered it, expecting something horrible like him telling me I had to get out of his house because he didn’t even like the thought of me there. Only, if he had said that, I was pretty sure that I was too tired to have cared at that point. These late nights and early mornings were a killer.
“Hello?” I answered his call.
“You sound like you’re unwell. Are you okay?”
I couldn’t hold back my yawn. “Yeah, I’m good. Just laying down for a bit. It was a late night, and then I had a really early morning. Well, not early for you, judging by how early you got up to go to the airport, but early for me.”
He chuckled, but the sound seemed like he might have been nervous about something.
“What’s going on with you?” I turned over on the bed and instantly regretted it as that gave my cock some friction. Talking to him got me kind of hard, but thinking about him while I was naked and lying in bed in his house definitely didn’t help matters at all. Maybe I’d take care of myself when we were off the phone.
“Were you with the person who likes to leave bruises on you?”
So that’s why he sounded strange. He was worried about me and my stupid choices while he wasn’t there to babysit me. Huh. “No. I haven’t seen him in a little bit.”
“That’s good.” He sounded relieved now. “So you were working late?”
I nodded against the pillow. “Yes. Late night and then an early-morning home assessment today.” And I was so tired. Did we really need to talk about this right now? All I wanted was to take a nap as soon as possible.
“I wish I could be at home with you. It was nice spending the evening with you.”
I smiled. “It was. Wasn’t it?” Aside from the part where he’d pushed too far, too fast and I’d broken down and needed to be by myself for a while, it had been almost fun.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“A seriously long nap. I don’t have to be at work anymore today, so I’m actually off until the day after tomorrow. I’ll probably watch some movies, walk around naked for a while….”
I heard Grayson’s sharp intake of breath, and I laughed, because I was hoping to get that reaction from him. “I wish I could be there to see that.”
I was sure that he did. Too bad I’d only been half serious about it. “Are you on a break?”
“Having lunch between meetings. Sushi. Do you like it?”
Raw fish? Not really. Not when I lived in Colorado and all the fish I ate was previously frozen. That’s why I liked pizza and good beer when I could afford it. We were known for our Colorado pizza and our craft beers and homebrewers.
“Not really,” I admitted. I shouldn’t have felt bad about not liking raw fish. But I suddenly felt kind of out of place, like it was one more thing that separated us. Not like we had a lot in common to begin with. He was a lot older than me, he’d been through college, he had at least some money, which I absolutely didn’t, and he apparently liked his raw fish. I shuddered.
“I’m having mochi ice cream for dessert. Do you like ice cream?”
To me it sounded like he was grasping at straws now to come up with something we both liked. Fortunately for him, I did like ice cream. I didn’t have the slightest idea what mochi was, but I figured that ice cream was ice cream. And I could probably get behind that.
“I like mint chocolate chip. Or mint with cookies in it.” And now I really wished that I’d grabbed some ice cream while I was at the store. I groaned, and it sounded far more like a sex sound than I’d meant it to.
He gasped, and I blushed. I hadn’t meant to take the conversation there, but he seemed to have no problem going there. “Tell me what you’re wearing.”
That was a dangerous question, for both of us. “Nothing,” I quietly admitted.
He hissed in his breath, and I wanted him to make that sound again, because it was just like the one he made when he was pushing inside of me for the first time during the night. I lifted up my hips and slid my hand between my legs to cup myself.
“Make that sound again. Please,” Grayson practically moaned in my ear.
I hadn’t realized that I’d made any sound at all. “Are you alone?”
“I am. I had the sushi delivered to my hotel room. I’m going to the bed now and opening my pants. What are you doing?”
“Stroking myself against the bed.”
Grayson chuckled, and he sounded a bit breathless. “I wish I had you in my bed and under me right now. I’d push you down onto the mattress and slide into your ass.”
Were we about t
o have phone sex? I’d never done that before. I didn’t even know how to begin. “Um. I’d….” What would I do? “I’d moan.” That sounded absolutely pathetic. Clearly I sucked at phone sex. “I’d….” Be really stupid about this.
“Come for me,” he hissed, warming me up right away. And then it didn’t matter what I said because I did know how to stroke myself, and my moans were always natural. If I ever did try to fake my moans, I was pretty sure I’d fail badly, and then someone would call me out on it. I thought about him thrusting inside of me like when he had me up against the wall. He was so much bigger than me, and when he had his arms up on either side of me by my head, I couldn’t see anything but his arms. He became everything to me, and I liked not being able to focus on anything else. I needed that sometimes.
I whimpered as I thought about him deep inside of me, his mouth against mine as I panted against his lips, and his big hands running over my chest and stomach. I always got sweaty with him, and since I’d never showered with him before the last time, I’d been able to drive back home with our come mixing on my skin and my sweat dampening my clothes. With Grayson I’d never been in a hurry to wash him off my skin. Instead I’d almost savored him being there with me as I’d taken my time to clean myself.
I heard him getting closer. His groans became deeper, rougher, and I pictured him squeezing his thick cock between his fingers. “Are you thinking about me?” I asked him. I was so close too, just hearing him and his pleasure.
“Of course. You under me. You on your knees. My hands in your hair. Your gorgeous mouth over me as I feed my cock between your lips.”
I closed my eyes and fought back my orgasm. But it was nearly impossible to do when he so obviously wanted me. I loved to be wanted. I was so often used and discarded that being wanted was a completely novel experience to me, and I didn’t remember another guy that I’d been with who made it completely clear to me that he wanted just me like Grayson did.
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