by Peter Styles
His words petered off into a whining gasp as I wrapped a strong hand around his cock and began to pump without mercy. I watched him clamp a hand over his mouth to keep quiet as I worked over him, mouthing and biting at his neck as he held back whimpers.
Quinn fumbled with pulling me out of my jeans, but once my cock was out, he wasted no time, hand moving over it sloppily but enthusiastically, and I started to believe that he did need this: the distraction, the feeling of something good for once.
Not wanting to deal with a mess, the moment he murmured, “I—I’m…” I dropped to my knees and took his cock in my mouth, swallowing as he came hot and heavy. He returned the favor with pliant lips and a dazed sort of look on his face, smiling up at me as he lapped the excess of my cum from my cock.
When I drew him into a kiss, I slipped my tongue into his mouth and could taste the both of us in it. Maybe that was what made him groan. Maybe it was the feeling of relief.
We pulled ourselves together quickly after, sharing little quips of laughter, and it felt just as good as a hurried handjob. There were the things that James and Nico told me about Quinn, but being here with him, I didn’t care so much. He smiled at me like he wanted me to smile back. The flush on his cheeks after sex was as cute as it was erotic, a lingering sign of what we’d done. Hopefully, none of the others would notice that part.
“How many sandwiches you finished so far?” he asked, hands on his hips as he surveyed Eddie’s and my work.
“Uh… almost enough.”
Quinn smiled, even as Eddie came back in, albeit a little cautiously. The guy had impeccable timing, at least.
“Well, finish it up,” Quinn said, putting on a bossy voice. “The both of you.” The joking tone broke away as he saluted the both of us. “I’ll be upstairs finishing putting my mama’s room together.”
“See you,” I said, unable to keep my eyes off his ass as he walked away.
“Hey, buddy.” Eddie leaned his head far enough to get a good look at me as I picked up my knife and started spreading some mayo on bread. “You got a button off.”
“Huh?” I looked down, and sure enough—I’d missed a button. Or rather, Quinn had missed it when he buttoned my shirt back up. “Oh, shit. Yeah. Must have forgotten it this morning, I was dead tired—”
“Wasn’t like that before, partner.” Eddie raised his brows, and it was like a confirmation. He definitely knew. “I got me eyes like a hawk.”
“R-right.” I made quick work of fixing it as the phone on the wall started ringing, and Quinn’s footsteps thundered on the stairs. He picked it up with a chipper, “Hello?”
As Eddie and I finished up making lunch, it was hard not to eavesdrop a little, what with Quinn talking so loud in the first place.
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks for calling back,” Quinn said, sounding a bit relieved. “I was just calling to inquire about the price your company would pay in cash for a parcel from out on our eastern fields. Yeah. It’s salvageable….”
“Here we go again,” Eddie said, voice hushed so Quinn couldn’t hear.
“What?”
Eddie didn’t look so entertained anymore. “This happens sometimes. A person gets sick or injured, the family needs money, so they sell off a piece, then another. Before you know it—no more ranch.”
I thought it would end there, but it didn’t.
“Quinn doesn’t have even half the balls his daddy had, I’ll tell you that.”
It wasn’t so much what he said, but rather how he had said it: with disgust.
I stopped prepping, and Eddie kept running his mouth. “We all oughta start looking for more work. This place won’t last.” And then he even had the audacity to laugh a little. “Sucks, don’t it? Bet you thought you were gettin’ in bed with money. You were dead wrong, man.”
It was crass and shitty and rude. I’d had enough of that in prison, but hearing it directed not only at myself but at mostly Quinn, who had been busting his ass this whole time, who had given me a job when they could barely spare the money.
“Maybe you should mind your own goddamn business. And don’t fucking talk about him that way, you hear me?”
Eddie looked up at me, at the low tone of my voice. I forgot I had this ability, this kind of defense: I didn’t think of myself very often as a scary guy. Eddie lost the color in his face real quick when he saw the kitchen knife still in my hand.
“Shit, I—I didn’t mean—”
I set the knife down pointedly. I hadn’t planned on doing anything with it, obviously. It had just been in my hand from making lunch.
It became instantly clear Eddie, who was stuttering and panicking, didn’t see it that way.
I had to remind myself that not everybody was like James or Quinn or Nico; not everybody knew me, but everybody knew of me.
“Just finish this up,” I said, knowing I had no business telling another hand what to do, but he listened, turning back to the sandwiches while I followed the cord on the wall to Quinn, fully involved in his phone call. He spared me a glance as I rested beside him in the narrow hallway.
“Thanks. Yeah, really. You’re a lifesaver. See you. Bye.”
Quinn walked around me to hang up the phone, but I caught him on his way back.
“What was that about?” I asked, to give him his own chance to explain.
He gave a half-shrug. The cheeriness from his phone call—hell, even the relaxation from our fooling around—was just about wiped away.
“Nothing. I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said, before realizing maybe how like a teenager he had just sounded. He sighed, rubbing at his neck. “It’s just some family business, Oliver. That’s all.”
I don’t know why, but his answer drew a very sudden and stark line.
I wasn’t family.
When had I gotten it into my head that I was family?
I wanted to be his confidant, or his something to lean on, to talk to, just as much as I was a distraction for him, but if he wasn’t willing to give that on his own, then it was what it was.
Just let it be what it’s gonna be.
“Okay, yeah.” I nodded, resisting the urge to kiss Quinn’s cheek before he left. He had other things to do, and so did I. His dismissal felt like it was maybe a good thing, as shitty as it was starting to feel. I had nearly forgotten my place.
I was just a charity case here at the Dyer Ranch, and probably with Quinn as well.
14
Quinn
“So what are you saying exactly?”
I looked between Sawyer and our family lawyer, Bob Evergreen, a man who’d known my family for decades. I was glad to have Sawyer come along for the meeting; I’d had a lifetime of growing up on the farm, but pieces of the business side were still new. Having someone with me who knew money like Sawyer did was a relief.
Bob made a noise, always clearing his throat. “The way the ownership of the ranch isn’t split evenly,” he reiterated. “Tilly’s got more than you, Quinn, which means you don’t have enough to decide to sell. It’d be something she’d need to sign off on, even if all you were sellin’ was, hell, I don’t know, a single yard.”
Hopeless. The situation was getting completely hopeless.
I blew out a breath. “Right, uh….”
“There’s no way to bypass that?” Sawyer asked, pushing through a folder of papers. He looked handsome and professional, done up tight in his suit. If I wasn’t so happy to be screwing around with Oliver in whatever tiny corner we could find, I might have considered being all over Sawyer like white on rice. “I’m wondering if there’s a clause anywhere—since Tilly is in the hospital.”
“Nope.” Bob looked at me apologetically. “The only way it’d be forfeit to you is if she was mentally incapacitated, but… even then, it’d be a process to transfer ownership. You’d have to go to court to take power of attorney. It’s possible, but it takes time and a whole heap of money.”
I nodded. “Right, well, it wouldn’t matter anyway.” I thought of my
mama, still fighting and being stubborn from her hospital bed. “She’s still got her right mind, and as long as she’s in it, there’s no way she’ll agree to selling. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“What about leasing?” Sawyer proposed. “Would she be open to leasing instead of selling?”
I hadn’t considered it before. “Maybe? We’ve never talked about it.”
“It could be an option.” Sawyer said. His quiet optimism got to me quickly. I was looking for any kind of sign that things didn’t have to be so bleak. “It’d still be keeping it in the family.”
“Leasing would be possible,” Bob coughed. “Tilly would still have to sign off on it, but….”
“But what?”
“It’d just be a matter of finding someone to develop leased land,” Bob said.
Right. Of course. Leased meant constraints for whoever was renting, and God only knows what kind of restrictions Tilly would put on a contract….
“I’ll be able to find someone,” Sawyer said, my knight in business casual. “I’ve got connections. Real estate agents who can put me in touch with clients, see what kind of interest there might be.”
He looked at me and I could have hugged the daylights out of him. It wasn’t a promise of anything getting better, but it was something. Something new, something to work with. As the meeting came to an end, Bob hacking his way back to his car, Sawyer gave me a good pat on the shoulder.
“Sorry we can’t do more, Quinn.”
“No, no.” I shook my head. “You’re doing more than enough, Sawyer, really.”
We shared a long look before he let go, heading for his own car. “Tell Tilly I said hi.”
I grinned at him. “Tell her yourself.”
He looked at me, somewhat surprised.
“I’m sure she’d love for you to visit.”
Sawyer seemed to consider it a moment before he smiled, small and genuine. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”
The ride home was antsy.
It was just me and a million thoughts; too late to visit my mama, which resulted in a lot of worrying—so much that the moment I pulled into the homestead, I gave the hospital a call just to check on how she was doing. Fine, the doc had said, she’s doing just fine, Quinn. He told me she started on her medication, and it was a relief to know she wasn’t trying to fight that off either, but was still outright refusing surgery. It took major effort to hide how plain frustrated I was.
I thanked him, deciding it was best to let my mama rest. All this business about leasing and developing—it could wait till morning.
I hung up the phone and leaned against the wall by it. The kitchen was dark and I stood alone in it for a minute just… thinking. Enjoying the silence. I don’t know. I wasn’t really enjoying the silence because it gave me too much time to think.
I heard footsteps at the back porch; I flipped the light on, not wanting to be caught standing in the dark like a weirdo.
Of course, like some divine intervention, it was Oliver who came stomping in. I could have laughed; did anyone else even work here anymore, or was it just good luck?
“Oh—hey, Quinn.”
I leaned back against the wall, my back arched a little, eyes lowering, just a little come hither. It was an innocent, passive move I’d gotten a whole lot of ranch hands with. I remembered their wandering hands, strong and commanding, but only wanted Oliver’s. His were rougher, stronger.
Oliver paused as he reached into a cupboard, probably for a glass. He never made it that far.
“Come over here?” I asked, already feeling the stirring in my abdomen.
I was tired of thinking, thinking, thinking. He was good at making me not think.
Oliver did as I asked, seeming to pick up on what I was giving, his hands resting on my hips, the house occupied by just the two of us. I knew there were probably very few people still left on the farm, the meeting with Sawyer having gone through dinner and the final work bell. No one would interrupt us.
“How was the meeting?” he asked, and he was tentative.
It was more domestic feeling than I could handle at the moment. I shrugged, murmuring a half-there, “Fine,” before I was angling in for a kiss. He obliged slowly, the slide of our lips pleasant. God, he was fucking good at that, even if it was just a little kiss like this one.
“You smell good,” I told him, and he laughed quietly. It was the truth. It must have been a long day; he smelled like sweat and sunshine and dirt and hard work—like a man. I’d almost forgotten what it smelled like after so many days spent in hospitals and air-conditioned offices.
“I’ve been working all day.” Oliver’s hands traced up my back. I wanted him to use them to bend me over somewhere.
“I can tell.” I grinned a little. “I missed you today….” My hand trailed down his chest, palming him loosely through his jeans. It didn’t have to be a quickie like yesterday, he could take his time with me if he wanted—
“Quinn.” I felt his hand on mine, guiding it away from his cock before I heard him sigh.
“What?” I asked. Giving space so we could look at each other square, I asked a little more innocently. “What?”
He said nothing, but looked like he was thinking hard about saying something. I didn’t like it, the waiting for him to spit it out, mostly because Uncle Ollie didn’t look too pleased with whatever it was going to be.
“Go on then,” I told him. “You got somethin’ to say, just say it.”
Air blew between his lips before he said, “I feel like you’re using us.” Using us, he said, different than using me. “You’ve got a lot going on. Sex is a good distraction, I get it, but maybe you’re using it to—”
“To what?”
He spread his hands. “So you don’t have to face what you’re feeling?”
The silence was tense. It might not have felt like a slap in the face from anyone else, but for some reason, coming from him, it hurt a little. Maybe ‘cause it was true.
“Quinn,” he said, voice gentler than you’d ever expect a tough-looking ex-con to sound as he lowered his hands again and closed some of the space between us. Not to bend me over or anything, just to be close. “Why don’t we just… we could talk. For a little while. Walk around. The stars are out tonight.”
I thought of it; a night under the stars. It sounded romantic.
But romance wasn’t what I needed.
“I appreciate the offer,” I told him, resting back into that seductive pose. “But right now, what I need is a good”—I hooked my finger in the front of his jeans— “thorough”—I pressed my palm to his half-hard cock through the fabric—“fucking.”
His muscles tightened; I could feel it in his abdomen. He was thinking about it, maybe thinking better of it.
I looked him up and down. “Unless you aren’t up to it….” I trailed, voice betraying a blithe disappointment. It was textbook baiting, sure, but he was a man after all. He had his pride, his ego, same as every one of us.
It was like a bridge breaking from under your feet; he was on me so fast, I barely realized what was happening. His mouth was hard on mine, the kiss bruising and messy and I made quick work of grinding on his thick thigh. There was no secret to it, no hiding from anyone. I moaned into his mouth, licked into it like it would be the last time I ever fucked someone, and he met it tenfold.
“You gonna fuck me?” I asked, voice teasing as he undid my buttons, before that was taking too long; he tore the last three open. Whatever. I didn’t give a shit about this fancy shirt anyway.
“I want your cock,” I told him, fingers in his hair as he gave me what other things I wanted, attention and distraction, his mouth open and wet over my chest and stomach, and then my mouth again while he worked my belt open. He bit at my lip, tugging it between his teeth and letting it snap back. “I want it—hard.”
“Against the table,” he told me, the only words he had spoken since calling me out. I shivered at the tone: commanding and fuck-rough. Doing as he asked, I stood
at the end of our long family table—the place I’d had breakfast and dinner at my whole life—while he came up behind me, pulling my shirt off my shoulders and spreading my fingers on the hardwood.
I would do whatever he asked of me, I thought. My cock was already hard and wet with the mystery of what he might do.
Large, hard-worked hands ran down my back, over my hips, and I arched into it like a cat, pushing my ass into the hard-on in his jeans. Oliver groaned quietly. I felt his hand press square between my shoulder blades before he pushed me down, bending me over the table. My cheek pressed into the wood, the desire to be touched, to be totally wrecked, mounting higher.
“Oliver,” I sighed, his hands tearing my jeans and boxers down in one move. I don’t know what I expected him to do, my mind racing but also blank; would he fuck me right away or take me apart in the middle of the kitchen? I’d gladly take either.
“Just relax,” he told me, voice like hot, melting iron. A hand traced down my spine before coming around my hip and fisting around my cock.
I jerked against the table. “I told you to fuck me,” I shivered.
“I know what you need, chavalo.”
I whimpered—really fucking whimpered—as he began stroking, and I thought maybe that would be it, maybe he’d just give me a handjob and be done with it, but I could hear him moving, could feel the air of it on my naked legs. His other hand touched my ass, pulled my cheek back and—
“Fuck, fuck—” Words turned into jelly noises as his tongue moved over my entrance. The heat it drew was like real fire, twisting inside of me, too good but too teasing at the same time. His tongue felt unsure, but it didn’t matter because it was wet and hot and perfect, animal groans pouring out of me as I babbled, begging with, “Right there,” and “Don’t stop,” and “Just fuck me, please.”
When he seemed satisfied with his work, his hands drew off of me completely, and it was worse than being teased. I needed to be touched, I needed something.
I didn’t have to wait long.
I heard the belt being undone, and it was all the warning he gave before his hard cock was pushing inside me, slick with his own spit, and I cried loud enough that had my mother been home, she would have thought I was in trouble. I clawed at the tabletop, hips pushing back onto him.