Cowboy by J. M. Snyder Read online

  I have to.

  Without looking at Luke, I tuck myself back into my boxers, zip up my damp jeans, wipe my hands on my thighs, both of them, they are equally stained. Luke sits up and frowns at me as I stand and run a hand through my short hair. I smell sex and wipe my hand on my jeans again. "Marcus?" he asks, concerned. When he reaches for me, I move away, but I can hear him rise from the tub, water splashing down around him, and he's naked now, I won't turn around, I can't. "Marcus, wait."

  His hand touches my elbow, his fingers wet and warm and strong through my sleeve. "Wait," he says again. "It's not ... I mean, that wasn't -- we didn't really do anything."

  "I'm with Kent," I tell him. Did I forget to mention that somewhere along the way? Did I forget to tell him that I have a lover who thinks I'm here alone now, who trusts that the only pleasure I'll find today comes from my own hand? You used your hand, a voice in my head whispers with a hint of malicious glee. I laugh bitterly and comb my fingers through my hair again, just to shake Luke off. He's standing naked behind me, water runneling down the planes of his body, his cock probably still half-erect and pointing at me -- reaching for the towel I set on the picnic table earlier, I hold it over my shoulder and close my eyes tight. "Just cover yourself up, will you?"

  He takes the towel. "I'm sorry," he mumbles. I hear the rasp of terrycloth on skin and damn him for being like this, so irresistible, so luscious. Damn me for being so weak. "Marcus, really, I didn't ... I don't see how it's so bad."

  With another short laugh, I shake my head and blink quickly at the setting sun. When is Kent coming back? Is he on the road now, a few miles away? Or still at the bar, lost in his cups? Where is he when I need him here with me? To keep me safe, to keep me from Luke, from myself -- where is he? "Kissing you and feeling you up and getting you off," I say, hating the way my voice almost breaks because despite all that, it wasn't enough, was it? I still want more. "Try telling Kent how it's not so bad. I'd like to see how you explain it to him."

  "He doesn't have to know." An unsure hand touches my back, and then Luke asks softly, "When's the last time he kissed you, Marcus? He didn't last night."

  I have to agree, no, not last night. I press my lips together into a thin line and tell myself it's not tears that sting my eyes, it's the sunlight and the heat and the bugs because I don't cry. Cowboys don't cry. Luke did -- but I'm not thinking of that, or the way he felt in my embrace or in my hand, or the way he tastes, I'm not. "You're amazing," he's saying, and though I tell myself that I'm not paying attention, I hang on his every word. "Does he ever tell you that? Don't you think you deserve something more that a drunk fuck? When's the last time he kissed you, or hugged you for no reason, or looked at you the way you've been looking at me all day? This morning, maybe, before he left? Did he kiss you then?"

  Numb, I shake my head. "I didn't see him," I admit. "We don't --" With a sigh, I cover my face with one hand and still smell the lingering musk of cum in my palm. "We have separate rooms, Luke. He doesn't want to wake me when he gets up so early."

  "And he doesn't want to hold you while he sleeps." The disgust in Luke's voice makes me rub at my eyes until red flowers bloom in my darkness. His hands are so damn gentle when he touches my shoulders, rubs at my arms. I can smell the warm water that clings to him, he's so close behind me, and I can almost feel his body along mine. Wishful thinking. "You need to be kissed," he whispers into the back of my neck, and to prove his point, he kisses my skin, a tender press of his lips that makes my own tremble. He kneads my shoulders in a slow massage. "You need to be loved, Marcus. You can't do it yourself and he's not doing it --"

  "So what, you're applying for the job?" My voice is harsh to my own ears, but when Luke nuzzles into my hair and sighs my name, I choke as I ask, "What's it to you anyway?"

  I don't really expect a reply. He's just passing through, looking for a quick fuck and he happened to get lucky enough to stumble onto someone looking for more, someone like me. But he kisses my neck, my jaw, and then he says, "No one's ever told me I had pretty eyes before." I laugh -- God, did I say that? This morning, at the sink, I should've never said that. "Of all the boys I've known," Luke continues in that same low voice, "you're the only one who looks at me like you'd give up everything for me. That's a hard look to deny."

  Like you'd give up everything ... and that's exactly what I have to lose.

  Luke is right, we don't have to tell Kent. He doesn't have to know about the whole tub thing, best not to mention it. Ideally maybe even Luke will be gone before he comes home, but to be honest I don't want him to leave. So I pick his clothes up from the grass as he wraps the towel around his waist, and I tell him that I'll see what I have in my closet that will fit him while these run through the wash. No use putting dirty clothes on a clean body, is there? He trails behind me into the house, quiet because I've sort of brushed aside what he said -- I don't want to talk about what I need, I don't want to think about Kent right now, and I sure as hell don't want to talk about jerking Luke off in the tub because he might hear how eager I am for more of his kisses, his touch, and God only knows what that will lead.

  I try to tell myself I don't want to find out.

  Inside, Luke follows me down the hall to the bedrooms, stopping when I do at the laundry closet to shove his jeans and shirt into the washer. They're the only clothing in the washer but I run a load anyway, the sooner he's fully dressed, the better. As it is I can't look at him directly, there's too much skin, too much nakedness, his arms bunched in thin muscles and crossed in front of his chest, his stomach firm and sculpted like clay, a thin line of hair leading from his navel down that flat muscle to the towel that rides low on his hips and further, to a thick patch that I know twines easily in my fingers and a hard shaft that even now pokes at the terrycloth with a slight lump. And below the towel, his legs, so strong, so lean, covered in a fuzzy down of drying hair that captures the light like an aura surrounding him. I want to smooth that hair beneath my hands, pet it flat like a cat's coat, until it's straight and long and I'll lick it down if I have to, just to make it stay. I want to lick him, his legs, his stomach, his arms, his neck and chest and cock, and he can see the desire in my eyes, he said he could and that's why he wants me so bad -- how am I supposed to hide that from Kent? How will he not see it too?

  Almost rudely, I step around Luke to enter my bedroom, hating the way my body thrills when my hand brushes his hip in passing. My room is sparsely furnished, like the rest of the house -- a cowboy's room, definitely, with the narrow bed and small table beside it, a lamp and a clock on top of that, a small dresser, a closet, one huge potted Jamaican agave in the corner that is the only gift Kent's ever given me. As I pull open a drawer on my dresser and start to rummage through my jeans, Luke sits on the edge of my bed and looks around. I see him from the corner of my eye. "What size are you?" I ask.

  "You should know that," he replies with a coy grin. Toying with the flap of the towel that rests across his thigh, he asks, "Or do you want to feel it again? What's this?"

  Before I can answer, he bends down and picks up my folder of magazine ads, half-hidden beneath the bed. "Nothing," I tell him, but he's already flipping through the pictures of my boys inside. I should photograph him, sitting on my bed like he is, cross-legged, bare-chested, that damn hat cocked so far back on his head that I'm surprised it's still on. "It's nothing, Luke, put it down. What size pants do you wear? I'm thirty-four, thirty-six." He doesn't answer, doesn't look up from the ads that Ally so carefully tore out from her magazines and sent to me. "Luke --"

  "You have a thing for cowboys, don't you?" he asks, closing the folder. When I open my mouth to speak, he adds, "Thirty-two but if you have a belt, that'll work. Who sends you these?"

  "My sister." I pull out a pair of faded jeans, worn but clean, and grab a braided belt from the back of the closet door. Then I find a t-shirt he can wear, a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of boxers that he'll have to roll to keep up, and I lay the clothes out on the bed. "I'll let you
get dressed --" I start, reaching for the folder.

  He hands it over. "Pretty boys," he says, standing, and as I head for the door, he tells me, "You don't have to leave."

  "I think it's better I do," I tell him. I don't need to see him naked by my bed, that image would sear itself into my mind and haunt me on lonely nights, I don't need that. "I'll just get dinner started ..."

  The towel around his waist falls to the floor. His skin is golden in the light from my lamp, and he looks over the clothes as if his nakedness doesn't bother him. "You think these'll fit?" he asks, holding up my boxers, mine, but I can't tear my gaze from the dark V of his crotch, the length that hangs between his legs, the firm buttocks that clench when he bends to step into the underwear. "You don't mind if I wear these, do you?" he asks. When I can't answer, he looks up at me, concerned. "Marcus?"

  Then the boxers are up, they hide his genitals and ass and my heart starts to beat again, I can breathe, I can think, he's talking to me. "Marcus?" he's saying, and I nod because I'm listening, even if I can't stop staring. "You don't mind?"

  "No," I manage. Dinner, my mind whispers, and I have this vision of the two of us in the kitchen, our chairs pulled close together, candles flickering in the middle of the table and me feeding him from my plate. I see his purple eyes flash in the candlelight -- I see him lying me back across the table and unbuttoning my shirt, unzipping my jeans, stroking at me through my boxers, kissing and sucking and rubbing until I scream with want of him, and when he finally enters me, I grasp at the sides of the table, Kent's never felt this good, this wicked, this right in me, ever --

  Luke interrupts the daydream. "You said something about dinner?" he asks, and he's almost fully dressed now, my t-shirt pulled up to expose his stomach as he cinches my jeans with my belt. I'll wear those before I wash them again, and I'll stand right where he's standing now, I'll pull the zipper down and fondle myself through the boxers he wears, I'll come just thinking about him in my clothes and that folder beneath my bed won't have to be open then. I'll smear those jeans and boxers with my juices and remember his dick in my hand, I'll pretend it's him I'm getting off, I'll whisper his name when I come. After he leaves, of course, when all I have is Kent and he's nothing to get worked up over anymore, is he? Not when I have Luke in my memory.

  "Dinner," I echo, nodding. Yes, dinner, sounds good.

  I wonder if we have any candles.

  We eat chili because we're low on groceries and that's one of the reasons Kent went into town in the first place, to restock our pantry. But there's enough ground beef left, and I find a can of beans in the cabinets -- cut up some tomatoes from the garden, add a blend of spices that Kent keeps in a bag marked hot! above the fridge, serve with bread and butter. Luke sits at the head of the table, Kent's chair, where he sat this morning for breakfast, and as we eat I find out more about him than I know about my lover of two years. He loves strawberries, his first name's Samuel, he graduated fifth in his class at the high school and surprised everyone by not even bothering to apply to college. "I just needed to get out of there," he tells me, dipping bread into the chili until it's red with sauce, then tearing into it as I watch him eat, wishing he would bite into me like that. He might if I ask, he seems the easy-going type. I can't ask. I shouldn't even be thinking stuff like this, not while he's just talking to me and Kent's on his way home. "What with my dad and all," Luke says with a shrug.

  I nod like I know what he means and memorize the way his Adam's apple bobs when he swallows.

  He tells me about a dog he had when he was a little boy, a black lab named Baron that followed him around everywhere, even though he dwarfed Luke. He tells me that he keeps a picture of his momma in a wallet, which he hid in our barn last night after he ate the burger. "Just to keep it safe," he says. I don't ask where it is and he doesn't offer the information.

  He asks about my sister, Ally, who left New Jersey when I did but kept going west -- wound up in LA, out by the coast, says I should come out and pay her a visit but there aren't any cowboys there to interest me. He asks about my folks, both doctors at the hospital where I was born, both retired and living somewhere down in the Florida Keys now, last I heard. I don't keep up with them much, a card at Christmas, that's about it. He asks about the scar on the back of my hand, where I cut myself opening a can of tuna last week and it hasn't quite healed yet. He asks me things Kent doesn't even care to know, and by the time we're finished eating, I know him better than I do myself. "I like you," he says, in the same tone of voice he used when he told me he likes going to baseball games and eating hot dogs slathered with mustard and ketchup and onions. "I want to kiss you again," so nonchalant, like he's talking about something he plans to do tomorrow, bring in the crops or water the lawn or take the tractor to town to get it fixed.

  He leans back in his seat, one elbow draped over the back, one arm on the table just inches from mine. Reaching out, he tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, his fingers tender on my face. Outside I hear a car on the road and I sit up enough to see out the window, sure it's Kent, he's home, he'll ruin this --

  But the car continues on, not stopping, not even slowing down, its headlights dwindling away into the distance. As I sink back to my seat, unnerved, Luke brushes at my cheek again, smoothing his thumb over the faint hair that's begun to grow in above my upper lip. "Can I?" he asks.

  I pretend that I'm not sure what he wants. "What?" I should clean up now, put the plates in the sink and check on the wash, anything but sit here and let him touch me like this, let him talk to me so softly.

  With a gentle hand, he cups my chin, turns me towards him, and suddenly he's right there, his face inches from mine. "Can I kiss you again?" he wants to know. I stare into his violet eyes and my throat works around words that I can't manage to say. No, I should tell him, but that's not what my heart wants, he sees that in my face and before I can reply, he closes his eyes and leans close, closer, his lips already parted, his tongue licking out of his mouth and into mine.

  I grip his wrist but instead of pushing him away, I pull him closer. He stumbles from his chair into my lap, his mouth insistent, his tongue probing into me, tasting me, filling me and my arms find his waist, pull him down into my lap, curve over his ass as our kiss deepens. His hands are on me now, roaming through my hair, down my neck, his breath hot, his lips demanding, and the next time a car passes outside I don't bother to see if it's Kent. I don't care right now -- all I want is Luke's welcome weight on my thighs, his knee pressing into my groin, his arms holding me so tightly, his lips on mine.

  Sometime later the phone rings, startling us. We're both breathless and flushed, Luke's shirt on the floor and mine unbuttoned, pushed aside. My nipples ache from the wonderful things he does with his tongue, swirling around the hardened nubs until I moan from his ministrations, and a dark red welt shines wetly on his shoulder where I sucked at him, the beginnings of a hickey that he's going to have to hide from Kent. Kent -- the phone rings again and I push Luke away just as he starts to pick at my zipper. "The phone," I say, like he might not hear it. He kisses me again before sliding off my lap.

  I have to straighten my jeans when I stand, the denim bites into my crotch and I have to shake it loose, I'm so damn hard and just from kisses. I can't imagine how incredible it'd feel to have those lips, that mouth, on other parts of me. Outside past the kitchen window the sun has set, draping the land and the road and our little produce lot in a darkness punctuated only by a rising moon that covers everything in a silver glow. What time is it? Kent should be home by now.

  The phone rings a third time and I snatch it up. "Hello?" I ask. It'll be him, calling from the bar to tell me he's running late. No shit.

  But it's not him, it's a woman's voice that fills my ear. "Mr. Latham?" she asks, and I know something's wrong because no one misters me. "I'm Officer Schultz, with the county police? There's been an accident --"

  "Oh God." The floor falls out from under me, an accident, and Luke is there to catch me, he wrap
s his arms around me, holds me as I start to shake. An accident. While I'm here kissing on another boy, my lover is ... "Kent?" I ask, my voice quivering. Luke eases me to the floor, sits so close that he's almost on top of me, smoothes my hair and my brow and murmurs it's okay. It's not okay. "Kent," I say again. I can't remember what he looks like now, and my heart hurts with each beat. "Is he okay? My God, what kind of accident? Tell me he's okay."

  "He's fine." The officer's voice is dry and humorless but I feel like she's just saying that because I asked her to. She starts to read from a police report -- driving too fast, she calls him Mr. Smithson and at first I don't realize she means Kent, no one calls him that, until she says he took a curve at break-neck speed and a showerhead on the seat beside him rolled to the floor. He reached down to get it out from under his feet, that's something he would do while driving, veered over the line and almost hit an oncoming car, a policeman of all people. Looked up in time to see the lights and pulled hard to the right, off the road and into a ditch. "He's fine," Officer Schultz assures me again, am I crying here? I don't know. "But he's pretty shaken up and has a blood alcohol level of almost twice the legal limit." She stops, waiting for my response.

  "He's okay," I whisper, and Luke rests his head against my back, his arms tightening around my waist. "Where is he? Can I talk to him?"

  "We had to book him," she says, sounding like one of those cops on TV, book him. "He passed out the minute we got him in a cell." A cell, Jesus. Arrested. I wonder how many drinks he had before he thought he could try to make it home. My fear is slowly turning to anger, what the fuck was he thinking? That he'd sober up on the drive back? That he wouldn't be stopped? He has a lead foot, I've told him before it'll get him in trouble. "He's posted bail," she continues, and I wonder how much of our deposit is left after that. "But we're going to keep him here until morning. He wanted me to give you a call so you wouldn't worry. I won't kid you, he's going to have to appear in court, and there's a good chance he'll lose his license for awhile, but other than that, he'll be fine."