Page 32 of Baker (Bastian Brothers #1)

“I trust you,” he parroted back and began to move.

I gasped at the sensations that he began to wring out of me.

He drove deep, rocking me hard, pushing in so far that I felt close to bursting.

Each thrust made me cry out as he carried me into the night sky.

We soared over the plump moon, through the thin strings of cloud, and burst through a star.

My cock exploded, coating my belly with pearly ropes as he drove hard, then filled me.

There was no ranch, no failed marriage, no years spent in the bottom of a bottle, no mother drifting away day by day, and no father who cared so little he left and never returned.

All of that was back on Earth. As my muscles contracted and I clung to Hanley’s shoulders, I was weightless.

There was an old sci-fi movie with a tagline about no one being able to hear you scream in space.

As I floated, I held him close, so close, and yet not close enough.

“I feel things for you,” I confessed as we lay there tangled like fishing lines on a windy day. “Scares me bad.”

He gathered me close, pulled free of my body, and rolled us to our sides, taking care of my casted arm.

Then he kissed me. Tenderly, his pillow lips gently moving over mine, dropping tiny pecks to the corners of my mouth as he situated my cast on my hip.

The air rolling in the open flap gave me chills.

Either that or it was this man’s tender ministrations after he had blasted me into the ozone that were giving me goosebumps.

“I feel those things too,” he confided before tucking the sleeping bag around us. Sharing a pillow was intimate as hell. I wasn’t sure I had ever done anything like this with Tanya. Nose to nose, gazing into each other’s souls. Yeah, that would be a nope.

“I’m not good at relationships,” I said while enjoying the hell out of the warm surge of his spend leaking out of me. Someone should find something to clean up with, but he seemed fine with having his hairy chest tight to mine as my cum glued us together. I was, too, if I were being honest.

“I’m not either. I got hurt once, badly, and decided that running all the time was the best way to not get hurt again. Catch me if you can, Cupid.” I tucked a small strand of cinnamon hair behind his ear. “Then I rolled into Oklahoma and met this cowboy…”

“Sounds like a country song,” I said as the cool air wafted into the tent, chilling my overheated brow and cheeks.

“Yeah, it kind of does. Only this isn’t a song about heartbreak, or I hope it isn’t.

I’m exposing myself here, Baker, and that’s something I rarely do.

Most of the time when I meet a man who I like, I get some ass then hit the road.

But there’s something about you and this land.

You’re wiggling your way into my heart.”

“And that sounds like you may have picked up a parasite while swimming in some tropical river.”

That made him smile weakly, and I pecked his lips. “Sorry. I’m feeling really open here and when I feel that way, I tend to try to pull back. Sarcasm and grumpiness always work.”

“I get it.” He placed a hand on my hip, his touch warm and reassuring.

“Trust me, I get it. I’m not great at balancing emotions, so I’m going to have to take this slow.

I think my heading north for a few weeks will be a good thing.

It’ll give us time to clear our heads and make sure that it’s not just the incredible physical attraction that we have for each other that’s coloring our thoughts.

Sometimes people confuse lust with love. I don’t want to do that this time.”

I saw the sadness enter his gaze even in the shadowed interior of the tent. The small battery-powered lantern showed me a lot of pain in his green-brown eyes.

“Who hurt you?” I dared to ask and got a slow, heavy exhalation.

His breath fanned my face as he gathered a breath, or perhaps it was his strength he was pulling up like a cloak.

“You don’t have to tell me. This isn’t a meeting.

There’s no dictate that you have to share.

Hell, even in meetings, there’s no rule that you must vomit up all your past misdeeds and fuckups. ”

“But it helps,” he offered, and I nodded. “Yeah, see that’s another thing about this thing we have percolating between us. I don’t talk about my past much. It’s not a pretty thing. But you’ve been so damn honest with me that I’d feel like a snake if I wasn’t being just as candid.”

I rubbed his firm biceps under the cover. Somewhere in the distance a screech owl called out in the night. He rolled to his back, the lantern’s glow warming his face. I enjoyed looking at his profile.

“My first year of college, I met a man, much older, a professor.” He peeked my way through his mussed hair. “You don’t look as shocked as I assumed you would be.”

“When you come from a place of dependence like I have, you don’t look down on others for their past mistakes.” I moved closer to rest my arm over his belly. He placed his hands on my cast with delicacy. “He was the one that hurt you?”

“Mm, yeah, but a lot of that was on me. People had whispered about him taking a new young lover every semester, but I dismissed those rumors. And if he had, surely, he would not toss me aside when I returned next fall. I was just that special,” he snorted in derision.

“You are very special.” I dropped a kiss on his shoulder. He hummed softly.

“Thank you, but not that special because when we did return in the fall, he had moved on to someone else. Of course, he’d not been man enough to tell me over the summer when we’d been sexting each other.

No, he just dumped me like a used condom on the first day of classes.

I still remember running to his office, filled with joy about finally seeing him again, and walking in on some freshman giving him a blowjob.

Needless to say, that tore a chunk out of me that never really healed.

I mourned him for months, years probably, if I’m being honest. I never again let another man get that close.

Until you and now I am shitting bricks.”

“Me too. We could build a house with the amount of bricks the two of us are dropping,” I tossed out, and he chuckled.

“Hell, we could probably build a town.” With that, he shuffled back to his side to look at me. “I’d like to take a chance with you, on us, but I’m going to need a long leash for a while. Like roll me back inch by inch when I start to try to break away.”

“Nope, I’m not snapping a leash on you. Either you want to curl up with me at night or you want to roam the wilds alone. I’m not going to force you to stay home when you have a wanderer’s heart. Go take your pictures wherever you wish. You know where I’ll be.”

He wiggled close to steal a kiss. “You could come with me.”

“Maybe someday, but not now. I have a heaping helping of work and family to get settled into place. Also, and I’m being frank as hell here because I want honesty from you in return, I will need to see that you come back to me on your own.

I’ve had a lot of people that I loved leave, and I know it’s a childhood trauma thing, but it lingers.

So go be the man with the camera up in Canada, and when it’s time to come back here, if you still feel the same, I’ll be at the ranch yelling at my brothers to quiet the hell down for fuck’s sake. ”

“I’ll be back.” It sounded like a vow, but I didn’t take it as a promise. We both were men with trust issues, so time would be the only real thing that would chip away at the distrust that shielded our hearts.

“Say that with an Austrian accent,” I teased.

He snorted then rolled me to my back and murmured things ala Arnold as he carried me to the stars yet again.

I’d never ridden a rocket to the moon while having lines from Predator whispered in my ear.

Yes, he was mixing his Arnold movies, but so what?

It was an erotic and oddly endearing experience.

Reaching orgasm as the man inside you grumbled “Get to the chopper!” added a whole new dimension to making love.