Page 5 of Destined Prey (Wild Ones #1)
Chapter Five
After an emotional night on top of the total bizarreness they’d been through, Jack expected things to be strained or off between him and Rhett. It surprised him all the way down to his toes to find Rhett whistling merrily as he made what looked to be a big breakfast for them.
“Wow,” Jack commented.
Rhett winked at him and flipped a large pancake, without a spatula, by giving the cast iron skillet a jostle.
“Impressive, I know.” He tilted the pan and slid the pancake onto a platter already stacked high with them.
“You know, it’s strange. I didn’t think I was weighted down by keeping that to myself, but this morning, I feel…
lighter. Like a burden’s been lifted. Stupid, huh? ”
Jack didn’t have to ask what that was. He knew, because he felt better, too. “Brotherly bonding, better late than never?”
Rhett chuckled and turned the stove off. “I guess. Maybe we could be friends, and not just brothers?”
Jack blinked at him. It wasn’t like Rhett to say things like that, not with the walls he usually kept up.
Something in Jack’s chest loosened at the words, but fear licked at the edges too.
He wanted it—wanted a brother who could also be a friend—but he didn’t trust himself not to screw it up the way he’d screwed up so much else.
Worry had Jack rushing to Rhett. “Let me see your head.”
“Why?” Rhett blinked, then laughed again. “Oh. You think I rattled something loose?”
Instead of checking on that knot, Jack took the platters Rhett handed him, one of bacon, the other with the pancakes. “Well, you’ve got to admit, this isn’t like you.”
Rhett shrugged. “Not sure you really know what I’m like. Not sure I know, either. I’ve been defining myself as brother, son, rancher, for so long, and that just isn’t all there is to me.” He scratched at his neck, where stubble darkened it. “I feel…restless. Huh.”
The word sent a small shiver through Jack he couldn’t explain. Restless. Like the way the air feels before a storm, heavy and charged, promising something big but not telling you what. He pushed the feeling aside.
Jack was close to twitchy himself. He put the platters on the table. “You want to leave the ranch? Sell it?”
“No way in hell,” Rhett quickly replied. “Say something like that again and I’m taking all the bacon.”
“As long as I get coffee…”
The scent of bacon and strong black coffee wrapped around him like a blanket, grounding him in the kitchen even as the previous night still crawled under his skin. For a moment, it almost felt like being a kid again, sitting at Mom’s table, before everything splintered.
“Heathen.” Rhett placed two cups of coffee out for them. “I’ll get the butter and syrup, you get the taters out of the oven. Been baking ’em instead of frying ’em.”
“Little changes,” Jack murmured, finding a pot holder and fetching the potatoes. “One less fried thing.”
“Exactly,” Rhett agreed.
Jack waited until they were both seated to ask, “So are you going to explain that comment about being restless?”
Rhett shrugged. “Dunno how to. Just feel like something’s coming. Like my life is gonna change.” He bit into a slice of bacon and moaned, rolling his eyes back with dramatic flair. “Oh, God, there’s nothing that tastes better than bacon.”
Jack snorted. “I beg to differ. I can think of a few things.”
Rhett gave him a narrow look, eyes crinkling at the outer corners. “Are you making a dirty joke at the breakfast table?”
Rather than be quelled, Jack let his impish side have its way. “At the breakfast, lunch and dinner table, because some of what I’m thinking about is just that much yummier.”
To his surprise, Rhett’s entire face darkened with a blush that soon raced down his neck as well. “I wouldn’t know,” he mumbled before stuffing the rest of the slice in his mouth.
Jack shook his head, certain he’d heard that wrong, or was interpreting it wrong, or something, because his brother couldn’t mean…
“Don’t look so shocked,” Rhett snapped. “Isn’t like I’ve had much opportunity out here.”
Jack ducked his head, his heart aching for Rhett.
“And don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” Rhett continued. “I made my choices, and it’s not like I’ve never had sex. I’ve just never, you know…with a guy.”
Jack had more questions than sense at times, or so he thought. He just couldn’t keep quiet. “You’ve had sex with women?”
“Yes. It was fine.”
“Fine?” Jack didn’t mean for that to come out so…well, shrill. “I mean—you know, I don’t have a clue what to say or think. But Rhett, you’re thirty—”
“God, don’t remind me.”
Jack wanted to tell his brother that he had to at least mess around with another man, soon, but his common sense finally kicked in and he kept that thought to himself.
It wasn’t his place to decide when Rhett was ready to act on his desires.
For all he knew, Rhett was asexual. Jack poured entirely too much syrup on his pancakes, then waited until Rhett slurped at his coffee.
“So which women? I want names and details.”
Rhett spluttered, and Jack laughed in delight. It was fun to get a rise out of Rhett.
“Come on,” Jack urged. “It’s not like I’m ever going to do that, but I am curious. What’s it like?”
Surprisingly, Jack didn’t mind listening, although Rhett refused to tell him who he’d had sex with. Breakfast talk between brothers was proving much more interesting than it used to be, Jack mused.
Jack put down his own restlessness to being unable to help Rhett like he wanted to.
It felt wrong to sit on his ass all day while Rhett worked.
The part-time ranch hands were all strangers to Jack, and he caught more than one of them giving him dirty looks.
Those looks slid over his skin like burrs.
He told himself it was nothing, just ranch-hand attitude, but the back of his neck prickled the same way it had out in the dark last night.
Like eyes he couldn’t see were tracking him.
Like something wanted him. Not to hurt him—or maybe exactly that—he couldn’t tell, and that uncertainty had him half sick to his stomach at the same time.
He suspected there was some bigotry about to come to the surface, though he was debating whether or not to say anything to Rhett.
He’d have to, because if those guys were homophobes, and they had the balls to look at their boss’ brother like that, what would they do if they found out Rhett was gay?
Jack turned the question over and over in his head while he stood leaning against the porch rail, not really seeing anything as he tried to work out what all was going on, not just with Rhett, but with him.
He kept getting the sensation of being watched.
Twice he’d caught two of Rhett’s employees staring at him.
The other times, he’d not seen hide nor hair of anyone else around.
Yet those times, in particular, he’d felt like he was being hunted, almost. It had to be a residual effect from the activities of the night before.
Neither he or Rhett had been able to piece together quite what had happened.
Jack hadn’t brought up imagining he’d been touched by a stranger.
The phantom memory flashed again: big hands, rough palms, the scent of musk and pine and male.
It made his pulse jump and his cock twitch traitorously, a reaction that embarrassed him as much as it confused him.
It was easier to pretend it hadn’t happened than to explain why it made his body light up.
And it sounded out and out crazy, considering there’d been wolves all over.
Or coywolves. Or both. Rhett hadn’t been sure what kind of critters had been out there, but he’d said there’d been an increase in the coyote-wolf hybrid, and that as such, coywolves were particularly deadly and wily.
Which explained nothing about the flashes of what couldn’t possibly be memories Jack kept having all day.
He’d see amber-brown eyes, not an animal’s, but a man, a tall, thickly muscled, handsome man with hair that seemed to be all over the place.
Then he’d smell the man—musk, sweat, and something else, something he couldn’t place, but damn, it made his dick hard.
Jack had already beat off twice, and it wasn’t yet evening.
If he kept it up, he was going to be sore in a very unpleasant way.
Unease prickled through Jack and he blinked, coming back to reality and turning his head to find Aldan, a burly, miserable-looking man, standing not a dozen feet away. Aldan was whispering to another ranch hand, Ernesto, but giving Jack some serious side-eye.
Jack looked at Aldan and Ernesto straight on.
He didn’t doubt they’d figured out he was gay—back when he’d lived on the ranch, he’d been as butch as he could be.
He’d been scared of anyone finding out. But years of living on his own and in a more tolerant place had stripped him of that act, and at times, he probably was flamboyant, though God knew he hated stereotyping anyone, especially himself.
Alex always did say he had too much swish.
Stop thinking about that fucker.
As far as Jack was concerned, there was no such thing as too much swish.
Whatever people were, was what they were, period.
He didn’t even know if, or how, Aldan or anyone had come to conclude he was gay.
For all he knew, he was totally wrong, and they just thought he was a lazy fuck for not helping Rhett out.
Whatever the issue, Jack wasn’t going to ask. Not yet at least. If the dirty looks kept up, he’d have to say something, at least to Rhett, because it could mean Rhett wasn’t safe with his employees.
Ernesto snapped out something Jack couldn’t quite hear, though he caught the sharp edges of Ernesto’s angry tone. Ernesto shoved Aldan back a few steps, then shook his finger at the older man before looking at Jack and tipping his straw hat.
Jack nodded back, and Ernesto’s mouth turned up on one side in a crooked grin. Then Ernesto walked away from Aldan, who stalked toward the barn.
“Wow. Drama at the Double T. Who’da thunk it?” He went back in the house, and goose bumps broke out all over his body just as he opened the screen door.
Jack paused, standing with one hand on the doorframe, the other on the door handle. He peered back over his shoulder as much as he could without making his side scream with pain.
There was nothing and no one watching him, at least not from the direction he felt he was being watched from. Jack told himself to stop being a paranoid idiot. It wasn’t like there were wolves or coywolves waiting, watching, planning to make a meal of him.