Page 8 of Saddle Studs (Rainbow Ranch #3)

You don’t realize just how awake I am right now.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I could use a bed.”

Fuck, the exhaustion crept up on me sometime after meeting the last horse.

I only spent about ten minutes in the shower before I felt the siren call of my bed reaching out through the thick steam.

I dried off and put on my sleeping shorts, which would be coming off the second I got back into the bedroom.

I brushed my teeth and washed my face and took a moment to look in the fog-streaked mirror.

I cocked my head and smiled.

Life could be so damn weird, couldn’t it?

Just last week I was doing the same thing, except I was staring at a puffy-eyed and depressed-as-fuck reflection, smile nowhere to be found.

It was a moment that resembled something close to rock bottom for me.

I realized that the light and life I normally exuded had been snuffed out somewhere between my relationship troubles and my career issues.

I had felt like used gum, chewed up and spit out and desiccated in the dry air. Lonely and sad and drifting.

One day at Rainbow Ranch seemed to have cured all of that.

Maybe it was the distance, or maybe it was my avoidant tendencies (sorry, Zack), but something—and I don’t want to be overly dramatic here— healed inside me the second I stepped out of my Uber and onto the ranch.

Like my inner child had been waiting for this very moment to burst through the doors of my subconscious and fill me up with joy again.

Or maybe it was just being around Benny that did all the healing heavy lifting?

Benny, Benny, Benny. Ohhhhh Benny.

Seeing him brought back so many memories and stirred up some residual emotions I thought were long, long gone.

Benny had been the one who made me question everything when we were younger.

I’d grown up with the same heterosexual rulebook he’d been raised with: Tonka trucks for Christmas, water guns for birthday parties, enrolled in baseball and basketball, always asked about possible girlfriends by every extended family member at every large gathering possible.

And yet, somehow, someway, Benny broke out of the mold and realized he was made for a different set of rules.

He came out to me when we were freshman in high school, and I immediately remember feeling the need to protect him.

The second emotion I felt was pride.

The third? It was jealousy.

That was the most subtle, but also the most toxic. I couldn’t parse it. Didn’t want to face it.

But that was so long ago. I moved on from those questions. Discovered that what I felt for Benny was an anomaly. A blip in the radar.

A yawn made me drop my head forward and stretch out my jaw. I finished up and walked out of the bathroom wearing a cloak of steam.

I liked boiling hot showers.

I walked down the hall and into my room, becoming acutely aware of the fact that the door to Benny’s room was only a couple feet away.

There was a guest house that I could have taken up in, maybe I could ask to be moved there?

I didn’t want to impose on the family. I also didn’t want to fuel my fantasies any further.

Inside the room, I shut the door and locked it.

Seconds later, I was completely naked again.

I tossed my shorts on a comfortable-looking navy blue chair and draped my towel across the back.

Then I flopped onto the bed, my face sinking into the cloud-like pillow.

I couldn’t help but groan. The sheets were so soft they should have been illegal, and they smelled like lavender and vanilla.

I rolled onto my back and splayed out like a starfish.

Fuck, this bed was comfortable.

And this room felt so cozy and homey, but also elevated. Benny really did have a great eye for design.

Then, as if he had known I was thinking of him, Benny coughed, sounding almost as if he were in the room with me. His bed must have been pushed directly against the wall behind me.

Damn these walls are thin.

I lazily rubbed my chest, wondering what Benny was doing right now. Was he reading something? Browsing YouTube? Was he doing something else?

My thoughts trailed, desire painting the path.

Damn. I hadn’t jerked off in like a week.

I’d been feeling down on myself, but that didn’t stop the sexual urges from building up, my balls feeling more and more full.

It didn’t help that I already had an overactive sex drive.

I could fuck multiple times a day, going for sessions long enough to leave me and my partners sweaty and brainless messes by the end of it.

So not jerking off in a week was already asking a lot of me.

My cock started to swell. I didn’t want to keep imagining Benny—my therapist would likely have something to say about that—so I leaned over and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. I grabbed my headphones next, popping them in and connecting them to my phone.

I cupped my balls as I opened up one of my go-to porn sites. The front page already had a couple videos that caught my attention. I opened one of them: a man lying down on a milking table with his wife underneath, working his lubed-up cock.

Fuck, that was hot. I stroked myself with one hand and scrubbed through the video with the other. I went to a gang bang scene next, where the girl had at least fifteen guys lined up behind her.

Underneath that video was another, featuring one of the guys in the last clip. It was him and another man, the preview showing them kissing passionately inside a locker room. They looked like they had just finished playing soccer.

I tapped the video. Made it full screen.

Leaned back. Something dinged, but I ignored it.

Probably a spam text. I spread my legs and gripped my rock-hard cock.

The video started with them congratulating each other on their win.

I skipped all the small talk, dragging the slider to where they started kissing.

Fuck. What was it about two men—all muscles and hair and firmness—kissing and rubbing that really set me off? Was it just that I didn’t see it very often? I rarely jerked off to gay porn, not going to say it never happened, but it wasn’t a frequent thing. Maybe that’s what made it so hot?

Whatever. Didn’t matter. Dick. All I cared about was dick. My dick. Stroking it, feeling the pressure build in my core, picturing Benn—no, not that.

The two men on the screen were naked, their cocks battling for space between them as their lips locked, hands roaming and squeezing and cupping.

I jerked off harder, hyper-aware to not make the bed shake with my movements so the headboard didn’t hit the wall.

The last thing I wanted was for Benny to know what I was doing.

One of the men dropped down, taking the other’s cock down his throat. My eyes rolled to the back of my head. A clear stream of pre-cum leaked from my tip, sliding down the shaft. I used it as lube, spreading it up and down, watching as the guy deep throated the other.

“Yeah, boy, suck that big cock. Take it. Take it down to my balls. That’s it, oh fuck yeah.”

Maybe it was my paranoia talking, but that sounded way too loud. Even though I wore headphones, I didn’t want any noise leaking through. I lowered the volume on my phone so I didn’t have to worry about Benny picking up on what I was doing.

There, now I could blow my load in peace.