Page 29 of Wrangled Up (Menage a Trouble #2)

“Hey, Davis.” Shady’s familiar twang rang through the house phone into Christian’s head.

He shook his head. Did he have a tab at The Hellion that needed paid? He hadn’t gone for a beer run in weeks. “Yeah?”

“I got your buddy down here, drunk as a Wyoming skunk and picking fights with the customers.”

“Fuck.” Christian swung his gaze to the homey scene in the kitchen, where Claire and Letty were coring apples for sauce. Jake had made himself comfy with a newspaper and a cup of coffee.

He lowered his voice and said to Shady, “I’ll be there in ten.”

Pocketing his cell, he fished in the front of his jeans for his keys. Then he poked his head into the kitchen. “I’m running into town for a few minutes. Need anything, Claire?”

She looked up from the mess before her. A little curl hung in one dark, amused eye. “No, we’ve got everything we need.”

“‘Kay. Be back soon.” He swung toward the front door, and a laughing echo of “Quickie Mart” followed him.

In the truck, he gnashed his molars in frustration.

No chili dog in the world could ease his anger with Tucker.

He’d been home less than a day. During that time, he’d delivered countless orgasms, had a wrestling match with Claire’s father and a pissing contest with his relatives over the land.

Now he was down at The Hellion, drunk off his ass?

“Damn idiot,” Christian muttered.

He spun up gravel in his rush to get down the drive and on to the main road. Veering around the massive pothole at the mouth of the driveway, he locked his boot to the pedal and took off.

He didn’t exactly relate to Tucker’s thought process. His fiancée had been gone for years. While grief never went away, it lessened in time. Christian suspected that Tucker was clinging to his pain, nurturing it as a way to protect himself from ever getting hurt again.

Did he believe Claire would cut his heart out? She was as sweet as they came. Saccharine. But maybe it was time for her to get pissed too and give Tucker a hard talking-to. If she finally got angry…

Christian’s mouth quirked at the corner at the thought of his calm girl getting riled up as she’d been when they met. Too easily he could picture her beautiful face flushed pink and her curls rioting around her head.

But this was perhaps the worst part of the situation. Tucker was taking advantage of Claire’s good nature, and dammit, she deserved better.

Tucker said he was running straight at him and Claire. For a moment, warmth infused Christian’s chest, tingling through his body and down to the low throb of awareness where Tucker had penetrated him earlier. God, the pleasure he’d gained from being joined with the man he loved.

He shifted as his cock began to swell. When he found Tucker, he was going to give him a good reaming too—with words.

When he was sober, Christian would show him who could run the show.

Tucker wasn’t the only one who could take what he wanted—and Christian wanted to deliver more pleasure to Tucker than the man had ever known.

When he bumped into the parking lot of The Hellion, he spotted only one available space, clear at the end of the lot. The place was hopping tonight. Loud strains of music blared from the rough wooden walls. Even the big sign above the doors seemed to tremble with the bass.

Inside, he spotted Tucker right away. Mostly because the guy was the center of attention—shirt off and roped muscles straining as he hurled himself at two men who circled him.

Tucker was slightly unsteady from too much alcohol, but the bald determination on his red face told Christian that he could do some serious damage to these guys.

“Langley!” Christian’s holler brought Tucker’s head up. He focused on Christian. At that moment, a lanky man with tight Wranglers hugging his spaghetti thin legs took a chance. He lunged forward and delivered a sharp uppercut to Tucker’s jaw.

Tucker roared with fury, fists clenched. He lowered his head and charged the man. He caught him off his feet and threw him to the dirty wooden floor. Cries reverberated from the girls in the crowd, and the men jeered.

Shady appeared at Christian’s side. “Get his ass out of here before the cops haul him away. They’ll be here any minute.”

With a sigh, Christian ducked into the fray. The second man was on Tucker’s back. Thuds of fists against midsection made Christian’s stomach hollow. He gripped the man’s arm and tried to haul him off Tucker, but he clung like a burr on a dog’s tail.

“Get the hell off, man!”

The guy swung blindly at Christian, catching him square in the eye.

A primal rage burst in his chest. With a bellow, he threw a punch right at the burr’s ear. His knuckles smashed brutally, splitting around bone and cartilage. Pain radiated up his wrist to his elbow, but he ignored it and reveled in the man’s howl of pain.

The burr rolled off Tucker, who was beating the skinny cowboy into a piece of linguini. Through the flurry of fists, Christian saw that Tucker had the man’s face uglied up .

“Stop, you ass,” Christian ground out, close to Tucker’s ear.

He caught Tucker’s arm mid-punch and twisted it ruthlessly behind his back.

When his friend started to break his hold, Christian jerked his arm higher, putting pressure on the shoulder socket.

“Get up and apologize and walk away or get a dislocated shoulder. Those are your choices.”

Blood and tears stung the eye that had been punched, and it was swelling rapidly.

The fight went out of Tucker. Under Christian’s body, Tucker’s went lax.

Passed out.

“Fucking hell.” Christian rolled his friend off the string bean cowboy and offered the man a hand up. The guy gripped Christian’s hand, and he launched to his feet.

“Get him outta here, Davis,” Shady said.

Christian hitched a thumb in his pocket and stared down at his friend’s unconscious face. Beautiful face—rugged in a way that stirred Christian. Even that new piercing made him look manlier.

With a nod, he grasped Tucker’s shirt and hauled him up and over his shoulder. The dead weight made Christian stagger a bit, but he righted himself.

On his way past the guys Tucker had fought, Christian caught their stares. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“Tell your friend when he wakes up that he should learn to handle his whisky better.”

Whisky? Yeah, now that Christian was in such close proximity to his friend, he smelled the sharp alcohol all over him. Was this what he’d learned while away? How to be a drunk?

Someone opened the door for Christian, and he passed through it, leaving the crowd and the loud music behind. Tucker’s hard body rode on Christian’s shoulder easily as he crossed the parking lot. Only problem was getting the truck door open.

Then again…

He dumped Tucker over the side of the truck, right into the metal bed. The crash roused Tucker, and he loosed a growl.

“Sons of a bitches, I’ll finish this!”

Christian stepped on the bumper and hooked a leg over the side, perching on the tailgate. He stared down at Tucker, who was pushing himself into a sitting position. A groan eased from him as he found he’d taken more blows than originally thought.

Tucker touched the top of his head. “Lost my hat.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose your teeth. Or your freedom. Cops on their way, called to a bar brawl. Why did you pick a fight with those guys?”

Tucker dropped his gaze. “Can’t recall.”

“Yeah, I thought that was the case.”

“Am I allowed to sit inside your truck on the way home?” Tucker’s voice was low, contrite.

It tugged at Christian’s heartstrings. Damn him to hell. “That depends. You gonna puke?”

Tucker contemplated a moment and shook his head. Christian climbed off the tailgate and went around to the driver’s door while Tucker hauled his body out of the bed. He joined Christian in the cab a long minute later.

“Sorry about your black eye. I didn’t do that, did I?”

“If you had, you’d be feeling it now.” Something about Christian’s comment cast a net of charged silence over them .

“That’s the thing I need, you know,” Tucker said, his words only slightly slurred.

“What’s that?” Christian fought the rising need in him—a desire to run.

“I need to feel something different from the old pain.”

A few raindrops struck the windshield and ran down like tears. Christian stared at them, taking in what his friend was trying to say.

“In other words, you’re causing yourself new pains to wipe out the old.”

Tucker’s eyes glistened. “Somethin’ like that.”

“Man, you can throw yourself off bridges, ravines or a horse’s back. Go full tilt on your path to self-destruction. But. Do. Not. Take. Claire. With. You.”

A little voice in the back of Christian’s head cried, “Or me.” But he didn’t say it. If Tucker harbored an ounce of emotion for him, he would hear the bell toll loud and clear.

Christian put the truck into gear. “You might want to think about this, man.”

Tucker’s voice was fogged. “What’s that?”

“Know what they do with horses that can’t be tamed? ”

Tucker turned his face to the window, and his silence meant he understood that Christian and Claire could cut him loose. Forever.

Christian stared through the drops of rain, unwilling to release his blurred look at the world just yet.

Finally, on the main highway, a car’s headlights hit the water, and Christian turned on the wipers.

Across the space, he glanced at Tucker, who was rubbing his thigh muscle gingerly as if it was bruised.

Yeah, it was time for Tucker to get his head out of his ass. And Christian intended to do just that—then later replace it with something equally as hard until Tucker screamed with release.

* * * * *

Claire’s uniform felt sticky with the residue of a soda a child had spilled all over her during the lunch rush.

While Claire had mopped at the little girl’s mess, the mother had filled her ears with a stream of consciousness outburst about the mess in the house and how her lazy kids and husband didn’t help .