Hound Dog & Bean (23 page)

Bean nodded swiftly and went to the van. The deposit bag was where he had left it, between the two front seats on the floor. He unzipped the burgundy bag, saw he could have offered two hundred more. It had been a good morning. Too bad it was ending on such a bad note.

He pulled out the three hundred dollars and brought it back to the man, who was still on the ground, although now he was sitting up. Bean held out his hand, and after a pause, Huxlie reached up, and before he could take the money, Bean had hauled the man to his feet. He shoved the money into the chest pocket of his overalls—and of course they were overalls. Would anyone believe the clichéness of this story when he told it later? He wouldn’t if it hadn’t happened to him.

Meanwhile, to Bean’s relief, he saw that H.D. was carrying the last dog to the van. It was the male Sheltie, and it had ducked its head under his chin and was whimpering.

Without another word, Bean turned his back on Huxlie, climbed in the driver’s side of the van, and took off.

N
O
. T
HE
evening had not gone on at all as H.D. had expected.

Dean stopped the van for a moment after they got over the hill and were buried in the tunnel of overgrowth on the way to the main road. He was breathing deeply and grasping the steering wheel hard. H.D. reached out, laid a hand on Dean’s. “You okay?” he asked.

Of course, the truth was,
H.D.
was the one who wasn’t okay. H.D. was a breath from completely breaking down. He couldn’t, though. He just couldn’t. There wasn’t time. They had to get those dogs back to Four-Footed Friends.

Dean turned to H.D. and reached out and pulled him into his arms and gripped him with arms of steel. Then before H.D. knew it, he was sobbing against Dean’s chest. He couldn’t help it. He hated himself for it. How long had it been since he’d let anyone see him cry?

It was the old woman. Ezzie.

A car had hit his sweet Lucas, the beagle he’d run away with when he was fourteen.

H.D. had run away from the foster parents who he knew were about to send him back to the home, and he couldn’t go back there again. Not again. He’d run and left the first and last lover he’d ever had, and he’d taken the dog because Lucas had loved him no matter what. Lucas hadn’t turned his back. A dog didn’t do that. Lucas had insisted on coming.

He and Lucas had managed to live on the run for nearly two years, and it was interesting how many men picked him up by the side of the road. He figured some of them wanted him, but usually they seemed to only need some company. Salesmen on long road trips, missing their sons, and H.D. was only too happy to let them father him for a day. If fathering meant a meal, and sometimes, if he was lucky, a bed for a night in a clean motel and not an old barn or beneath a bridge.

Luckily, Lucas wasn’t big, and all he had to do was turn on the waterworks and they’d let him take the dog.

Then one day they’d been walking along a highway and Lucas had taken off after a rabbit, and a car hit him and didn’t even slow down—just like last time. H.D. had run right out into the road and once again tried to scoop a dying dog up into his arms. The car that almost hit him was driven by an old woman. She’d gotten out and come to him, looking like she was at least a thousand years old. She had a cane and her face was more deeply wrinkled than any face he’d ever seen, and her sparse hair was pulled back in a bun.

The old woman not only stopped but took him home, and she helped him with Lucas. Helped in a way that nearly killed H.D.

“You said you would help him!”

“I did little boy. I sent Lucas to a place called the Summer Lands. Where he can run and jump and chase rabbits and never have to worry about cars.”

She helped H.D. in lots of other ways. Ways that didn’t break his heart. Ways that helped.

He’d stayed with that old woman for nearly a year, and she’d been the closest thing he’d had to someone who loved him since his mother had died six years before. She was a crazy old bat, but she’d gotten him to break his vow that he would never love anyone again.

Taught him all kinds of stuff too. Responsibility was one of them—he had chores to do. She lived on a couple of acres of land and grew all her own vegetables, tons of them, and rows and rows of herbs. He helped her in her garden a lot. He had no idea how she’d managed to get by out there without him, although she did get along pretty well for a lady of a million years or so.

She was a bit wacky. She thought she was a witch and that she could cast spells. It was ridiculous, of course. He didn’t believe a word of it. But the neighbors did, and they would come by and pay her to read their fortunes, and she (claimed she) helped them. Why, she had even delivered a baby or two.

But what meant more to him than anything (although he’d never admitted it to anyone; not Ezzie, not even Elaine) was that Ezzie held him. Held him many a time. She let him cry.

Until she went to the hospital with pneumonia. They wouldn’t let him see her at first, but he lied and told them he was her grandson. She was asleep, heavily drugged, and they told him she wouldn’t last the night.

So he left.

He hit the road that night because there was no way he could see her dead. Couldn’t. Could
not!

That was the last time he’d loved. Really loved.

Because if people didn’t take their love away, they still went away.

From then until that moment in the van, he hadn’t let anyone hold him. Not like this. He certainly hadn’t let anyone see him cry. Not even Elaine. Close. But, not even Elaine.

When he got in control of himself, managed to half wipe his face, he sat back and, to his surprise, saw that Dean’s eyes were wet. He…. Had he cried too?

“We got to go,” Dean said. “
They
need us back there.” He nodded toward the back of the van.

“God, how long have I been acting like a fool?”

“It’s only been a minute. I wasn’t going to be able to drive until I pulled myself together. I’m ready. Are you?”

H.D. nodded. And then he climbed over the seat and into the back and cooed to the dogs and helped the daddy Sheltie who seemed desperate for love.

They went back faster since they weren’t looking for tiny little roads. In fact, he saw that Bean was well over the speed limit. He could see that even from his vantage point. He didn’t say a word either. They had to get these dogs to Four-Footed Friends.

Since Bean had called ahead with his cell phone—H.D. didn’t have one—the volunteer vet was already there when they got back. Sadly, both the sickly dogs that had been in the lower cages were dead when they arrived.

At least they didn’t die in that barn
, H.D. thought.

Poindexter was there as well, and between all five of them, counting the vet, they got the dogs inside. It took hours to make the animals comfortable, clean them up, get the weaker ones to eat. Dr. Garrow, or Dr. Lee as they liked to call the older man, did all he could. He was an excellent veterinarian and gave shots where they were needed, cleaned up cuts and sores, and made an appointment with his clinic to get them all fixed.

“At my cost,” Dr. Lee told them.

H.D. wanted to stay the night with the Shelties in the Socializer room. It had a rug and a recliner and was very comfortable, but the room freaked the dogs out. Just the sound of their nails clicking down the hallway linoleum unsettled them, and it seemed they had no idea what a carpet was. Chicken wire was the flooring they were used to and they took no comfort in the living room-like accommodations.

So into the kennel they went.

And with only a little pushing, H.D. accepted Dean’s offer and went back to his home. Dean made a late dinner. Not what he was planning, no (he assured H.D.). It was pasta and Ragu—

“I make a ‘killer’ sauce, I promise.”

“Next time,” H.D. had said, and surprised himself thinking once more that there could be a next time….

—and slices of bread sprayed with butter-flavored Pam and sprinkled with garlic salt—

“I promise. I promise next time will be better….”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Next time.

Next time?

—but they were both so tired that it tasted like food served by fancy waiters in a five-star restaurant in Rome.

Oh! There
was
wine. Yes, yes, there was wine. Not “fancy” wine like the night before. It was Lost Vineyards, cheap but good nevertheless, and fuck a duck, it wasn’t like he’d had many chances to learn the difference.

It sure as fuck wasn’t Boone’s Farm, he knew that much. It wasn’t Strawberry Hill or Mango Grove or even Blackberry Ridge. It wasn’t $3.49 a bottle (or $2.79 on sale if you were lucky), that was for sure.

First they had a merlot (not sweet at all and this was what wine was supposed to taste like?) and then after that—God
yes
, they actually started a second bottle (thank you, there was a God after all). With the evening
they
had just spent, H.D. needed it. The second bottle was called pie-not noy-er (or howeverthehell it was pronounced). But that didn’t matter, either, because on their tired taste buds it had been fine and taken them from tipsy to wonderfully friggin’ inebriated.

They’d stumbled upstairs and were too drunk to fuck, but not too drunk (thank God) to get hard or suck each other and then fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Who knew how good it would feel to fall asleep with someone spooned up behind you, pulling you close, and the two of you somehow fitting together like… well… like two spoons in a drawer?

He could get use to this.

No no
no no no
….

And then H.D. fell asleep.

T
HE
NEXT
morning, they did something really scary.

They made love.

H.D. woke to the feel of Dean’s breath and kisses in his ears and against his neck. Dean’s arms were around him and were holding him close, and H.D. could feel the rigid length of Dean’s cock wedged up in the cleft of his ass. He tried—he did!—to squiggle back against that hard-on and make it all nasty and naughty, but apparently Dean had something else in mind. Dean kissed him. Kissed his shoulders and then buried his face deep in his dreadlocks and sucked at the back of his neck, and oh, didn’t that feel wonderful?

Dean kissed him everywhere. His Adam’s apple and his lips and his chest and sucked at his nipples. He went down, down, and sucked his cock and then made maddeningly sweet love to his balls. It was insane how good it felt, and he found himself begging Dean to make love to his hole (which he did) and to fuck him—but no! Dean straddled him and lowered himself onto H.D.’s cock instead. The tightness of the man was impossible, and neither of them lasted long before they both came.

They cuddled afterward in some awkward, weird position, but neither of them wanted to break the physical connection they had formed.

H.D. drifted off at some point, then woke to Dean’s gentle snoring. It was comforting. The best white noise ever.

He thought about getting up and making breakfast for his lover, but it seemed like so much work, and it wasn’t quite time to make himself at home. Not yet.

He smiled.

Not…
yet
.

T
HEY
MADE
breakfast together—pancakes. The morning was
stunning, so they ate out on the deck, and damned if they didn’t do it naked. It was amazing. Oh…. The temperature was perfect, and they sat together like Mother Nature had intended for them to do.

And to H.D.’s surprise, they talked.

No. What surprised him was that
he
talked.

“I had gotten used to it, you know?” he said, after explaining that his mom had gotten shot in a drug deal gone bad, and what had been horrible was that she didn’t even
do
drugs. At least not the kind that had gotten her killed.

“I got used to the foster parents. Got used to the fact that they always let me go. I would get all these promises that they would adopt me. Then something would happen. Always.” He reached up and began to play with his dreads. It wasn’t something he did often. Only when he was alone and here he was doing it in front of Dean. He looked up and saw Dean was watching him. Listening.
Really
listening and not just pretending. Listening to what he was
saying
.

Damn.

“They’d get transferred,” he said. “Or the wife would get pregnant and then they’d be all ‘sorry’s’ and give me back. After a while I got some attitude, you know? I became what the adults called a ‘problem child.’”

“‘Hillary,’ they’d complain. ‘How do you ever expect to get adopted when you act the way you do?’”

“And I would say, ‘No one is going to adopt me!’ Because I saw it. They always sent me back. So I was just hurrying things up.”

God. Where was this going? Maybe he should stop while he was ahead?

H.D. reached for their plates, but Dean waved his hands away.

“It’ll wait. Go on…. Please, Hill.”

Hill? First he let Dean call him Hillary and now Dean was calling him Hill?

H.D. sighed. Shrugged. Why not? He was calling the man Dean after all. And why not finish his story? Some of it anyway. Dean would have something over on Elaine, wouldn’t he?

He looked across the table at Dean, leaning comfortably back in his seat, naked and beautiful. His big brown eyes, the well-sculpted beard, the sweet lips, the strong neck, the powerful chest covered in a fine coating of hair. Then that flat belly and that big cock—not huge or ridiculous, but perfect in every way. The long muscular legs and shapely feet with their perfect nails. Dean was gorgeous. Just right. And more. Dean had stepped in front of danger for H.D. twice now. The second time in front of a gun.

And H.D. would never forget last night. Never. Not
ever
. It was more than Dean being willing to take a bullet—as if that weren’t enough for about any guy on the planet. But what he’d done for those dogs.