Older and Wilder: A Steamy Gay MM Romance
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Authors: B.J. Totts
Older and Wilder
B.J. Totts
Copyright 2015
At this distance Jesse couldn’t make out much about the truck tearing up the long dirt road towards his front porch, but based on the cloud of dust the driver was kicking up, he was trying to outrun someone. Adrenaline surged in Jesse's veins for the first time in months, his heart pounded, and his thoughts slid into sharp focus. He didn’t yet know if he was on the side of the driver or his pursuers, but finally something interesting was happening. He’d been seeking peace when he’d moved home to help on the ranch, clarity after the cacophony of two miserable semesters in New York, but all he’d found was boredom and chores.
Jesse’s mind raced through possibilities. They were a thirty minute drive from the closest town and even that was only big enough to support one grocery store. The mysterious driver could be anyone. His father had two award winning stallions in the barn, both incredibly valuable to the right person, and they were close enough to the Texas - Mexico border that the driver could be a drug runner who’d taken a wrong turn.
The odds were it was one of the high school kids his father occasionally hired to exercise the horses, but even that would interrupt his long stretch of loneliness. He’d probably known the driver or at least known of him for years, but maybe the judgmental kids from school had joined the rest of the modern world and gotten over gossiping while he'd been away at college. Not likely, but there was always hope.
Jesse ducked back inside the house, locking the door behind himself, and bolted up the stairs to the bathroom to check a mirror. As expected, he was a far cry from ready for company. He’d been out checking fences this morning and caught his sleeve on a barbed wire line, tearing a small hole in it that had only grown as he'd gone through the rest of his chores. He’d spread on sunscreen before he left the house too, but it was nearly supper time and he'd long since sweated it off and grown rosy. He stole a look out the bathroom window at the battered truck parked in the yard and wondered if it would be better or worse if he looked more pulled together.
The driver unfolded from the cab of his faded red pickup and settled a worn cowboy hat on his dark blond hair. The hat, dirty in places and crumpled in others, obscured his face, but his posture was unmistakable. Jesse had seen it off and on his whole life. That was Derek Heller, his father’s best friend. The Paces loved Derek like a pet pirate, welcoming him into their home whenever he was nearby, and since Derek’s parents had passed away four years ago he’d spent most of his time off the rodeo circuit at their house. Jesse had known Derek his whole life and always found him easy to love, and but since Derek had started coming around more it had become a little harder to tell him goodbye each time he left.
Jesse's mother's friend, Kayla, didn't share the Pace family's high opinion of Derek. According to her, her ex-husband was a hard drinker with a bad attitude and an inability to value a good woman. “Never love a rodeo man” Kayla warned anyone who would listen. By all appearances, Derek was a rugged man's man, hard riding and hard working. As there always were about anyone who made it out of town, there were a few scattered rumors about Derek's “big city ways,” but Jesse'd never seen any evidence Derek was anything but straight as a board. Jesse knew he had no business even thinking about those strong callused hands or the crinkles around Derek's eyes from years of squinting into the sun on the back of a horse.
Jesse certainly shouldn’t have let his eyes linger last year when he’d caught Derek in the hallway making the dash from the shower to his room wearing just a towel. The pattern of scars that covered his muscular body had been almost hypnotic. Derek had caught him staring and muttered, “I’ve been thrown a couple of times,” before ducking out of sight and firmly closing the door.
Something he didn’t want to name twisted within him again, an old feeling he knew was wrong. Derek was his father’s best friend. That alone made him off limits. Add in that he traveled with the rodeo and took a new lover in every town according to Kayla, and he was just the wrong man. Jesse didn’t like cowboys anyway. He didn’t like all the loneliness out here. He was moving to town - any town - as soon as he could figure out how to make it happen.
Derek mounted the porch steps two at a time, his long legs skipping every other step with a confidence born from years of clunking his boots up and down them. Each pound on the door, firm and certain he was welcome in the home of his childhood friend, reminded Jesse who Derek was. Off limits. Too close to his father. Too old. Too worldly. He waited, willing Derek to just go away so he could go back to being bored to death, but instead Derek headed to the barn. Of course he would.
Jesse ran a washcloth over his face and gave a quick swipe to his neck and armpits. It didn’t matter how he looked or smelled anyway. Derek wasn’t an option, and, even if he was, he only saw Jesse as a kid.
Jesse tried to look casual as he strolled across the bare patch of ground between the house and the barn, but it was an effort. Even if the man hadn’t been sexier than was altogether necessary, Jessie had been bored and lonely for months now with just his parents to talk to most of the time. The occasional run to town for groceries just wasn’t meeting his need for stimulation. It had been hard enough to come back home and go back to standing in the closet door when he'd been out at school, but the dirty boots and strong arms waiting in the barn were a recipe for sweet torment.
Jesse tried to look casual as he ambled through the barn door and called out, “So what do you need?” He flinched at the tone in his own voice. He couldn’t have Derek, but he didn’t need to be rude either.
“Need to talk to your dad,” Derek answered. Of course. Derek was Dad's friend, not his. Why else would he be here?
“Well, you’ve got me.” He managed a smile this time.
“Good to see you, but I need to talk to Mike.”
“Nothing I can do for you?”
Derek gave him a look he couldn't read, and Jesse barely stopped himself from egging him on. Something was under Derek's skin. A brief flare of hope made Jesse wonder if it was him. Maybe the rumors were true. Maybe Derek did like guys and had come home to sweep Jesse off his feet and away from the ranch. That would be something wouldn’t it, to have a crush he’d nursed so long fall into his arms?
“You were driving like someone was after you,” Jesse said.
Derek scoffed at that. “I’m just trying to outrun the boredom.”
“Why?”
“Because I make poor decisions when I’m bored.” He flashed a joyless smile. “I’m trying to make better choices. Trying to think about the consequences of my actions before I act. Need to talk to your dad.”
Jesse rolled this information around in his mind. He should leave his father's friend alone. He should walk out of this barn and weed the tomatoes and never look back at the lines of muscles peeking out the sleeves of Derek's rumpled shirt. Instead he asked again, “Why?”
Derek flashed his Cheshire cat grin, the conspiratorial one he’d used when he’d bought beer for Jesse and his friends in high school or agreed not to rat him out when he caught him breaking curfew. Derek was older, but he often felt more like one of Jesse's friends than someone his parents’ age. “I need him to teach me how to be boring. I figure I’m finally ready to learn.”
A smile crept across Jesse’s face. This was going to be fun. “I can tell you what he does to pass the time and how he plans to stay busy. He and Mom are out picking up the crib right now.”
The look on Derek’s face was worth more money than Jesse’d spent on tuition before he’d dropped out. With any luck he’d been a little more subtle when they’d broken the news to him. Forty wasn’t old for babies in some parts, it was just the fact that they’d stopped at two children almost twenty years ago that made it come as such a surprise.
When he could finally speak again, Derek launched into a stream of consciousness monologue that told Jesse more than he cared to know. Jesse tried to let the news roll off of him. Maybe his older brother had been a tequila accident, but Dad and Mom had settled in and made a life of it. It was more than Derek could claim had come out of his relationship with his high school sweetheart. Even if his parents may have gotten on the road to family by accident, maybe more than once, they seemed happy about it, in love, and determined to do a good job. They’d done better than most and shown Jesse what he wanted in his own marriage one day. His babies would have to be planned and he wouldn't live out in the middle of nowhere, but smiling at your best friend over breakfast every morning seemed like a pretty good life goal.
Derek’s rant quickly lost steam, and he shoved a weary hand through his hair then turned his attention on Jesse. “Your Dad told me there's no risk of you getting a girl pregnant, but you know about condoms, right? You're being safe?”
Jesse wondered if the heat radiating from his cheeks would set fire to the hay in the barn. “What did Dad tell you?”
“Not much. I told him back when you were in high school that if you ever came out he better do a hell of a lot better job with it than he did with me. You called him from school and when he hung up with you he called me to see how he'd done.”
Jesse's mind grabbed at the bits of information floating past, but they were like dust motes in bright light. “You? But I know about the women...”
“I'm too old to bother with labels. I like who I like and I don't feel bad about it.”
Jesse closed the space between them and breathed deeply. Leather, hay, horses. He'd grown up with these scents, but now, close enough to Derek to feel the hot brush of his breath, Jesse understood why people went wild in cowboys.
“Jess, I need to talk to your dad, first.”
The wall held Jesse up as he leaned hopelessly against it. Derek, a rogue of the road and twice his age, wanted to talk to his father about his gay son's romantic life. That was going to go well. Jesse's head banged back against the warm, worn wood of the barn wall and the heat suddenly seemed to smother him. Derek might make his heart run fast, but he wasn't an option. Dad would be right to send him away. “Well then it's never going to happen.”
“Probably not, but I still want to do this right.”
Jesse leaned in, his lips inches from Derek's, and Derek closed the distance. Their kiss was sweet and gentle at first, a promise of what was to come once Derek had done the gentlemanly thing and checked in with his friend before courting his son. The fire caught though and logic and honor seemed to melt in it. This had been building for years, and sweet teen fantasy quickly gave way to the rough reality of adult desire. The scratch of Derek's beard and the scrape of his calluses was a sharp contrast to the fuzzy dreams Jesse had nurtured for as long as he could remember. Derek was rough and real, utterly unlike the people in town putting on a show of doing the right thing. His reputation had burnt to ash years ago and he'd laughed as the sparks had floated towards the sky and out of this two-bit town. A roll in the hay with a man he shouldn’t touch was right up his alley. If he’d had as many lovers as he had bull riding buckles - and by reputation he certainly had - then this was going to be at least as good as it was wrong.
Jesse slid his hands under Derek's shirt and raked his nails down his chest, feeling the slight ridge of a scar over his ribs and the hard curves of his abs, contours he'd seen and dreamed of but never touched.
There was a reason they'd never touched. Derek was his father's friend. He shouldn’t do this.
Momentarily surfacing from the wave of lust that had washed away common sense, Jesse murmured, “We shouldn’t.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” Derek agreed.
Jesse slipped Derek's shirt off over his head, then kissed him with more teeth than he’d ever used before.
“I like the way you don’t do things,” Derek answered. He pressed Jesse into the wall and ground against him while Jesse arched into him, giving as good as he got until they were both moaning. With one hand Derek unbuttoned Jesse's pants before running a single teasing finger just under the waistband of his underwear. “How long have you been thinking about this?” Derek murmured.
