A Prairie Dog's Love Song (5 page)

But this…. There were no cameras and no money on the table now, just them. And Joshua was no nameless boy. He was a man Ben had idolized since his youth, and them having sex would mean something. Maybe it would mean more than Ben could stomach right now, when he was so determined to run away from everything that smelled like home.

Ben’s hands were on the door, palms flat, and slowly Joshua reached out, so slowly, and loosely held one wrist, and then the other. He rubbed his thumbs along the insides, where the thin skin didn’t hide the pulsing veins, just rubbed gently and made soft hushing sounds until Ben’s shaking stilled. His breathing slowed and then grew harsh again for another reason altogether.

Joshua pressed in closer, letting Ben just barely feel him along his back, with only Ben’s soft clothes between them. He felt the tension between them stretch unbearably thin, but he softly nuzzled Ben’s nape, nothing more. He waited, even though it liked to kill him to do so with Ben right there in front of him like that, all of Ben, so solid and real and smelling like a warm summer night.

Joshua could hear their breathing in the room. He felt his own blood singing, and Ben’s as it pulsed in shuddering staggers in his wrists.

Until, with a low moan, Ben turned in Joshua’s arms, pulled him in, and kissed him.

B
EN
HAD
thought he was experienced at sex. Hell, he was a
porn star
. Most of the time he was right proud of that, winking at waiters or giving women on the street a sly smile and thinking
I am a sex god.

But truth be told, in his personal life, he’d only had sex with a couple of girls back home and a couple of girls here in Vegas when the gang had gone out to party. And the boys… that was only on camera and, yeah, all right, one furtive blowjob after hours given to a guy who pretended it hadn’t happened the next day. But this….

Ben had never felt anything like this.

Joshua was large and warm and sure, somehow managing to be both passionate and slow at the same time. He kissed like it was the morning, noon, and night of sex, and there was no hurry to get anyplace else. Ben reckoned he could even come like this, given enough time, or maybe he’d just expire out of sheer want, with Joshua’s mouth sucking lightly at his, Joshua’s tongue stroking him in short, luxurious caresses, and Joshua’s body so solid and hard against his. Joshua’s hands cupped him confidently, one behind his head and one at the small of his back, and didn’t move.

Ben felt safe. He felt cherished by this
man
, this older, experienced man who really seemed to want him, the real him, Ben Rivers. He felt…. God, he felt horny as hell.

Ben suddenly remembered that he had hands and that Joshua Braintree, the man who had starred in Ben’s own personal wet dreams for years, was pressed against him, stark naked.

With a moan, Ben let go of his death grip on Joshua’s back and ran his hands up the smooth planes, up to those weight-of-the-world shoulders. He felt their wide, muscled contours greedily and then ran his fingers down, down (
God, his skin was soft
) to that solid waist, down to spread across the firm curves of that ass.

That ass.
Joshua had apparently noticed the way Ben had stared at that ass. He couldn’t help it. Growing up, Joshua had been in and out of Ben’s house as often as the family dog, all rangy and firm, with that deep voice and deeper sense of quiet and calm. Ben had mooned over Joshua for years, and that was part of why he’d done the porn thing. He figured he was never going to have Joshua, thought he was as straight as a fence post, and Ben had needed to get away from all of that, to explore what he might really want out in the real world. God knows, it wasn’t something he could explore as Ben Rivers of Clyde’s Corner.

Ben gripped that ass firmly now (
Lord, thank you for answering my boyhood prayer
) and tried to push Joshua back toward the bed. Joshua’s cock was big and hard against his nylon shorts, and Ben wriggled into it impatiently. He pulled his mouth away.

“You gonna just kiss me all day long, or do ya know how to use that thing?”

Joshua groaned and laughed at the same time. He spun Ben around by his hips and tossed him onto the bed again. Within seconds, he had Ben’s shorts stripped off and his T-shirt over his head.

“Damn! Glad I never went up against you in calf ropin’,” Ben said breathlessly.

Joshua snorted and crawled over him on all fours, his eyes all dark and sexy as hell. Ben shivered.

“What do you want?” Joshua asked him, studying Ben’s face.

Ben reached up to all that smooth skin and tried to pull Joshua down on top of him. He might as well have been trying to push a boulder. So Ben arched up his hips, which proved just as unsatisfying with Joshua braced above him like that.

“
Joshua
.”

“Tell me, Ben.”

Ben didn’t want to. How could he put into words what he wanted from Joshua? There weren’t enough words in the dictionary, or time left in his life to say them, even if he could sort out what he wanted exactly, and he couldn’t. So instead, feeling devious, he slid his arm under Joshua’s and found his cock, hard and overripe and moist at the head, hanging below his belly. Ben teased and stroked it, looking up into Joshua’s face. Joshua shut his eyes for a moment and made a strangled sound deep in his chest. He looked at Ben again, and Ben stroked faster.

It was the weirdest sensation. It almost felt to Ben like he was touching himself. Every stroke he made brought him closer and closer to coming—just knowing that it was Joshua he was touching, feeling the sexy-as-hell heft and weight of him at last, seeing the pleasure in those soulful brown eyes, the jaw clenched in an effort at control.
God, yes
.

“This what you want?” Joshua gritted out. “Want me to come like this?”

“No,” Ben said, stopping at once. It was good, but it wasn’t what he wanted.

“Tell me.”

For such a quiet man, Joshua was being awfully insistent on talking, Ben thought, annoyed. But Joshua nuzzled into Ben’s neck, sucking lightly and licking there, like a baby calf suckling at its mother. And maybe it was the love-soaked lust that spiked through Ben at the sensation, or maybe it was the fact that Joshua wasn’t looking at him anymore, but Ben found the words.

“Just hold me,” Ben said, which wasn’t what he’d thought he was going to say. He’d thought he was going to say
Everything, I want it all
. Or maybe
I want you inside me
, because he did, or even
Fuck me
, just to be sassy. But once he’d said the words, they seemed just right.

This wasn’t for the cameras. They didn’t have to do
A
, then
B
, then
C
, then
D
with the perfect come shot at the end. This was just him and Joshua, and Ben wanted—
God
, he just wanted it to be real.

Joshua seemed to understand. He lay down next to Ben on his left side and tucked Ben into his chest. Then he reached down with a big, callused hand and wrapped it around them both.

Ben sighed
. Yes
. Joshua kissed him again, and it was like drowning in fire, all the cells of his body awake and yearning at the same time, for the same thing. No, nothing had ever felt like this, love and lust all wound around each other like mating snakes, hearts and bodies in a sort of mutual frenzy. Even the way Joshua’s cock felt against him was right—they were about the same size, and what parts of Ben’s shaft weren’t stroked by Joshua’s hand were perfectly sliding against the root of him, the undersides of both heads rubbing just right against each other, in that most sensitive spot, over and over.

Ben couldn’t stifle a cry. Nothing anyone had ever done to him had felt as good as this, and this was just… hell, this was nothing. So why did it feel like everything?

Joshua kissed Ben deeper when he cried out and quickened the pace. His hand was moving, that confident grip, and their hips were moving too, faster and faster. And Ben felt his orgasm approaching like a pickup on a country road doing eighty miles an hour.

“Close,” he gasped, pulling his mouth away.

Joshua grunted and crushed their mouths together again, and Ben came like that, making animal sounds into Joshua’s mouth. He felt Joshua shudder and pulse against him even as he was still shaking.

B
EN
WENT
to fetch a towel to clean them off. And then Joshua pulled him back into bed and cuddled Ben against his chest. Joshua felt a sense of peace he hadn’t felt in days, not since he’d heard about the blowout in Nora’s Diner. It was gonna be all right.

He felt a tiny catch of doubt. Wasn’t it?

“Come home, Ben,” Joshua said, gripping Ben’s arm a little bit tighter.

“And then what?” Ben asked quietly.

“What’d ya mean?”

“I mean, what’s gonna happen if I do? You and me gonna sneak around and do this on the side once in a while?”

Joshua thought about it. “More’n once in a while,” he teased.

But Ben shook his head and pulled away. He sat up. His face was serious as he thought it over.

“If I am…. No, I guess I can’t argue about it. I’m
gay
.”

“Okay,” Joshua said carefully.

“And
if
I’m gay, then I’m gonna be that. I don’t want to be sneakin’ around and hidin’ it.”

Joshua frowned. “Ain’t nobody’s business.”

Ben picked at the sheet, not meeting Joshua’s eyes. “But
you
hide it. Lord, Joshua. I had no idea, and nobody knows you as good as Chet and me.”

Joshua tried to find the right words to explain how things were—how they’d always been. “It’s like… prairie dogs.”

Ben quirked an eyebrow at him.

“You see the holes. ’N’ you know the dogs are around, even if you don’t see the dogs themselves.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Gay. Cowboys. They’re there. Like a lot of single cowboys, they go into Billings once a month, only they ain’t there to see women. There’s no point in flingin’ yourself around in public, ’s all.”

Ben looked confused. “But why would you wanna do that?”

“Do what?”

“Only have what you really want once a month? Go around actin’ like somethin’ you’re not?”

Joshua grunted. “Easier, ’s all. People have fixed notions. No point buckin’ ’em.”

Ben looked forlorn. “I shouldn’t have to choose between doin’ the job I love, and bein’ in the place I love, and bein’ with the
person
I love.” He sighed and looked Joshua in the eye. “But I reckon I do. I can’t go back there. It’s not just the porn. I—I have to be myself, live out loud. And I have to be able to be proud of what I done and who I am. And I can’t be that in Clyde’s Corner. Folks there will never accept me.”

Joshua felt a cold numbness in his chest as the words sank in. He could see in Ben’s eyes that he meant it. Joshua had thought them making love would change everything, that all he had to do was stake his claim. Now he realized it wasn’t so. Point of fact, it might have just made things worse. Because if he couldn’t have Ben now, it would kill him.

He sat up and took Ben’s hands in his. “Do you hafta live
quite
so loud?”

Ben nodded seriously. “That’s who I am, hoss.”

Joshua sighed. That simply wasn’t possible, and that was okay. It was worth what you had to give up, to live like they lived. But how could he make Ben see that? He struggled to find the words.

Ben studied his face, and he must have read Joshua’s mind anyhow, because his eyes grew bright with tears.

“It’s okay. I know you came all this way. And I—I can’t hardly believe that you’re really gay and that you want me and all. And I—” His voice broke. “I guess you’re just about everything
I
ever wanted. But… I ain’t no prairie dog, Joshua. That just ain’t me. Just like you’re you, and you ain’t never gonna change or leave Clyde’s Corner. So please, go home now before you break my heart.”

“Goddamn it, Ben.”

But Ben got out of bed quickly, went into the bathroom, and locked the door.

Joshua lay on the bed for ten minutes, trying to think of what else to say or do to make Ben understand. There was just a way certain things had to be. And he couldn’t see how it could be any different, not when he thought about Clyde’s Corner and his life there, the ranch, the horses that needed him, and his program with the kids. His life was like a rushing stream, and he knew every rock and twist and turn that made it up. It had so much momentum that it seemed an impossible thing to try to up and reroute it. To make it into, say, a little pond instead. The Joshua Braintree folks knew back home—he was a good cowboy, a good rancher, and a good man. He liked that man. He didn’t know how to be someone else.

So finally he got up, put on his clothes, and left the apartment.

His chest was so tight he could hardly catch his breath as he drove down the freeway. And for the first time in his life, Joshua knew what true heartache felt like. It was much worse than it sounded. It felt like someone had taken a big old pair of shears and cut away part of his soul—maybe a third of it—and he was left limping around with what was left. And what that missing piece of his soul contained was Ben—a big part of his life that
should have been
and now never would be, a road block on a major artery of his life, shut down before it even started.

As he got on the plane, he felt like he’d failed Chet and Fred, failed Ben, and failed himself too. But he was goddamned if he knew how to fix it.

C
LYDE
’
S
C
ORNER
did not feel the same when Joshua got home to it. It seemed smaller and dimmer now—a bit like a prize horse he’d paid good money for only to discover it had colic.

His home, Muddy River Ranch, was big and open and beautiful… and empty.

Joshua didn’t much know what to do with his heartache, so he worked. He was up before dawn, and he worked till dark. He spent as much time with the horses as he could. In the evenings he watched the news, had three or four shots of whiskey, and went to bed by eight o’clock.