Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 (23 page)

The morning might have gotten off to a rocky start, but with the vision of the blanket and the alone time lodged in his brain, he was totally on board with the off-trail plan.

Rafi tugged at the backpack straps on his shoulders. Denny had thrown together a quick pack containing what he’d called the basics for the two of them: water, snacks, flashlight, more snacks, first aid kit, cell phone. It had seemed excessive to Rafi. They weren’t hiking to the top of a mountain after all. But after ten minutes of Denny’s lecture about hikers who got lost in the Presidential range that crossed New Hampshire, Rafi had conceded the “never hit the trail unprepared” rule. More than conceded. When Denny’s back was turned, Rafi stuffed another six protein bars in the front pocket of the backpack.

Just in case.

He didn’t know why he’d insisted on carrying the backpack, but he strongly suspected it was his brain’s dumbass instinct to show he was in charge of something, even when he had no idea what he was doing. The look on Denny’s face had said he wanted to argue, but he’d let Rafi take the pack without an argument. What had felt like a light enough load at the beginning of their walk to the trail was now giving him a nagging pain in his lower back, but Rafi didn’t even consider complaining or asking to trade off.

Besides, since Denny had taught him the rest-step, Rafi’s thighs and calves had been a lot more enthusiastic about the steep parts of the uphill climb. Not feeling like he was dying meant he had enough energy left to admire the bunch and slide of muscles in Denny’s legs and ass.
God, that ass.
The memory of it pressed against his dick in the bathroom, his hands stroking Denny until he came…

Rafi stumbled over nothing and came back to the present with a curse that halted Denny in his tracks.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”
Except for a hard-on the size of this mountain
. Rafi looked around them. They hadn’t seen anyone since leaving the trail head. “Is there, like, poison ivy or anything around here?”

Denny peered off trail and shook his head. “I don’t see any. Why? You have to take a leak?”

Rafi pulled Denny off the path and into the sparse woods, tugging him to the far side of a large tree. They were out of sight. Mostly.

“Where are you—?”

“Alone time.”

“Yeah, but…” Denny looked over his shoulder at the trail to the waterfall.

Rafi shrugged off the backpack, grabbed Denny’s T-shirt and backed him up against the tree. “It can wait. I can’t.”

“Okay,” Denny breathed, grabbing the back of Rafi’s head and pulling him close. Rafi leaned into him and opened his mouth, wanting to take it slow, to linger over kissing in this quiet place that smelled like dirt and green and hummed with quiet life. But images of sex and naked skin dappled by sunlight through leaves pushed his need higher until he was rubbing himself against Denny. The ridges of their erections lined up through their shorts, and Rafi thought the outdoors was the fucking best thing ever.

“God, I’m gonna come in my shorts,” Denny ground out.

Not until I get you in my mouth, you don’t.

Before Denny could say a word, Rafi dropped to his knees. He pulled as Denny pushed and shorts hit the ground. Then Denny pulled his T-shirt out of the way, leaving himself naked in all the right places.

“There’s condoms in the backpack—” Denny began, but Rafi shook his head. They both knew how low the risk was with Denny on PrEP, but he wouldn’t have cared either way. The idea of tasting Denny was making his body hum.

Rafi slid his hands up Denny’s thighs, ruffling the hair as muscles bunched under his palms. He lifted one hand and trailed a finger along Denny’s length, smiling at the choked-off groan that spilled into the air. “You’re so pink. I can never get over how pink you are.”

“Less talking, please,” Denny said, and then gasped as Rafi obliged and wrapped his lips around the head of Denny’s cock, licking him as much for the taste as for what it did to Denny. Which was make him cry out so loudly, something rustled away through the brush as Rafi poked the tip of his tongue into Denny’s slit and made him squirm.

They were twenty feet off the trail and Rafi was pretty confident they’d hear anyone coming in time, but the tension of not knowing for sure was an extra jolt of
holy-shit-hot
to the system.

He closed his eyes, sinking under the adrenaline rush and pushing down farther on Denny’s cock. Letting his mouth water, which was easy because Denny tasted
delicious
. Every time he lifted up, Rafi sucked extra hard, pulling another spurt of precome out until his mouth was full of nothing but the taste of Denny.

His jaw ached and his eyes watered and his knees hurt because he was a dumbass who went to his knees in the woods, which were full of fucking rocks apparently, and Rafi didn’t give a damn. Denny in his mouth was everything he wanted, and he was going to suck his boy inside out before he let him go.

“Shit. I’m not gonna last,” Denny panted when Rafi reached between his legs with one hand to grab his balls.

Rafi smiled around Denny’s dick and squeezed gently. The next groan that ripped out of Denny’s mouth as Rafi sucked and swallowed, letting the back of his throat squeeze the tip of Denny’s dick, was half protest, half laugh.

“Proud of that, huh?”

Rafi hummed his yes and Denny’s dick turned to steel in his mouth. Hips punching forward, Denny cried out and came, pushing so deep into Rafi’s throat that Rafi coughed when he finally pulled free. He wiped his wet eyes against Denny’s thigh and then leaned his forehead there, catching his breath. Nothing but silence from above him. Silence, and a distant noise reminding Rafi of where they’d been heading. He looked up. “Is that the waterfall I hear?”

“Wait. Don’t you want to…?” Denny stared pointedly at Rafi’s crotch.

Rafi grinned and tugged Denny’s shorts back up, tucking him in gently. “You bet. Right next to that waterfall, baby.”

Denny shook his head, grinning, as Rafi jumped up and grabbed the backpack. “I’m really worried I’m going to underdeliver here. Especially after
that
.” He waved at the scuff marks where Rafi’s knees had pressed into the dirt.

“Don’t worry, guapo.” Rafi pressed a fierce kiss to Denny’s mouth.
Handsome
wasn’t even the right word for how hot Denny was. “I got faith in you.” He strode back to the path.

The trail eventually leveled off as they walked next to a small river, Denny forging ahead of him and holding on to the thin, whippy branches so they didn’t smack into Rafi. It didn’t take long before the scratchy background noise Rafi was hearing resolved itself into the splash of water on rock.

“Here we are,” Denny announced as the brush between them and the river thinned. They’d arrived at the waterfall. Rafi pushed past Denny to get a better look.

“Be careful.” Denny’s raised voice carried over the rumble of the water crashing onto the rocks of the streambed.

The fall wasn’t particularly impressive in size, at least not as far as the amount of water pouring over the lip of rock at the top, but it was tall. Thirty feet, maybe, and the spray from the skinny stream of water splashed everywhere, coating all the rocks and shrubs and the trail itself with a slick spray.

It was no Niagara, but it was a damn waterfall, and that was pretty fucking cool. He definitely needed a picture of this. He took another step forward and reached back to find the pocket with his phone.

“Whoa,” Rafi shouted as he slipped on the rocks, whipping out an arm to grab a tree branch. The skinny bough bent low under his weight as he hauled on it, trying to stay upright. He kicked until he managed to catch some traction on the wet stones, feet spread wide apart, and then wobbled back and forth at the hips, heart racing. “Holy shit.”

Picking his way carefully across the slick bank, Denny made his way over to where Rafi stood, muttering under his breath. “I told you, be—”

His left foot shot out from under him.

Denny duplicated Rafi’s move, throwing a hand up to grab a branch, leaves falling as his grip stripped them free. But there was no recovering from his fall, and Rafi watched as the entire weight of Denny’s body yanked on that twisting hold as he slid down the bank.

A roar erupted from Denny as he flung out his free hand, clutching at the ground. The thin branch slipped farther through his other fist. Rafi lunged.

He wrapped his fingers like steel around the wrist of Denny’s free hand and pulled.

Denny’s slide down the bank halted.

Rafi had a split second of relief at realizing that Denny wasn’t going to end up in the river, before Denny started screaming. His arm hanging on to the branch was held at a strange angle. A wrong angle.

Denny closed his mouth, choking on the noises that still tried to escape. His face paled, his skin under Rafi’s fingers growing suddenly slick with sweat. The muscles of Denny’s throat flexed as he swallowed again and again.

“Hold on.” Rafi kept his grip tight on Denny’s good arm, scooting back until he had his feet solidly under him on dry ground. “Okay. I got you. You can let go.”

For a moment, it was as if Denny couldn’t make himself.

Rafi kept his voice low. Soothing. “Let go, Denny.”

At last, Denny opened his fingers, the branch whipping out of his grasp and bouncing back up into the air with a whistle of dry leaves. His arm dropped and his eyes rolled up. Denny screamed, and the sound ripped Rafi in half.

Deaf over the rush of panic in his own ears, Rafi pulled Denny away from the riverbank. Before he stopped moving, Denny was turning his head and puking. Rafi let go of his wrist and Denny flopped on the ground, angling away from the sour trail of vomit.

Rafi shrugged off his backpack and dug inside it, pulling out white paper napkins. He knelt next to Denny and swiped the soft paper across his lips and chin, cleaning him off. Denny spat into the dried leaves, and Rafi wiped his mouth again.

“Did you break it?” Rafi asked, eyeing Denny as he pulled out his cell phone and called Austin, knowing he was the one least likely to be able to ignore a ringing phone, even with a hangover from hell.

“Dislocated. I think.” Denny was breathing hard, panting with his mouth open. Rafi peered around him, spotting a protuberance under Denny’s T-shirt that definitely looked like a bone poking out in a place no bone should be. Fuck.

Austin answered his phone. “Hey, wilderness boy. Heard you’re wrestling with Mother—”

“We’ve got trouble. Denny’s hurt. I need you to come get us. We took a trail that starts about a mile from the house on the other side of the road if you go left at the bottom of the driveway.” Austin started asking questions, but Rafi didn’t have time for that. “You need to find the keys—”

“Fuck.” Rafi startled as Denny’s curse exploded over his words. “I’ve got the car keys.” A stream of
fucks
flew from his mouth.

“Shit. Denny’s got the keys.” Rafi bit the inside of his cheek hard to keep himself from yelling at Denny for not thinking to leave the car key behind. No time for that.

“I can walk.” Denny managed to get the words out, grinding his teeth on the pain.

“You’ll have to, down the mountain at least.” Fuck, this nature bullshit was ridiculous. What the hell use was 911 if they couldn’t get to you? Rafi held the phone away from his mouth. “Unless we can call, what? Mountain rangers with, I don’t know, rescue gear they can use to carry you down.”

“I can do it.” Denny pressed his lips together. “I’m not sitting here in the mud, waiting for the EMTs to come and haul my ass to town. With my fucking luck, they’ll know my aunt and uncle, and someone will end up calling my mom.”

Rafi knew there’d been a stretch of awkward communication between Denny and his mom after he’d come out. He’d spent longer than originally intended in New Orleans on his internship, partly to give himself and his parents some space to get used to the new status quo. But Denny’s mom had eventually bounced back to her old self, which meant helicopter mom from hell—in the nicest possible way—if Denny didn’t squash her every move to micromanage his life from a distance.

Still…

“You know you’re gonna have to call her,” he said to Denny, who grimaced.

“I know. But if I find out how bad it is first, maybe I can talk her off the ledge before she hits DEFCON 1.” Rafi opened his mouth to argue—his sisters would absolutely kill him if they weren’t his first call when he was injured—but Denny kept talking. “My legs aren’t broken. All I have to do is get down the big hill and I’m gonna get some killer drugs.”

After a moment, Rafi nodded and Denny beckoned for the phone. Austin’s high-pitched yap poured out of the speaker until Denny reassured him that he was not, in fact, going to faint, die or otherwise expire before they could rescue him.

“Get Vinnie,” Denny instructed, voice tight with pain. They were all runners, but when he wanted to, Vinnie could outpace them with ease. “Have him run to the trailhead. He can meet us there and run back to get the car. I definitely need to go to the hospital.”

By the time Denny finished giving Vinnie better directions to the trailhead and hung up, Rafi had pulled a long-sleeve T-shirt out of his pack and started folding the fabric of the shirt to make one long piece of cloth from cuff to cuff.

“That looks official,” Denny said. Rafi could still hear the tension, like grit, under his calm words.

Rafi nodded, eyes on his improvised first aid. “I think you’re gonna need a sling if you want to try hiking back down.”

Denny pushed himself to an upright sitting position with his good arm, hissing as he moved. “Feels like I might pass out right here.”

“Yup. That can happen.” Rafi held his voice to a cheerful, bantering tone, as if nothing at all out of the ordinary was going on. Keeping kids calm when they were hurt was a skill that worked on adults too. “I’ve seen kids hit the ground from one yell to the next when the pain gets too bad.”

“So, you know what you’re doing, huh?”

“I take a CPR and first aid class every summer to keep my certification current. I’ve never done any of the wilderness stuff, but I can make a sling.”