Love, Like Water (25 page)

“Careful you’re not putting that in with lunch,” Joshua said, watching him.

“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs,
niño
,” Eli snorted.

When he’d finished, he swung back up onto Milo and led the way back out of the meadow. The head mare bugled in triumph at their retreat and Eli chuckled again. “She’s a pistol, that one. She’ll be mad as fire when we move them to the ranch for winter. That’s usually a fun roundup—they get up on the open desert and don’t know what to do. Half the time they just mill around looking lost. Getting them up the trail isn’t easy, but if we can get Big Mama up first, the others will follow.” He glanced over his shoulder as they walked their horses through the crevice between the meadow and the little valley. “The two littlest foals are gonna be tricky—think I’ll tell Tuck to bring a trailer for them and their mamas. It’s too far for them to run, even if they are three months old.”

“You really love them, don’t you?”

Eli smiled, the expression gentle. “Shit, yeah, Josh. Horses are the biggest, dumbest, sweetest, most lovable critters in the whole world. They’ll carry you for miles ’til they drop dead of exhaustion. They’ll fight for you, they’ll guard you. The whole history of mankind’s wrapped up with the horse, four, five thousand years at least. Hell, it’s only been about a hundred years that we’ve had any alternative to ’em at all and I can’t say as I think it’s much of an improvement. Yeah, sometimes you’ll get bastards that you don’t dare turn your back on, but shit, you find that among people too.” He patted Milo’s neck. “Even bastards like him—he led me straight to you when you got lost, like he was a dog or something. And he’s good at heart. They mostly all are.” Looking up at Joshua, the same gentle smile on his face, he added, “Sometimes you gotta look past the outward behavior to see the light on the inside.”

“What if there isn’t any light? What if it’s all faked, and it’s nothing but dark inside?”

Eli shook his head. “There’s always light. Sometimes, though, it gets twisted. Damaged. Sometimes it can be fixed. Sometimes it can’t. Depends on how bad it’s broken.”

“What do you do when it’s too badly broken to fix?”

“You try and find something worth keeping. If it’s a stud, and it’s good with mares, you breed it. If it’s too wild to breed, you geld it and hope it calms it down some. And in a worst-case scenario—you put the animal down.” Eli got quiet a moment while they dismounted by the water and unshipped the saddlebags with the lunch in them. “Tucker hates when he has to have an animal put down. It’s only happened two, three times I can remember, and it’s always been the fault of some human—either abuse or indulgence. They’re about the same, where animals are concerned.”

He hadn’t put his gloves back on after he’d finished the collecting, just tossed the used rubber ones back in the bag, so when he reached out and put his hand on Joshua’s nape, it was warm, callused skin that stroked him. “I’m thinking in your case it’s about three years of abuse,” he murmured, “and that ain’t enough to ruin you for good.”

“You don’t know…,” Joshua began, but Eli interrupted.

“Yeah, I don’t. Don’t matter. I can see the light,
mijo
, and it’s clear and bright. It’s just a little shadowy.” He drew Joshua in for a long, slow kiss, soft and wet and exploratory. Joshua was barely aware of Eli’s other hand unbuttoning his shirt until fingers swept up and across his chest. The calluses snagged in Joshua’s chest hair, but the faint, tiny stings only set his skin singing, and the fingers themselves were firm and gentle. Joshua shivered a little, then reached up and pulled off Eli’s hat, tossing it to the side and running his hands through the rumpled blond curls.

Eli made a soft sound deep in his throat and pinched Joshua’s nipples. Joshua’s knees nearly gave out; Eli caught him as he staggered and lowered him to the ground, peeling back the folds of Joshua’s shirt and bringing his mouth down on Joshua’s chest, his tongue flicking across first one point, then the other. Joshua shifted so that Eli was kneeling between his thighs and hiked his legs up to wrap around the cowboy’s waist. “Fuck me,” Joshua groaned, his fingers tightening in Eli’s hair.

Raising his head, Eli grinned at him. “In time,
papi chulo
, in time.”

Joshua let his head fall back onto the grass and felt his own hat flip off. He didn’t care. Eli’s hands and mouth kept him thoroughly distracted—Eli was in charge, so Joshua lay still, the leaf-dappled sunlight playing against his closed eyelids, as Eli leisurely explored every inch of his body. He lifted his hips to let Eli pull off his jeans and boots, and when he felt Eli’s mouth trailing over the soft skin of his groin, he let out a deep, contented sigh.

That changed to a gasp and growl when Eli licked the head of his cock, his teeth gently—very gently—scraping over the shaft. “Jesus, Eli,” he groaned. He felt, more than heard, Eli chuckle.

Then Eli’s mouth was gone, and Joshua looked up to see him reaching for one of the saddlebags he’d packed the lunch in. He pulled out a pack of condoms and a little bottle of lube and waved them at Joshua. “Plan ahead,” he said soberly, then the grin was back, wide and white in his tan face. He slapped Joshua’s bare hip lightly. “Roll over,
papi
.”

“I don’t know which freaks me out more,” Joshua complained as he obeyed, “you calling me ‘
papi
’ or you calling me ‘
mijo
’. They’re both weird.” He came up on his knees, folding his arms on the ground and resting his forehead on them.

“What would you rather I call you?” Eli asked.

“How about ‘Joshua’?”

“Joshua,” Eli said, and ran his hand over Joshua’s butt. He’d already lubed up his fingers, and they slid easily into the crease. “Joshua. Beautiful Joshua. Sexy Joshua. Smart Joshua.” His mouth pressed against the base of Joshua’s spine. “Beloved Joshua.”

Joshua started to raise his head, to ask “What?” but he felt Eli’s tongue pressing against his entrance and all the words flew out of his brain. He dropped his head again, smelling the rich scent of mold and dirt and the sharper aroma of grass, and turned his mind off completely, letting himself become an entirely sensual thing. The wet of Eli’s tongue, the rasp of his hands on Joshua’s skin, the scent of grass overlaid with the pungency of the lube, the pressure of fingers working their way inside—and the faint musky odor of the drops of semen that dribbled from his cock each time one of Eli’s fingers stroked over his gland.

Then Eli’s cock was at him, pressing slowly inward, and Josh held his breath for a moment until he was fully seated. “Okay?” Eli asked, and Joshua nodded, hiking his hips back to engage with Eli’s thrusts. Nothing more was said after that, not in words, anyway, but the noises Eli made as he fucked Joshua were as good as language.

Apparently it was the same with Joshua, because just as he was starting to move his hand toward his own cock, ready to come, Eli reached around him and curled his fingers there, stroking and pulling until Joshua cried out and came, spurting over the grass. He heard Eli’s yell a minute later, felt him shove against him hard two or three more times, then collapse over Joshua’s back.

Joshua rolled to the side, dumping Eli onto the grass, and lay there a moment, catching his breath. “Jesus,” he said finally, his voice raw, as if he’d been yelling for an hour. “Jesus.”

“No, just me,” Eli said behind him. He draped an arm over Joshua’s waist. He still had on his shirt—come to think of it, Joshua thought, he did too. “Been wanting that for a while. All day in fact.”

“Me too,” Joshua murmured. He stretched his arm up and laid his head on it, the smell of spunk and crushed grass sharp in his nose. Behind him, Eli snuffled into Joshua’s neck, nuzzling the nape, and Joshua smiled to himself as he drifted off to comfortable, dreamless sleep.

H
E
MUST
have slept really well, because when he woke some unknown time later, he was wide awake and raring to go. Eli was still asleep; he’d rolled over onto his back and flung his arm up over his eyes. Joshua chuckled at the sight of him—jeans down around his still-booted ankles, shirt open to display his hairless but muscular chest. He was almost golden in the dappled sunlight, but there was the farmer’s tan Joshua had expected: below the waist he was as pale as any gringo. Joshua snorted faintly—for all his talk about being careful about sun exposure, it looked like Eli spent at least some time shirtless in the great outdoors.

“Yeah,” Eli said from under his arm, “you busted me. I like a good tan as much as anybody else. I just ain’t blatant about it, like the other guys. For straight boys, they sure like to show off their pecs.”

Joshua ran his fingers lightly over the tan line at his waist. “But not pantsless.”

Lowering his arm, Eli glowered at him. “Pantsless? Are you loco? I’d be run outta town on a rail.”

“Jesus Christ, Eli, between you and my uncle I think I’ve been exposed to every cowboy, redneck, Old-Westy cliché ever written. Do you guys practice this shit?”

Eli laughed. “Well, your uncle don’t—he just talks the way they did growing up. Me—well, I worked for a while on a dude ranch, and part of the shtick was for us cowpokes to talk—what did you call it? Old-Westy?—for the customers. Plus they kinda eat it up at the rodeo too. So I got into the habit.” He ran a hand over Joshua’s bare knee. “I think you kinda like it.”

“I kinda do,” Joshua said. He caught Eli’s hand and drew it up to lick the wrist, a long, swooping stroke up to his elbow.

“Don’t do that,” Eli said awkwardly. “I’m all gross and lubey. And worse.”

“Not here,” Joshua said, but he released Eli’s arm. “I want a swim.”

“It’s cold.”

“Good.” Joshua stood up, stripped off his shirt, and ran into the lake.

Jesus! It was freezing, but it felt good after being hot and sweaty all day. He rubbed himself with handfuls of the frigid water, then dove under to rinse himself off. When he came up, Eli was sitting on the bank, having taken off the rest of his clothes. “Cold?” he asked Joshua.

“Yeah, but I’m tough.” But he splashed up to sit next to Eli on the bank. “Going in?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Think so,” Joshua said, and tipped him forward so that he fell into the pond. Sputtering, he came up swinging. Joshua grabbed his arm and pulled him up and out of the water, so that they stood embracing on the bank.

“Little shit,” Eli murmured.

“Not so little—I’m taller than you are.”

“Just the right height.” Eli reached up and grabbed Joshua’s face, dragging him down for a kiss.

Joshua wrapped his arms around him and started humming one of his favorite songs to dance to, “El Amor” by Tito el Bambino. It started out slow and romantic but picked up to a lovely quick beat, a cross between the salsa and the reggaeton he loved to dance to.

E
LI
hadn’t realized that Joshua could sing, but he was, low and soft, even as he pulled Eli into a close, intimate dance. Something about love being a dream, and magic, and light, and water. His hands held Eli’s hips, moving them with his own in a way that was both sexual and sensual. Eli put his own arms around Joshua’s neck and let him lead for a bit, but he’d never been a dancer, and laughing, he finally pulled away and dropped to the ground. “You’re too good for me. Where did you learn to dance like that?”

“I’m Puerto Rican,” he replied, his body still moving. “I was born knowing how to dance.”

And he kept dancing, but not the simple steps he had been using with Eli. He put one hand out to the side, and pressed the other against his belly, and danced, singing the words out loud. He picked up the beat, too, so that the music was spilling out of him, fast and rich, his body moving in the complex rhythm. Eli could almost hear the drums behind the voice.

Joshua shot Eli a quick grin, then took a couple of quick steps so that he was dancing directly beneath the little waterfall that fell from the canyon wall. He was singing something about water, about love running like water, and dancing as if his soul were on fire. He was so beautiful Eli almost wept.

He came out of the waterfall as he finished the song, walking straight for Eli, taking him into his arms and kissing him, hot and fierce.

Eli closed his eyes, and fell.

Chapter 22

“O
KAY
,”
Eli said as he pulled up to the curb. “There’s a parking garage two blocks over. I’m gonna park there. There’s a café about four blocks
that
way”—he pointed in the opposite direction—“and that’s where I’ll be.”

“For two hours?” That seemed like a long time to sit drinking coffee. Uncle Tuck ran errands while he was waiting for Josh; it seemed like there was always something to be picked up. But Eli didn’t have any errands to run, it seemed.

“Oh, yeah. They got good coffee there, and newspapers and shit. I been there lots of times. You take your time and don’t worry about me.”

Eli seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing, so Josh decided he knew what he was doing. With a quick glance around to make sure no one was in sight, he leaned over and gave Eli a quick kiss. “Thanks—for driving me and for waiting. Uncle Tucker doesn’t think I could have done this on my own.”