He wasn’t looking for Logan, he repeated to himself. He wasn’t. But as he sat high up on the saddle, he restlessly surveyed everywhere he rode, and he wouldn’t be entirely honest if he said that he wasn’t alert for a tall, muscular form in worn jeans that clung to a gorgeous little ass.
* * *
There he was.
Not that he was looking. Only Derrick found that he couldn’t even keep up the fiction anymore. He had ridden over vast stretches of the ranch by the time it was midday, and his stomach was growling at him that he hadn’t put anything in it but coffee yet. But he hadn’t been able to stop riding, not until he saw Logan.
It was almost funny because when he found the other man, he was almost back to the starting place, the horse barn. Instead of baking his head in the heat, he could have just waited in the relative cool of the barn, with the simple, undemanding company of the horses. That was one thing that he had to admit that he missed about the ranch, the horses. Cows, he could take or leave, but horses had always fascinated him.
“Hey, kiddo,” Logan greeted him, and it was a bit gratifying to see that Logan had dark circles under his eyes and looked a bit pale under his tan. The night of heavy drinking had hit him hard, too, though not as hard as it had Derrick, who was far less used to it.
“Don’t call me kiddo,” Derrick replied automatically, though he suspected it was a lost cause. This man was never going to see Derrick as anything but Malcolm’s younger brother. Although maybe that wasn’t entirely true, given that they had ended up making out the night before.
Not a helpful thing to think about, and Derrick did his best to pull himself together and swung a leg over the horse as he dismounted. It was a thing he had done thousands of times, at least, in his life, and normally, it went off without a hitch.
Normally, however, he didn’t stay up late drinking, then ride around in the burning hot sun for hours on end on an empty stomach. Normally, he was far too intelligent to do anything so stupid.
As it was, his leg dragged too low and smacked against the cantle as he tried to dismount. His other foot got tangled up in the stirrup, and he gave a startled little cry, trying to grab onto something, anything, to keep himself from falling, but he was going over, and there was nothing that he could do about it.
What would have happened without Logan, he didn’t know. He probably would have wrenched his knee badly, at the very least, and it could have gotten a lot worse than that, too. But Logan was there, catching him easily, and though Derrick was taller than pretty much anyone else that he encountered, Logan was taller as well as broader, stronger, and he swept Derrick up into his massive arms, guiding him safely out of the saddle, detangling his foot, and helping him to the ground again.
“Thanks,” Derrick said, knowing that he didn’t sound exactly gracious, but he did mean it. He didn’t need yet another reason to like this man. He had always liked him more than he should, and as he had aged, he had started to resent Logan for that very reason.
“No problem,” Logan told him, gazing down into Derrick’s eyes. They were still so close to each other, Derrick’s feet firmly on the floor but Logan’s arm was around his body, his hand resting in the small of Derrick’s back. If there was even an inch between the two of them, it was only barely.
Just when Derrick was starting to relax, Logan shot him an infuriating grin and even winked at him.
“You forget how to ride a horse at that fancy college of yours or something? Maybe you shouldn’t go out alone for a while.”
Logan was teasing, of course, the same way that he had always teased Derrick if he ever noticed him at all. But it somehow felt wrong, after they had kissed. Did Logan still see him as nothing but some idiot, pain-in-the-ass kid, even after that?
“Shut up,” Derrick growled, and he pushed at Logan’s shoulders to try to shove him away. He might as well have been pushing at a brick wall, for all the good it did, and that only irritated him more. He had thought, on some deep down level that he was only now becoming aware of, that Logan would see him differently now. Would see that he was an adult now, not someone to make fun of. But he really should have known better.
“Okay,” Logan murmured back, and then he was lowering his head and those sweet, full lips, slightly dry from working all day in the sun, were slanting over Derrick’s and the small amount of distance that was still between their bodies had shrunk down to nothing. They pressed tightly together, right there in the barn, where technically anyone could come walking in, and kissed each other like their lives depended on it.
There was no alcohol to blame this lapse in judgment on this time. They were kissing, not because of the whiskey but because they wanted to kiss each other. Derrick could still hear his pulse hammering away in his chest from the near fall, and maybe it was the adrenaline from that experience that had him so vulnerable.
But he knew better. He was kissing Logan, he was plunging his tongue into the other man’s mouth, for no reason other than that he wanted to. He had wanted to for years, even if, as he’d gotten older, he had come to resent that. Being into men was one thing, but for him to be interested in a rugged cowboy like this, it just didn’t fit in with his image of himself.
Here he was, though, fucking his tongue into Logan’s mouth, feeling the hot, desperate press of Logan’s own tongue in his mouth. They tangled, almost fighting, and that wasn’t something that Derrick was used to. He had kissed women who yielded to him, not big, rough men who took what they wanted.
To his surprise, he liked it. It seemed to suit his relationship with Logan, which Derrick, at least, was fighting against but which was still happening. And he didn’t get the sense that Logan had planned any of this, either.
“Wait, the horse,” Logan said, and Derrick gave a little groan but nodded. They couldn’t just leave the poor horse there with its saddle still on, unbrushed, especially after such a long ride. So Derrick turned to do that, and his hands still remembered how which was a damn good thing given that most of his attention was on his own body, pulsating in time with the rapid beat of his heart with arousal.
He expected Logan to leave, to be honest, and he kept his gaze on his work so that he wouldn’t see it when it happened. Why Logan had kissed him, Derrick didn’t know, but surely the man had come to his senses, and when Derrick listened, he didn’t hear anything and didn’t dare to look to confirm what he was sure was true.
But the moment that the horse was fed and watered and then stabled, there were strong hands on Derrick’s shoulders, pulling him around. Logan hadn’t left after all. He was still there, and his eyes shone with the same desire that shimmered through Derrick’s own body.
“Follow me,” Logan whispered, and Derrick knew, at that moment, at least, that he would have followed Logan anywhere.
