STORY EXCERPT

Brick took the offered two hundred dollars and high-tailed it out of the ranch. He left his overreaching father and social-climbing mother behind him and did not look back. He just climbed into his saddle and spurred his horse away from the house and through the gates. He’d stop somewhere to rest and think once he knew he was out of his father’s reach. 

Brick’s father had been pushing for a marriage between Brick and Arabella Thornton for as long as Brick could remember, and what Counters Senior wanted from his son, he always got. Counters Senior even made sure that any money Brick earned was never given to Brick directly. So Senior controlled Brick’s entire life.

When his father had told him that at twenty-three it was high time he married, Brick had bitten his lip and said, “Very well, Father,” his eyes never once leaving the switch held in his father’s fist. When his mother had told him she and his father were arranging a union between himself and Arabella Thornton, he’d nodded calmly, eyes on the ebony cane his mother carried everywhere, while he howled in his head. When Arabella’s mother started coming over to have lunch with his own mother, he knew he was doomed.

So, when Mason Thornton had called him into his den, just hours before the wedding ceremony, Brick had only expected more of the same. Instead, Mason Thornton had asked him a barrage of questions about his true feelings about Arabella, then handed him the money, and told him to run.

“Run, boy. Run far away from here. Find yourself a good life. Find someone to love you and care about you and not themselves or what they can get from you. Don’t marry a selfish bitch like my daughter or her mother. You deserve better than that. So run. Head down the hall and down the servant’s stairs. Out the back door. Get on your horse and ride. Ride like the devil himself was after ya. Because that’s what’s gonna happen as soon as they figure it out.”

Brick quickly took the offered bills and turned for the door. He stopped and looked at the older man. Mason Thornton was by every estimation a very handsome man. In his early forties, his hair was still jet black, his eyes a piercing blue, jaw strong and square, cheekbones cut by a chisel, and a cleft in his chin. Yes, Brick thought, Mason Thornton was a very handsome man. 

“What about you? What will happen to you when they find out?” Brick asked.

“Don’t worry about me, boy. I can look after myself. Now git,” he’d answered.

Brick nodded once to himself, took one deep breath, and took two steps forward until he was in the older man’s space. He quickly lifted one hand and wrapped it around the back of Mason’s neck. He pulled the other man toward him, and before he could think twice, he plastered their lips together. Taking advantage of Mason’s shock, he took the full lower lip into his own mouth and nibbled at it slightly as he gently sucked on it. The older man tasted like whiskey and cigars and was somehow so sweet, it made Brick moan and pull their bodies flush for a second. Then sanity reasserted itself, and Brick threw himself back.

“Well, in the absence of any other ideas, you could always tell them I did that. They couldn’t blame you then for kicking me out,” he’d said huskily.

Then he had thrown himself at the door and out of the ranch house and gone. His last image of Mason Thornton was of the man standing just where Brick had left him. Eyes wide in shock. Hand lifted to his lips. Lips still parted and chest heaving as if he’d been running. It had been a good look on the older man. It had been quite a hell of a look on him.

So, Brick had run. He’d ridden from Arkansas and into Texas. He’d finally stopped at a small town when he’d heard that an old rancher was looking to sell his land. He’d tracked the man down. Fifty dollars had bought the Circle D ranch with land as far as the eye could see and a run-down shack of a house. Ten dollars had hired five ranch hands that rumor said knew what they were doing but found it hard to find employment because they were…different.

Brick understood just how different they were once he talked to them. The hunger, loneliness, and dread in their eyes was a mirror to his own. In a short time, they had built a proper farmhouse that they shared, and the Circle D had become the biggest and most profitable ranch in the area. Brick’s stud bulls were sought after from all over. The horses they bred, trained, and sold could run, cut, and herd cattle in their sleep and fetched a healthy price. In fact, Brick had a waiting list for his stud bulls and trained colts that just kept getting longer by the day.

In two years, Brick and his men had turned a run-down, ramshackle ranch into the pride of the area.

ADULT EXCERPT

Mason was quickly and with devastating accuracy devouring Brick’s mouth. He slipped his tongue in at the instant they’d joined together and marked Brick’s mouth as conquered territory. Mason nipped his bottom lip gently and then sucked it into his mouth, leaving Brick completely breathless and wanting.

One kiss and Brick was hard and aching and caught safely in Mason’s embrace. The arms around him were hard as steel and making him hotter and harder with their strength. He shifted his hips, trying to find any sort of relief for his trapped cock, and whined in frustration as those strong hands kept him still.

He felt Mason remove his hand from his hip and start a slow slide to his groin. He arched his neck further, deepening their kiss and encouraging Mason’s endeavors. He almost keened when he felt Mason undoing his button fly and then sliding his whole hand into Brick’s jeans. He gasped and jerked when a hot, hard hand closed gently around his erect cock and slowly started to glide up and down. The move so achingly slow, it was a glorious torture.

He wrenched his mouth from Mason’s and threw his head onto the larger man’s shoulder, hips thrusting in counterpoint to the hand slowly driving him insane. He could feel Mason, hard and panting behind him. The other man’s heat incredible. The heat coming from the other man’s body was incredible. His hands on Brick made Brick feel fully alive and on a knife’s edge. Brick felt a sharp nip on his earlobe and a tightening along his aching cock, then sweet gushing release as Brick came over Mason’s hand, and the older man had to press them both into the fence rails to keep Brick on his feet.

Brick gasped for breath and fought to bring some facility faculty back to his brain. He couldn’t stop from pushing himself farther into Mason’s arms, turning his face into Mason’s neck and breathing in the man’s scent.

Mason chuckled softly, and Brick relaxed more. Mason released Brick’s soft cock and pulled his hand out of Brick’s pants, using one hand to deftly button up the fly again. Once done, he urged Brick to turn in his arms. Brick quickly complied and sighed deeply when he felt Mason wrap an arm tightly around him. “You’ve been on my mind since that night. Since that kiss. A small part of me wished I’d let you marry Arabella. Then you’d have been on hand. But she would have broken you, so I was very glad you ran. Now, though, now I’ve found you again, and I’m going to enjoy every second of you,” Mason told him softly. His lips just brushed Brick’s ear, his breath tickling the sensitive shell, and all the while, that deep voice traveled along Brick’s spine to lodge itself deeply in his groin.

“God, Mason, you can’t talk in my ear like that. Your voice can set me off again,” Brick begged huskily, burying himself deeper in the other man’s arms.

Mason chuckled and pressed them into the corner provided by the meeting fences.

“Oh, darlin’, that’s not an inducement for me to stop. If all I have to do is keep talking, I’ll find things to say.”

“Ohhh,” Brick groaned and shifted his hips. His hardening cock rubbed against Mason’s still rock-hard dick. “God, Mason. I’m so selfish. We need to get you off. Tell me what you want,” Brick said breathlessly, hands already reaching for Mason’s belt and trying to step back enough to have a little space.

Mason growled lightly and pushed back into Brick, plastering them back together. “Just kiss me and let’s rub off against each other, like being a teenager again,” Mason said.

Brick didn’t think about it. He surged forward and locked his lips to Mason’s, drinking the man in. Brick flicked his tongue along Mason’s lips until he felt the other man shiver and maneuver their hips until cocks were lined up. Already hard again, Brick slowly ground their cocks together, just teasing them both for a few seconds. Mason growled again and held Brick still as he thrust against him. The result had Mason gasping and Brick taking advantage of Mason’s open lips.

Brick slipped his tongue right inside and laid siege. He couldn’t get enough of Mason’s taste. He moved his tongue in the moist heat freely, flicking teasingly against Mason’s teeth and running slowly over the roof of his new lover’s mouth. The more he got of the man, the more he wanted. He wrapped his arms tightly around Mason’s neck and melted into the embrace, moving against Mason as the other man pushed against him.

They had started off slowly thrusting and grinding, but as the kisses deepened and their bodies heated, their movements became frantic and desperate. Mason dug his fingers into Brick’s hips, and Brick knew there would be bruises there come morning. Brick was almost in a frenzy as he plundered Mason’s mouth, tongue plunging into that welcoming cavern as fast as their hips did and teeth nipping at Mason’s lips occasionally. Mason groaned into Brick’s mouth, and Brick swallowed it eagerly.

Suddenly Mason pulled his mouth away and bit into Brick’s shoulder as he shuddered through his orgasm. The mix of pleasure and sharp pain threw Brick into his own release, and they stood there, trembling together in the aftershocks, panting and keeping each other up.

“I think you could be the death of me,” Brick groaned.

Mason huffed. “I’m older than you. I’m the one in danger here.”