“I also missed—” Bede looked down at his empty plate, shaking his head, a small grin lighting his features, as if he wasn’t sure he should share what he’d been about to share. But then he looked up and said, “Standing in the grass in my bare feet. Or standing in the dirt, it doesn’t matter.”
“Bare feet?” asked Marston, and Galen leaned forward to hear the answer. He couldn’t help himself.
“You can’t go around barefoot in prison,” said Bede. “It’s not just the mold in the showers, and the floors are kept pretty clean, lots of mopping as punishment, you see.” He smiled, shakinghis head, as if the memory was good, rather than, actually, quite sad. “Another inmate sees you barefoot, they’ll stomp on your toes. And just try stepping out in a prison yard without boots on. You’ll step on a goat’s head burr, many of them, inside of two minutes.”
Sitting back, sympathy rising, Galen’s misgivings churned inside of him right next to fraught nerves and a heightened sense of want.
Finishing his dinner, he made his way back to his tent. It wasn’t even close to sunset, and the tent was set aglow by the sunlight coming through the pine trees, accompanied by the familiar scent of sun-warmed canvas, the bright smell of pine, and crushed pine needles.
What came next between him and Bede? He had no idea. Should he make his bed before he went to movie night? Should he change into clean boxers? Should he forget the whole thing?
Well, one thing was for certain, he wasn’t going to lollygag in his own tent like some damsel who needed rescuing.
What he really needed to do was put the kibosh on this whole thing, nip it before it became unruly. Because, reasonably, in the real world, he would not be hooking up with an ex-con.
But the valley wasn’t like the real world. It was a place of green swathes of trees, a cool blue lake, startlingly clear skies. A place apart where dreams might turn into reality.
Leaving the bed untouched, as it was made anyway, and not changing clothes, Galen stepped out of his tent and strode along the path between the trees in the direction of Kell and Bede’s tent.
He should have encountered someone, but perhaps they were all at the mess tent in preparation for movie night. But there was nothing and no one at the moment. The woods were eerily silent as the sun streamed through the trees, slicing in yellow angles, creating long, slanted shadows.
He’d gone as far as the spot where the two main paths through the trees intersected and paused, planning to go left to Bede’s tent, when he heard a rustle in the woods.
Turning, he saw Bede coming toward him.
Everything slowed down as his focus narrowed in on the way Bede had rolled up the sleeves of his blue chambray shirt. The fact that he was wearing his cowboy boots, which made his legs look ten miles long. How his shirt was unsnapped in a come-hither way. The tumble of dark hair across his forehead. The way his eyes widened, then narrowed as he saw Galen and began to walk faster.
Everything sped up.
Being caught in Bede’s arms, strong bands of iron, Galen was shocked by his body’s own response to a sudden and heated kiss, the lances of pleasure up his legs, the banding around his groin. The heat of pure desire that seemed to come out of nowhere and settle over him in pops of invisible glitter.
“Bede,” he gasped, his palms pressing against Bede’s chest because he needed some air. A moment to steady himself.
Bede circled warm fingers around the back of Galen’s neck and drew him close. Not quite close enough for a kiss, but close enough for their noses to brush, and for Galen to imagine he could feel the whisper of air from Bede’s eyelashes as he surveyed Galen’s face.
“It can’t hurt us,” said Bede, almost whispering.
“What can’t?” asked Galen, both confused by the statement and distracted by the idea of being hurt.
This would hurt. All of it. Getting together with Bede would be good, but any connection he was likely to make—wassureto make—was making—would be trampled at summer’s end. Bede would go his way and Galen would be left with the tatters of his heart.
He never got in bed with any man until he had feelings for him, and here he was. His body plastered to Bede’s, all up and down, a hot sear. Desire hot, his skin flushing, his reason a runaway herd of horses. Oh, yes, he had feelings for Bede. Confused ones. Good ones.
“Whatever this is.” Bede paused, his gaze fully on Galen now, his eyes wide and open. “Whatever we are.”
Before Galen could speak—though certainly no part of him, notany, was saying no—Bede’s hand, withdrawn from his neck, leaving a cool space behind, was between Galen’s thighs. Those fingers, pressing against denim, drew up in a slow, languorous trail.
Heat building in Galen’s belly, his groin, his whole body sighed, muscles turning liquid, the parts of his brain that could still think sparking out until he could not think at all.
When was the last time he’d been touched like this, responded like this? Since before his dad had passed away, that was for sure.
The summer before, when he’d come on to Zeke Malloy, it had been in stops and starts, and had ended in a polite but firm rejection. And maybe he’d not been attracted to Zeke, but to the idea of him. Someone to lean on, someone strong, someone to enfold him in firm arms when the night got too dark, and the sense of loss and grief became an overwhelming tar-black puddle.
Bede didn’t know about Galen’s dad or what had happened, how sudden his passing had been, but he was acting as if he did. He caressed and kissed Galen’s face, sweeping away astonished shock with that mouth of his, and with his hand, he cast spells that Galen had no idea, simply no idea, how to ward off.
And when Bede undid the snap and zipper of his jeans, sliding his hand inside, not stopping, his palm warm against thebare skin of Galen’s belly, he knew he didn’t want to stop any of it.
Pleasure rippled as Bede’s fingers curled around his cock, warm inside his boxers, taut against his belly. There was no shyness in Bede’s touch, only boldness in each caress, only an earthy, animal insistence on taking this happenstance meeting in the woods to an exact conclusion.
