“I’m going to lean on her shoulder, make sure the needle stays in the vein, and hopefully keep her from trying to get up till we’re done.” I felt a lot better seeing the needle sitting where it was supposed to be, the solution flowing into her winter-furred body.I got it right.
“Getting up?” Austin eyed Ebony’s lowered head.
“When the calcium works, it hits ’em pretty fast. They can go from being downer to up on their feet real quick.”
“Fuck, I hope she does. Come on, Ebony.” Austin held the bottle up. “You need to get better.”
The slow seep of liquid flowed down the tubing and into Kendrick’s pet cow.Come on, Ebony,I echoed in my head. This was one I was not going to lose.
Administering the supplement was a slow process. John had told me once you didn’t want too fast of a flow, or the cow could have a heart attack. Something else to torment myself worrying about, but hopefully she’d be fine. The calcium trickled in.
“This is boring,” Austin said. “Too bad we can’t make out while it’s flowing.” He grinned, and that look on his face, the curve of his mouth—
“No!” I glared up at him. “No making out while important work is happening. That’s dangerous. See? This is why a relationship is a bad idea.”
“I didn’t ask for a relationship—”
“Or even sex,” I said. My heart thudded a drumbeat in my chest. “Distractions are too risky. We should stop right now. I’m not taking chances. Not again. Never again!”
“Hey, hey.” Austin held out his free hand like I was a frightened calf. “I wasn’t serious. Just chill.”
“Fuck.” I stared down at where my hand trembled over the needle and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Seth.” Austin’s murmur came soft and warm. “It’s okay. I don’t know why you’re freaked out, but if you want to stop flirting, we’ll stop.”
“I’m notfreaked out.” I opened my eyes to digest that lie. “Cautious. That’s all.” Under my hand, the calcium still flowed smoothly.
“Nothing wrong with cautious.” Austin’s voice remained too kind, too reassuring.
I was fine. I didn’t need fuckingreassurance. “Exactly.” I refused to look at him. “How’s that bottle doing?”
“About a third left.”
“Let me know when it’s almost gone and we’ll hook up the next one.”
“Sure.”
Time passed with the deep breaths of the cow and little ear twitches from her calf. Austin stood unnaturally quiet and tense.
We pinched the tubing, unhooked bottle one, hooked up bottle two.
“We could talk about something else,” Austin offered. “Favorite movies? Favorite colors?” After a pause, he said, “Shelter, and green, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” Okay, that sounded surly even to my own ears. “Sorry, you just don’t know.”
“No, I don’t.” Austin shifted the bottle to his other hand. “Want to tell me?”
No.And yet, if I was going to shut him down, didn’t he deserve an explanation? We were sharing a cabin, hell, a bed. Maybe he should know why his wiry body and lush lips were forbidden territory.
Maybe I wanted to tell my story to someone who wouldn’t think I was weird for lusting after another cowboy.
The IV solution flowed. Ebony lifted her head and flicked her ears. Her skin had stopped twitching. Good signs.
“Miguel was the hottest man I’d ever seen,” I said out of the blue, my voice surprising myself. “I was twenty-five, not in the closet, but not precisely out. I’d hooked up now and then, away from the ranch. He started flirting. Well, he flirted with everybody, but I was the guy who flirted back. We became a thing.” I paused, not sure even now what we’d been.
“A thing?” Austin asked.
I shrugged, trying to seem casual. “He started as a seasonal hand, but at the end of the season, he moved in with me. We’d just started strip grazing, needed the extra man in the winter. We shared a bed. We sometimes went out to bars, occasionally to clubs in San Francisco, if we had two days off. Miguel loved to dance. Holy shit, that man could dance.” I could almost see him, moving sinuously in a crowd of men. He’d whip off his shirt and stick it into the back of his belt by the second song. The lights glinted over his sweaty tanned skin, and he looked like pure sex.
