Page 2 of Close Quarters

Well, most didn’t get that second tingle. That was mostly a me thing. If other guys around here were into men, I was pretty sure they’d admit there were more than a couple of good-looking guys roaming around the ranch. Not that I was a walking, living, breathing, excessively talking bag of thirst that drooled at the sight of a guy. But either all the hard work and good food at the ranch had made the men here way hotter than usual, or there was some secret criteria that everyone brought here had to be a five at least.

I didn't think I was the most stunning-looking male specimen ever to walk the earth, but I was pretty cute. I’d managed to pull my fair share of guys before I went to prison, but never in prison. I had standards. I’d buzzed my hair recently, mostly because I lost a bet to Dom, but the sandpaper fuzz was growing back, and the light brown, almost blond, I’d sported my whole life was getting soft as it grew back. I had a few tattoos on my body, with skin that didn’t know if it wanted to tan or burn in the intense Texan heat, but those tattoos had come before I’d gone to prison, unlike some of the guys around here.

Still, it made me blend in a bit, making me look tougher than I actually was. Didn’t hurt that, like most of the guys here, all the manual labor had bulked me up, something I’d never thought I needed. All in all, I thought I could do pretty well if I needed to, but no way in hell was I going to treat this place like a meat market for my own?—

“Elliot!” Dom barked, and I snapped my head up to find him glaring at me. “Fuck’s sake.”

“Hi,” I said, grinning a little nervously. “I’m here.”

“Are you? Because it sure as shit looked like you were on Pluto.”

“Mmm, no farther than, like…Jupiter this time.”

“How the fuck you bounce all over the place and then get so lost in your stupid thoughts you lose track of everything is…beyond me,” he said, giving me a push through the door. “Let’s go.”

“It’s a gift,” I told him with a grin.

We emerged into the sunlight, already showing signs of making the day a scorcher. The cabins for the guys in the program were all clustered in the same area, though for those of us in Tier Three, it was four guys to a cabin, something about fostering ‘positive relationships with others.’ It was reduced to two per cabin in Tier Two, and guys who made it to Tier One all got their own cabins. All were more or less in the same place, but Tier Three cabins were surrounded by the Tier Two cabins, with Tier One cabins on the outer edge.

My theory was that the setup was so the upper tiers of more responsible and seasoned members were like a living fence to keep the newer, rougher recruits in line.

“It’s a curse to anyone who has to deal with you,” Dom said, giving me another push. This one was to the side because I was already beginning to outpace him despite him being taller.

“You love me,” I told him with a laugh.

“See, this is like the gift thing. You’re getting things backward.”

“Or I just understand the inner workings of your cold, black, bitter heart.”

“Fuck off with that gay shit.”

When he went to push me this time, I dodged away, looping behind him to jump on his back. It wasn’t like I was short, Dom was just stupidly tall, and I needed a good leap to get up there. His problem was that although he was built like a brick shithouse, he wasn’t the most flexible and struggled to reach around to get a good hold.

“What is wrong with you?” he growled, still stumbling forward as he continued to fight to get his hands on me.

“I was a spider monkey in a previous life!”

“And a pain in my ass in this one!”

I cackled until he spun around and sped backward, slamming my back into one of the cabins. There was a brief moment to brace for what was coming, so I only lost half the air in my lungs. My grip weakened enough that Dom wasted no time in grabbing my wrist and yanking me off. Thankfully, I wasn’t too stunned and kept my feet even if I had to stumble to stay upright.

Anticipating what came next, I scrambled away before he could lunge forward and get his hands on me. Dom would never intentionally or seriously hurt me, but I was intentionally pestering him, and he wasn’t above giving me a good dose of pain to try to deter me from doing it again in the future. Try was the keyword because I considered persistence one of my better qualities…and one of my biggest downfalls.

The actual downfall came when, in my attempt to get away, I tripped over a rock sticking out of the hard-packed ground. I didn’t sprawl on my face, thankfully, that ground could break a limb and not notice, but it cost me precious distance between us. Before I could recover, I felt arms wrap around me and take me down to that unforgiving ground.

“Ow! Jesus, you weigh as much as a teenage rhino!” I complained, flailing to get away, but there was no hope. His arm had snuck around my neck and locked behind his other, keeping me firmly in place. “You said no more chokeholds! You promised!”

“Yeah? And you said you weren’t going to be annoying, little dick!”

“Oh, I see, you get to have the big dick, but mine’s little? Fuck you!”

“That’s because mine is! Don’t blame me for your pencil dick!”

“I’ll show you pencil dick!”

“Yeah, bet you would.”

“A-hem.”

---