Page 17 of The Earl's Wrangler
They were drenched in seconds.“Are they all inside?”Randall asked.
“Yes.”Sawyer hurried toward the front, and they climbed the fences until they reached the front of the barn.Sawyer pulled the door closed and then they ran to the house, stopping in the mudroom.
“Everything okay?”Alan asked once they had closed the door.
“Yeah,” Sawyer answered, pulling off his boots and turning them upside down to drain out the water.Randall’s jeans clung to him, but he got his boots off and stood dripping on the tiled mudroom floor.“Everything is fine.Randall here even got Hurricane in the barn.”
“How?”Alan asked.“That horse freaks out at every storm.”He smiled.“Good job.That’s no small feat.”He yawned and tossed towels at both of them.“I’m going back to bed.Turn out the lights behind you.”He yawned again and his footsteps retreated.
“I need to get out of these jeans,” Randall groaned.“But I think they shrank on me.”He tried to get them down, but the damned things didn’t want to budge.
“Unbutton the pants and jump up on the washer,” Sawyer told him.Randall did as he asked, and Sawyer tugged at the bottom of the legs.The jeans began to slide, and once he raised his hips, they slid off his legs.Sawyer dropped them into the wash tub with a splat.Randall couldn’t help laughing.
“I don’t know if I’m ever going to get those on again.”
“It’ll be fine.We can wash them in the morning and stretch them a little.For now, we should get out of the rest of these wet clothes and go back to bed.It looks like it’s going to rain for a while, and in the morning, we’ll have to clean up whatever the wind decided to blow around.”
“Will it be bad?”
“Probably not, but you never know,” Sawyer said, and Randall followed him down the hall and to their rooms.He went inside and got out of his wet shirt, then pulled out something dry to sleep in before quietly sneaking across the hall to the bathroom to hang up the wet things.When he opened the door, he found Sawyer outside, and it seemed it was his turn to stare.
“Sorry,” he whispered, and Randall scurried around him and headed to his room.He made it to the door before a hand rested on his shoulder.Randall turned, staring into huge, surprised eyes.
“Yeah?”he asked, ready to go back to bed.In an instant, Randall remembered what his back looked like and why those marks were there.“Look, I….”
“Who the hell did that to you?”Sawyer asked.His voice was soft but vehement, his eyes blazing with suppressed fury.He touched Randall’s back, and Randall flinched for a second, but Sawyer was gentle, his fingers warm and only a little rough.“What kind of person would beat you like this?”He drew closer, and Randall felt the heat washing off him.He didn’t dare turn around, even though tingles radiated from each point of contact.
“My father,” Randall finally answered.“I told you he drank too much, and when he did and I did something he didn’t like….”His voice ached with the old pain.“He used to have a razor strop, and he’d wield it like a whip when he was drunk and angry, which was most of the time.He never controlled himself very well, so even today, when someone has too much to drink, I avoid them.I got really good at being away from my father when I was on school breaks.I had a hideout in the stables that he didn’t know about, and I even had one in the attic of the estate and one in the kitchens.My father rarely went down there.He might have lost his temper, but he always did it when we were alone.The staff had no idea.Well, most of them didn’t.”
Sawyer placed his hand on his right shoulder blade.“Your father really did this to you?And I thought mine was a jackass and a half, but this takes the cake.How could anyone do this to someone else?”He drew closer, his hands gliding over his skin and along the lines Randall’s father had carved into his hide.“It’s just mean.Did your mother know?”
“She was already dead before he started acting this way.I know my father loved her.Hell, she was probably the only person in the world he truly cared for other than himself, and after she died, he went off the deep end.That’s when the bad drinking started and he….”Randall had said more than enough.This was too painful to hash over, and his father was dead.There was no use dredging up what was best left in the past.
A gentle kiss ghosted over his skin.
“What was that for?”Randall asked.
“My mama used to kiss my knees whenever I skinned them.She said it would make them feel better.”He did it again, and Randall slowly turned around.“And it seems a shame that no one tried to make you feel better.There should have been someone to stand up for you.”
“Not against him.He was the earl, so everyone deferred to him.He was very used to it and liked it.Damned idiocy made him feel important and smart.But he was dumb as a stump, I swear.The man could barely add, and he never read anything other than the label on a whiskey bottle.But he thought everyone in the village should come by and ask his advice before they did anything.And when they stopped because his advice was usually wrong, it only deepened his sink into the bottle.”He didn’t dare move, not wanting the break the connection with Sawyer’s deep blue eyes.
“You don’t want to talk about this anymore, do you?”Sawyer prompted.More than anything, Randall wanted to forget that part of his life, but he bore constant reminders of it on his body.He shook his head slowly.“The scars….”
“I know they’re ugly.I’ve been told that by almost everyone who saw them.I used to stay out of the locker rooms until everyone else had left so I could change without others seeing.”
Sawyer drew closer.“Bullshit.They’re scars.We all have them.Some on the outside where they can be seen, and some on the inside.Those are the ones that are worse, because no one knows they’re there but us.”Sawyer gently turned him around, then ran his fingers over the scarred skin, sending ripples racing through him that Randall didn’t quite know how to parse.Were they desire or weirdness?Maybe a combination of both.
“But….”He was supposed to be strong and a leader.That was the role he was born into, and the one his father had failed at.He wasn’t supposed to feel this way about his own body.
“These are war wounds.”Sawyer rested his hand flat on his shoulder blade.“They happened because of what someone else did to you.And you survived and were strong enough to heal and go on.Your father is dead and he can’t hurt you any longer, so really, you came out the winner.”Sawyer pulled away, and Randall had to see into his eyes to know if he was serious or just humoring him.When he turned and looked into them again, he saw heat and desire reflected back at him.
This was a bad idea, but it was just the two of them standing in the damned hallway outside his room.Randall slipped into it, not looking away from Sawyer, who seemed to follow him, drawn by an invisible string.Neither of them moved nearer to the other until Sawyer shut the door.Then he closed the distance, drawing Randall into his strong cowboy arms and moving to kiss him.“Is this okay?”Sawyer’s voice was rough and deep.
Randall nodded, and Sawyer bridged the last gap between them, sealing their lips together in a kiss that made Randall’s head spin.He had been with a number of guys.Hell, Randall was no shrinking violet, but Sawyer seemed so forceful and sure that Randall found himself taking a back seat, letting Sawyer lead the way.
Sawyer pressed him back toward the bed until the backs of Randall’s legs hit the mattress.Sawyer paused, sliding his hands down Randall’s back and into his sleep shorts, then slipping them down his ass and legs until his cock popped free.Randall sighed as the fabric slid down his legs, and he stepped out of them.He was bare in front of Sawyer, and almost instantly, his very own cowboy was just as naked.And damn… now he understood why the guys had come here, because cowboys were bloody hot.
“Hey, you gonna keep looking or what?”Sawyer stepped back and slowly turned around.
