Page 14 of The Cowboy's Second Chance
He shouldn’t have to be face to face with someone that he still wanted so badly, that he still cared about so much. But that was, he supposed, what he got as a natural consequence of letting himself fall for his best friend’s brother.
The smart thing to do would be to drop back down the ladder since he knew that it wasn’t mice that had made this noise. Somehow, he couldn’t make himself do it, though, not for just a split second too long.
Derrick looked up. Right at Logan, who got a good look at his face straight on.
Derrick was sweating. It was far too easy to remember other times when Derrick had been sweating. When Logan had made Derrick come over and over again, when they had brought each other to such indescribable heights of pleasure, it had been foolish and reckless, but it had also been so damn good, and at that moment, paralyzed by Derrick’s gaze, Logan remembered it all.
Logan had been building a wall around his heart. Brick by brick, he had laid it in place, and only Kyle had shaken it at all. And even then, looking into Derrick’s incredibly, achingly beautiful face, he had to admit that even Kyle had only gotten to him because he had reminded Logan in some way of Derrick.
Belatedly, he started to drop down the ladder, only to watch as Derrick’s slender fingers plucked his earbuds free.
“Wait,” Derrick called, and Logan did. It was like he had no choice but to do so, not when Derrick asked him to. If Derrick asked him to jump off a cliff, and if he used that soft, plaintive tone of voice, Logan had to think that he would at least consider it.
“What?” Logan asked, hoping that the gruffness of his voice would hide how much he was feeling at the moment. This was the first time that he and Derrick had been alone together in years, he realized. Even that morning after Derrick had first come back, Kyle had been there. He had been asleep, but he hadn’t stayed that way for long.
It was absolutely terrifying.
“Do we have to do this?” Derrick was looking at Logan directly, and it was almost too much for Logan to take. Meeting that gaze was a strange mixture of anger and thwarted desire and emotions which never should have been, and it burned through his veins like lava. “Do we really have to let what happened between us …”
Logan was moving before he was even aware of what he was doing. There was no conscious thought in the slightest. He crossed the distance between himself and Derrick in a matter of seconds, and he wasn’t even sure what his intention was. All he knew was that he couldn’t handle hearing Derrick talk about it. The wounds were not fresh, not by a long shot, but neither had they healed properly, despite his best efforts.
His hands landed on Derrick’s broad shoulders, feeling their burning heat, smelling the sweet, musky scent of clean sweat. It was inevitable, that was how it felt, anyway, that he would be here, inches from Derrick, touching him again. Right here in their hayloft, where they had touched each other so many times before.
He could be rational about this later. For the moment, there were two things, and only two things, which seemed to matter to him. One was that everything, every inconvenient, obnoxious emotion, was still there, and the other was that he needed to shut Derrick up before that all spilled free.
There was one sure way to shut Derrick up. Logan had lost track of how many times he had used that way. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for him to pull Derrick’s unresisting, probably stunned, body towards himself and clamp his lips onto Derrick’s.
The kiss was a strange mixture of foreign and familiar. Once, they had done this every chance they got, and the way that Derrick kissed was exactly the same. That girl, Jessica, she might have stolen Derrick away from Logan, but she hadn’t changed that.
For a moment, Derrick gave in to the kiss. His lips tensed and then relaxed, his tongue thrusting out into Logan’s mouth with that same intense dominance that Logan had so often guiltily remembered as he shot his release all over his own hand. No one else had ever dared to try to take control, not like Derrick would, and while Logan didn’t have it in him to just give in, that was somehow perfect for them.
And then, just as Logan was relaxing into the kiss, Derrick pulled away and his face was a storm cloud, his eyes flashing and a flush of temper, or desire, or maybe both, high on his cheeks.
“How dare you?” Derrick demanded, his fingers settling around Logan’s wrists and pulling them forcibly apart and away from Derrick’s shoulders. “How dare you lay a hand on me?”
Logan recoiled as if he had been slapped, and honestly, those words probably couldn’t have hurt him more if Derrick really had struck him. Derrick had been the one leaving, and Logan, well, he was obviously an incredibly stupid man to have even tried for it.
“It won’t happen again,” Logan promised, and it was a promise that he completely meant to keep. A promise not only to Derrick but also to himself. He wasn’t giving this man the chance to reject him, to dismiss him, again.
“Good,” Derrick said, his voice dripping icicles, even in the broiling midsummer heat. “It had better not.”
Logan had nothing to say, because really, as cold as Derrick was being, he was right. All Derrick had done was ask if they could work past what they had been to each other before. That had hardly been an invitation to kiss him, that had all been Logan’s stupidity. So he just nodded and made his way back toward the ladder down, his body simmering with arousal and anger and frustrated desire.
“Hold on. Logan, I meant what I said before. Can’t we just pretend that nothing ever happened between us?”
Logan sighed and refused to look back at Derrick. He didn’t dare to. Here this man was, talking about moving on like it was nothing. But it had taken years for Logan even to start to be able to consider another person, and even then, that person just couldn’t stand up to what he felt for Derrick.
“No.” Logan let his tall body down onto the ladder, and halfway down, he was finally brave enough to look at Derrick. He had no idea what to make of the expression on the man’s face. Not angry, still flushed, that much he knew, but otherwise, it was hard to read. “I won’t forget. I think we’d better just stay away from each other.”
He finished his climb down, but Derrick, typically for him, wasn’t going to let Logan have the last word. He probably couldn’t make himself, even if he tried.
“Fine by me,” Derrick said, his voice floating down from the ceiling and haunting Logan even as he finished caring for his horse and then made his escape out of the barn. Fine by Derrick. Of course, it was. This had never meant much of anything to Derrick at all, and the more they interacted, the more clear that was to Logan.
That kiss had been ill-advised, and it had told Logan all he needed to know about what future he and Derrick had together. None. It was better that way, anyway. Or so Logan repeated to himself as he left.
He wouldn’t admit it, other than in the very innermost parts of himself, where he kept the secrets that he would never tell anyone, but he had half-hoped that Derrick would come down while he was tending to the horse. But that, of course, didn’t happen.
