Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“There you go. A romantic after all.” Ned laughed and kissed Cole’s cheek, giving himself time to sense the bristles of facial hair scratching at his flesh. “I really liked what we did tonight. The world is what it is, so I wouldn’t be shouting about it from the rooftops, but it was… so overwhelmingly good.”
“We’ll make sure to do it again then,” Cole teased, sliding his hand down Ned’s stomach, into the dense red hair growing at the base of Ned’s prick.
Ned bit his lip and held Cole’s gaze. “I’d want to try it the other way too, so that you can see how it feels. I want to see your face twist in pleasure because of me and feel you trembling as I hold you.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean is… we don’t often get to be this clean on the road.”
Cole pushed his face under Ned’s jaw, breathing softly as his knees peaked above water, curling up between Ned’s thighs. He didn’t try to pull away, but Ned knew him enough to recognize unease in the way Cole held his limbs so tight against him.
“I—I didn’t really think about that yet,” he confessed.
“I wasn’t just saying it was good to lure you in. It’s so amazing I’m excited to have you experience it. I tell you, Cole… there’s this spot inside, and we had no idea.” Ned closed him in his arms with a happy huff.
Cole traced Ned’s jaw with his knuckles in a way that was both arousing and calming. “Tell me more.”
“I was a little nervous about being on the receiving end of things, but now that I know how it feels, I want to do it again.” He grinned and pinched Cole’s cheek with his teeth. “I want you on top of me, pumping that gorgeous cock into my hole…” He slid his fingers to Cole’s thigh with a happy groan. All his.
Cole pressed his forehead to Ned’s, exhaling softly. “I think I owe you the truth. About the things you asked.”
Ned fell silent and gave Cole all of his attention. They’d blocked the door with a chair to share this peaceful moment of intimacy without worrying about being discovered. Cole might have been a reckless man who’d often tossed Ned off all too close to camp, always wandering the tightrope, but as Cole put his face under Ned’s jaw, just out of his sight, it was clear as day he’d needed this moment of peace too.
“That mark on my face. The old hag who owns the brothel with her daughter has it put on the people she owns through debt. My mother and I had nowhere to go, nothing to eat. Her reading and writing was even worse than mine… well, she couldn’t do it at all, and the agreement must have sounded like a good enough deal to her. But so much of her earnings went toward room, board, and costumes that a few years in she’d only paid off a fraction of what the brothel was owed,” Cole said, playing with Ned’s fingers. “It was a trap.”
Ned swallowed, angry at the old woman he’d briefly spoken to earlier. He’d shield this man from bullets with his own body if need be, and he was ready to protect him from everything else, including nightmares from the past.
Cole exhaled in relief and lay against Ned, his muscles relaxing despite the difficult things he needed to recall. “The scar doesn’t indicate how you work for the madam’s benefit, but people assume, and men told me strange things about it since I can remember. Times got tougher as my mother realized she had no way of running from this life. We tried once and were caught.
“Eventually, the doctor offered her a little something to cope with the challenges she was facing. Everything went downhill from there. She slept more and more when she wasn’t working. And with no one to keep watch over me, I started going hungry more often. And then… then she died, and our debt was suddenly on my meager shoulders.”
“Oh, Cole… I’m so sorry.” Ned remembered Cole as a young boy as if that terrible night in the mountains had happened a week back, not years. Big-eyed and slender, he’d been such a small, scrawny thing. Ned’s past held its own share of horrors, but he hated to think of Cole suffering. Especially when he could do nothing to help it.
Cole shuddered but pushed even deeper into Ned’s heat and went on. “Many times, she stripped me and locked me in a room with peepholes in the walls. Men would pay to secretly watch the girls change or wash themselves in there, and I couldn’t understand why she had me do it too. I knew I was being watched each time, but I’ve been told to feign ignorance, so that’s what I did.