Ned had been reluctant at first, but once Cole began lavishing his opening with his tongue, he’d gone from embarrassed to so horny he all but begged Cole to take him. And do it hard.
Such things had no place in the presence of a child, but little Tommy, who waded in the shallow lake alongside Ned and showed a rare smile, wasn’t privy to Cole’s thoughts anyway. So Cole occupied his kiss-starved lips with the harmonica, adding his own bit of music to the birdsongs.
High up in the mountains, even May had been cool, but down here, June embraced them with the warmth of sunshine, and the joyful bloom of flowers in the lush grass. They ended up avoiding main routes because of the bounties on their heads, and the slow journey took them past vistas so majestic Cole didn’t even mind all the stops Ned claimed were for Tommy’s benefit.
Coming across a small lake in a broad valley almost entirely overtaken by trees more ancient than the oldest buildings on the east coast had been yet another opportunity to prolong the pilgrimage to Denver. He’d already promised Tommy that they’d do something fun in the city before leaving the boy in the orphanage, and he was set on coming up with a special treat.
Ned had asked Tommy if he knew how to swim, and when the boy shook his head, he had offered to teach him. It was yet another ploy to make the trip last longer, but Cole chose to pretend that he’d been fooled and smoked some tobacco using Ned’s Wolfman fur coat as a blanket. He petted Dog absentmindedly, and the beast twitched in his sleep, dreaming of times when he still had both of his hind legs.
Cole still couldn’t believe the mutt had made it, but with enough money on the table, the doctor had amputated the leg, and Dog had been getting better ever since. It had been a difficult transition for him, but to Cole’s surprise Ned’s pet was learning to move on three legs just as fast as he was regaining his appetite.
The fur coat was too warm to wear in the summer, even in the shade, but Cole enjoyed its furry smell, and the way it hung on to Ned’s own aroma too, enveloping Cole in an earthy, pleasant scent. It would have to do now that he couldn’t touch the Wolfman anymore.
Perhaps he should have taken this opportunity and asked Ned to give him a swimming lesson too, but Ned’s touch could only end one way, and that wasn’t happening anywhere near Tommy. A part of Cole was jealous over the boy getting the attention he secretly craved so much, but he couldn’t voice anything so needy.
What right did he have to Ned’s time, anyway? He’d intended to leave him a week ago. Yet here he was, in limbo with a man he wanted to devour but didn’t dare to, because making a move would have been a statement Cole didn’t wish to make. If he made a choice to pursue Ned, they could have stolen a moment of intimacy in the woods here and there, so Tommy was far from the only thing in the way. The biggest obstacle was Cole’s pride.
But pride was becoming less and less important as Cole watched Ned bathe. He faced away from Cole, making a slow turn in the water. Submerged all the way to the hips, he held Tommy’s hands while the boy splashed with his legs like mad to stay on the surface. How was it possible that with the scars, the bruises, freckled shoulders red and scorched, Ned seemed more handsome to Cole than when he’d been young and fresh-faced? While he’d induced puppy love and endless excitement in Cole years ago, Ned had matured into a man with eyes speaking of secret desires, so confident in what he wanted Cole could’ve licked him from head to toe.
Whether he liked it or not, he adored Ned’s rough skin and the strong scent of his body. Even the strange sense of calm he exuded most of the time, the one that made Cole uncertain and kept him second-guessing Ned’s thoughts, was somehow arousing. The old Ned was still there, changed by years of loneliness and grief, but Cole wasn’t the same man either, and deep down he knew no one would understand him the way Ned O’Leary did.
Was this why he found it so hard to let go? Had he gotten addicted to Ned’s silent acceptance of his moods, to the way their bodies fit together? To sharing silence that never felt uncomfortable? Perhaps he wasn’t so different from Ned after all if he craved the one thing that would bring him to his downfall? But while Ned could always trust in a bottle of booze, people, even those Cole cared for, all lied. Even Butcher Tom, who’d said one thing and done another, as if the rules he’d established only concerned others.
If Cole gave in to the temptation of Ned’s warm arms and unexpectedly soft lips, he’d be vulnerable to anything Ned might end up unleashing on him. And as proven by him throwing their initials into the fire—Ned was unpredictable, and would one day do the same to Cole’s heart if Cole was stupid enough to let him keep it.
“Look, Cole! He’s swimming!” Ned exclaimed with a big grin as he let go of Tommy’s hands.
The kid splashed around like a salmon thrown to the shore, but he was in fact not drowning. When he stood on the bottom of the lake, only his head poked out of the water, but he made a happy yelp as Ned ruffled his blond hair.
And Cole found himself smiling, as if it made any sense for a man who murdered the boy’s father to now play with him.
“That was fast. You have talent for this, Tommy. Keep it up.” He didn’t know whether Tommy would have access to any body of water at the orphanage in Denver, but this wasn’t his child, and not his responsibility. Some might have argued that taking care of Tom’s son would have paid for indirectly causing the man’s premature death, but Cole knew better than anyone that the life he led was not meant for children.
He sometimes wondered how much Zeb had poisoned the boy’s mind with promises of revenge and stories of a brutal past, but once Tommy had gotten over his initial fear of the two men who’d left his guardian to die, he didn’t seem to hold any grudges. He was a curious child, even if meek, and perhaps with the right education he could make something of himself.
He’d been excited to find out Cole knew sign language and was teaching Ned the basics. For his age, he was also proficient at writing, which was how he communicated more complex matters. He revealed that he didn’t remember being able to speak, so he must have lost his tongue as a very young child. Once he got over initial shyness, Tommy started feeding them bits of his past, which soon made up the picture of a sad life.
Pregnant and destitute, Lotta had returned to her estranged family and stayed with them until she have become ill. Tommy told them she’d been pale and coughed a lot, and that, inevitably, meant a painful death from tuberculosis.
Losing her strength, Lotta decided she couldn’t leave the boy in her father’s care, so she asked Zeb to take the boy instead, and had died soon after. It had only been a couple of months since her passing, and in his own way Tommy was still mourning her. But the past belonged in the past, and regardless of what Cole had proven with the last seven years of his life, a man had to move on.
Forest lakes always reminded him of the day he’d sucked Ned’s prick for the first time, and he thought of the birds flying above to will his arousal down.
At least the sounds of splashing in the water and Tommy’s strange little sounds helped him keep lust at bay.
“Get dressed fast. Don’t want you catching a cold,” Cole said and tossed a sheet Tommy’s way.
For a boy as small as him, two months of meandering the Rockies with Zeb couldn’t have been much more bearable than living in a house where the punishment for swearing was a whole day and night without food. The ribs showing prominently under his skin had concerned Cole from the start and prompted him to feed the kid nuts and raisins from his own stash. He’d been worried Ned might tease him about it, but that never happened. Lars would have taken the opportunity to make fun of Cole’s softness, mocked his masculinity, or even joked in an unsavory fashion. But Ned O’Leary knew what poverty and hunger Cole had been brought up in, and kept his mouth shut.