Somewhere to Belong Read online

  I loved those times when I lay there under him completely satisfied and he fucked me just like he wanted to. I was sometimes sore the next day, but it was so worth it in the moment while he was in me and taking me like that.

  “Mmm. Yes. I like that too.”

  He kissed me, and I pressed myself up against him.

  “I know you do. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who liked what I did as much as you do.”

  I smiled against his lip and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “You know what else I like?”

  “What?”

  “When you come.”

  He took the hint. Sweet and slow was nice. But I was awake now, and we were running out of time. He needed to hurry if we wanted to have breakfast. And that meant I’d have to come without being touched another time because I didn’t want to wait that long.

  Only when I went to wrap my hand around my cock as I dug the fingers of my other into his shoulder, I felt him press tightly against my prostate, and I bit down on my bottom lip and waited, hoping that it would happen. I’d read about guys coming without having to be jacked off before, in guy magazines, but I thought it was all bullshit until Grayson slid against me repeatedly at just the right angle.

  And then I was crying out and hanging on to him as my orgasm pushed through me and made my vision blur. I saw dots of light that faded quickly to gray, and I lost control of my own breathing for a few seconds as my pleasure burst out.

  He rode my orgasm out, quickly gaining speed until he was thrusting into me as hard as he’d ever done, and the bed was bouncing under us. I was smiling, and I probably looked like a crazy person, but that didn’t matter to me because I loved every second of being with him like this. Under him, on top of him, in front of him with my body pressed hard against the wall—it didn’t matter. I loved it all from him. As long as he was in me and fucking me as hard as he could, it was the most wonderful thing I could imagine as far as sex went.

  He came with a low groan against my collarbone and then collapsed on top of me. We both needed showers now, but it was totally worth it. Even though we did have to rush through breakfast so that I could still get to work on time that morning.

  WHEN I got to the rescue, Mason was there waiting for me. He slung his arm around my shoulders, which was a bit hard for him since he was a good five inches shorter than me. Grayson was about six inches taller. Mason would have a really hard time doing that to him too. It would be nearly impossible. Thinking about Grayson made me smile. Weird.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Anything going on?” I asked him. There were more cars in the parking lot than there normally were.

  Mason dropped his arm from around my shoulders as we headed into the office for me to sign in. “Don’t know. Evaline said all hands on deck today.”

  That in itself was pretty unusual. I hurried over to the daily clipboard to sign in for work, and then Mason and I walked out to the big barn where everyone was hanging out. There were three barns, but only one that would fit us all. I had seniority, so I went to the front where Evaline was.

  She hugged me, because she hugged everyone, and then I looked over her shoulder. In the barn, Thrall lay on his side. He was an ancient gelding who was at least thirty. And he’d been Evaline’s first rescue.

  I went into the stall before anyone could stop me. Only then did I realize he was already gone. There was nothing I could do for him. I just sat there against his side in the hay and stroked my hand down his leg. He was a thoroughbred, built for speed and grace, and he’d done well on the tracks until he hadn’t. He was a descendant of Secretariat, not that who was in his lineage mattered as a rescue horse, but I had always thought it made him pretty cool.

  “What happened?” I asked Evaline.

  She shook her head and came into the stall with me. Others were crying. I hadn’t noticed it before. But now that he knew, Mason looked pretty upset as well. Thrall had been a barn favorite. I held up my hand for him too, and he joined me. He had no concept of personal space as he came over and sat right down in my lap like a child. That got some looks from people, but I was too worried about Evaline to pay any attention to them.

  She knelt down next to Thrall’s beautiful black head and rubbed her hands over his face. “He just laid down in here while we were doing the morning feedings. He went quietly. We should be glad about that. Shouldn’t we?”

  I supposed that we could be. But I knew she was more upset about losing him. “You should take a few days off. I can handle the rescue. It’s not a big deal.” It was, a bit. I’d never had full control of it. But I didn’t want her to have to worry about that while she mourned Thrall.

  “I could?” She looked surprised.

  “Of course. Tell me what you’d like done with him, and I’ll take care of it.”

  Evaline gave me a shaky smile and got to her feet. “Thank you, Eli. I think that would be best. You’re such a good boy. I think he would be best with the others. In the back pasture. You know where.”

  Of course I did. As a sanctuary, we had lots of older horses, and not all of them got adopted or fostered before their time was up. “He’ll be taken care of.”

  She kissed my forehead, and I touched her callused, weathered hand, and then she was gone and getting into her truck. I got Mason off my lap, and then I stood up to address everyone.

  “Evaline is going to take a few days off to mourn Thrall. He was the favorite for a lot of us, so if you’d like to take a day off too to mourn him, please sign out before you do. If you’re here on community service and need me to talk to your officer so that you can take the day off, please let me know. Otherwise you all know what to do. The back pasture is off-limits today while I have people out here to help him.”

  A girl started sniffling, but a boy near her scoffed. I heard something about how she shouldn’t cry over a horse, and then I was in front of him. He was at least three years older than me, and taller than Grayson, but I was in charge of the rescue right then, and I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of crap.

  “Leave. You’re fired. Effective immediately.”

  “We’re all volunteers. You can’t fire us.”

  He was a community service worker, so I kind of could, actually. I stood my ground. “You’re trespassing. Get off the sanctuary.” I saw a few of his friends watching us with interest. “Take your friends and anyone else who doesn’t respect or care about the horses with you. Evaline may have liked you, or thought that the sanctuary needed the extra hands, but you just pissed me off. We all loved Thrall. You don’t get to treat other people, or the horses here, with such obvious disrespect. So, again, and for the last time, get off this sanctuary.”

  Mason came up behind me and bumped me on the back of my shoulder. He was so tiny that if it came to a fight, like I hoped it wouldn’t, he wouldn’t be much help at all. But I still appreciated his support anyway.

  “Fuck you,” the guy growled at me, before he started backing away from us. I snorted because there was no way that was ever going to happen. A few people left with him. I wasn’t sad to see them go at all.

  “Okay, everyone else, take some time to get yourselves together or have a day off. We’ll be okay if you need to go home and take care of yourselves. You can go in and say goodbye to him too.” I moved aside so that they could crowd in to touch the old gelding.

  Mason followed me back into the office. “Ricky was such an asshole.”

  “Who?” I asked him as I looked through Evaline’s list of phone contacts.

  “The guy….”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t really known him. Most of my work was off-site doing home assessments. “Okay, a few things to do today before we go check on the horses. You okay being my assistant for a bit?”

  He sat down across from me while I called the burial company, who said that they would be out within a few hours and just to have the area between Thrall and the back pasture clear. They started to explain the process about how they were going to drag him out o
f the stall by his back hooves and then load him onto a flatbed truck, but really I didn’t need the details. I’d seen enough horses buried to know what was going to happen without having to be told it all again. I thanked them for their speed, then got to the appointments.

  “I need to move these assessments to next week. Can you call this one, and I’ll call these two? Don’t schedule me for more than one in a morning or an afternoon, please.”

  Mason got to it and so did I. That took a total of twenty minutes. I explained that I was very sorry that I needed to change the time of our appointments, but we had something come up at the rescue. The two families I talked to were both very understanding. Mason, though, was explaining everything to whoever he was talking to. I reached over and tapped his arm.

  “It’s my mom,” he quickly explained. “I’m letting her know that I’ll be late getting home tonight because you need me for some extra stuff.”

  “Oh. Okay.” That was actually a good idea. I took out my phone and texted Grayson. One of the favorite horses died. I gave Evaline a few days off to grieve. I’ll be really late getting back. Looks like I’m running a rescue now.

  His reply came back a few minutes later while I was counting the number of volunteers who had signed in and those who had also signed out, and from that, I could decide how to get everything done that day. Is there anything I can do?

  His attempt to help made me smile. Not really. I’ll try not to wake you if I’m getting in super late.

  Take care. With his last reply, I decided to go out to the barn and get to work. We all had a long day ahead of us, but at least most of the volunteers stayed late to help us get it all done. There were barns to clean out, I had to oversee Thrall’s burial and write the guys a check from the sanctuary account. I was glad I had that kind of authority.

  Yes, the circumstances of getting to run the rescue for a day sucked so hard. But at the same time, I liked the pressure of it. Evaline needed me, and I had nothing else to do but step up and take over where she’d left off. The only person waiting for me was Grayson, and he was an adult. He could handle some stuff on his own until things settled down there.

  Unfortunately things didn’t ever calm down. Not until after eight o’clock. Mason was passed out on the couch in the office, waiting on his mom to come get him. I was barely awake after working harder than I ever had at the rescue. I was sore and definitely exhausted too.

  Then Grayson came into the office. I smiled up at him and realized how hungry I was the instant I smelled his Chinese food takeout.

  “Hi,” he said, a bit awkwardly as a bleary-eyed Mason started to sit up on the couch.

  Mason was so unattractive as he smacked his lips together, then he realized we weren’t alone. “Uh….”

  “Mason, this is Grayson. And Grayson, this is my best friend right there.” I hope he got my point. Mason was my Nigel. Only my best friend wasn’t an asshole to people who he thought of as being beneath him.

  Grayson put the food containers down on the desk and offered Mason his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I brought a lot of food. Would you like to join us?”

  Mason looked to me, as if he needed my permission or something ridiculous like that, but I nodded and gave it to him anyway. Then he was diving into the food, and I was joining Grayson on the couch with a box of sweet and sour chicken in my hands. He had broccoli and beef. Mason grabbed the lemon chicken and found a place to sit at the desk. There were still two more containers of food that we hadn’t opened.

  “You got way too much food,” I told Grayson as I leaned against his side and began eating my fried chicken. I didn’t even care about the sauce. I just liked the simple things like juicy chicken in a light batter that made the whole headache of my day kind of fade into the background.

  “I didn’t know what you’d like,” he explained.

  “Thanks for bringing food. And sharing it with me.” Mason spoke up from about four feet away from us.

  I leaned my head against Grayson’s shoulder. It made eating awkward, but I didn’t have any sauce to accidentally spill on him, so that was okay. “Yeah, this was really nice.” Actually, no one had ever done this for me. It made me warm and somehow sleepy. Like I could have fallen asleep right there while I leaned against his shoulder. I still had an hour to drive back to his house, so that probably wasn’t a good thing.

  “Mason, when is your mom supposed to pick you up?” I asked him.

  He took out his phone and looked at it. “She won’t get off work for another hour. I can just take the bus or something. That’s my plan, anyway.”

  “I’ll take you. No reason you should be here this late.” I’d been doing paperwork, but he’d been resting. He was exhausted too. And now that I had food, I really didn’t want to stay at the sanctuary anymore. I loved it there, but there came a point when doing the daily reports could wait, and I didn’t exactly love paperwork to begin with.

  I was nearly done with my food, but I didn’t want to get up. I was far too comfortable right there. But as soon as I ate my last piece of chicken, I got up to toss out my container, and since Mason was done too, I took his as well. The next container I grabbed was honey walnut shrimp. It was sweet and creamy and tasted like dessert and shrimp put together. I loved it and savored every last bite. Mason started eating some kind of fried rice.

  “Do you want to share mine?” I asked Grayson.

  “Just one bite.”

  I could have let him take it himself. But feeding him from my little plastic spoon was much more fun. He smiled at me, and then I gave him a quick kiss before going back to my dinner. I caught Mason watching us, and he looked so absolutely wistful and lost that I had to laugh at him.

  “Your time is coming,” I told him.

  “I wish. I’m going to be alone forever.”

  I snorted and finished up my dinner. I was full and barely awake by the time I was done with the second box of food. Mason didn’t look too much better off than I did. “I should get him home,” I told Grayson. “So I’ll see you back at the house?”

  “Why don’t I drive you two? I’ll bring you back here tomorrow when you come back for work, and that way I don’t have to worry about you driving in the mountains when you’re this tired.”

  Thornwood really wasn’t in the mountains. Or if it was, it was just barely there. But I saw his point. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  He shook his head, and a few minutes later, we were in his luxury car, which I was too tired to notice the details of more than that I was sitting in a leather seat and his display had navigation. I didn’t even have a display. Mason was passed out in the back within a few minutes.

  “It’s okay, I know where he lives.”

  Grayson nodded and started following my directions to get Mason back to his mom’s house in Highlands Ranch. “You two seem close.”

  “We are. We’ve also never had sex, if that’s what you were trying to get at.”

  “You got me. I was wondering about that.”

  I smiled over at him and sleepily offered him my hand. He took it, and we held hands for the whole twenty minutes it took to get Mason home.

  “Where do you live?” Grayson asked me after we’d dropped Mason off and made sure that he’d been able to get inside his house, before Grayson got us back on 470.

  “Castle Rock.”

  He turned around to head south.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him. I was starting to become more awake.

  “Taking you to your apartment so that you can get a few things. No reason you should continue to wear the same few outfits. And I don’t mind taking you.”

  While he was being very sweet, I really hoped that Brent wasn’t watching my apartment like it seemed he had been so that he could come over. I really didn’t want there to be any trouble. I hadn’t heard from him at all, which was great, but I didn’t expect that to last forever.

  “Are you okay after the horse died?” he asked me after I finished giving him directio
ns.

  “I’m a bit sad, and I really liked him, but after my dad, I kind of got over my shock about death. I mean, I was seven, and my dad was dead. I don’t have those kinds of shocked feelings that people told me about today. Does that make me cold and heartless?” I’d been thinking about that today, while everyone had been crying and I’d been trying to figure out how we were going to take care of all the horses with so many less people to help out. We’d made it work, but it had still been a lot harder than I’d anticipated to get everything done today with no one really being focused and being shorthanded anyway. I was glad the assholes were gone, of course I was, but I’d needed a lot of help too.

  “No. I think it actually makes you practical.”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that, but maybe he was right. “So….” I needed a change of topic away from my day, though it was a nice surprise to have someone even asking about it and how I was doing with the stress and losing Thrall. Usually people just didn’t bother to see how anyone else was doing these days. And if they did ask, then it wasn’t like they cared to know. It was just about making polite conversation. But Grayson actually wanted to know, which was nice, and it made me feel special. “So you’re from Virginia? Or at least your family is?”

  He chuckled. “Yes. They are. But I’m not close to the Virginia Pendletons anymore, as Nigel called me. He makes a big deal about my family history and their name and place in that society. I don’t value it at all.”

  That surprised me. I knew he had money, and I just thought it came with some kind of a title and land and maybe a fucking castle or something the way Nigel had made it sound like such a big deal that Grayson was part of the Virginia Pendletons. Like wow, let me bow down and kiss his boots or some shit like that. But Grayson was cool with it.

  “Are you still close with your family?”

  “Not at all.”

  He didn’t seem put out by that, which made me think that it had been a long time since he’d spoken to them. “Because they got upset at you when you came out?”