Joe

My mum looking in on me woke me up. At first, I didn’t notice anything different. Recent days and weeks faded away, and I was tramping it on the couch in my muddy work clothes. Then her knowing smile and wink broke through the haze and reality hit me like that bus I’d been running from in my dreams.

She shut the door, her footsteps somehow barely audible on the creaky stairs. I turned my head and there was Harry, sleeping beside me like he’d always been there. My heart stuttered. Grandpa’s room became somewhere else, and in my head, I found an ounce of Harry’s grace and rolled over to straddle his waist, to kiss him awake, and show him without words how happy I was to see him.

But my body was stiff from sleep, sore from the hoof-shaped bullshit in my gut, and the best I managed was a pained gasp. Harry stirred, and I clamped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late. His eyes fluttered open, his gaze met mine, and somehow I knew that nothing between us would ever be the same.

He smiled and reached for me, carefully pulling me close, his touch gentle and light, but consuming all the same. I pressed my forehead against his and searched his expression. “Why did you stay?”

“Because I wanted to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

It was the reassurance I didn’t know I so badly needed. I kissed him, and my body came to life in ways that parts of it didn’t really want to. Heat flared in my veins, and my skin tingled. And as he deepened the kiss, shudders rippled through me.

My abdomen protested as I slid closer, but I hardly felt it as Harry met me halfway and eased me onto my back. His body covered me, but without his weight. His chest was a hairsbreadth from mine. So close, but not nearly close enough. I arched up and couldn’t bring myself to regret it as the heat of him seeped into me.

Harry gasped and I swallowed the tiny sound and scraped his lips with my teeth. I’d never kissed anyone like I kissed him. Never felt it in every dark corner of my body. I shivered again, and my dick hardened in the sweatpants that still smelled of him. I moved my hands to his waistband and pushed his loose joggers down his hips. When I opened my eyes, they were as low as they could be without the money shot, but it was still clear that Harry packed some heat.

I broke the kiss, desperate to touch him, but Harry laid his palm flat on my chest and held me down.

“Easy,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Could I take that literally? Being cooped up on my own had left me plenty of time to think about things I’d likely have ignored otherwise, and the fact that Harry’s time on the farm was dwindling had occurred to me more often than I cared to admit. With his hands gliding over my tender abdomen, it was hard to imagine that he wouldn’t be here in a few weeks’ time, but the fact remained that however close we became, it was temporary.

He kissed me again, more demanding than before. I dissolved into him, and it felt like hours had passed when he finally pulled away for real.

“I’d better get up,” he said. “I want to help Toby with the hay bales when he gets here.”

“Toby knows where the hay is kept?” The swift drop to reality made me chuckle. “That kid hasn’t fetched a bale since he got here.”

Harry smiled. “So I heard, but Emma made a list of all the jobs you do that someone else could do, and—uh—would it be the worst pun in the world if I said that he’d drawn the short straw?”

“Yes. It would be so fucking bad that I wouldn’t ask you to stay and put your dick in my mouth before you went downstairs.”

“Wow.” A flush stained Harry’s cheeks beneath his dark beard. “You’re feeling better.”

It wasn’t a question. And as I considered the statement, I realised that it was true. My stomach was sore, but it finally felt like a bruise, not the apocalypse, and the fatigue lacing my blood was no longer nauseating. “Is that a yes?”

“You didn’t ask me anything.”

I sat up on my elbows and held Harry’s gaze. “Lock the door.”

Harry propelled himself fluidly off the bed and to the door. As he flicked the tiny catch that could barely keep the cats out, the irony that in less than a day I’d gone from not wanting to sleep in this room to getting busy on Grandpa’s bed struck me funnier than it should have.

“What are you smirking at?” Harry came back to the bed and straddled my waist. “’Cause if you’re about to tell me you were taking the piss about having my dick in your mouth, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“You think I’d joke about that?”

Harry raised an eyebrow and we stared each other down. The truth was, despite a crazy connection that wouldn’t quit, we didn’t know each other at all when it came to sex. If you’d asked me after the first week, I’d have pegged him as a submissive bottom, but the way his gaze speared me now said otherwise.

Fuck. Images flashed through my mind, each one filthier than the last, and parts of me I’d assumed extinct roared to life. I fisted his T-shirt and yanked him down to my level. “I wouldn’t joke about it.”

Harry took my hand and pried it off him. “Good job I’m not laughing then, eh?”

I couldn’t argue with that. Didn’t want to. Harry shucked his trousers and underwear and then slid mine down my legs with a swift tug. His cock was as long and thick as I’d imagined. I swallowed and licked my lips. Could I take a dick that big? Would he want me to? Or would he stay exactly where he was and ride me? As Harry walked on his knees towards me, either way was equally terrifying, because whatever happened, this dude blew my damn mind.

Harry pressed the tip of his cock to my lips. I took him down my throat. He groaned, and his grip on the bed frame above my head tightened enough to make the wood crack, my breath catch, and my dick throb so hard I saw stars.

My stomach still wasn’t strong enough to hold me up for long, but it turned out not to matter as he fucked my mouth. Harry was a gentle soul—soft-spoken and kind—but a different man drove his cock down my throat. Urgent, demanding . . . dominant. How had it taken us so long to get to this point? As Harry reached behind himself to jack me, I had no idea.

His power over me in this moment was absolute. Rhythm, pace, grip, I was gone. I moaned around his dick, and my teeth scraped his shaft, spurring him on. His growls went right through me. I tilted my head back to let him thrust even deeper, and his rhythm on my cock faltered.

“You’re gonna make me come,” he guttered out.

Like he had anything to worry about when I was winning that race like a fucking pro. The only bad thing about having his dick in my mouth was that I couldn’t kiss him as my balls tightened and my screaming core muscles seized up. I thrust up into his hand, groaning with abandon until my voice cracked, and then I came hard, painting us both with come.

“You’re so fucking hot.” Harry’s strong thighs quaked, and his dick pulsed in my mouth. “I’m gonna come.”

And come he did, like a train, while I swallowed it all like a starving man.

It seemed like he was coming forever, but eventually, he pulled out with a soft sigh and manoeuvred himself to lie next to me. My chest was heaving. He laid one hand over my racing heart, and the other rubbed soothing circles into my belly.

I winced. It was too much. The pain I’d ignored when my dick had taken over my senses came back full force and nausea washed over me.

Harry frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Give me a sec.”

“I’m here.”

I sucked in deep breaths and curled into him. The ache in my abdomen peaked in waves but was so fucking worth it for the residual pleasure zinging through my veins. For the warmth of his touch all over me. For the trance he could put me in with just the graze of his fingers.

“Joe?”

I opened my eyes and gazed up at Harry, aware that time had passed, but no idea how much. The question in his dark eyes was obvious. “I’m okay.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah. I’m good, but you’d better help me strip the bed before my ma comes up and tries to do it for me.”

Harry laughed—a real deep chuckle that was warmer than any sunshine. “There’s another new duvet set in the cupboard. I’ll put it on for you if you want to take a shower?”

“You saying I stink?”

“No, I’m saying you should probably take a shower while I’m around to listen out for you.”

Just like that, Dom Harry disappeared. I waited a hopeful moment for him to come back, but it didn’t happen, and the Harry I was left with still made my heart skip a beat.

He helped me stand, held me up when I wavered, and walked me to the bathroom. I wanted to drag him into the shower and sink to my knees in front of him, but I settled for turning the shower as hot as it would go and kissing his cheek, feeling suddenly—and weirdly—shy. “Don’t go before I’m out, okay?”

“As if.”

And he kept his promise. When I staggered out of the bathroom a little while later, he was sitting on the freshly-made bed—the dirty sheets who knew where—and thumbing through his phone. He seemed uncharacteristically irritated.

I treated myself to another pair of his sweatpants and steadied myself with his shoulder as I pulled them on. “Why the long face? Something wrong?”

Harry glanced up. “You don’t wear underwear anymore?”

“What’s the point when I’m in quarantine?” I eyed him. “And what’s with the deflection? You don’t let anyone else get away with that shit.”

“Don’t I?”

“Don’t be cute.”

Harry grinned wryly. “You’re a perceptive motherfucker.”

“Thanks. Are you going to answer my question? ’Cause it would be a lot quicker if you told me to jog on.”

“Fine. Come here.” Harry patted the bed beside him until I sat down. Then he held his phone out to me. “Take a look through this Instagram account.”

Lacey and Jemima pissed around on Instagram all the time, but my knowledge of social media was limited to the long-ago abandoned Facebook profile I had before I’d returned full-time to the farm. Instagram was a mystery, and scrolling through some fitness fanatic’s profile didn’t do much to educate me. “What am I looking for?”

“Nothing in particular. I just want to know what vibe you get from it.”

I looked again at the dude posing in the pictures—all muscles, weights, and protein shakes—and watched a brief clip of him shouting about meal plans. In the captions below, he’d listed the subscription prices for whatever it was he was trying to sell, and my eyes bugged out. “How much a week?”

“I know, right?” Harry took the phone back. “There’s hundreds of PTs like him, plugging meal plans and diets when they don’t know jack about nutrition. And don’t get me started on the weight regimes they pimp. Put together with this protein guzzling nonsense and it’s—shit. Sorry. It just winds me up.”

“I can tell. Is this why you don’t eat mashed potato?”

Harry stared at me like I’d grown two heads. Like he thought I hadn’t seen him blanch every time someone put bread on his plate. “What?”

I blinked first. “Never mind.”

“Anyway . . .” Harry said. “My point is that these media PTs are dangerous. You can’t focus on the latest fad and hope it will build your wellbeing. You wouldn’t expect those ponies in the tack room to recover by just feeding them bran, would you? Your dad told me that horses don’t live well without emotional support. Perhaps there’s parallels.”

“Leaving Jonah out of it, if you’d compared it to horses from the start I’d have known what you meant. I have a limited imagination.”

“I don’t believe that, but I’m sorry for ranting at you. My mate Angelo usually deals with the fall out when I’ve been on social media.”

It was the first time Harry had mentioned friends from back home—from his real life. I wanted to know more . . . to press him until there was no room left in the “Harry” part of my brain, but he got up before I could voice a coherent question, ready to go and break his back on my farm.

I grabbed his T-shirt and yanked him down for a kiss. It was rough and raw, and over far too soon. “You’ll come back later?”

“Of course,” he said. “We can go for a walk if you’re feeling up to it.”

“Thought I was supposed to stay my arse in here?”

Harry winked and gently bit my cheek. “Then we’ll go after dark.”

* * *

It took me three days to figure out who was fucking around with my stable plan. I sat in Grandpa’s chair and watched Emma lead Shadow to Mani’s stall and forced myself not to holler out of the window at her.

I kept it in until she wandered into the house for dinner. “Why are you fucking with my horses?”

Emma glowered at me across the table as Toby drifted into the kitchen and stopped—eying us both—and clearly considering whether to join us or not. “Fucking with your horses? What does that even mean?”

“It means you’ve got Mani in Shadow’s stall, and Shadow kicking up a storm next to Ava and Jazz.”

“Have you heard him kicking?”

Not that I could remember, but that wasn’t the point. I was sleeping like a dead man at the moment, especially at night when Harry lay behind me, his chest pressed against my back— “Why have you moved them?”

“Because isolating Shadow doesn’t make him any happier. Yeah, he made a fuss at first, but he likes it now. I caught him nuzzling Ava this morning.”

“Bollocks.” I didn’t believe her. Most of my days right now were spent staring out of the window, mentally cataloguing what the rest of them were doing wrong, to stave off the mind-numbing boredom of being too wired to rest and too tired to move, and I hadn’t seen Shadow do anything in his new digs but heckle passing cats. “He can’t stay there if he starts on the other horses. It’s not fair on them.”

“I know that. Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.”

Harry came in as Emma was speaking. Like Toby, he glanced between us, but there was no apprehension in his amused expression, and despite being so fucking hot for him, I kind of wanted to punch him.

At least until he dropped into the seat beside me and surreptitiously squeezed my thigh. “What are you two bickering about?”

“Shadow,” Emma said. “Joe thinks the world is going to end because he doesn’t like change.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back. “The world will end if he kicks one of those old mares. He’ll break their . . .” I trailed off as I realised they were all staring at me. “What?”

Harry squeezed me harder, and Emma giggled, leaving Toby to nervously take his seat and explain. “Erm . . . it’s just that we were saying this morning that we missed you shouting, boss. Welcome back.”

“I don’t shout.” Beside me, Harry’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. Emma broke into full-on cackles. I threw a digestive biscuit at her. “Bugger off, the lot of you.”

Their obvious amusement didn’t ease my worries about Shadow. After dinner, I called time on my daylight confinement and supervised the horses as they were brought in from the fields. Instead of saving Shadow till last, Emma led him down with the oldest girls. I braced myself for disaster, but nothing happened. He went into his stall like a lamb, only pausing to take a shit where it was least convenient for him to do so.

Harry was apparently responsible for the evening feeds now. I bit down on the urge to nitpick at him and dragged Emma inside. “Okay. You have my attention. What’s the theory?”

Emma stuck her hands in her pockets. “Same as the one Harry uses on me. That nothing can change if we don’t try. We want him to be more socialised, but that’s not going to happen if we keep him away from all the others. I think he’s lonely, and he acts like a prick to compensate.”

Her scowl was so intense that it was hard to tell if she was having a dig at herself or me, but the theory fit us both, particularly if you combined the worst traits of our personalities. Had Shadow absorbed that from both of us? He’d always been a difficult horse, but had we made him worse? “What did Jonah think when he was here?”

“Why do you care what Dad thinks?”

“Why did you bring him here if you don’t?”

“Because you were so messed up I was scared you wouldn’t come back. When I called him, they were still saying your liver might be pulverised.”

I winced. “Thanks for the visual.”

“You’re welcome. But seriously, I was scared, and I needed help, and that night was probably the only time he’ll ever be able to help me. It might not mean much to you, but it meant everything to me.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, and suddenly my father’s opinion of my renegade horse ceased to matter. I pulled my sister close and hugged her tight. “You should work with Shadow more. Perhaps you understand each other.”

Emma sighed. “Perhaps we do.”

She went back outside, and after swallowing a couple of codeine, I followed her. The idea of Shadow being an anxious horse troubled me. I parked myself on an upturned crate by the tack room and watched him for the rest of the evening, all the while jonesing for the cigarettes I’d forgotten about until now.

Harry came to join me as the sun went down. “Something on your mind?”

I jerked my head in Shadow’s general direction. “Emma’s right about him. He’s so chilled out shacked up with the ladies.”

“Yeah . . . it’s interesting, isn’t it? How aggression can mask other things. You’ve said before that he’s calmer when he’s exercised—which works for humans too—but I’d never considered the social aspect of it. Stupid, really, because lots of my patients see a spike in their recovery when they come to my group sessions.”

I couldn’t imagine anything worse than trying to put myself back together with an audience, but that was me, and I’d already established that I was probably part of the problem. “Do you think Emma could ride him?”

“You’re asking me?” Harry leaned against the tack room door, lazily playing with the mane of the pony who came to investigate. “I don’t know anything about riding, and I’ve never seen Emma on a horse.”

“But you know her,” I said. “Or at least, you understand how her mind works better than I do. She quit riding because she became terrified of hurting herself. Seriously, it was like this phobia that appeared overnight after Grandpa died. I never connected the two, but that was around the time Shadow started acting out too.”

“Was it sudden? Your grandfather’s death, I mean?”

“Yes and no.” I watched Shadow poke his head out of his stall and call out to his new girlfriend next door. “He was old and getting frailer, but I thought we had more time. We all did.”

“Waiting for the end is almost as bad as the event itself.”

“Is that what happened to your dad?”

“My dad died of a heart attack in a taxi on his way home from a strip club. It was so fast, he probably didn’t realise what was happening, and I hate myself for thinking that he didn’t deserve to go out so easy.”

I looked up at him, squinting in the murky evening light. “Does he deserve you hating yourself instead?”

“Probably not.”

You complex motherfucker. I nudged him with my elbow and went back to my horse-watching. After a while, Harry dropped a subtle kiss to my head and wandered off.

With the farm winding down for the night, it didn’t take me long to follow.