Jack balanced himself on one arm, reaching for Riley’s cock. The tightening of Riley’s muscles, the ebb and flow of pressure, and Jack was fucking into Riley’s heaving body with a shout of completion. He stilled as Riley groaned, cursed and shot white stripes over his chest.

“I love you, Jack,” Riley forced past his kiss-bitten lips. “Love you.”

They stayed joined, kissing and exchanging heated words of love, until Jack softened enough to pull free. He used his discarded boxers to wipe at the come, knowing that Riley would need more than that after Jack had come inside him. Riley wouldn’t be comfortable, but it didn’t look like he cared for now. He was blissed-out, flat on the ground, half on the twisted blanket and half on the grass.

“I needed that,” Jack murmured. He flopped to lie next to Riley, tugging at the blanket so they were at least both on it. He held Riley’s hand, “You think it will ever stop?”

“What? This?” Riley gestured with his free hand. “Making love under the blue sky in the middle of the morning?”

“No,” Jack said thoughtfully.

Riley turned his head to look at him. “Then what?”

“The burning. To be with you, to want you, to look at you. Think we’ll ever stop?”

Riley smiled, and the smile reached his eyes, which were more green than brown today. “It burns in me as well.”

“Always?”

“Yeah. All the time. It isn’t only making love. It’s sleeping next to you, looking at you, seeing our kids. It’s everything.”

Jack squeezed Riley’s hand. “Hetboy, you’re my everything.”

“Back at ya, cowboy.”

CHAPTER TWO

They lay there for maybe thirty minutes, then laughed and joked as they collected the trail of clothes. It was only as they got dressed that Jack recalled something he’d meant to do before. They could do that something, seeing as they were this side of the ranch.

“Can I show you something?”

Riley twisted his hands around Jack’s neck and locked them in place. “You already did,” he smirked. “Wanna go again?”

“I’m not sixteen anymore,” Jack said, but he kissed Riley and enjoyed the feeling of holding and kissing.

“So what did you want to show me?” Riley finally asked.

Jack climbed onto Solo’s back, and Riley followed suit onto Alex. Together the two men left their little haven of loud sex, and Jack joined a trail up and over to the acres beyond. They came to the stone building quite suddenly. Over a rise in the ground, nestled in a grassy hollow, was the house Jack had called the Ghost House when he was young. He’d done that to freak out Beth, and only because Josh had done the same thing to him, but the Ghost House was what it remained.

“What is it?” Riley looked left and right. “This is still DD land, right?”

Jack tied off Solo. “Yep, all ours.” He waited for Riley to dismount. “Let’s go look.”

The house looked as solid as Jack remembered. “It has its own access road of sorts,” Jack explained with a wave to an overgrown area to the front of the house. “It was the original ranch, or so we think. I’m pulling the records to find out for sure, but it would be way back before the land belonged to my family. Me ’n’ Josh called it the Ghost House.”

“Does it have a resident ghost, then?” Riley teased. “A grizzly old cowboy with chewing tobacco and a six-shooter?”

“We only did it to tease Beth. Didn’t want her up in all our boy’s business when she was little.”

Riley huffed a laugh. “Seriously? Poor Beth.” He stepped closer to the nearest wall and examined the stones. “Seems to me this would be exactly the right place for a ghost.” He looked through the space where there had been a window. “It’s kind of spooky.” He wiggled his fingers at Jack and let out a ghostly wooh, edged with laughter. Jack couldn’t help himself, he immediately pulled Riley close and held him tight. When Riley laughed and teased, Jack fell more in love with his husband.

Riley got with the plan, closing his arms around Jack and holding tight. They stood that way in the place for the longest time until Riley released his tight grip and kissed Jack deeply. They kissed and hugged, and Jack relaxed into Riley’s embrace.

“You okay?” Riley murmured.

Jack nodded. “Just an awful lot of memories in this place, y’know. Sometimes Dad would come out to find us, back when we were real tiny, and he’d play cowboys with us. I remember those days as happy.”

“Before he….”

“Yeah,” Jack finished. “Before the Hayes shit got inside his head and wouldn’t leave him.” Riley stiffened next to him and Jack immediately regretted his words. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Yeah,” Riley began softly. “You did, and it’s true. I wish there could be a way I could rewind everything and make it right.”

Jack frowned. What he and Riley had? That was making it right. All of it.

“Riley, we made it right the minute you said you loved me.”

Riley said nothing for the longest time, but when he finally spoke, his words were filled with emotion.

“If there had never been a Hayes-Campbell feud, we wouldn’t be together.”

They kissed again, and this time Jack pushed Riley back against the solid wall and made the kiss mean way more than I love you. He pressed his weight against Riley and felt the exhalation of Riley’s satisfied sigh against his lips. When they finally separated, Jack was so hard, it was like they hadn’t just made love under the trees. He wanted more, and it seemed like Riley did too, judging by how hard he was.

“I can never get enough of you,” Jack said.

Riley cradled Jack’s face. “And I can’t get enough of you.” He looked down at the ground around them. “We could….”

Jack grimaced. “I like the idea of a mattress this time.”

Riley snorted a laugh. “Thank fuck. I was wondering how my knees would survive.”

Jack kissed the laughter from Riley’s lips, then with reluctance he pulled back.

“So tell me about the place,” Riley asked.

“Don’t think it had a dramatic past. Nothing more than it got too small for the family, or they decided they wanted the flatland by where the ranch house is now.”

Riley pressed a hand to the stone. “But it’s old?”

“Yeah. But built to last.” They stepped farther inside, and Jack could see the sky where the roof had long since disintegrated into piles of kindling on the floor. “A new roof, utilities—we could make something of this.”

Riley leaned against an internal doorjamb where once there would have been a door hanging. “Make something of it? You mean us moving here?”

Riley sounded intrigued rather than concerned.

“Not exactly.”

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Jack worried at his lip. He’d been having thoughts about this building for a long time. Niggling thoughts that wouldn’t leave him alone. “It’s difficult to explain. Well, not difficult, but it would need investment, maybe more than the riding school, even.”

Riley didn’t appear worried by that. “Go on.”

“You remember when I was in Laredo for the court case?”

“Yeah, of course.” Riley looked puzzled as well he should. Jack was starting this story a long way back.

“I met three men there. Actually one was still a boy. They were the witnesses that were in the dock with Liam in the case against Hank Castille. I put some finances in place, started myself down the road for helping them. Only, it didn’t happen.” This was the difficult part. How would Riley react to what he said next? Jack had dropped the ball because he’d been so wrapped up in Riley and the kidnapping; so much so that everything had gone cold and he’d lost contact with two of the boys.

“Because you had me to worry about.” Riley’s insight into what had happened meant Jack didn’t need to explain. Riley didn’t sound pissed or guilty or any one of a million emotions Jack had considered. He should have had faith in his husband, known that Riley would be above all that now.