Sworn Enemy: An MM Enemies-To-Lovers Book (Wild Heart Ranch 1)
Sworn Enemy: Chapter 18

Holy fuck.

First of all, I suck at lazing because my brain is on hyperdrive.

I…

I mean…

What is happening?

I’m naked in Charlie Wills’ bed, and he’s naked too. And not just, like, naked. Naked and wrapped around me, with his naked penis touching my naked hip, and his leg is sorta tucked in between my legs so my balls are resting on his knee.

Or maybe his knee is tucked under my balls?

Also, he’s skimming his fingers through my chest hair, and now…oh shit. Pubic hair. He’s kissing my Adam’s apple while sinking his fingers into my pubic hair.

I mean, all I did was practice the honesty thing, you know? I told him how I was feeling, and he said it didn’t scare him.

Like…I told Charlie Goddamn Wills that I loved him back in high school and that I still love him now, and his response was that he wants to know more about me.

He tongues my nipple. “You’re awfully thinky for someone who’s supposed to be lazing with me.”

“Well, uh, you’re you. And I’m me. And your fingers…ah, ah, ah…are making it impossible to relax.”

His hand is resting on his knee as he gently handles my balls. He grins as he repositions himself, kneeling—nakedly—at my hip, folded in half so his nose nudges my soft cock. Running his nose up the length of it, he gives the head a kiss.

And—fuck my life—that is the exact moment my stomach lets out an embarrassing gurgle. Charlie laughs, humming as he rubs his stubbly cheek against my balls. My stomach, not finished with my humiliation, grumbles again, this time even louder.

Charlie laughs and lies alongside me again, kissing my temple. “I’m hungry too. What’s your favorite breakfast food?”

I shake my head. “You’re gonna laugh at me.”

“I promise you I will not.”

I try to scowl at him, but his calm, toppy demeanor and easy acceptance win me over.

“Fine. Cream of Wheat. With brown sugar, butter, and half-and-half.”

Charlie lets out a throaty chuckle, and I fake-punch his arm.

“You promised!”

“I promised not to laugh at you. Besides, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at myself. Cream of Wheat is also one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast.”

I narrow my eyes. “You’re just saying that.”

He holds up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“Yeah, but there’s no way you actually have it, do you?”

He gets out of bed and walks toward his closet. “I absolutely do. I have a whole method for making it smooth and lump-free.”

“You’ll make it for me?” I ask, skeptical.

He licks his bottom lip, and I get lost in the gesture. Finally, I look up to find his amused eyes.

“What?” I ask, self-conscious.

He winks, giving me a little half-smile. “Yeah. I’ll make it for you, but only if you answer a question.”

Hell, there’s a lot I’ll do for a proper bowl of Cream of Wheat.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you tense like that? What was going through your head?”

I shake my head. “That’s not the question you want to ask.”

“It isn’t?”

“Nope. Before, you wanted to know if, back in high school, I’d ever masturbated to the thought of being with you. The question you really want to ask—which, I promise, will answer your original question—is this: how many other men have I masturbated to since high school?”

He chuckles, pulling on his earlobe. “Okay, Mr. Jennings. Aside from me, how many other men have you had impure, masturbatory thoughts about since high school?”

“That’d be a big, fat goose egg, Mr. Wills,” I say, making a zero out of my fingers and holding it out for him to see.

He smiles, his eyes dancing. “Ah.”

“Yeah. Ah.” I hold up my hands in case he gets the wrong idea. “I know you’re not promising me anything. But that you’re not freaked out by that fact, and you’re willing to maybe see where this goes?”

Charlie grins, nodding along with my words.

I lay my forearm over my eyes. “Yeah, that’s gonna take me a minute.”

There’s a gentle vibration and shuffling of footsteps as he nears the bed. When his cock hits my bent elbow, I open my eyes. Winking down at me, he holds out his hand.

“You make the coffee. I’ll make the Cream of Wheat.”

Grinning like a jackass, I let him pull me to standing, body to body. I let out a fevered breath, unable to think with all his skin on my skin.

“Hey.” He crooks his finger and taps under my chin. “Look at me.”

Nervous, I do as he asks, sucking in a sharp gasp. Desire. That’s all I see. Desire and acceptance and the tiniest hint of a smirk.

“Justin, when I think about how hurt we were back then, I feel empathy for two confused kids and proud of how far we’ve come.”

I furrow my brow.

He kisses me. “I’ve always carried with me leftovers of the hurt and anger from that time. It’s why I stayed away, and why I nearly rejected my father’s offer of the land.”

“Yeah?”

Nodding, he continues, “But talking to you, being with you, finding out how much pain you endured, how the adults in your life emotionally abandoned you, and seeing what you’ve accomplished? You’re a damn miracle, Justin Jennings. You and I had to do a lot of work to get to where we are, and you did it with a lot less support than I did.”

I drop my eyes, and he shakes his head, tapping under my chin again. Oh fuck. I have to take calming breaths to stand in that gaze.

“This thing in you that makes you look down when you should hold your head up—whatever that is, is a lie. You are so good.”

His words rain down on me like the first hit of a cool shower on a hot, dusty day. He pulls me down to kiss my forehead, my nose, my lips, and then I bury my face in his neck as he surrounds me in his strong arms.

He means it. He really does.

Finally, we separate, and he shrugs on a well-worn plaid robe, made thin by years of wash and wear. He tosses me a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. The boxers hang low on my hips and the T-shirt’s a little loose, but they’re comfortable.

His eyes track up and down my body, sparking with approval. Not sure if I’m ever gonna get used to that, or even if it’s possible.

Still emotionally shaky, I follow him into the kitchen. He points me to the coffee maker and the cabinet where all the supplies are kept, then grabs a box of Cream of Wheat sealed in a Ziploc bag, a canister of brown sugar, and a little carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator. He starts the water to boil and twirls a whisk in his fingers while waiting for the coffee to brew.

Smoothing my hand over his ass—because I can—I raise a brow. “I hope you like strong coffee. I need my caffeine in the morning.”

He snorts as he checks the pot. “I once spent twenty-four hours in the air, went straight from the airport to the site, snuck seventeen people out of a warehouse, brought them to the appropriate safe spot, and then hopped back on an airplane to come home for my parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary. So yes, I like my coffee strong.”

Huh.

I want to ask him what he saved the seventeen people from, but I also don’t want to push it.

Instead, I roll my eyes. “You could have just said that last part. You didn’t have to go brag about your whole around the world in forty-eight hours thing.”

“Yeah,” he says, snaking an arm around my waist, pulling me in for a kiss. “But I like impressing you.”

He trails kisses down my neck, letting his tongue flick out over my collarbones as he runs his hand over my belly.

“Well,” I start, my breath hitching when his fingers skim my length, “I once got up at four-thirty to repair Mrs. Castlerock’s broken fence because all her Pygmy goats got out and three climbed onto her roof. They were causing a ruckus and shitting everywhere. After fixing the fence, I had to climb onto the roof and grab ‘em, and one of the little bastards bit me.”

Charlie cracks up. “You win. You totally win. But you have to tell me: how did a bunch of tiny goats get on the roof?”

“They snuck into her yard through a broken bit of fencing, then hop-climbed up a ladder that had been left propped against the house.”

“That reminds me. I meant to ask you something yesterday but got busy and then horny,” Charlie says, hip-checking me. “I thought you were afraid of heights. I seem to recall a rope-climbing incident in gym.”

“I was afraid of heights, but that was one of the many things I worked through in therapy. Weirdly enough, I kinda like high places now. Also, the goats were eyeballing the ground a little too closely. I would rather deal with heights than tiny dead goats.”

Charlie, so handsome while standing in his kitchen, gestures with both hands. “See. This is what I’m talking about.” He pushes a finger into my chest. “You, Justin Jennings, are a good person.”

I shake my head, smiling and a little embarrassed.

“Don’t give me that bashful look,” he says, tugging on the elastic waistband of the boxers he lent me. “If you give me that bashful look, I’m going to make you do something horribly cheesy, like stand in front of the bathroom mirror and tell yourself that you’re a good person.”

I dry heave, and he raises a brow. Ugh.

“Fine. I, Justin Jennings, am a good person. And a work in progress,” I tack on to the end.

“I’ll allow it.”

Charlie returns his attention to the Cream of Wheat, concentrating as he slowly whisks the cereal into the boiling water. He’s right, of course. He has an excellent technique, and when we tuck in, it’s smooth as silk and just as buttery.

“This is perhaps the best Cream of Wheat I’ve ever had in my entire life,” I say afterward, patting my belly.

Charlie’s self-satisfied grin is everything.

I startle when a loud horn goes off multiple times.

Charlie checks out the window and grins. “The horses are here!”

I join him at the window and spot the Goodnight’s ranch truck with a trailer full of horses behind it waiting at the locked gate.

I grimace and glance over at Charlie. “I’ll stay out of the way.”

Charlie leans in and kisses me. “You’re never in the way, and I don’t have a problem with them seeing you.”

“Okay.” I think about it and shake my head. “Too…uh, shy. For now.”

“Totally fair,” he says, grinning as he tugs me in for another kiss. We get a little distracted, and the horn goes off again. I pull away, flushed and turned on.

He scrunches his nose, then cups my jaw, whispering into my ear, “Duty calls. But come out to the barn after they leave, okay?”

I agree and follow him into the bedroom, where we get dressed, him in ranch gear and me in more borrowed sweats and a T-shirt.

Twenty minutes later, the Goodnight truck leaves the ranch. As I stroll to the barn across the expanse of barren, graded land, I can picture it with greenery and new-growth trees. It’ll take some time, but soon this place’ll be gorgeous. Even more beautiful than it was before.

I knock on the barn door, impressed with how solid it is. Charlie’s smiling as he slides open the doors and lets me in.

He introduces me to the horses, noting that this batch, which he anticipates will be donated to various organizations in short order, is named after the My Little Pony horses.

“These horses are beautiful and so well behaved,” I say, marveling at how their demeanor infuses me with calm.

“That’s all Sparrow,” he says.

Sparrow used to be the foreman at the Goodnight ranch, but he and his husband now own their own horse training facility.

“But didn’t you say that you were going to train them as well?”

He nods. “I’m taking their training the rest of the way. Both for search and rescue and for equine therapy.”

“Do you already know which horses you’ll use for search and rescue and which you’ll use for therapy?”

“Ideally, the horses will do both. A lot of times, you have horses trained for one specific function, and then they’re sort of left to their own unless they are needed for that specific function. Take the specialized search and rescue horses. They are most often in the barn or an exercise pen, not out rescuing lost kids.”

“So both jobs won’t overwork them?”

“Nope. Also, the temperament needed for search and rescue—patience, intelligence, good with a wide variety of humans in a wide variety of emotional states—also works really well for therapy.”

I’m a little nervous to ask, but I do anyway. “How did you find out about equine therapy?”

“The place I went to after my attempt had it as an option.”

I nod. “Same. They have equine therapy at the facility I went to get sober. When I go in for a top-off, I always try to book some time with the horses.”

Charlie looks thoughtful. “I didn’t realize that you sometimes have to go back in for help with your sobriety.”

I feel a little self-conscious, hoping it’s not a dealbreaker for him. “Uh, yeah.”

“What’s this look on your face?” he asks, cupping my chin.

Just give him the answer, Justin. It’s better to break your heart now.

I toe the hay at my feet. “Not sure if you’ll be okay with this, but like you said, it’s hard work. Sometimes I have bad days. Reaching out for help is how I cope with those days, and sometimes that looks like putting a pause on the real world. It’s never just about sobriety. It’s always a symptom of something mentally that needs to be addressed.”

Charlie faces me, putting his hands on my hips, drawing me close.

“Justin, I need you to look me in the eyes.”

I do as asked, still unaccustomed to the acceptance and affection he’s showing me.

“I need you to hear me when I say that I have no judgment about that. At all. I was surprised because, in my admittedly limited view, there seems to be a lot of talk around stacking up the days in a row. I’ve only ever seen people go in for a stay when they’ve somehow failed at sobriety and reset to zero.”

My lip curls at the thought.

“Counting the days is really helpful for a lot of people, but for me, it’s the worst. It makes me anxious, and it keeps me out of the moment. Doesn’t let me be present,” I explain. “Obviously, I do well when life in general is easier, but when things get hard, it’s nice to take a few moments in a quiet space and reflect. For me, that looks like going back into treatment.”

“Is it different when you go in sorta proactively like that?”

I nod. “I can focus on figuring out a new way of thinking or identifying a blind spot. The conversations with counselors and the group are more…productive? I guess you’d call it. Anyway, one of my pet peeves is the negative connotation surrounding addicts who need more than one go at rehab. Most addicts need more than one visit.”

“Makes sense.” Charlie rubs his chin. “If I’m honest, when I hear somebody’s been to rehab multiple times, I have tended to judge it in the past, thinking they couldn’t get their shit together. But I really like that you’re not trying to just string together a bunch of days. It sounds like you’re tuning into yourself and going with the ebb and flow of your addiction. Is that…did I say that right?”

I nod, grateful that he’s willing to own up to his feelings on the matter. “That’s a really good way of describing how I handle it. Of course it’s different for everyone, but I like the place I go to because they’re queer-friendly, and while they work with the twelve steps, that’s not the only methodology they use.” I rub the nose of the horse named Sparkle, and she nuzzles into my touch. “Anyway, I think the way you’re utilizing these horses for both equine therapy and search and rescue is amazing. I think the horses will enjoy having a job.”

Charlie grips my hips a little tighter, anxiety tightening his face. “I hope so. The ultimate goal is to have a few permanent residents and donate the balance of these hybrid horses to different equine organizations around the US. Maybe even internationally.”

It’s clear how much this means to him, and watching him talk so effusively about it makes me smile.

Charlie rubs the back of his neck, oddly insecure. “I still can’t tell if this is a great or terrible idea.”

I kiss his cheek. “It’s an unusual solution to a bigger problem, and I think it’s inspired. And hey, you can always call me over. I can be your friendly neighborhood addict who loves equine therapy.”

I laugh, then turn to Charlie when I realize he’s gone quiet.

“Do you always do that, Justin?” he asks, his head tilted to the side.

“Do what?”

“Dunk on yourself like that.”

Oh. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Have you ever tried not doing that?” he asks, affection and concern in his eyes as he touches my arm.

“I don’t want people to think I’m full of myself.”

“Justin,” he says, pulling me in for a kiss. “Nobody thinks you’re full of yourself. Everybody sees how hard you’re working, including me.”

I shift my weight from foot to foot, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. “Thank you, Charlie.”

We make out a bit more, then he pulls away, an evil grin on his handsome face.

“What?”

“You should know that Erik already guessed that we spent the night together last night.”

My face heats, but I can’t help the smile on my face. I like that his best friend knows.

And even though I’m trying to keep my expectations low, everything he’s doing makes me wonder if this place is in my future.

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