Red Dirt Heart Read online

  God, I needed this.

  I hadn’t realised just how much I needed some alone time until I said it out loud to Ma. I’d booked and paid for two nights in a hotel for them and told them to charge any restaurant bills back to the room and the hotel would take it off my credit card.

  I’d said goodbye to them all as they were leaving, still not managing to make eye contact with Travis. I’d set about doing my afternoon work, fed the animals and tidied up the shed and finally came inside when my stomach told me it was dinner time.

  I opened the fridge door to find containers of food premade by Ma. I smiled despite the insult that she thought I was too useless to cook for myself. I took one marked ‘dinner’ out of the fridge and threw it in the microwave. I went and got cleaned up, but when the microwave beeped, instead of taking dinner to the table, I sat on the lounge, in front of the TV and put my feet up on the coffee table.

  Television out here wasn’t great; when I was a kid, it was so bad I would hardly ever watch it. But now with the introduction of satellite TV and the internet, I could pretty much watch what I wanted.

  I scanned through the movie channels, hoping for some foreign gay film, but settled on a rerun of Die Hard. After John McLean had yippee-ki-yay’d every mother fucker, I grabbed my laptop out of my office, turned the lights off and went to my room.

  I could have done this at my office desk or even on the sofa, but jerking off to gay porn where Ma did the daily crossword kind of weirded me out.

  I needed to get Travis out of my head. I had two days to get rid of any silly ideas, foolish notions or fantasies out of my system, and what better way to do that than to watch men fuck.

  Men that didn’t have short brown hair, cool blue eyes and American accents.

  I stripped off my clothes, grabbed some hand lotion and tissues, and, leaning up against my headboard with my laptop on my thighs, started trolling the usual sites.

  I was already hard, so I put my laptop beside me and pressed play. It didn’t matter which video I watched at this point. I just needed to watch something. I quickly applied some lotion to my hand and gripped myself, watching the men on screen kiss at first, their ripped bodies, naked and beautiful. Unable to wait, I skipped the lovey-dovey shit and prepping scenes and went straight for the fucking. All I needed to see was the cock slipping into an ass, balls tight, and the moaning. Fuck, I needed to hear the moaning.

  The bottom threw his head back and groaned as he took an entire cock into his ass, and that was all it took.

  My cock surged in my hand, my hips flexed one last time and I came. Hot strips of cum poured onto my stomach, down my hand, and my head spun as my orgasm rocked through me.

  By the time I could focus on the laptop screen, the two guys were covered in cum and kissing. I wiped myself clean with some tissues and still needing more, I clicked on the next video.

  I watched from the beginning this time while languidly stroking my cock back to life. It didn’t take long. I watched the men on screen, kissing, naked, missionary. I missed that intimacy. Someone to hold me, touch me, kiss me.

  My strokes became harder, twisting my hand over the head of my cock while imagining it was me being kissed like that. That it was my cock buried in that ass while he kissed me like that, moaned for me like that.

  That it was Travis who begged me like that.

  My eyes shot open and my hand stopped. My cock was aching and throbbing in protest.

  With my other hand, I clicked off that video and onto a new one. I didn’t even wait for it to start; I just clicked two-thirds into the clip. I didn’t want to watch them kiss and touch, I just needed to watch them fuck.

  The video started at a scene with one guy on his hand and knees and three guys behind him. They took turns fucking him, each sliding their dicks in, pumping a few times and then letting the other guys do the same.

  It was pig-dirty, there was no emotion to it, it was just pure animal-need fucking. And it was hot.

  After a few rounds, the next guy kept thrusting, fucking until he came all over the guy’s ass.

  My orgasm rolled through my belly, building.

  The next guy moved in, sliding in easily. I stroked harder, imagining it was me. The man on screen fucked the ass in front of him, until he pulled out at the last minute, spraying cum over the bottom’s hole.

  My cock swelled and my balls tightened. The building pleasure coiled tight in every cell of my body.

  Then on screen the next guy took his turn. His big, fat cock pushed in deep, making both men moan loudly. The sound sent warm shivers over my skin. He gripped the hips in front of him, driving in every inch over and over. The camera cut to a view from underneath, so all I could see was balls flush against ass, and the moaning got louder and the fucking got harder. Only this guy didn’t pull out, he thrust in one last time, his balls drew up and he came deep in the guy’s ass.

  My orgasm ripped from my toes, sending flashes of white hot pleasure through my entire body as my cock spilled hot bursts of cum over my stomach.

  It took a little while for the room to stop spinning, but I closed my laptop, rolled off my bed and cleaned myself up in the shower.

  I climbed back into bed, sleepy and sated. I refused to think about the last video I watched, how it was nothing but dirty porn.

  Most of all, I refused to think about Travis.

  But I woke up before the sun with dreams of a soft American accent whispering in my ear still swirling through my brain.

  I squeezed my dick to stop the ache, but it made it worse.

  I closed my eyes and had visions of his blue eyes fluttering closed and his head falling back as I pressed my lips to his neck. Then he pulled my face to his and kissed me, and I came again and again, my back arching off the bed as I fucked my fist.

  Completely spent and boneless, I lay in bed trying to catch my breath.

  Okay, this infatuation, this stupid fantasy, was officially getting ridiculous.

  I jumped out of bed, cleaned myself up, pulled on some shorts, stripped the sheets and stomped through the too-quiet house toward the laundry. I needed to be busy, I told myself. So I had a quick breakfast and kept myself busy. All damn day.

  I stayed in and around the homestead. Not that I was short of transport. I mean, everyone had piled into the only two four-wheel drives to go to Alice Springs, but I still had five dirt bikes and a half a dozen horses I could ride. Hell, I even had the helicopter.

  But being out here all by myself with the nearest help hours away, I didn’t risk it. I’d never been this isolated. If a bike broke down or if I fell off a horse – not that I had since I was a kid – it could be a death sentence.

  The temperature was over forty degrees Celsius and the humidity before the wet season was always hellish. If I got left a few hours from the homestead with no water and no one to come get me, it could kill me.

  Rule number one of the Outback: Don’t be an idiot.

  I had plenty to do anyway. I checked and rechecked all food lists, fuel and water supplies and medical kits for the first of the droving runs come Monday. I finished some laundry – I always did my own. Ma did everything else, but never anyone else’s washing. Not that it bothered me, I mean, I was a grown man, I could do my own. I swept and mopped the floors, fed the animals, did a few hours in the office and not once did I think about him.

  Not until I got into bed anyway.

  I’d eaten dinner in front the TV again, watched some lameass robot movie and turned it off before it even finished, and went to bed. I didn’t need porn tonight. I recalled one of my many drunken college nights, dancing with strangers and having sex with them in bathroom stalls, backrooms, hotel rooms, dorm rooms.

  I could remember the feeling of having the warm body of some guy underneath me as I sunk my cock into his ass. Those memories, a blur of strobing lights and alcohol, were all I had to fuel a life of solitude. I had them all stored in my mind and ready to recall when needed.

  Only tonight, the memory
wasn’t of some random faceless stranger underneath me. As I jerked off—again—short brown hair and blue eyes appeared in my mind. His lips were parted in pleasure, his groans and whispers were laced with a Texan twang.

  It wasn’t some nameless man whose hands touched my face, bringing me in for a kiss. It was Travis.

  And when I imagined my tongue in his mouth, the hand around my cock pumped harder, and reaching farther my other hand cupped my balls and one finger teased my hole before pressing inside.

  “Fuck!” I cried as I came. My heart was hammering in my chest, my bones were spongy and my blood warmed through.

  Sleepily, I cleaned myself up, throwing the tissues on the floor to deal with in the morning. I rolled over and pulled a pillow under my arm and for the briefest of moments, I wondered what it would be like to curl up and fall asleep with Travis in my arms.

  My fantasies had officially left this-is-getting-ridiculous and had landed right in the middle of Crazytown.

  * * * *

  I woke up the next morning feeling very removed.

  If I dreamed of Travis I didn’t remember. I rolled out of bed, then picked up the dried tissues off the floor and put them in the garbage, feeling more than a little pissed off with myself.

  How I ever let it get to this was beyond me.

  I needed to get my shit together. Everyone was due back this afternoon and I needed to have my fucking head screwed on straight.

  Straight. Huh. How ironic.

  If I wasn’t so pissed off, that would be funny.

  In no mood for breakfast, I did my early-morning chores. After the dogs and horses were fed, I headed back in for a shower.

  And something got the better of me.

  My father’s fucking words.

  I took my laptop with me and tried to watch some straight porn, like I’d tried a dozen times before, hoping it’d stir something in me – something to prove to the ghost of my father that I was someone he could be proud of.

  Of course it didn’t. I knew before I’d even started that it wouldn’t. Sure, the guys in it were fit and hung, but the women were vocal, and even muted I still couldn’t like it. I liked the grunts and groans of men in porn, and if watching porn was the extent of my sex life, I may as well as watch what I liked.

  Which was men having sex with men.

  As much as I wished it otherwise, I was gay. As much secondhand shame and disappointment I carried on behalf of my father, I couldn’t change who I was.

  I just chose to bury it.

  I shut the laptop down, giving up on my plan A completely and even more pissed off with myself than before. Instead of opting for a shower, I pulled on my boots, grabbed my hat off the hook in the hall and a canister of water. The screen door slammed behind me, and walking over the fence, I whistled for Shelby.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  He has a star tattoo. Oh, of course he fucking does.

  I rode back into the yard and smiled when I saw the two Land Rovers parked out front. They were home. They were also early. I was hoping I’d be back before they got home. I rode Shelby to the water trough near the shed, and after jumping down, I unsaddled her and grabbed the hose.

  She’d worked up a good sweat so I hosed her down, giving her a good rubdown for which she rewarded me with a nudge or two. I figured anyone inside the house would have seen or heard me, and I smiled at George when he walked out to see me.

  “How was your weekend?” I asked him.

  “Never mind me,” he said. “Ma just about had a nervous breakdown when we got back and you weren’t here.”

  “Ah, shit,” I said. “I was hoping to be back before you.”

  “I told her if you weren’t here by dinner we’d worry about panicking then,” George said. “I figured I’d know where to find you anyway.”

  I smiled and nodded, silently admitting to where I’d been.

  He raised one eyebrow. He knew I only went there to clear my head. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, and then right on cue, the very reason for my bout of crazy walked out of the house and headed over. “Oh fuck.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, even as a whisper. George’s gaze shot to mine and he smiled.

  “Well, you’re alive,” Travis said, walking over and petting Shelby’s neck. He looked over my horse at me, all blue eyes and perfect smiles. “Ma had you snakebit and dying of thirst a hundred miles from home.”

  “Just went for a swim,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “Now I have to put Shelby in the holding yard.”

  Travis looked at me, then to the arid desert behind me. “A swim? Out there?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, about thirty miles northeast.”

  His eyes popped wide. “Thirty miles? For a swim?”

  “Spring-fed lagoon,” I told him. “It’s real pretty.” Then I said, “How was your first weekend in the Alice with the crew?”

  Travis groaned, and he looked at me most seriously. “They drink like fish. Actually, Fish, as in the man Fish, is a fish. He consumed more alcohol than oxygen. Which he’s paying for now though, because he’s as sick as a dog.”

  I chuckled. “You survived okay? Not hungover at all?”

  “Actually, I feel terrible but don’t tell any of them that. I’m trying to act all cool and shit, but really I feel like crap.”

  Despite my trying to not be affected by him, I burst out laughing, just as the screen door slammed and Ma came stomping over.

  “Charles Sutton,” she yelled, glaring at me as she walked. “You’ll be the death of me.”

  Travis took a reflexive step back, I sighed and George laughed as he took the reins from me, leading Shelby to the yard. I looked at Ma. “Oh, Ma,” I said, using my you-could-never-hate-me tone. “I just went for a swim.”

  She put her hand on her hip. “You coulda left a note! I was worried about you being out there all by yourself.”

  I wrapped her up in a big bear hug and squeezed her ’til she squeaked. It was how I usually ended all our disagreements. I put her back down on the ground. “Ma, I’ve been out there a thousand times all by myself.”

  She just narrowed her eyes at me. “And what do you need to go all the way out there for to clear your head? The whole house was empty?”

  I ignored that question—and the fact that Travis was still standing right beside me. “Now that you bring it up, how was your weekend away?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows at her. “George was a gentleman, I hope.”

  “Don’t you answer that!” George called out from the holding yard.

  “Gentleman?” Ma grinned, her eyes full of mischief. “That man’s got the devil in him.”

  I snorted out a laugh, and even Travis chuckled at that. “How was the food?” I asked.

  Ma tilted her head. “How did we go from talking about you to talkin’ about me? I wasn’t done yet!”

  I gave her another hug. “I’m glad you had a great weekend, Ma.”

  She growled at me. “You get inside. The both of you. I have a list of things to do a mile long. Fancy sending me away the weekend before the season drove.”

  “We’re organised,” I told her.

  “You might be, but I’m not,” she said. “You can help me in the kitchen,” she told me, then looked at Travis. “And you can do some laundry.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. I think she scared him.

  “I’m a cook, not a slave,” she added for good measure.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And quit callin’ me ma’am. The name’s Ma. Learn it. Use it.”

  Travis’s wide eyes met mine, and I burst out laughing again. “Ma, leave him alone. You’re scaring him.”

  “Bit of fear never hurt anyone,” she said. Then she slid one arm around Travis and gave him a side-on hug. “Now, inside, both of you. I wasn’t jokin’ about doin’ your own laundry.”

  * * * *

  Normally a time of rare quiet, dinner was loud. Even hungover, everyone was laughing and joking about their weekend away,
telling stories of what they did and apparently what they didn’t do.

  “Not short on admirers this one,” Bacon said, nodding to Travis. “Women lined up out the door almost.” My stomach knotted; though I’d wanted him to go and have some fun, as it turns out, I didn’t like hearing about it.

  “Not quite,” Travis said quietly, still cutting the meat on his plate, not looking up.

  “Never took any of ’em up on their offer,” Bacon went on.

  “Not that we saw anyway,” Fish added.

  Travis shook his head. “Not my thing, really.”

  “Got a girl back home?” Fish asked. “Is that why?”

  Travis swallowed hard and smiled. Then he shook his head. “Nah.”

  I was relieved. Fucking relieved. Can you believe that? God, I was pathetic.

  “There was girls trippin’ over ’emselves to talk to the cute American,” Bacon said with a grin. “Weren’t interested in us because of him.”

  “They weren’t interested in you because you’re a pig,” Trudy said flatly.

  “They don’t call me Bacon for nothin’” he said, too thick to realise the insult.

  The jokes and banter went around the table until there was no food left and Ma shooed us out. I helped Ma again in the kitchen She protested the entire time, but I told her shut up and deal with it.

  She dropped the spatula into the sink with a loud clank and stared at me.

  I just laughed. “The kitchen is neutral ground, remember?”

  “Neutral ground is one thing, Charles Sutton,” she said. “But tell me to shut up one more time and you’ll be eating oatmeal three times a day.”

  “I hate oatmeal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Good, now get out of my kitchen.”

  “I thought you said you needed my help!”

  “No, I really just wanted to get you and Travis inside together.”

  “Ma!”

  “Oh what,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They can’t hear me. They’re all outside. Where you should be. With him.”