Free Forever Promised by Amy Lane Page A

stalls for the next muckraker. They made convenient benches, and Crick sank down onto the double stack gratefully. He worked a full day’s load, but his leg and his arm were never going to be what they used to, and at the end of the day, they got weak. Deacon knew. He’d spent hours over both of them, rubbing, massaging with the heated wand—anything to help work the nerves and flesh that had been decimated just as Crick had been leaving a Middle East war zone to come home.
    With a sigh, he hopped up so he was standing on top of the bale Crick was sitting on, and leaning on the triple stack next to it. Crick was tall enough that Deacon only had to lean a little to pull on his arm.
    “Here, rest it on my knees,” he grunted, and Crick did so with the ease of long practice. Deacon had asked Jeff and he’d given Deacon some pointers. Deacon’s favorite was this one move that started at the shoulder and kneaded the heavy muscles up around Crick’s neck, and then worked the tension out and down his bicep, to the heavy scars of his forearm, and then down to his twisted hand and the tips of his fingers. He didn’t spare Crick the pain, and there was nothing sexual about it, but Deacon liked to close his eyes and imagine. He could see all the stress, all the grown-up shit that knotted Crick’s muscles like waxy black thread, and as he worked, he imagined smoothing that out, combing through it with pressure and counterpressure, with the magic softening of touch, and that by the time Deacon got to Crick’s hand, the darkness had been all combed through, and there was nothing left but shining, woven promise, which was all Deacon had seen in Crick from the moment they’d met.
    Crick let out an unabashed groan by the time Deacon got to his hand, and Deacon raised the twisted fingers to his mouth and touched lips gently, stroking the tightness of his grip out with the other hand.
    Crick leaned his head back against the stall, heedless of Mercury, the gigantic American saddlebred who was broken to carry men in armor on his back as part of the Faire circuit Mikhail still traveled when he danced. Mercury made an effort to lip Crick’s hair up, but Crick swatted him away gently, and Deacon sweetened the pot by giving him a carrot.
    “You know, when you do that, you’re just telling him he gets treats for eating my head,” Crick grumbled, eyes still closed.
    “Which is why I do it,” Deacon replied mildly, and Crick opened one eye and scowled.
    “We’re not done with this conversation, you know!”
    And now it was Deacon’s turn to scowl as he dropped Crick’s hand, hopped off his hay bale, and stalked back to Flower’s stall. “You need to tell them no,” he said decisively, looking at Flower and trying to pretend like that didn’t hurt to say.
    “I’ll do no such goddamned thing!” Crick didn’t stand up, but he did cross his arms in front of him and glower. Deacon would have told him he looked cute, but that would mean no sex that night, because you didn’t say that to a man who stood six feet five inches and had shoulders like a Clydesdale.
    “Look, Carrick,” Deacon started, and then added, “no, no, don’t get up—”
    “The only way you’ll let me out-stubborn you is if I loom.”
    “It didn’t work when you outgrew me at sixteen, it’s not going to work now.”
    But this time, when Crick stood behind him, he put his hands on Deacon’s shoulders, and Deacon finally took the invite and leaned back.
    God, Crick felt good. Deacon had spent his whole life being a self-contained package, doing as many things right as he could, being the best person he could be to help his father keep the ranch running, help Crick grow up to be a man, and then, after Crick grew up too fast for either of their comfort, helping to keep together a family out of spit and sweat and pure need. People looked to him. He’d had one lapse to alcohol, and one into heart disease, and yes, he counted that as a lapse, and he’d