Cole sat back on his heels, cock still pointing to the sky, but the bliss that had softened his features was no longer there, leaving behind ridges so sharp they’d cut if touched. “And I am? A pervert?”
“I don’t know. Are you?” The cogs in Ned’s brain began working all too fast. “You said you fancied me from the day we met. And then you stole my horse just to lure me out of my home. Are we even friends, or has this been a scheme to see me naked all along?” Ned’s cheeks flushed as the words came out of his mouth.
Cole had hunted him down as if he were a stag with exceptionally large antlers.
Cole shoved at Ned’s chest and rose, walking over to his pile of clothes. “You have some nerve. That’s what you think of me? That our friendship had only been a way to wear you down and get my prick stroked?” he asked, voice snappy as he sat facing the lake and pulled socks over his feet.
His shoulders were wide, waist narrow, wet black hair stuck to his neck, and even now, after release, Ned couldn’t stop wondering when this attraction to masculine bodies started.
“Why else would you have taken such a shine to me? I wasn’t giving you no signs!” Ned swallowed when Cole stood, revealing his softening cock, stabbed by a sense of guilt he shouldn’t be experiencing in the first place. He focused on dressing, eager to hide under layers of fabric and no longer imagine Cole’s cock filling his mouth with spunk. Or how it would taste, feel on his tongue, how warm it would be.
Cole shook his head, hiding his body in a dark gray union suit. “No? You’re looking at me like a calf in need of milk.”
Ned was only dressed halfway when he faced Cole, numb with heat. “You take that back!” he growled and pushed at Cole’s chest. That same chest he’d gladly have licked over both the smooth and hairy parts.
Cole barked with laughter, his eyes like dark slits offering Ned a glimpse to hell. “Hadn’t you just said I was like a storm? That you couldn't bring yourself to regret anything?”
Ned’s mouth went dry. He had said that. Yet now he regretted every word. “Because you fondled my prick! You can’t expect a man to think clearly in that kind of situation!”
Cole pushed him back before pulling his shirt out of the pile. “You had plenty opportunities to protest my ‘lewd touch’, O’Leary! I lured you, and each time you took the bait instead of staying blind to it like most men would. If this offends you so much you should've said so before I drank your damn spunk like a dollar whore!”
Ned backed away as more droplets of rain hit his skin, a reminder to get dressed. Had he… invited this? Had he encouraged Cole’s attention? He’d been craving Cole’s closeness from the day they met, but not… not like this.
“Do you often seek out friends of this kind?” he asked, curious despite jealousy burning the back of his throat.
Cole spun around, walked the two paces that separated him from Ned, and smashed his fist into Ned’s cheekbone, sending him straight into the pebbles at the shore. He landed on his rear with a groan of pain, and his pants instantly soaked up the shallow water. The wound on his cheek, which had barely started healing, erupted with anguish, and when he grabbed his face, blood soaked through his fingers. Again.
“None of your damn business! You clearly don’t listen to a word I say anyway.” Cole moved toward his things, only to turn again and scoot at the shore, grabbing the hair at the top of Ned’s head. “You dare spill a drop of this to anybody, and I’ll cut them balls off you. So better watch yourself around liquor. Do you understand me?”
The onslaught of violence had Ned curling his knees to his chest in case Cole targeted his nuts next. He couldn’t bring himself to look into his eyes for fear of what he might see there, and held on to his throbbing cheek, eaten up by guilt. He should have had more self-control and have never said the things he’d spat into Cole’s face in exchange for pleasure. He’d lost his friend, and there was no way back.
“I know how to keep secrets.”
Cole’s jaw trembled, the fine muscles around it twitching under skin as he watched Ned in painful silence. “Do you now? Maybe that’s why you found it so easy to lie to my face. I might be a mean man, but never been crooked to a friend.”
With that, he rose and returned to his clothes as fat droplets fell from the darkening sky, turning the smooth surface of the lake into a sheet of gooseflesh.