“So,” Chris sat back in his chair and grinned over the rim of his coffee cup at the sight of Vin sweeping a piece of cornbread around his bowl to sop up the remains of his stew, “I take it you approve of what I did ta your buck?”

Vin shoved the cornbread into his mouth and chewed, narrowing his eyes at the smirking gunman. “Reckon it’ll do,” he mumbled around the mouthful.

Chris snorted and shook his head, then drank from his coffee. Tanner had all but inhaled two big bowls of stew and three pieces of cornbread, and all he had to say was “reckon it’ll do.” Hell, it really was a wonder somebody hadn’t shot the contrary sonuvabitch by now.

Ignoring the look of mixed affection and exasperation that Chris was giving him – pretty much Larabee’s standard expression when looking at him, he’d come to realize – Vin pushed away his bowl and slumped back in his chair with a long, contented sigh. Between the food in his belly and the warmth within the cabin, he was beginning to feel a pleasurable heaviness and lassitude in his body, a feeling that he suspected had been helped along by the whiskey with which Chris had laced his coffee.

Man definitely had a talent for taking the edge off nerves stretched to their limits.

Chris watched Vin’s chin dip toward his chest, his eyelids growing heavy, saw the faint rosy glow coloring his cheeks, and smiled softly. Without the slouch hat to hide his face and shapeless coat swallowing his figure, with his long hair falling about him in loose, disorderly curls and his face relaxed into almost perfect peace, the hide-tough tracker looked young, vulnerable and heart-rendingly beautiful. Chris stared raptly at him, and fell in love all over again.

Vin lifted his head with an effort, forced open his eyes and gave a soft, rueful laugh as he met Larabee’s smiling gaze. “Reckon I’s more tired than I thought,” he drawled. “Didn’t mean t’ go t’ sleep on ya.”

Chris sat down his cup and shook his head. “It’s all right, partner,” he said quietly, still smiling. “Hell, I’d be surprised if you weren’t dead on your feet. You’ve had a tough day.”

A soft light shone in Vin’s eyes as he gazed at the man across the table from him. “Turned out real good, though,” he rasped. “Reckon any day that ends with me lookin’ at you’s a good one.”

Chris chuckled and shook his head slightly. “Doesn’t take much ta make you happy, does it?” he teased.

But Vin remained serious, wide sapphire eyes dark with feeling, and all of it for the man across from him. “Jist takes you,” he breathed. “I been through worse days than this before, reckon I will again, too. Jist always seems t’ work out that way,” he said with a resigned shrug. “But as long as I end up with you, well,” he smiled slightly and nodded, “I reckon it’d be worth whatever I had t’ go through t’ get there.”

“Who’s the sweet-talker now?” Chris asked softly, humbled as always to realize just how much he meant to this man.

“Ain’t sweet talk, Chris. ’S jist the God’s-honest truth.” He leaned forward in his chair, folding his arms on the table and staring intently at Larabee. “I been through hell lotsa times in my life an’ survived, an’ fer no good reason that I could see. Now, though,” he lifted his chin defiantly, “I got me the best damn reason fer survivin’ I could ever have, so I reckon hell’s gonna have t’ try a whole lot harder’n that little blow outside t’ keep me away from you.”

Chris smiled at that and nodded, understanding completely. He’d had his fair share of hell, too, would likely have it again. But he figured he could take it, as long as he also had the heaven that came with Vin Tanner. “Well then,” he murmured, “I guess whatever happens, we’re in it together.” He studied Vin a moment longer, saw again the tired slump of his shoulders and chuckled softly. “Now, how ’bout we get you inta bed before you fall asleep where you are? Don’t think this table’d be just real comfortable.”

“Hell, Chris,” Vin sighed, slouching back in his chair as if the act of sitting upright were more than he could manage, “right now you could prop me up in a corner an’ it wouldn’t matter.”

“Yeah, well, it matters to me.” He scooted back his chair and rose to his feet, then walked around the small table to stand at Tanner’s side and held down a hand. “Let’s get you settled inta bed. I’ll clean up supper and join ya.”

“Sounds good,” Vin agreed, setting his hand in Larabee’s and letting the man pull him to his feet. Then, before Chris could step away, he tightened his hand about Larabee’s, slipped his other arm around the man’s neck and held him close, smiling wickedly into startled green eyes. “’Specially that joinin’ me part.”

Chris knew he should argue, should insist that Vin needed rest, but the soft light shimmering in those deep blue eyes and the press of that lean, hard body against his own were rapidly interfering with his ability to think. Unable to help himself, he wound one arm around the tracker’s waist and lifted his other hand to bury it in the soft waves of the man’s hair, pulling his head closer. “Does have a certain appeal,” he breathed, pressing his lips to Vin’s in a slow and tender kiss.

Vin shivered and melted into that kiss, clutching at Chris and opening his mouth to invite the man deeper. Chris accepted at once, his tongue slipping through Tanner’s lips and teeth, and Vin’s rose at once to meet it, the two teasing and twining in a slow, intricate dance. He moaned and buried his mouth in Chris’s, drinking the man’s warmth and breath into himself.

“God, Vin!” Chris groaned as he realized yet again how much he needed this man. He slipped his hands beneath the shirts Tanner had donned but hadn’t bothered to tuck in and pressed them against the tracker’s back, craving the feel of his living warmth. Lost in that craving, lost in Vin, he feasted on the younger man’s mouth and slowly stroked his back, finding and fingering the rough scars that marred the smooth flesh, reacquainting himself with the taste and textures of the man in his arms.

Vin gasped and shuddered as Chris worshipped him with mouth and hands, as the gunman kissed and caressed him with a shattering slowness and a loving thoroughness. Chris’s lips fed on his, then traced wet paths along his jaw and down his throat, while the man’s long, sure fingers ignited a thousand fires beneath his flesh. Trembling and aching in body and soul, awash in a rising heat that chased away all memory of the cold that had so nearly killed him, he moaned wordlessly and dropped his head onto Chris’s shoulder, closing his eyes tightly and clinging desperately to the man, panting harshly as Larabee’s tongue traced slow circles against the tender flesh of his neck.

“Please, cowboy!” he begged in a ragged whisper, knotting trembling fingers into the shirt covering Larabee’s chest. “Tell me y’ ain’t gonna stop!”

Chris had no intention of stopping, couldn’t if he’d wanted to and sure as hell didn’t want to. The remains of supper were forgotten, everything was forgotten. Nothing in this world or any other mattered except Vin.

“Not gonna stop!” he vowed fiercely, burying his face in Tanner’s hair and winding his arms tightly about the slender, shaking frame. “Never gonna stop! Gonna love you ’til I die!”

Vin lifted his head with an effort and stared into Chris’s glittering eyes, then raised a hand slowly and pressed it to Larabee’s darkly flushed face. “Don’t talk about dyin’ now,” he rasped. “Not tonight.” He slid his hand down and let his fingers come to rest over the heavily throbbing pulse in Chris’s throat. “Tonight’s only fer bein’ alive.”

Chris groaned again and crushed Vin to him, tipping his head and capturing the tracker’s mouth with his in a hard and hungry kiss. Alive! God, yes, that was how Vin made him feel, what Tanner had given back to him, and he’d gladly spend the rest of his days making the tracker feel the same.

Wet mouths searching, demanding, and bodies locked together, they stumbled their way across the small cabin toward the bed, their need growing with every twin beat of their hearts. Flesh burned and blood raced in torrents of liquid fire as they undressed each other, as greedy mouths and hands claimed and explored every inch of exposed skin, as they kissed and caressed with a mounting urgency and a shattering intimacy.

Finally naked, they tumbled onto the bed in a tangled heap, bodies surging together, limbs entwined, each man desperate to make himself as much a part of the other as he could. Outside, the storm still raged with a frozen fury, yet the two knew only the blistering heat between them.

Lying atop Vin, Chris bowed his head over the tracker’s throat and found his clavicle, tonguing the notch there and then sucking at one corner of the hard bone. He licked and bit his way along the ridge to one shoulder, his fingers skimming down Tanner’s sides all the while. Vin writhed and moaned piteously beneath him, head thrashing feverishly against the pillow and hips thrusting frantically, his body racing far beyond the ability of his mind to control it. He had no control where Chris was concerned, could no more deny his need for the man than he could his need for breath.

Hell, how could he when Chris was his breath?

Chris moved from Vin’s shoulder down to his chest, licking and kissing a path between the tracker’s pectorals, then swept his mouth to a small, taut dusky nipple and seized upon it. Vin cried out sharply and arched against him, driving his hard and aching cock into Larabee’s belly and digging his fingers into the man’s powerful back. Lightning seared along his every nerve, and he damn near wept from want.

But Chris wasn’t finished yet, wasn’t nearly finished. Tanner was a fever in his blood, a constant, driving thirst, and he was determined to drink his fill. From one nipple to other and back again he dragged his mouth, teasing, tasting, tonguing circles around the velvet-soft ovals and nipping at the hardened peaks, tearing breathless, wordless cries from his lover and driving the hot stakes of hunger ever more deeply into himself. Vin’s scent and taste washed over him, through him, intoxicated and aroused him, more potent than any liquor ever found in a bottle.

He could spend the rest of his life drinking from Vin and never get enough.

He slid slowly down Vin’s body, showering kisses and caresses over his narrow chest and flat belly, tongue lapping cat-like at the shallow dip of Tanner’s navel, fingers stroking his hips and lean flanks. Still further down he moved, blowing a soft stream of warm breath through the thatch of dark curls surrounding Vin’s hard, thick-swollen shaft. He buried his face in the tender crease at thigh and groin and breathed in the pungent, earthy scent of the tracker’s sex, his own cock twitching in hungry anticipation.

“Jesus, what you do ta me!” he gasped hoarsely.

“Got some things … I wish ya’d do t’ me!” Vin panted, burying his hands in Chris’s hair and thrusting his hips frantically as raw need pounded through him. “Shit, Lar’bee, yer like t’ kill me here!”

Chris chuckled softly, his warm breath wringing a hard shudder and thick groan from Tanner. “Just tryin’ t’ warm you up, partner,” he teased, nuzzling a whiskered cheek against the sensitive flesh of the tracker’s inner thigh.

Vin shuddered again and fought the urge just to drag Chris’s mouth to his hideously aching cock. “I git any warmer,” he whispered through clenched teeth, “an’ I’ll burst inta flames. Now, goddamn it, do somethin’ ’fore I have t’ kill ya!”

Chris laughed again, but obligingly turned his attention to Tanner’s cock. “Never could resist a sweet-talker,” he breathed.

Vin opened his mouth to retort, but all that escaped him was a strangled gasp as a hot, wet mouth abruptly engulfed his hurting flesh. Half blinded by the sudden explosion of light and heat before and behind his eyes, he growled thickly and clutched at Chris, driving himself further into the gunman’s mouth.

Chris immediately clamped down hard on Tanner’s hips to hold him still, determined to set his own pace. He knew Vin, knew the tracker was fast reaching that point of wildness that would send them both careening over the edge, but he had no desire to rush this. Vin had said that tonight was only for living. Chris figured it was also for loving.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the scent, feel and taste of the man, holding himself carefully in check. Lips, teeth and tongue worked in perfect concert, his whole attention riveted to the hard shaft in his mouth. He licked up and down its length, scraped his teeth across the spongy head, sucked with a deliberate slowness. He lifted one hand from Tanner’s hip and wrapped it around the base of his cock, fingers pumping in time to the firm drawing of his mouth. Vin’s legs wrapped like steel bands around his torso, long, strong fingers dug into his shoulders and the man arched his ass off the bed with every pull of Larabee’s mouth and hand. Yet still Chris refused to rush.

Vin thought he might die, when he could think at all. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, felt as if all his air and every drop of blood in his body were being sucked out through his dick. He wanted to beg, wanted to scream, wanted Chris to go faster and wanted the man never to stop what he was doing right now. At once tortured, thrilled and damn near pulled apart by that wondrous mouth, he could do nothing but cling helplessly to Chris and writhe beneath him, never even hearing the high, broken keening coming from his own mouth.

But Chris heard, and felt the strange, wild sound unleashing a primal power in himself. Gradually intensifying his sucking, he unwound his hand from Tanner’s cock and slid it to his balls, taking them in his palm and kneading the heavy sacs between his fingers as they grew fuller still. Vin arched again and Chris released his balls, sliding his hand behind them to the tight hole there and feeling it clench at his touch. Sucking harder, faster, he rimmed the hole with a probing finger, then slipped the digit inside. Vin gave a shuddering, wordless cry of pleading and Chris pressed another finger into him, preparing his ass even as he sucked at his cock.

Unable to help himself, stripped of thought and bereft of reason, Vin thrust alternately into that tormenting mouth and down upon those busy fingers, desperate for the release both promised. Sweat poured from his flesh and tears streamed from his eyes, and his unconscious wail broke and shattered into a sobbing moan of desperate need.

Chris knew what Vin wanted, knew the tracker had a taste for fast and hard and would beg for more even as his bones were being shaken apart. And while Chris had no problem with that, and certainly wasn’t averse to being the one shaking those bones, he’d already decided on a different course. This wasn’t about fucking or giving the man what he liked. This was about turning him inside out and wringing him dry.

He lifted his mouth from Tanner’s cock, delivering one last kiss before he let it go, then rose to his knees and reached across Vin to the small stand by the bed. Ignoring the tracker’s whimper of abandonment, he pulled open the single drawer and searched through it for the salve he’d learned to keep handy. He found the small tin easily, pulled it out and wrenched off the lid, dipped his fingers inside and scooped out a generous amount. He set the tin on the stand and slicked himself with the fragrant salve, his rigid shaft twitching and throbbing in hungry anticipation. Finally he settled himself on his knees between Tanner’s thighs and pulled the man’s ass into his lap, placed his cock at that beckoning hole and pushed into the tracker’s body.

Vin bucked and cried out harshly, driving his head back into the pillow and gripping Chris’s wrists, digging his nails into the man’s flesh. But the familiar pain of penetration was short-lived, driven from him by the incredibly, almost unbearably pleasurable feel of Larabee’s heat and hardness filling him. Beyond speech now, beyond anything except sheer sensation, he clutched at Chris, thrust down frantically against him and loosed a shuddering, incoherent plea for more.

And Chris obliged, pulling his wrists from Tanner’s grip and lacing his fingers through the tracker’s, then sliding into the man’s body until he was fully embedded. Holding tightly to Vin’s hands, leaning over and locking gazes with him, he drew a ragged breath, clenched his jaws and slowly pulled out until only the head of his cock remained within.

Vin arched his back and loosed a long, low, ragged moan as Chris’s dick seemed to scrape against every nerve in his body. Then it was sliding back into him with that same agonizing slowness, and he clenched his ass tightly around it, desperately needing to hold it in place, desperately needing it to go deeper still, just desperately needing. He wrapped his legs around Chris, pulled himself closer, lifted himself higher, wanting nothing more than to feel Larabee pounding through him without mercy.

“Jesus … cowboy … fuck me!” he snarled.

Buried to his balls in his lover’s ass, Chris gave a slow, thin feral grin and proceeded to do just that.

Vin nearly screamed as Chris took him with long, slow, steady strokes, pushing in all the way to the root and simply holding there for long, excruciating moments before pulling out again and starting the blessed torment anew. Now and then Larabee would wiggle his hips as he entered, finding and stroking against his prostate and tearing sharp cries from him as fire streaked along his every nerve. The man was killing him by inches, and it was the sweetest death he could imagine.

Chris loved this, loved watching Tanner unravel and loved being responsible for it. Loved shredding the man’s formidable control and stripping him as naked in soul as he was in body, leaving him nowhere and nothing to hide. Never wanted Vin to hide from him. Time and again Larabee took his lover to the very brink of climax, held him suspended there for breathless moments but then backed off, leading him from one crest of pure feeling to another, all the while building the inexorable tide in them both.

Vin, too, felt that tide rising, but could do nothing to slow or speed its advance. He was utterly at Chris’s mercy, his body no longer his own. Like his heart and his soul, it now belonged solely to Larabee.

“Open your eyes,” Chris rasped as Vin squeezed them tightly shut and buried his head in the pillow, the cords of his sweat-glistening neck standing out. “Open your eyes and look at me.” He thrust into Vin again, sheathing himself fully in his lover’s tight, wet heat, and reached with a trembling hand for the tracker’s cock. “I want you lookin’ at me when you come!”

Vin was helpless to resist this man and wrenched open his eyes, staring up at Chris, his gaze wild and unfocused. As the gunman’s hand closed firmly around his throbbing cock, a long, hissing breath escaped him and the black of his pupils swallowed the blue of his irises. “Please!” he whispered frantically, his need more than he could bear.

Hearing the note of pain in that ragged voice, Chris knew it was time to give them both what they craved. Staring deeply into Vin’s wide, heat-glazed eyes, he resumed his thrusts into the tracker’s body, quickening his rhythm with every stroke until he was driving furiously into the younger man and pumping Tanner’s cock with that same ferocity. Vin’s heat engulfed him, went through him and joined with his own, searing away every last vestige of restraint and leaving him at the mercy of his own raging hunger. Thick, guttural cries escaped him as he worked Vin inside and out, as he gave full, free rein to the passion this man never ceased to ignite in him.

Vin locked his legs around Chris and rode out the firestorm sweeping through him, thrusting alternately down upon that merciless cock and into that masterful hand, his over-wrought body acting on its own as his mind shut down. Larabee was hitting his prostate now with every stroke, and it was too much. The boiling tide slammed through him with a shattering force, and he arched his back and howled as he shot thick ropes of cum over himself and Chris.

Chris felt the hard, convulsive shudder of Vin’s body against his own, felt the tight clenching of Tanner’s ass around his cock, caught the pungent smell of the tracker’s release and erupted into his own, spewing his seed into his lover’s body. Fierce tremors rocked him as he poured himself into Vin, as the two strained together and were made one. When at last he was empty, he groaned thickly and eased carefully out of Vin, then collapsed onto the bed at the younger man’s side.

Vin made a soft, stricken sound as Chris pulled out of him, but the feeling of loss was quickly soothed when Larabee’s arms closed about him and gathered him into the shelter of his lean body. He pressed as close to him as he could, slipping one leg between the gunman’s two and winding an arm about his trim waist, pillowing his cheek against Chris’s chest and losing himself in the strong and steady beating of his heart. He closed his eyes and smiled softly, contentedly.

He was home.

Chris buried one shaking hand in Vin’s tangled, sodden hair and rubbed slow circles into the small of his back with the other, smiling softly and letting his eyes drift close, not sleeping, just treasuring the feel of this man against him. He still didn’t understand how this had come to be in his life, but knew the “how” didn’t matter. Never really had. He had Vin now, and that was all that mattered.

They lay together in a sated silence, their twined bodies and twinned hearts saying more than words ever could. The heat that only moments before had threatened to consume them cooled, sweat and semen drying on their flesh, and Vin scooted still closer to Chris, shivering as the night’s chill reached him.

Chris chuckled quietly and pressed a kiss into the tracker’s shaggy head, then reluctantly began untangling himself from the younger man’s limbs. But Vin only tightened his hold and burrowed closer, and Chris heaved a patient sigh. “Don’t you wanta be warm?”

“Plenty warm where I am,” Vin rasped even as another shiver rippled through him.

“Yeah, I can see that.” He slid a hand to Vin’s face and tipped it up, arching a brow as he met that drowsy blue gaze. “Way I see it, you got two choices. You can let me clean us up and get some covers for us, or you can listen to me sayin’ I told you so when you’re down with pneumonia and Nathan’s pourin’ some God-awful potion down your throat.” Green eyes gleamed wickedly as he gave a lazy grin. “You got a preference?”

Vin scowled and flopped onto his back. “Yeah,” he huffed. “I’d prefer it if ya wasn’t so goddamn uppity.”

Chris laughed again and leaned over him. “It’s part of my charm,” he breathed, planting a quick kiss to Tanner’s pouting lips. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He winked, then crawled over Vin to get out of bed.

Vin turned onto his side, his scowl giving way to a soft smile as he watched the gunman in rapt fascination. Chris went to the fire and knelt before it, the flickering light bathing his face and body in dancing shades of rose and gold, emphasizing the supple play of sinewy muscles beneath smooth skin. His blond hair gleamed with a burnished hue and, as a hank of it fell over his forehead, Vin’s fingers itched to brush it back and lose themselves again in the silken strands.

The man was the most beautiful damn thing he’d ever seen in his life.

Chris turned abruptly to retrieve more wood from the box nearby, but faltered when his eyes met the midnight ones fixed so intently upon him. The awe and adoration in those wide eyes stole his breath, made him wonder just what it was in him that put that look in them. For so long, he’d thought the best parts of himself had died with Sarah, but Vin seemed determined to resurrect them just as he had Larabee himself.

Damn tracker …

“Thought you’s gonna hurry,” Vin drawled softly, still holding Chris’s gaze with his own. “You gittin’ slow in yer old age?”

Chris narrowed his eyes and scowled at the younger man. “You’re awful damn mouthy for somebody who showed up without an invitation,” he warned. “I could always throw your scrawny ass back out into the storm.”

Vin sat up on one hip and propped his head on a hand, blinking slowly and sliding the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. “An’ jist who’d keep you warm?” he asked in his soft, gravelly voice.

Chris swallowed hard and exhaled unsteadily. “Well,” he rasped, deciding that keeping warm would never be a problem with Tanner around, “I guess you do have your uses.”

“Thought ya’d see it my way,” Vin said with a wink.

Chris laughed despite himself and shook his head. “Don’t I usually?”

Vin snorted and rolled his eyes. “Not without a helluva fight first,” he grumbled. “Hell, Peso don’t gimme half the trouble you do! ’Tween the two ’a y’all, it’s a wonder I ain’t pulled all my hair clean out.”

“You’re such a poor thing,” Chris said without a trace of sympathy, turning away from Vin. He reached into the box and drew out a thick piece of wood, then fed it carefully into the fire. Once satisfied with the blaze, he snatched the buffalo robe off the floor and rose to his feet, then turned back to Vin and arched a brow. “You ready to behave now?”

Vin let his gaze roam slowly over man’s finely-sculpted face and lean, powerful body, and a slight, crooked smile tugged at his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “Behavin’ ain’t exactly the first thing that comes t’ my mind when I see ya standin’ there like that.”

“Like what?” Chris asked, frowning slightly.

Vin sat up slowly and folded his legs before him. “Like the finest thing God ever gimme,” he said softly, seriously.

“Damn, Tanner,” Chris breathed, moved by the feeling, the love, in the tracker’s voice and eyes. He went back to the bed and sat down upon it at Vin’s side, dropping the robe and lifting a hand to his lover’s face, tenderly stroking a whiskered cheek. “You’re gonna make me believe in myself yet.”

“Don’t know why ya wouldn’t.” Vin reached up and laid his hand over Chris’s. “I do. Believe in ya like I ain’t believed in anything or anybody in a long damn time. An’ I’m startin’ t’ believe in a lot more because ’a you.”

Chris frowned and searched the tracker’s eyes intently. “I do that for you?”

Vin smiled and turned his face into that loving hand, kissing Larabee’s palm. “Do that an’ more,” he whispered. “Like I said, cowboy, yer the finest thing God ever gimme. An’ if he never gives me another blessed thing, I’ll still have more’n I ever thought I could.”

Chris tipped Vin’s face up to his and pressed his lips to Tanner’s in a soft and tender kiss. “Glad you found your way through that storm, partner,” he murmured against the tracker’s mouth. “Glad that damn fool horse of yours had the sense to bring you here.”

“Told him t’ take me home,” Vin sighed, twining his arms about Larabee’s neck and pulling the man closer to him. “Reckon even he knows that’ll always mean you.”

THE END