Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

MARK

“ C hris, dammit, what are you doing?” Mark yelled. He sat in his truck, drumming his fingers on the driver’s side door frame, where his elbow stuck out the open window.

“Hold on a sec!” Chris yelled back through the cabin’s front door.

Mark groaned and laid his head against the headrest. I knew I should have told him we were leaving an hour earlier.

As it was, he’d only built in a cushion of thirty minutes in addition to the usual drive time to the bar in Livingston.

“Guess we’re not getting laid tonight,” Mark muttered.

At this rate they’d be lucky if they made it to the bar before the band took the stage. Meaning trying to hold a conversation with a strange woman with the hopes of her not being a stranger by the end of the evening would be nearly impossible.

And if they didn’t arrive early enough, if there were any eligible woman looking for company there was a good chance some other guy would chat them up first, leaving Christopher and Mark holding each other’s dicks.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, because they had fun doing that anyway. But after a winter spent mostly snowed in together with few chances to socialize with anyone besides co-workers or local residents in Gardiner, Mark was ready for a little outside recreational company, even if they didn’t end up sleeping with them. That, coupled with the unexpected “special assignment” he and Christopher had drawn yesterday to guide a scientist through Yellowstone’s backcountry, meant a rapidly dwindling window for them to finagle a little extracurricular fun before the park opened to the public for the season.

This time of year, tourists weren’t plentiful yet. If ranch hands came to town they were eager to chat up tourist women who thought TV shows were real and wanted to ride with a real cowboy.

And not on a horse.

Park rangers and botanists unfortunately didn’t bear the same gravitas as a ranch hand, thanks to cable TV sagas. And it wasn’t like Mark could flirt while on duty. Tonight, he could leave his service weapon and badge behind in their gun safe and try to pretend to be a civilian.

They’d looked up the scientist on her company’s website on Mark’s laptop last night after they got home. She wasn’t smiling, wore her hair pulled back in a severe bun, and the picture was in black and white so he had no idea what color her hair was. When Mark caught himself thinking she should smile he’d closed the page because that was toxic bullshit he didn’t want to engage in.

Finally, Chris appeared in the doorway, shutting and locking the door behind him. Gravel crunched under his work boots as he hurried to the passenger door and climbed in.

“ Really ?” Mark asked. “You’re wearing work boots?”

He glanced down at them. “They’re comfortable.”

Yep. We’re definitely not getting laid tonight. Not with some cutie between them, anyway.

The bar was a typical small-town, just off Main Street, grungy old dive joint that the locals knew about and avoided during season, and the rare tourists rarely made it to outside of it. It was the only place this time of year that both served alcohol and which also had a live band playing music that didn’t require a baptism and contribution to the collection plate.

And the draft beer was a third cheaper than during season.

With opening weekend quickly approaching, Mark would end up slammed with work for weeks with little chance to relax, and even less desire to go anywhere requiring contact with tourists.

Christopher wasn’t much of a socializer, unless someone pinged one of his interests and unlocked his programming to turn him into someone who could literally talk the paint off a goddamned wall.

Christopher was, however, uncannily able to charm women without even meaning to, much less trying.

Usually because he wasn’t trying.

Mark had long since given up trying to explain that to Chris and simply let him be himself while waiting for an opening to see if the woman was a) not a batcrap crazy train wreck who b) they might want to sleep with, who—and this was even more important than point a—c) might be interested in sleeping with them.

“Them” being a deal-breaker if she wasn’t down for being with the two of them together. They’d decided two years into whatever the hell this was they had that while they enjoyed the intimate company of women, they also weren’t willing to do anything to damage their relationship. That meant if they decided to sleep with a woman, it was both of them, or neither of them. It’d been over a year since they’d last shared a woman.

Frankly, Christopher was far better at sucking a cock than most woman.

Maybe I am gay after all .

He’d long since given up trying to figure it out. It wasn’t something he’d ever openly admitted to his family, either. That wasn’t a problem, because he hadn’t been home for more than a weekend in several years. No one had cared enough to ask if he was dating or married or the father of a dozen kids via sperm donation or starting a crazy cat collection or…anything.

His relationship with Chris wasn’t a secret, though. They were listed as each other’s next of kin and emergency contacts. They referred to each other as partners. They’d even discussed getting married.

When they could find the time.

But either Mark was out on patrol in the backcountry, or Christopher was out in the field doing whatever the fuck it was he did with plants, so the time they snagged together at home when the snow wasn’t over their heads was usually spent sleeping or fucking.

Or sleeping after fucking.

They’d never slapped labels on themselves. Christopher had no problem talking about his past relationships with men and women, to the point Mark frequently reminded him the Montana/Wyoming/Idaho-straddling national park wasn’t New York City, and it wasn’t wise to openly discuss that unless they first established the person wasn’t a gay-bashing psychopath.

But then again, that was Christopher. It was one of the things Mark loved, that he could dive into an infodump when the conditions were right and totally tune out the world and any social cues that might make anyone else feel self-conscious.

It was also one of the things that annoyed the crap out of Mark, but Mark admitted he wasn’t perfect, either.

And since it looked like he would spend the rest of his life with his autistic sparkly vampire botanist unicorn, Mark had long ago quit trying to change him and accepted it was just the way Christopher was. Sometimes he’d give his guy a subtle nudge if Chris drastically misread a room.

When they pulled into the gravel parking lot, it looked pretty full but Mark breathed a sigh of relief when they walked in and the band was still unpacking their gear. Christopher followed him to the far end of the bar, where Mark usually stood because he liked having his back to the wall and being able to see the room. Jason, the bar’s owner, emerged from the back with a case of beer on his shoulder and greeted them before he carried it behind the bar for the young guy working with him to stock the coolers.

Christopher was still putting his earplugs in when Jason walked over to them. “Whatcha having tonight? Or are you on duty?”

“Civvie tonight.” Mark held up two fingers. “Whatever’s on special on tap.”

“Gotcha.”

Mark scanned the room. He knew maybe a quarter of the people by name, half of them by sight, and the rest appeared to be locals, cowboys, and a few tourists. Not the most promising of pickings.

Dammit.

The band completed their set-up and sound check just as what looked like several carloads of tourists arrived.

Figures .

Mark turned to watch the band while Christopher wandered off to mingle. He didn’t like Mark’s preferred corner because of the way the music sometimes vibrated through the amps and into the bar Mark liked to lean against.

And Mark couldn’t easily mingle in a crowd like this. He wanted his back against a wall and a tactical advantage.

It was always better to let Christopher break the ice with someone—if there was such a someone for them to meet—and observe from a distance, reading the woman’s body language, and then possibly making his way over to them if he was intrigued enough.

By the time the band finished their first set and took a break, more people filled the bar and Christopher stood on the other side of the room at a high-top, talking with a woman with long, blonde hair loosely flowing down her back.

He even watched Chris crack a smile, a very good sign. A woman who couldn’t make Chris smile never made it as far as exchanging phone numbers.

Mark walked over to stand next to Chris so he could meet the woman.

She was pretty, but as he studied her cool blue eyes and the store-bought tan, he realized something.

Shit.

She was definitely underaged, and as he looked at the bottle of beer in her hand he realized he had a decision to make.

Christopher made the introductions. “Hey, Mark, this is Stephanie. Stephanie, this is my partner, Mark.”

Okay, so Chris had already gone there with her, because she appraised him with a slyly sexy gaze. “Nice to meet you.” She held out her free hand to shake and yes, there wasn’t a single wrinkle around her lips, at the corners of her eyes—not even a crease in her brow.

Fuuuck.

Hell, if she was even nineteen he’d be shocked.

“Hey, guess what?” Chris said. “She’s studying wildlife management over at UM.”

“That’s great,” Mark said. “When do you graduate?”

“I’m a freshman,” she said.

Bingo.

“She’s here for the next two weeks with friends,” Chris continued. “They rented a house in the valley.”

“Nice.” Mark reached back and fished his cell out of his pocket, glancing at it like he’d received a text. “Sorry. I need to handle this. Be right back.” He quickly wove his way through the throng back to the end of the bar and caught Jason’s attention. There were now two other regular bartenders behind the bar, along with the new guy.

Jason scowled and walked over, leaning in when Mark motioned.

“That girl talking to Christopher?”

“Yeah?”

“She’s got a beer.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know who served her but she just told us she’s a freshman over at UM. Not sure how you want to handle this, but I can pretend I didn’t see anything, if you’d like to deal with it right now. Maybe I’m wrong and if so, I apologize. But if I’m not, whoever served her needs an ass-chewing that I trust you’ll administer. I didn’t tell her I’m law enforcement.”

That was a rule he had with Chris. When Mark was out of uniform, Chris wasn’t to volunteer his profession as anything but park ranger. Partly so it didn’t turn people off, but also so he didn’t have strangers pestering him for crazy stories.

“God dammi t,” Jason growled, slapping the towel on his shoulder onto the bar and ducking under it to stalk across the space.

Mark leaned against the bar and watched as Jason walked over, talked to her, and then her face turned beet red. That it was visible from across the room to Mark meant he’d been right.

The girl shook her head and now Chris looked confused as Jason held his hand out for the bottle, taking it from her, and pointed at the door, following the girl as she left.

A wistful pang plucked at Mark’s heart over the disappointment on Christopher’s face as he watched her leave. Another of their agreements was that a woman needed to at least be of drinking age, if not closer to their own ages. Neither of them had any desire to bang someone barely legal.

Chris headed back to Mark. “Well, shit,” he said. “Was it the freshman thing I missed?”

Mark nodded. “Sorry buddy. The night’s still young.”

Chris sighed and put his earplugs back in as the band started their second set while Jason pulled the new guy from behind the bar and into the back room, presumably to give him an ass-chewing.