Regge was half asleep. As soon as he woke up, it would be weird. I couldn’t stay like this. But I couldn’t move either. Fucking hell.
I gently lifted his arm from around me so I could slide under. One leg edged toward freedom. Regge’s top leg fell into place between mine. Damn it.
But damn, it felt so good. I breathed. It had been a long time since I’d been with anyone like this. This… closeness was more intimate than any Grindr date or fumble against the back wall of a club. And there it was. Why did I have to think of sex? Because my cock got the wake-up call loud and clear. If Regge moved his leg up a fraction, he’d feel it.
I took another breath. Okay, move again, turn on to my back, one leg out and foot on the floor. Two more slow but steady moves and I’d be free.
“The need for stealth is naught. I am awake.” Regge’s voice held that deep sleep-induced roughness, and when helapsed into his Shakespearean-speak, it made me hard. Which I already was. Now it was painfully obvious.
I jerked, twisted, and fell out of bed. Regge’s soft chuckle made me blush. So smooth, Bruce. Really.
I rolled over onto my knees, coming face-to-face with the hottest green eyes on the planet and a not-so-hidden smirk. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“Oh no. I’m fine.” I stumbled to my feet. “I always get out of bed this way. Wakes me up faster.” I turned and hustled into the bathroom, thankful for the dimness of the room. Leaning back against the door, I took stock. My dick throbbed, air rushed from my lungs, and my head buzzed.
I was no stranger to love, both unrequited and unsuccessful. My longest relationship had lasted two years. Well, almost. And that was ages ago, in college.
For someone who manages things in two-minute increments of life, two years is a long time. Credit to Carrie Earnshaw. Totally. She had such faith in me, in us, to make it work. If Carrie had been a guy, we would have broken up as soon as the new sex energy wore off, which was about four months in. A really fun four months, but still.
After Carrie came to her senses and broke up with me, my mom wanted to talk about things.
I want you to be happy. And maybe grandchildren will be nice too.
I’d come out to my mom when I was fifteen, and she’d been more amused than shocked. Now she inevitably mused out loud about my penchant for dating guys when my longest relationships were with girls.
What could I say? I liked who I liked. It was more about the person than the gender, yada, yada. But who was I kidding? Guys were too impatient to put up with my shit, and womenthought they could fix me. Like if I would focus a little, I’d be more of who they really wanted.
Since moving from New York to Philly, I avoided talking to my mom about relationships because there wasn’t much to talk about. For the past three years, I stuck to hookups from Tinder or Grindr, depending on my degree of loneliness.
That activity had halted when Regge showed up. Of course it did. It wasn’t like I could ask Regge to go upstairs and hang out at Isabelle’s while I took the edge off with a stranger.
My eyes were bleary in the bathroom mirror from too little sleep, and my hair looked like a badly groomed terrier perched on my head.
Honestly, Regge staying with me hadn’t cramped my style. It was that the idea of a good dicking down with a random stranger suddenly felt icky and sad. Because I wanted more. And more was lying just twenty feet away on a nice soft futon. And he smelled like sunshine and caramels and memories of the beach.
I splashed water on my face and ran my hands through my hair. I was well and truly fucked. And not in the good way.
Chapter Nine
Julian succeeds in acquiring even more weirdness
The next day, Julian told his crew he was meeting with Ramon in South Philly and would be in later. Ramon was currently in a chest freezer in Julian’s storage room, but he was still useful as an excuse to be out of reach.
He drove around to check all the Bruce Hunters from the previous night’s work. After discovering that the two guys from the diner had followed him home, he did an image search from the picture he’d snapped.
His computer skills were mediocre at best, so finding the purple-haired guy on social media had been a total fluke. From there it was a simple address search, ruling out other races and ages until he’d narrowed it down to three possibles.
The third house he checked felt like a bust. No way purple-haired Bruce Hunter could live in a house this quaint. The older neighborhood was well kept and teeming with ordinary folk.
The little blue house sat like an artist’s watercolor plein air in the middle of the block. Flowers in the window boxes, the patchy hedge bordering the front walk.
Julian checked the address again. This was the number. He parked his Volvo on the cross street and walked the half block to the house. No car in the driveway, but he already had his story set as he made his way up the walk. A well-worn path to the side of the cement driveway diverted him through the side yard.
A set of cement stairs led to a basement door. Yeah. This was better. A basement apartment fit young Purple Hair. He descended and knocked.
There was someone home, more than one someone, judging by the voices. He knocked again, going over his story. Deciding to go with his private investigator ruse, he pulled out an official-looking card from his wallet. These days, he had no reason to use it—people came to him or were brought to him. But when he was first starting out, he’d found that while folks were suspicious of salesmen and cops, they were fascinated by private investigators.
The door opened. A small, exceptionally ugly man looked up at him.
