“Bullshit. According to you, Bell was supposed to have all the answers. It didn’t sound like that to me.”
“He had the answers,” Ledger said. “We just needed different questions.”
Wren twisted the lid off the bottle. The ink on his back continued over his shoulder and down his chest.
“It’s a bit late for that,” he said, offering Ledger the bottle. “Unless you want to try and chase down that truck.”
Ledger considered the bottle, decided he deserved it, and took a swig. It tasted like mouthwash and stung the inside of his lips where he’d bitten them raw.
“I don’t need to,” he said. “I can work with what we got.”
Wren stared at him. “You were wrong,” he said and took the bottle back. “And the liquor was for your face.”
Oh. Well.
“That’s where it went,” Ledger pointed out. “And I’ve been wrong before. You get used to it.”
Wren snorted. He grabbed Ledger’s shirt and pulled him in close.
“Stand still.” He cupped his hand around the back of Ledger’s neck and tucked his thumb under Ledger’s chin to push his head back and to the side. “Trust me. Earl isn’t going to be so… tempered.”
“He gave me until the equinox,” Ledger said. He could feel the pressure of Wren’s thumb on his jaw as he spoke. It was oddly, sharply intimate. “So if he has any complaints, he can share them while he’s harvesting my bones— Ahhhh!”
Wren tipped a shot glass worth of spicy whiskey onto Ledger’s face. It felt like acid. Ledger squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his jaw, and tried not to squirm in place. He sucked in a breath and held it as he waited for the sting to ease.
“It’s not just a threat,” Wren said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen him harvest a man before. He will do it.”
Ledger squinted one eye open and looked at Wren. “I know,” he said. “That’s the problem of doing business with the unnatural. The penalty clause is always pain.”
“You’re lucky you’ve never had to pay it,” Wren said.
“How do you know that?” Ledger asked.
“If you had”—Wren smirked crookedly. He ran his thumb over Ledger’s lower lip to smear away the whiskey—“you’d not have covered for me.”
“Maybe I would.”
“No. You wouldn’t.” There was something horrible about the confidence he said that with. “No one would.”
He tightened his grip on Ledger’s neck and pulled him into a Fireball-spiced kiss.
It was a bad idea.
Ledger knew that. He could list the reasons why, from the fact he couldn’t trust Wren to the time crunch on the job.
But Wren’s hand on the back of Ledger’s neck was almost gentle, his mouth was hungry, and Ledger needed something to take the edge off tonight. Something better than whiskey.
Ledger grabbed Wren’s arms and pulled him closer. Their bodies pressed together as Ledger leaned into the kiss. It was messy, with teeth scraped over tender lips and blood spiced with cinnamon in someone’s mouth, but it was real. It wasnatural, and it cut through the sour, miserable grime of the night.
Earl was a problem for the morning.
Bell was a problem for the next time Ledger had a therapist appointment.
Tonight he had this, and if it was a bad idea? At least it was a sweet one.
CHAPTER11
LEDGER’S BACK BANGEDagainst the door of the pickup. He gave a breathless laugh and dragged Wren along with him, trading messy, eager kisses grazed over lips and chewed into any patch of bare skin they could find. Ledger explored the jut of a bare, tanned collarbone, just over the inked line of the tattoo, while Wren worked at the buttons on Ledger’s shirt.
