“Good.”
Ledger closed his eyes. He’d been doing his best to ignore the static of scratchy panic he’d pushed to the outside of his brain. It wasn’t going to help. Every hour that passed, when all he had weremorequestions, it got more insistent.
It felt like being a teenager again. It felt like being locked up in the hospital, trapped and scared andslowwith all the drugs they’d given him. He hadn’t been able to think clearly enough to plan anything, but he’d known that Bell would send something after him.
“Last night was great, but—”
He felt the bed shift under him, the pitch of a cheap mattress, and opened his eyes to find Wren on his knees in front of him. The towel was discarded on the bed.
“Shut up,” Wren said and kissed him.
His mouth tasted like cheese and vinaigrette. Ledger supposed hehadsaid he should eat something, so he leaned into the kiss.
As rationalizations went, it was thin at best, but Ledger wanted to buy into it. So he did. He curled one hand around the back of Wren’s neck, burying his fingers in the damp, thick hair. He ran his other hand up Wren’s leg, from his bent knee to the hard run of muscle under tanned skin. The scruff of sparse dark hair on Wren’s skin was rough under Ledger’s palm. As he reached the top of Wren’s thigh, Ledger grazed his knuckles along the shaft of the other man’s hard cock.
Wren groaned at the touch and grabbed Ledger’s hand to move it away. He shifted it up to his shoulder. Ledger pulled back out of the kiss to complain, but before he could, Wren grabbed his hips to pull him closer. He ended up in Wren’s lap, straddling his thighs, the hard jut of Wren’s cock caught between their bodies.
“If you’re going to die,” Wren said, “I want to fuck you first.”
“Afterwards wouldn’t be much fun.”
Something… bad… flickered through Wren’s all-black eyes. It was hard to read, but this close Ledger couldn’t miss it either.
“Well,” Wren said, “not for either of us.”
Ledger thought of the dead girl in the upstairs room, with something trapped in her dead, scarred eyes. He remembered Earl’s mush-mouthed threat.
It should have chilled him, but the static in his brain drowned the memory out.
Fuck that.
The nihilistic noise of it twisted through the heavy, insistentwantin Ledger’s gut and amplified it. If he was going to die, he might as well get something out of it.
“Why don’t we both shut up?” Ledger suggested.
Wren looked amused as he leaned in to drop a quick, rough kiss on Ledger’s mouth. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
Ledger snorted. When Wren drew back, he chased the kiss back into Wren’s arms. Newspaper and photos crinkled under their knees as they shifted their position on the bed. Salt washed up from them like the tide, and the almost-drowned-out voice of practicality noted that it would be a bitch to try and sort them out later. Ledger wasn’t sure if it was the smell of sin or the thought of more work that convinced him.
“Not on this,” he said.
He pulled Wren, after a brief growl of annoyance, with him off the bed. The towel was left behind, tangled in the sheets.
“I could fuck you against the window,” Wren offered. He pulled Wren in close, one arm wrapped around his waist, and nibbled the offer down his throat. “Make everyone think they’d been right about you ordering a whore.”
The way he said that made Ledger’s brain skip. He tried to put his finger on why, but it was hard to think through the sticky, dragging pleasure of Wren’s mouth on his shoulder and his hand on Ledger’s hip.
It was…
Wren’s cock nudged insistently against Ledger’s stomach as he walked him toward the door. The memory of it in his ass, the way it spread him, made Ledger’s stomach muscles pull tight.
…probably should say…
Ledger ran his hands down Wren’s back. He caught a glimpse of them both in the dresser mirror and watched as his fingers traced the long straps of muscle and the inked outlines of shadowy birds.
“Do you want this?” he asked.
Wren laughed, warm and damp, against his shoulder. He ground his hips against Ledger, his cock hard as it was caught between their bodies.
