He pushed past Ledger into the room. Ledger briefly considered throwing him back out, but then he’d just hammer on the door again. If they were going to talk now, it might as well be inside.
As he went to step back and close the door, the woman yelled again, “Next time, stay up to let your fucking whore in.”
Ledger blushed. He could feel it scorch all the way from his chest up to his temples. The fact he was only wearing a pair of light pajama bottoms made it hard to hide.
“Oh,” Wren said as Ledger slammed the door. The other man had sat on the edge of the bed. He sprawled backward, weight propped on his elbow as he looked at Ledger. The dim light made it feel soft and intimate. “So that’s why you didn’t want the woman of your dreams. You wanted me.”
“Still trying to barter me down from that forty bucks?” Ledger asked. He flicked the lights on. That didn’t help. “I didn’t find any other deeds at the house.”
Wren held up a finger. His knuckles were bruised and swollen from their earlier encounter with Ledger’s car. His split lip, a ragged line just to the left of his cupid’s bow, was from something else.
“Same deed,” Wren corrected. “Just the real one.”
Ledger had thought about stopping to get a bottle of whiskey earlier. He’d decided against it. Maybe that had been a mistake.
“No deeds, real or fake,” he said. “You still owe me forty bucks.”
“No,” Wren said. He rolled up off the bed and stalked toward Ledger. “It has to be there. The old man had it. I saw it.”
The tension in the room was suddenly wire-taut. It felt dangerous. It sucked the air out of Ledger’s lungs and tightened his chest. The thought of stepping back didn’t occur to him until Wren had already stopped—room still left between them—and it would have seemed overdramatic.
Ledger raked his hair back from his face.
“He had a good forgery. Maybe you saw that.”
Wren stared at him, eyes narrowed, and then abruptly turned away. The sudden release made Ledger feel somewhere between relieved and let down. He made a mental note to shake himself later—the number of ways the heavy feeling in his cock was a bad idea would take more time to go over than he had right now—as he let out an unsteady breath. Then immediately sucked in a new one as Wren grabbed his carry-on case and tossed the contents onto the bed.
“What the hell?” Ledger spluttered in protest. “I told you, I didn’t find it.”
“Maybe you lied,” Wren drawled, his voice dry with sarcasm.
Ledger stepped forward and grabbed his shoulder.
“That’s enough,” he said. “I already told you—”
Wren turned and shoved him hard enough that Ledger hit the thin wall between the bedroom and the bathroom before he realized what was going on.
“If I want you to touch me,” Wren said flatly, a flicker of something bright, hard, andoldin his eyes, “I’ll already have my hand in your pants. Got it?”
Unnatural dread filled Ledger’s bones. It was cold and thick, enough to lock his joints and pin him in place. It was an effort to remember to breathe. He’d have agreed to almost anything Wren wanted, but he could only muster a scratchy gasp.
Wren looked… sorry, maybe. He looked something, at least. It didn’t stop him. He turned his back on Ledger and searched the three days’ worth of clothes and toiletries with dispassionate efficiency, fingers dipped into pockets and fabric balled up in his hands. Then he flipped the case open, split down the middle like a clamshell. Wren pulled a switchblade from his pocket and thumbed the blade out with a hard click.
“Cut up… my suitcase,” Ledger gritted out. It made his chesthurtto speak as he forced air out of stiff lungs, “I add it… to your… bill.”
Wren paused, knife poised over the lining, and looked over his shoulder at Ledger.
“That’s new,” he said. “Most people just piss themselves.”
Ledger grinned, thin and hard. “It’s not my first time on the carousel.” The more he spoke, the easier it got. That wasn’t always a good thing. The next step was that his mouth ran away with him and he promised something he couldn’t deliver.
Or worse. Something he could.
Wren chuckled. He stabbed the knife into the case and left it there as he reached into his jacket for his wallet. It was battered, the seams half-stitched where the thread had broken, and patched with a strip of duct tape. Wren pulled out a couple of notes and folded them one-handed as he walked over to Ledger. He hooked a finger in the waistband of Ledger’s pajamas and pulled it out just enough to tuck the money into the gap.
“Happy?” Wren asked as his knuckles grazed along Ledger’s stomach. His smile conjured up two deep, crooked dimples in his cheeks and split the half-formed scab on his lip as he leaned in. “Turned on?”
Ledger tilted his head back against the wall. It wasn’t that Wren didn’t smell good—and the fear that gripped Ledger was just… in general—but right now, he needed air. All the air he could get.
