“Mmmffff….” He sighed through the donut, and Eric was horrified when he realized what he’d thought was his stomach cramping over strawberry donuts with strawberry icing was really,oh dear God, arousal!
His cock ached because this nice, albeit naïve, policeman was eating a strawberry donut.
Trying to recover from his horror, he reminded himself that he’d been the one to come on to Brady the night before.But then you had dinner with him. You watched him be kind to killers like you.
You hoped.
“So,” he said, forcibly pulling his attention away from the semiorgasmic policeman next to him, “you made me strawberry donuts to bribe me?”
Ernie wrinkled his nose. “God no. I made strawberry donuts because Brady was here.” Ernie smiled at Brady, somewhat embarrassed. “I made another plate for you to take to your precinct. I’m afraid none of us are really big strawberry donut fans.”
Brady appeared blissfully engaged with his second donut, but in response to Ernie he took a swallow of black coffee and then gave Eric a semiadoring look. “You people arespoilingme,” he proclaimed and then asked what Eric had been trying not to ask.
“These must have taken hours—how did you know I’d be here?”
Ernie shrugged. “Lucky guess,” he said blandly, and Brady cocked his head.
Eric knew all ofhisinteractions with Ernie were flooding his memories, and he was sure the same thing happened to Brady, who grimaced.
“Lucky guess,” he muttered. “Second question.” Carefully he wiped his mouth with one of Eric’s napkins and gazed longingly at the rest of the donut on the napkin in front of him. He wrenched his eyes away and peered at Ernie again. “Who’s all of us? All of us who don’t like strawberry donuts?”
“Ace and Sonny,” Ernie said guilelessly. “Crullers, my boyfriend. Jason and Cotton—they live in the house next to us. And Jai, whom you’ve met, his boyfriend, George, who works at the hospital, and George’s friend Amal, who takes up one of their spare rooms. They live two houses down near the end of the cul-de-sac.”
Brady blinked, and Eric could watch him do the math in his head. “Was this place trying to become Palm Springs?” he asked.
Eric laughed, although Ernie frowned, confused.
“After the eighties, Palm Springs became sort of a haven,” Eric told him. “And I’m new here. I have no idea.”
Ernie shot Eric a look that said,Cowardand answered. “Not specifically for gay men,” he said. “But… well, how happy are you about ICE?”
“In my soda pop, super happy,” Brady said honestly. “In my communities, not so much.”
“Well, us neither,” Ernie said. “There’s a certain, uhm, kind of, uhm… uhm….”
“Bent,” Eric supplied helpfully, enjoying the double entendre.
“Sure,” Ernie said, rolling his eyes. “Let’s just say that any one of us could get beaten up in a honky-tonk bar for reasons that have very little to do with us being gay.”
“Except none of you that I’ve seen could get beaten up anywhere,” Brady said astutely.
Eric cocked his head, suddenly very intrigued. “George and Amal?” he began, and Ernie shrugged.
“Not fighters,” he agreed about the two nurses Eric had only met peripherally. “But wily. And Amal was almost shipped off to a concentration camp or deportation camp or fucking death camp for standing up for a woman being sexually abused by an ICE agent, so he’s not a pennyweight in the resistance department.” Ernie glanced at Brady. “Would you imprison him for that?”
“No,” Brady answered, but he sighed. “Although most of my station would.” His shoulders slumped, and he appeared disheartened. “And back home, most of them would imprison him for having a name like Amal. I do know what you’re talking about, sort of. However this cul-de-sac came to be, you’d rather it not come to the attention of law enforcement.”
“That would be nice,” Ernie said. “Although Crullers and Jason have enough pull to put a stop to any harassment, it would be nice for them to not have to worry about it.”
“Pull as what?” Brady asked, and at that moment there was another knock at the door.
Eric got up to answer it, since Ernie still had control of the kittens, and he stared down from the camper doorway into a pair of soulful brown eyes belonging to a fit, handsome Black man that Eric was glad to be on the right side of.
“Club boy!” Lee “Crullers” Burton was in the middle of shouting, “you had better be about done in there—oh. It’s you.”
Eric nodded. Well, mostly on the right side. He knew that while Ace and Sonny had approved of him, this man and his superior, Colonel Jason Constance, had both been the most resistant to Eric’s arrival.
“It is my tuna can,” Eric told him dryly, and his reward was a flash of a knee-melting grin.
