A flash of motion outside dragged Javi’s focus out of his cock for a second. The cat had jumped down into the garden, a splash of milk-colored fur against the scrubby sand, and he braced himself for the shriek of attempted murder. Instead the cat bumped up against Bourneville’s face from jaw to nose and shouldered her away from her food. Bourneville just shuffled back on her haunches and watched it pick the chicken out of her dish with an adoring look on her face.
“I think your dog’s in love,” Javi said.
“Yeah, she loves anything little. She’ll sit and watch Tancredi’s baby for hours,” Cloister said as he let go of Javi’s cock. “I’d have bred her so she could have pups, but her hips are for shit.”
For a moment Javi wondered if he had, finally, managed to put Cloister off. The thought was an odd mixture of weary satisfaction and blue-balled frustration. Then a T-shirt hit the window in front of Javi and flopped to the floor. He turned around just in time to see Cloister, long, bare, and honey gold in the sunlight, step out of his jeans. Javi’s cock lifted against his stomach, his balls tight and eager under it.
“This?” Cloister thumbed an old notched scar on his collarbone. “A woman hit me with a hammer after I arrested her husband for trying to beat her to death with the same hammer. The scar on my back is from where the harness snapped when I was being lowered down a cliff face to rescue some drunk kid from a crashed car. I’ve been blown up, beat up because I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut, and once some idiot rolled an armored truck over my foot and broke all my toes. I told you. If I haven’t managed to get myself killed, then some Javi-come-lately isn’t going to pull it off. Got it?”
Javi licked his lips. He walked over and ran his fingers over the twisted ink and scar tissue that ran up Cloister’s side. It was hard to imagine the original pattern, but Javi sketched a rough impression of the initial cheap tribal flash that had been inked there.
“And this?”
There was a pause, and then Cloister shrugged. The long bands of muscle and bone shifted under Javi’s fingers. “It didn’t get the job done either.”
The bruises from the car accident spread out beyond the edges of the old injury and blurred the ink down past Cloister’s waist to nearly the sharp bone of his hip. Javi traced its boundaries with his fingers.
“So should I believe that you’re invincible, then?” he asked as he stroked his thumb down over the taut skin of Cloister’s stomach. “Or that you don’t care about yourself?”
Cloister sighed and grabbed Javi’s shirt to pull him into a quick, impatient kiss. His cock nudged against Javi’s hip as their bodies pressed together.
“Shut up,” Cloister said into his mouth, slipping his words and then his tongue between Javi’s lips. “And come to bed.”
For a sharp, sticky-hot moment, Javi thought about it—facedown on Target’s best sheets, the weight of Cloister’s long, lean body on his back and the sweet ache of a cock in his ass. Would it be quick and rough or slow and sweet? Bruised hips or bruised lips?
Lust twisted, hot and tender, in a long, tight line between his ass and his balls. The last time he got fucked, though, it was a preamble to being fucked over.
Javier.
Enough.Javi had given Kincaid enough room in his head over the years. He didn’t get to put a bad taste on this.
Javi cupped Cloister’s face in his hand, laid his thumb along the sharp, stubbled line of his jaw, and kissed him back. He chased Cloister’s breath over his tongue, both of their mouths sharp with beer, and bit his hunger into the firm curve of Cloister’s lips.
“You never use your bed,” Javi said as he broke the kiss. He licked his lips and stepped back. “Why should I?”
Cloister looked confused.
Javi pulled the curtains that looked out onto the rest of the trailer park. The windows at the far side stayed open, the light from the setting sun laid in ruddy bands over Cloister’s shoulder and thighs. Javi was too cautious a man to really commit to exhibitionism, but he could see the appeal around the edges of it.
“Lean back against the counter,” Javi said as he unbuttoned his borrowed shirt and stripped the cotton off. His shoulder ached under the gauze pad as he moved his arm, the stitches laced through raw flesh like hot staples. It was more itch than pain, but it still irritated.
“If I don’t?” Cloister asked with interest. It was empty defiance. He’d already leaned back and braced his good arm against the Formica. His cock jutted out from the crux of his thighs as he shifted position, his skin tight around the hard shaft of it. “What then?”
Javi smiled sharply as he hung the shirt off the back of a chair. “Then I just bend you over the counter.”
Cloister twisted to glance over his shoulder. “I should probably move the BBQ beef, then.”
The smile caught at the corners of Javi’s mouth before he could stop it. He usually didn’t put a high priority on laughter in bed, but he supposed he could make an exception since they weren’t in bed.
“Unless you think you’re going to need a snack in the middle,” Javi drawled as he stepped closer. He ran his hand up the outside of Cloister’s thigh, over hard muscle and a scruff of coarse, gilt hair, and around until he cupped the curve of his tight, freckled ass. “You’re a year older now, after all. Maybe your stamina isn’t what it was?”
Cloister snorted and reached back to push the cold tray of food into the sink with a swipe of his cast. His skin pulled tight over his chest and shoulders as he moved. No spare flesh blurred the play of muscle. “I think I can keep up.”
“We’ll see,” Javi said.
He stepped between Cloister’s legs and pressed a kiss to the point of his shoulder. With his tongue he traced a path from freckle to freckle to bruise as he worked his way down Cloister’s chest until his mouth reached the dark-pink coin of his nipple. He scraped his teeth over the flat bud and flicked it with his tongue until it tightened and swelled into his mouth.
Cloister made a choked sound and let his head fall back, the line of his throat tight and vulnerable. He clenched his fingers around the edge of the counter, and the muscles in his forearms stood out in high definition against his skin.
