Joe’s fingers tightened for a second, and then he relaxed them to let the strip of abused fabric slither free. A rueful smile tilted his mouth.
“Maybe another time,”Joe said as he stepped back.
It would be a bad idea. Cal knew that. He was on his last, thin chance with El—brother or not—and he didn’t exactly have the kind of résumé that would get him a job without the security net of a long stay in prison at the end of it.
He folded his lower lip between his teeth as he looked Joe over. Broad shoulders arrowed down into lean hips and long legs. There wasmuscle there, tight and defined, but it ran to long legs and elegance instead of bulk. Cal had never really had a type—unless you counted “trouble”—but there certainly wasn’t anything about Joe he objected to.
“Probably,” Cal admitted wryly. “Don’t make it a good idea. See you in the morning, Mr. Bailey.”
This time Joe let him leave without protest. Cal closed the door behind him and stood inthe dark as he took a deep breath to clear his head. It didn’t work. He could still taste sex and salt on his tongue. Cal’s skin was sticky with both.
Fucking feral, he cursed himself as that lazy twist of interest stirred again. He really was.
A soft click echoed down the hall, and the lights flashed on. They weren’t that bright, but it was unexpected enough to make Cal squint and blink spotsfrom his vision. He turned and looked down the hall where Edward stood stiff and straight next to the light switch. The hard-faced man was still dressed in his nondescript black suit. Either he hadn’t gone to bed yet or he’d slept in it.
“You’re not a man to take advice, are you, Mr. Tate?” Edward said quietly.
Cal shrugged and shook his shirt out to shrug it back on over his kiss-bruised shoulders.He scratched his stomach again. Edward glanced down, grimaced in distaste, and looked away quickly. Cal walked down the hall to him.
“You’ve seen my record,” he said. “You think nobody ever told me it would be a good idea to knock that shit off?”
Edward’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “Joseph isn’t…”
“Yeah, well, that’s his problem,” Cal said. “I am. If you don’t like it, well… looks likeI’d be the only one doesn’t have a problem.”
A cold light flickered in Edward’s eyes, and he leaned toward Cal. “I could change that,” he said.
Cal shrugged. “Be an asshole, then,” he said. “No skin off my nose.”
That took the wind out of Edward’s sails. Sometimes an instinct to self-destruct could work to your advantage, but not often. Cal waited for a second. When Edward glared at him inconfused frustration, Cal shrugged and went back to his room.
He thought about a shower. In the end he shrugged and stripped back down. Often enough he’d crawled into bed when he stunk of worse than Joe. The bed was soft, the pillows fat, and the linens smelled a helluva lot better than the ones at his place. If he was going to get fired in the morning, he might as well take advantage of cleansheets with no laundry.
It felt like he’d only closed his eyes when the alarm went off.
HE WASN’Tfired.
In fact, based on Joe’s cool demeanor when he came out of the bedroom the next morning in a tailored gray suit and his hair dry and styled in a loose quiff, it was possible Cal had dreamed last night’s encounter. But he hadn’t. The dull sting of the night—tender like sunburned skin—wasevidence of that.
Three days later the ache had faded and Joe hadn’t mentioned it again, not even late at night when Cal hitched up a knee in his rented bed and grabbed his cock while he wondered if Joe’d want to be fucked this time. Not that Cal would mind if he didn’t.
Parked outside a narrow, gray office building in the Bentley, Cal dangled his hands over the steering wheel and passed thetime with an attempt to remember how long it had been since he’d had someone else’s cock in him. A few years, at least. He hadn’t forgotten what it felt like, but he’d forgotten how… fuck, he didn’t know. Cal stretched his fingers as he fumbled at the feeling.
Exposed, he supposed, but not in a way you wanted to stop. Like he didn’t have to front it out—whatever the hell it was this time—foronce.
He glanced in the mirror at the traffic warden who had worked her way down the road toward him. Usually playing chicken with a parkie would usually not be his idea of a good time, but he was still on his best behavior. Sometimes the universedidn’tput the boot in after you fucked up, but even Cal knew not to push his luck. So he had stuck to the speed limit, not poked at Edward, and theonly thrill he had to look forward to was a close call with a ticket.
She stopped next to low-slung, two-tone BMW and pulled her pad out. A pink-faced man with a yolk-stained napkin tucked into his collar burst out of a restaurant as she worked. His keys jangled in his hand as he waved them about angrily. The traffic warden heard him out as she finished the form and then slapped it on the carbefore he could object further.
Cal chuckled. He’d be the first to bitch if he got a ticket, but Napkin guy looked like a dick, and he drove a dick mobile with red accents. So couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. The scene as the woman faced off against Napkin guy bought Cal a few more minutes before he had to move.
He kept a casual check on the rearview mirror. Parkies could be deceptively lighton their feet when they saw a chance to ticket you, and besides, Napkin was a dick, and even if they were a traffic warden you didn’t punch women.
Granddad had always been firm on that. You didn’t punch girls, you only talked to the cops if it was pervert related, and he didn’t care what anyone else said, Mrs. Smith wasn’t from Pakistan, and even if she were, you never called anyonethat.WheneverEl got on Cal’s case about being a fuckup, it was some comfort to remember that, by Grandad’s moral standards, he was still on the straight and narrow.
A woman who’d worn a cream pantsuit to breakfast, her hair pin straight and matte, stormed out of the restaurant. She shoved her purse back in her bag and marched over to snatch the napkin out of Napkin guy’s collar.
“Now what am I going to callhim?” Cal wondered out loud.
