The bite inhis voice made Cal’s eyebrow twitch slightly in response, and he pulled his hand back to rub the bruise on his jaw instead. Joe bit the side of his tongue. He knew he was being an asshole, but with the last of the panic still hot in his ears, he couldn’t stomach any… constraint.
He looked around. An old woman with a small black dog tucked under her arm and a phone up to her ear stood at the bottomof the road and frowned up at them. A few rows over, a couple murmured to each other as they curiously craned their heads.
“Did they see anything?” he asked.
“Not much,” Cal said. “It happened pretty quickly. Look, if you don’t want to call the police, we should at least call Edward. He’s your—”
“No,” Joe snapped. He swallowed and tasted the metallic salt of spent panic and anger. “Let’s beclear, Mr. Tate. The other night changed nothing about our relationship. I’m the boss, and if I don’t want to say ‘please,’ then I won’t. You’ll still do what you’re told. If you can’t do that, then I’ll do what Edward wants and get your brother to send a replacement.”
The minute Joe said it, he wished he could take it back. In his head it had sounded more of an unsentimental reinstatement ofboundaries and less like a privileged asshole with control issues. He couldn’t even blame it on the claustrophobia.
Reserve shuttered Cal’s pale eyes, and he shrugged.
“You’re the boss.”
The apology was on the tip of Joe’s tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to spit it out, probably because hewasa bastard with control issues. Instead he pushed past Cal and stalked back down the hill.
“Spit or swallow?” Cal asked behind him.
The low, growled question reached down under Joe’s good sense, palmed his libido in one callused hand, and flicked his temper with the other. Joe felt heat prickle up the back of his neck as he turned around, but he couldn’t swear whether he wanted to punch Cal or kiss him.
Split the difference, a wicked little idea suggested,put him on his knees andmake him show you what he does.The mental image was easy—paint his memory of the hotel bedroom with sunlight and Cal’s mouth around Joe as he came—but that didn’t mean it helped.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Cal held out a handkerchief. “Spit or swallow,” he said as he gestured at his own lower lip. “You’re bleeding.”
Joe touched his mouth, and his fingers came away wet and red. He hadn’tnoticed before, but now he felt the sting of a split lip under the hot static of panic that had filled him.
“Thank you,” he said after a second. “I didn’t hear you right.”
He took the handkerchief, wiped his fingers clean, and then dabbed it carefully against his lip. It hurt now that he knew it was there.
Cal smirked at him with a slow, cocky slant of his mouth that said he knew exactly whathe’d said. “Did ya?” he asked. “That’s a shame, but you should mind that lip.”
He headed on down the hill. Joe pressed the folded cotton against his mouth and watched him go. There were grass stains on the white cotton shirt pulled tightly over his shoulders and mud on the trousers that weren’t quite tight enough to show his ass off to full effect. The wicked little thought nudged back into hisbrain to note,“He’s not that cocky when he’s under you. If you….”
Joe shoved it back into its box for later, when he was alone between fresh hotel sheets, and limped after Cal.
“I need a drink,” he said instead and then glanced down at himself with a grimace. He’d dripped blood all down his shirt, and there was grave dirt worked into his trousers. “And some new clothes. I don’t want to explainthis to Edward.”
“HERE,” CALsaid as he set a glass of whiskey in front of Joe. He sat down on the other side of the table with a bottle of soda and straddled the low chair with his long legs. “Try that.”
Joe picked it up and took a drink. The liquor stung the cuts inside his mouth and burned on the way down. He ran his tongue along the inside of his lip and tasted the dull-penny tasteof fresh blood.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You paid for it, Mr. Bailey.” Cal shrugged as he lifted the soda. “I did as I was told.”
There was, probably, nothing particularly lewd about the pucker of Cal’s lips when he drank, but Joe had to shift uncomfortably in the booth and look down into his whiskey. He rubbed his thumb over the sharply cut corner of the square glass.
“What I said,” he saidstiffly. “It might not have been called for. I’m not used to my personal and professional lives being quite so… connected.”
Cal swallowed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Don’t usually sleep with the help?”
“You make it sound sleazy.”
The first smile since the graveyard curved Cal’s mouth. It didn’t slide into goofy, but it touched his eyes. He slouched back in the chair and idlyrubbed his thumb around the lip of his bottle.
