Chapter Fourteen
ONE DAY.
That was how long Bass had managed to steal from his real fake life—one Sunday to play at being someone whose life wasn’t hedged about with lies, legends, and violence. The sad thing? Bass wasn’t sure if that described Bass or Detective Sebastiani, the cop or the crook.
Neither of them was someone who’d wake up on his stomach in Tag’s bed.
Mostly on Tag. He sprawled over his bony back with a shoulder blade for a pillow and his hand folded under Tag’s stomach so he could hang on to his cock. They’d gone to dinner, talked about movies, and looked at houses together.
Okay, so it was loft apartments for a single doctor with a shit Mustang. Bass had just… not thought too much about the fact that he’d never see the apartment. Or that if it were real, he’d have probably chewed off his arm to get away. They’d only hooked up a couple of times. For anything real, that was too early to move in together.
If things went according to plan, this legend would be burned with a handful of others that Bass had retired over the years. It wasn’t like Bass could hang around after he’d fucked over the Corpse Brothers. Even in jail, Shepherd had enough clout to organize payback. Not, Bass added to himself hastily, that he wanted to stay in Plenty anyhow. He’d spent half his life on the run from this place, from thishim.
So what the hell, right? In fifteen minutes Tag’s alarm would go off, and Bass would lie to him. For the next time, not the last time. Until then he could lie to himself for a while. He’d earned it.
The ceiling creaked overhead. The rhythmic, predictable beat of a tired parent who needed to pace the floors to get their baby to sleep. It was already a familiar sound to Bass.
Tag turned his head to the side, hair kinked and face sleep-creased from the pillow, and opened his eye.
“Not your problem,” Bass grumbled into his back.
“I’m a doctor,” Tag objected sleepily. “Sick people literallyaremy job.”
“In the hospital,” Bass said. “Go back to sleep.”
“Too late.”
Tag untangled himself from the sheets and wriggled out from under Bass. He sat up on the edge of the bed and scratched his head as he listened to what was going on upstairs. Bass sat up too, but only so he could sling an arm over Tag’s shoulder and press a kiss against his neck.
“It’s your job when you get to the hospital,” he said. “Right now it’s a weird hobby. The woman knows her own kid. If there’s something wrong with it—”
“She’s young,” Tag pointed out even as he leaned back against Bass’s shoulder. “She could be here illegally and not know she can get the baby treatment, or be scared what could happen if she does.”
“Then she probably has someone else to ask for help,” Bass pointed out. He slid a hand over Tag’s hip and stroked his thigh. He was all long, wiry muscle and spare flesh. Bass chewed a bruise into his shoulder. “What are you going to do, walk up there and demand she hand over her kid? She’ll think you’re crazy.Ithink you’re crazy. So come back and be crazy in the sack, where it does me some good.”
Tag twisted around and grazed a quick, awkward kiss over Bass’s mouth. It was a brief taste of sleep-sour tongue, not that Bass figured his breath was better, and then a soft, chaste buss against his unshaven cheek.
“No strings, remember,” he said. “So you don’t get a vote on what I do.”
“Yeah?” Bass worked his hand back up to cup and squeeze Tag’s balls. That got him a ragged moan from Tag and a twitch of interest from the limp cock dangled over his knuckles. “I count a couple of votes in my favor.”
Tag grumbled, but he didn’t resist as Bass pulled him back into bed.
Fifteen minutes to an hour, Bass decided as he tangled himself around Tag’s lanky, eager body, and then he’d get back to work. He’d waited too many years for a chance to get even on Shepherd. He wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers now for the sake of… what? Long legs, a nice ass, and the worst dirty talk in history?
But for a second, that trade-off almost made sense. Almost. Bass used Tag’s mouth to drown out his regret that he couldn’t quite convince himself of that lie.
“TELL YOURex to go fuck himself,” Bass told Tag as he dropped him off outside the hospital. He waited until Tag had dismounted the bike and pulled off the helmet. Then he pulled him back in for a slow, thorough kiss. “Because you’ve got a better offer.”
Tag slid an arm around Bass’s waist. His fingers were cold as they dipped under his jeans to brush against the curve of his ass.
“You slept over. Don’t get cocky,” he said into Bass’s ear.
Bass let him pull away. “Three nights in a row,” he reminded him with a wink. “Hey, if I make it to five, do I get a free prostate exam?”
A grin flashed over Tag’s face. “That’s complimentary. Trust me, it feels fine.”
He turned and loped over to the doors with a wave tossed over his shoulder. Bass watched him go and then tugged his phone out of his pocket. He hadn’t ignored the messages he’d gotten while he played hooky—two from his handler under the front of a tattoo shop with its own Facebook page and an inexplicable cadre of devoted fans who’d definitely never been tattooed there, four from Shepherd, and one from Ville—but his replies had leaned into a holding pattern. Now he needed to get things moving again. He slid his thumb over the screen as he typed, half his attention on the road.
