Chapter Three
IT WASSaturday. Tag didn’t have to be at work until later. The baby in the flat upstairs didn’t care. It wanted one of the short list of things a baby wanted, and it was going to scream until it got them an hour before Tag had to get up or not.
Tag groggily dragged a pillow over his head and folded his arms over it. He tried to hang on to the last indulgent dregs of sleep despite the warbled screech that pierced the walls. It didn’t work.
“Jesus,” he muttered finally as he blindly shoved the pillow aside. He yawned into the mattress hard enough to make his jaw creak and rubbed his hand over his eyes. After a second he rubbed his eyes again and rolled over. Usually by this point he’d be pissed off and want to yell at the kid’s mother to actually parent the brat.
Hadn’t so far, mostly because it would be a dick move, and less flatteringly because it wouldn’t do much good. The mom, Maria, was barely more than a kid herself and obviously worked all hours and odd shifts to support them. From the few meetings they’d had on the stairs as Maria dragged her thrift-shop baby carriage in off the street, she didn’t speak much English. And while Tag could ask “Where does it hurt?” in seven languages, that scraped the barrel of his knowledge of Ukrainian.
This morning he didn’t just feel resentfully tolerant. Another hour of sleep wouldn’t have gone amiss, but babies were going to baby.
Something was different. It took him a second to realize what. Despite the eardrum-spike wail of discontent from above, the hard mattress that came with the prefurnished flat, and the fact that he wasina prefurnished short-term apartment, he felt… sore, self-satisfied, and like he should be—but wasn’t quite—ashamed of himself. And good.
His ears got a rest as the baby finally got whatever it wanted. Tag stretched out on the cheap sheets and grinned at the crumpled disaster of his tux tossed over the dresser. His stomach muscles were tender, and there was a pleasant ache between his hips. The memory of rough kisses and rougher hands made his cock stir with lazy interest, but it had to make do with his hand, loosely cuffed around the half-hard shaft. He rubbed his thumb along the ridged vein to the head, and a shudder of pleasure flicked down his cock and into his balls.
When was the last time he woke up with a hangover from a night’s misbehavior? It had never been his normal—medical books and antisocial shift patterns had put a crimp in any plans he’d had for a life of debauchery—but he’d still had some memorable nights.
Two months. Atleasttwo months. Even when his and Kieran’s relationship wasn’t on a collision course with a hot nurse and his ass tattoo? It had been a while since the sight of each other naked had kicked them in the gut with bewildered lust.
Although… Tag hadn’t lied last night. Bass was hotter.
Tag shifted uncomfortably on the sheets as that settled. Guilt was a funny thing. Last night he’d staggered home with his shirt glued to his chest by a more-or-less stranger’s come, and he hadn’t felt a twinge. A stray thought about who he thought was prettier, and he felt like a cheater.
Fuck that.Tag kicked the sheets down to the bottom of the bed and braced his bare foot against the mattress. He chewed on the inside of his lip and pumped his fist along his cock as lazy interest sharpened to lust.
He tilted his head back against the too-thin pillows and closed his eyes. The memories of last night, still sharp edged and in high definition, rose easily to the surface of his mind—salty-sweetness of warm golden skin under his tongue, black lines of ink drawn tightly over hard muscles, and the rasped encouragement of a low, harsh-edged voice against his jaw.
Tag lifted his hips off the bed and tightened his fingers around his cock. His breath was quick and harsh, and it hissed raggedly between his teeth as he strained toward the finish line. He could feel the plucked string of nerve endings that ran from the nape of his neck all the way down to his balls.
He licked his lips and tasted sweat caught in the scruff of overnight stubble. His mind skipped a handful of pages in the play-by-play of his fantasy and dropped him straight into hands clenched around his hips and a cock buried in his ass. He twisted his hand around his cock impatiently and came with a groan, the spill of come wet and sticky between his knuckles.
The tension leaked out of him and left him boneless, more relaxed on the unfamiliar bed than he’d been since he moved in. He exhaled slowly, wiped his hand on his stomach, and just lay there as he enjoyed the quiet inside his own head.
For all of a minute. Then his actual alarm went off.
Tag took a deep breath and sighed it out through loose lips. It was still a better morning than most lately. He spent a second more in contemplation of it, and then the angry guitar riff of Metallica set the baby off again.
Maria yelled something Tag couldn’t quite make out and hammered on the floor with what sounded like a brush. He groaned but gave in to the inevitable and scrambled out of bed. His phone was on the dresser—out of reach, since otherwise he could never ignore the snooze option—and he grabbed it with one hand to silence “Whiskey in the Jar.”
Fifty-two unread messages. Two from Fightjunkie.
Tag caught a grin at the corner of his mouth and bit it back. It could be a bill for damage to the couch. Fuck, it could be some sort of app feedback. That could be… ego bruising. He hovered his thumb over the notification for a moment and then bit the bullet and tapped the screen.
An icon spun as his phone downloaded a picture. The text beneath it readCould have been your one chance to ride me!?
The twitch of immediate arousal ached in Tag’s spent cock like pins and needles in the oversensitized flesh. He chewed absently on the inside of his lip as he waited for the image to flash onto the screen. His eyes were drawn to the spread thighs, denim pulled tight and faded over heavy muscles as though they were the focal point of the picture, and then down to the worn leather seat the thighs straddled and the matte black of a gas tank.
Tag snorted at his own thirst. He’d gotten laidandjerked off, yet he was still dry mouthed over a pair of spread thighs? Some things didn’t change. He’d always been uselessly horny when he was single.
Should have said that was on the table before my ass got ridden,he sent back.
He got a leering smiley back, and he grinned as he tossed the phone onto the unmade bed. The rest could wait. He had to get back to normal—deal with the crappy water pressure in the apartment and apologize to the director of surgery for the way he’d left the fundraiser—but not yet.
It could wait until he had breakfast… or at least a shower.
THE GOODthing about emergency medicine, other than all the lives saved, obviously, was that it didn’t give your mind time to wander… or give you time to check your phone.
It had been over a week since Tag had hooked up with some random hot guy on an app and six days since they started to text.
