“You know what? The hell with it,” Bob spat as he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “It’s pocket change, and this place is a dive, anyhow. C’mon. Let’s go somewhere else to spend our money.”
He blustered out of the bar, friends at his heels, already halfway convinced it was their idea. Boyd snorted and turned around. His gaze flickered from bruise to scrape, and he winced.
“I didn’t need your help,” Morgan growled as the threat of sympathy put his hackles up. He didn’t want Boyd to look at him with that “who are you really” question in his eyes, but pity wasn’t what he wanted to see instead. “I certainly didn’t fucking ask for it.”
Boyd rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “You looked like you had them on the ropes.”
Morgan reached up and gingerly pushed his thumb against the tender spot on his forehead. “It was a cheap shot.”
The bartender shoved a plastic cup of ice over the counter. “Cops will be here soon,” he said. “If you want to talk to them.”
That was the last thing Morgan wanted, but he was surprised when Boyd also grimaced at the thought.
“It’s up to you,” Boyd said as he turned to Morgan. “If you want to make a complaint against Robbie—”
Morgan laughed harshly. That would go well—the out-of-town ex-con up against the judge’s kid and his cronies. No bastard in the bar would remember a thing.
Besides—he watched cotton stretch over broad shoulders as Boyd reached for the cup—fuck the captain’s rules. He rolled the cue ball back onto the pool table, the polished ivory smeared with blood.
“Let’s get out of here.”
MORGAN SATon the edge of the high lumpy bed, head tilted back to let Boyd do some first aid on him, and chewed on the raw inside of his mouth to keep from saying something stupid. His pride itched to swagger and bluff, to prove he didn’t need anyone’s goddamn help.
Except it didn’t exactly suck.
“So what do you think,” he said. “Am I gonna make it?”
“That was a pretty nasty hit,” Boyd said as he pressed the sterile edges of the paper stitches down against Morgan’s skin. He sounded as though he regretted their flight from the bar. “You could have a concussion.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re a doctor now?”
Morgan shrugged. “Not my first rodeo,” he said. “I’ve had concussions before. I know what it feels like.”
The bed shifted under him as Boyd took his weight off the mattress. “You should probably stop getting hit in the head.”
“Maybe I should keep you around,” Morgan said. He leaned back, arms braced behind him, and watched Boyd pack up the first aid. It was the closest to a “Thanks for saving my ass” he could stomach. “So you just get lucky and stumble into that, or were you looking for me?”
Boyd wiped his hands on a towel and turned around. He leaned back against the heavy dresser as he twisted the worn cotton between his hands.
“Sort of. It was lucky I turned up when I did, but Shay asked me to talk to you,” he said. “He wants to meet you, but he didn’t think he made such a great impression the other night.”
Disappointment twisted in Morgan’s gut. It was stupid, but he hadn’t realized how much he wanted Boyd to say that he was there forhim.Instead it was just some errand for the blond asshole.
“Didn’t think you’d be doing him any favors,” Morgan said roughly. He cleared his throat to scrape the edge from his voice and looked pointedly at Boyd’s mouth. The split lip from the other night was just a thin red line now, but still visible. “Not after that.”
Boyd absently ran his tongue over the injury, and Morgan’s balls tightened with immediate tactile memory. The wash of lust was cut through with sharp discomfort, a back-of-the-throat catch like he’d done something wrong. He’d had blowjobs before, sloppy preludes to the main event, and it always left him hard and vaguely disgusted with himself. The fact that thought of Boyd doing that—his mouth around Morgan’s cock, his tongue wet and busy—turned Morgan on was… vaguely perverted.
He looked away and shifted uncomfortably to loosen the snug fit of his jeans over his cock. “I guess it’s none of my business, though.”
“It’s not,” Boyd said.
That should have been enough to end the conversation. Morgan knew when he’d been shot down, but he couldn’t quite swallow the irritation.
“He shouldn’t have hit you,” he said. “I wouldn’t hit you. Ever. I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m that guy just because I hit someone with a pool ball.”
What the fuck? Morgan cringed at the words as they left his mouth. What was he, all of a sudden? Taylor fucking Swift? He didn’t know Boyd, and whatever Boyd thought, no one in Cutter’s Gap knew Morgan.
