“Trying to,” Morgan said, his voice low and rough with frustration. The bed creaked under him as he sat up and looked down at Boyd. Lust flushed pink over his cheekbones and glazed his eyes. “Look, if I got the wrong end of the stick, just say. You seemed into me, otherwise—”
“I was. Iam,”Boyd said. He wished he could make himself shut up, give in to the static crackle of impulse, but…. “I just don’t want to…. Actually, I kind ofdowant to, but Ishouldn’ttake advantage of you. This whole thing has kind of messed up your life, whatever the truth turns out to be, and I don’t want to be the one who makes it worse. Whoever you are, whether you want to talk to Shay or not, I’d kind of like to be your friend, and not the sort of friend who fucks you to get what he wants after you’ve been hit on the head.”
His cock called him a liar on that, but his conscience finally shut up. So it was probably the right call.
Son of a bitch. It would be.
Morgan stared at him, jaw set and gray eyes unreadable. He was probably pissed off, and Boyd couldn’t blame him. From his side of the frustration, Boyd probably looked like Cutter Gap’s biggest tease.
Morgan got up off the bed in one smooth movement and stepped forward to stand over Boyd. He hooked his thumb in the waistband of his jeans, fingers splayed over the bulge of his erection under the worn denim.
“Let me get this straight. You want to fuck me,” he said, “but you don’t think I can make my own decisions?”
Boyd took a deep breath. It smelled of sweat and blood, the promise of sex cut through it. He wanted Morgan so much that what he was going to say fell apart in his mouth. It took him a second to drag them all back into line.
“That’s clearly a trap,” he said.
Morgan set his jaw and narrowed his pale eyes. “That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t want to be an asshole,” Boyd said. “I don’t want to manipulate you. I don’t want you to feel you have to do or be anyone to pay me back. Or keep me on your side.”
Morgan exhaled raggedly. “Shut up,” he growled as he folded himself down, his knees planted on the waxed wood on either side of Boyd’s hips. There was a smudge of color around the split skin over his eyebrow and a welt scraped across his collarbone. He twisted his fingers in Boyd’s shirt and pulled him forward. “You want to know what I want?”
Boyd glanced down. “I think I can guess.”
“Not that. Not yet,” Morgan said. “How did you know I hadn’t stolen Bob’s money?”
Boyd drew a blank briefly. His mind had been somewhere else at the time. He’d just hit a man with a chair. Even if it was the town’s biggest asswipe, that was the sort of thing that could get you in trouble.
“Oh,” he said as his brain finally dredged up the moment. “I don’t know. I mean, screw him. I didn’t care if you had. Why?”
Morgan shook his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. Then he ducked his head to chew a rough, possessive kiss over Boyd’s mouth. It was hungry, almost desperate, and the intensity of it dragged at Boyd. He hung on to Morgan’s shoulders as though that would keep him from being swept away. When Morgan broke the kiss for a second, his breath warm against Boyd’s skin, and Boyd was breathless and unsteady. His lips were tender and his cock ached pleasantly. “And I promise, after I fuck you, I won’t be any easier to get along with.”
He flashed a grin at Boyd, his smile bracketed by deep dimples half-hidden in fine gilt stubble, and raised his eyebrows expectantly. Boyd squeezed his eyes shut for an instant. If he wanted his change of heart to stick, he had a feeling he should have left with it earlier, but it was definitely easier to think when he didn’t look at Morgan’s face.
“Shay needs to talk to you,” Boyd blurted out. He opened his eyes and tightened his grip on Morgan’s shoulders before he could draw back. “About the DNA results.”
Frustration flashed over Morgan’s face. “I don’t want to talk about Shay,” he said. “I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want you to think abouthim.”
There was an edge to Morgan’s voice, something about the way he stressed the word, that made it clear he didn’t just mean Shay.
“Okay.”
Morgan narrowed his eyes. “Okay?”
Boyd slid one hand up into Morgan’s hair, the unruly blond sticky with beer and blood. “I guess I don’t want to be a good guy that much.”
“You’re good enough for me,” Morgan said, the words mumbled against Boyd’s lips as he pushed him down onto the floor. The weight of his body, all muscle and bone, pinned Boyd down. He licked his way down to Boyd’s throat and bit a wet, openmouthed kiss into the tender skin over his pulse. “Pretty sure a saint has better judgment in men than you.”
Boyd compliantly tilted his head back. The low murmur of pleasure in his throat darkened into a groan as Morgan squeezed his cock through his jeans. He grabbed Morgan’s T-shirt, the fabric damp with sweat and spilled beer, and dragged it up toward his shoulders. It caught under his arms, and Morgan growled in annoyance as he untangled himself from Boyd long enough to get the shirt off. He tossed it at the desk in the corner of the room.
Dapples of blue and red stained his arms and ribs. Most of them looked like they’d fade in a few days, and there was an older, darker bruise aged to soft-edged greens and blues an inch over his hipbone. Boyd winced and cautiously brushed his fingers over the mark.
“That had to hurt.”
“I deserved it.” Morgan shrugged dismissively, although he held still as Boyd traced the outline of the bruise. “I started that fight.”
“The cop?” Boyd guessed.
