Next time Lucky would be sure to check the clubhouse.
They got everything back into the house in a few trips, though Moose had to sniff every inch of the backyard before charging back inside, tongue lolling. He gave Lucky a wet swipe on the hand. Lucky jerked away.
Lucky Cat didn’t evade fast enough. He arched and spat. Moose licked him again.
“That cat is so like you.” Bo snickered and led Lucky out of the kitchen, through the living room, and to their bedroom. The pets trundled in behind them. Moose collapsed onto the rug at the foot of their bed.
Cat Lucky perched in the bedroom window, staring out at the night and likely planning evil for the beagle next door. Bo drew the blinds.
Lucky flumped down on the bed and kicked off his shoes. “I thought your assignment would never end.”I missed you. I love you. Never leave me alone again.If so many thoughts weren’t churning up his mind, they’d both be naked by now.
“I was only gone a few weeks.”
A few weeks Lucky’s ass. Seemed like a lifetime.
Bo peeled off Lucky’s T-shirt. “Don’t tell me you missed me.”
Lucky shifted, letting Bo yank his jeans down and off. “Okay, I won’t.” Snuggling up to Bo tonight might mean a good night’s sleep, after a sleeping tonic of getting his brains screwed out.
An hour ago he’d planned to give his lover a proper sexual homecoming the moment their coworkers left. Now, Lucky’s cock wasn’t much of a concern.
He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling fan lazily turning. Moose pounded the footboard with his paw while scratching an itch.
Cat Lucky curled beside Lucky while Bo stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
One little piece of Lucky might save his father. A father who’d disowned him. Wait a minute! Charlotte said Dad would agree even if he knew where the offering came from, but could Lucky possibly give part of his liver without his parents finding out the donor?
The people who used to care about him didn’t know where he was or what he called himself. Or even that he lived. He’d ask Charlotte later. She’d called and broken their text and e-mail only routine; they might as well start talking from now on.
About damned time.
On autopilot, he trudged into the bathroom and stood beneath the shower’s spray, barely helping while Bo scrubbed him down. All day long he’d planned what to do when Bo finally came home: take him on every flat surface and attempt the vertical ones.
Now his mind kept returning to the kind of things he visualized when trying not to get hard. Hospitals, doctors, needles… drugs.
And yet Bo dried him off, put him to bed, and held him without using the stiffie occasionally brushing Lucky’s thigh.
Safe in Bo’s arms, he didn’t have to worry about the right thing to do.
And yet he did.
Chapter Four
Lucky sat at his desk, but his mind hadn’t made the trip to work yet. Sipping cold coffee and staring off into space hadn’t accomplished much.
His father needed him, but would his father accept his help if he knew where it came from?
Charlotte said yes, but back home folks didn’t say “stubborn as a mule” like they did in other parts of the South. Nope. The folks in their little farming community said, “Stubborn as a Lucklighter.”
Down to the last one.
On Lucky’s computer screen, the image of a young man smiled at him—a man who’d lost his life in the line of duty before Lucky joined the SNB. No guarantees. Lucky or any other agent could go out today and get gunned down, or have a wreck in rush hour Atlanta traffic.
Or live to a decent age and suffer liver failure. Dad had been twenty-one when Lucky came squalling into the world. He hadn’t reached sixty yet.
Too young to die.
Way too young.
