Tramps and Thieves

by Rhys Ford

  “Time?” It was a croak. An actual croak and Rook swallowed, tasting grit and stale air. “Shit, I hurt.”

  “You were shot,” Dante said from somewhere in the milky darkness. “Well, mostly. Creased pretty badly. Stitches are going to hurt. Did you take one of the pills the doctor gave you?”

  “Fuck the doctors,” he mumbled into a pillow. “And okay, I forgot, but I’d rather have you.”

  Blinking was a chore, but Rook did it anyway, trying to peer around him to find his lover.

  Dante stood at the end of the bed, shirtless and unbuttoning a pair of jeans. His belt lay at the foot of the bed, and a quick nudge of Rook’s foot—a very painful, agonizing nudge—and the belt slithered off the mattress, hitting the carpet with a soft thud.

  A glance up and Dante’s amber gaze ran hot over Rook’s face, traveling down his shoulders and coming to rest at the gauze taped to his ribs. The fire in his lover’s eyes dissipated, quenched by the bandages and probably the bruises Rook now felt near his lower back.

  The agony along his ribs and back dampened Rook’s lust, but it flared and spat, refusing to die. Despite the haze of pain flittering across his senses, Dante was still hot, thickly muscled and lean-hipped, his hard abdomen dusted with a bit of black down around his navel, and the jut of his hipbones over the elastic of his briefs were hard enough to make Rook’s mouth water. He loved Dante’s wide shoulders, rippling and powerful from years of doing all the domestic, masculine things he liked to do with the house he’d brought back from the dead. Until he met Dante Montoya, Rook hadn’t realized how sexy a man looked mowing a yard, sweat dampening his shirt and sticking it to the narrow of his back. Or how erotic it was to watch Dante drink from a shadow-cooled garden hose, shoving his head under the stream to soak the heat from his scalp and neck.

  “You should be asleep.” The reproach was firm, flavored with the promise of a tequila shot, a smack of lime, and deep kisses. Dante owed him a night of tequila, Rook mused, the two of them on the back porch of Dante’s bungalow, listening to the city and dancing in the faint light of Los Angeles’s spotty streetlamps. “You listening to me, Stevens?”

  “No, I’m thinking of how good you’d feel stretched out next to me and warming the back of my thighs,” Rook confessed. “But sure, I’ll entertain all suggestions for my recovery. However the fuck late it is. Where’s my phone?”

  “Confiscated. It’s over on the dresser.” Dante grinned at Rook’s frown. “Don’t scowl at me. It was on the floor when I came in. Archie catch you up before you crashed?”

  “Yeah. Remember? You sent me a threatening message not to go down to the hospital.”

  “Good call on my part. Sadonna skipped out. O’Byrne decided she needed to do something, so she lurched down to the room they’d put Sadonna in, but she wasn’t there. There was supposed to be a uniform covering her door, but they hadn’t gotten there yet.” Dante’s fingers were chilly on Rook’s cheek, but he leaned into his lover’s touch, biting Dante’s thumb. “Tell me you’ve had a tetanus shot, cuervo. I can’t afford to get sick. Not when we’re trying to find your aunt. Sadonna pulling a Houdini—”

  “More like a Crazy Ivan.” The confusion on Dante’s face was worth it. It was always worth it. “There is so much to teach you and so little time to watch everything. Gorram smuggler reference. Sets fire to the atmosphere and disappears, incinerating their pursuers. Really, it’s like aliens dropped you on this planet without a guidebook. Go on about Sadonna.”

  “Not much else. Bottom line, Sadonna was hurt in an alleged home invasion, your aunt Margaret taken, and I was almost run down by the kidnapper. Her running out on us brings up doubt.” The jeans were left open, and Rook tugged at them with his toes, trying to inch them down. Dante chuckled, slapped at Rook’s foot, then bent over to pick up his belt. After coiling the belt up into a tight circle and securing its tang, Dante tossed it over to the dresser. “Honestly, there’s way too much going on, and every time Hank and I get something figured out, it twists all around again. This is a Möbius strip kind of case.”

  “So Sadonna’s back on the chopping block because she ran?” Rook contemplated the possibility of the vampish movie star plugging anyone full of holes, unable to imagine her standing over her husband’s dead body. “Dude, you cracked your head. Sure, she’s sketchy, but can you see her killing Vicks? Or Margaret? Maybe she ran because she’s scared someone’s going to finish the job they started.”

  “Maybe, but this makes her look bad. Especially since there’s no one else left on the board for us to go after,” Dante replied. “All we’ve got is theories, but so far the guess is one of the Natterly brothers is involved in something off, and somehow Harold got caught up in it. I found a photo of him and Jeremy at Margaret’s place, so it’s anyone’s guess if that’s the Natterly who’s Harold’s boyfriend or if they just knew one another. There could have been a fight and one of the brothers killed him or… something, but like Sadonna, them missing brings up doubt and more questions. Most law-abiding people find out the cops want to ask them a few questions and they’re right there, ready to get us off their backs.”

  “Yeah, not in my world,” Rook scoffed.

  “Did you miss the part where I said law-abiding?” Dante teased, easily moving out of the reach of Rook’s halfhearted kick. “What can you tell me about Davis and his brother, Jeremy? Could Jeremy be the boyfriend, or did Davis take that picture and he was the one Harold was with?”

  “Jeremy, maybe.” He bit back a groan, muffling it to a whimper as he eased back onto the pillows. “Davis is more… nonsexual. I mean, he’s button-up shirts and horn-rimmed glasses. Very fifties-looking. He’s… business. Always. No sense of humor but a decent guy. Jeremy’s more… the poet type. Flowing hair, sensitive and distracted. I always got the feeling he’s working there because he’s got to, not because he likes the place. Davis loves it. He likes ferreting things out. Most excited I’ve ever seen him was when he got a line on a pair of ruby slippers and snagged them. You’d have thought he found Jesus’s clay cup and drank from it.”

  “Just because someone’s a poet doesn’t mean he’s gay.” Dante tugged at Rook’s nose. “We’re all kinds of men now, remember?”

  “Hey, you asked. I just can’t see Davis getting excited about anything to do with someone’s body. He’s the type of guy who’d wear latex gloves to pop the lid off of a cat food can.” His libido was doing serious battle with his fatigue, and Rook sighed. The sheets were soft, luxurious to the touch, and warmed from his own body, but Rook wanted more, something to anchor him in the freewheeling terror lurking at the edges of his mind. Flitting his fingers over Dante’s thigh helped, as did the long pause his lover took, turning to stare down into Rook’s face. “Why are you still dressed? Why aren’t you in bed making me regret all of my bruises, but not giving a shit about the pain?”

  “How about if I get you some of your meds, a glass of water, and tuck you in?” his cop offered, brushing a kiss over Rook’s cheek.

  “Tuck into me,” he corrected. “Not tuck me in. Shit, you’re crappy at this seduction thing.”

  “You were shot.”

  “I was creased.”

  “You have stitches,” Dante reminded him, but he let himself be pulled forward when Rook hooked his fingers into Dante’s belt loops. “And need sleep.”

  “I need you more.” Rook sat up, resting on his haunches, and gently tugged Dante’s jeans down. Leaning into his lover, he traced Dante’s belly button with his tongue, worrying at the rim with a delicate bite. He hurt. Ached, really, but Rook needed Dante’s touch, longed for it. He needed a bit of home, and his heart skipped a beat when he realized home now meant Dante Montoya. The throb along his ribs began again, and he couldn’t keep the grimace off of his face. “Okay, meds wouldn’t be bad. But then after that, I need you, babe. I just… fucking need you.”

  “Meds first. Then… we’ll see,” Dante cautioned, stepping out of his jeans and kicking them aside. A few sec
onds later, Dante was back. “Here. Take these.”

  “No, not those pink ones.” He accepted the glass of water and palmed most of the pills Dante got for him from the battalion of bottles lined up on the bathroom counter, but the sedative wasn’t something he wanted in his system. Popping them in his mouth, he mumbled, “They make my head fuzzy. I don’t want to pass out on you. The other ones take care of the pain. I don’t know why they gave me so many of the damned things to take.”

  “Passing out isn’t a bad thing,” his lover said, but Dante dropped them into a shallow dish on the nightstand, taking the mostly empty glass from Rook when he was done, placing it next to the discarded pills. “Move over a bit. That way if you fall asleep, you’re not on your hurt side.”

  The medications worked quickly, and Rook exhaled, testing the tightness across his ribs while he rested his head on Dante’s shoulder. The tickle of fingers moving up and down his spine bled away some of the tension in his belly, and Rook eased into the crook of Dante’s arm, forcing his taut muscles to relax.

  “Shit, I’m going to pass out. Goddamn it.” Sleep pulled at his eyelids, weighting them down. “I wanted to take advantage of you. I wanted… everything. Want everything. You. Us. Maybe a goldfish.”

  “A goldfish?” Rook felt Dante’s chuckle echo through his chest, and he flicked Dante’s nipple with his fingers, grazing it with his nails. “Ouch. Hey. Watch it.”

  “I’m not responsible enough for anything smarter than a goldfish.” The tired was getting to him. His body was sloughing off the desire he’d built up, despite the warm, gentle stroking of Dante’s hand on his arm and back. “I’m going to fall asleep on you. Like… right now.”

  “I know, cuervo.” Dante’s voice was as warm as his fingers, brushing over Rook’s temple. “I’ll be here when you wake up. We can talk about goldfish then.”

  THE DAMNED bed was not only empty next to him, but it was kind of cold. Flipping over seemed less of a chore than yesterday, and Rook gingerly slid from the bed, carefully putting his bare feet on the floor, testing for any pangs along his ribs. A little bit of pulling but nothing he couldn’t handle, and the non-ache held up when he pushed off of the bed, bending forward to minimize stretching the skin across his ribs.

  “Oh God, I need to pee.” Despite the rug, the floor was chilly, and Rook shuffled quickly to the bathroom. A few minutes later, he’d swallowed his morning dose, changed the plaster on his side, and began brushing his teeth when the door opened behind him and the mirror reflected a worried Dante back at him. Frothing, he mumbled, “What?”

  “Nothing. Just hoped you’d still be in bed when I came back.” Dante waited while Rook rinsed his mouth out, then gently turned him around, pressing Rook up against the counter. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good. It doesn’t hurt as much today. Stitches look good, no pinkness.” Eyeing the cop, Rook asked suspiciously, “Why?”

  “Because Book told me to come in later, and since you and I haven’t had a chance to catch our breath since all of this shit’s gone down, I wanted to spend a couple of hours with you. I see you put your shirt back on. That’s… unfortunate.” Dante sucked at Rook’s lower lip, playing with its firm flesh, then letting go when Rook growled softly. Stroking at Rook’s sides, Dante murmured, “I brought you coffee and some food. Thought I’d feed you and we can talk.”

  “You and I have very different ideas on how to spend a couple of hours in bed. I want sex, and you want to… peel me grapes?” He shook his head, bemused at Dante’s husky laugh. “Not cool, Montoya. You are a damned—”

  Dante’s mouth swallowed his teasing, stealing the breath from Rook’s chest and rushing the blood through his heart until his eardrums ached from the increasingly pounding beats under his rib cage. He sipped at air when he could, but Dante wasn’t letting him go, refusing to break the connection between their mouths. He felt nothing beyond his lover. Dante’s hands were gentle enough, but the rasp of his roughened palms stoked an ember in Rook’s belly, especially when the man’s clever fingers skimmed the waistband of his sweats, tracing around the ridge of bone and muscle on Rook’s hip.

  He was left gasping, aching for more when Dante pulled back, arms braced on the counter and the small of his back pressed into the hard, cold marble, a keen contrast of sensations after Dante’s hard, long body held him captive without so much as a sliver of air between them.

  “No grapes,” Dante murmured, nipping at Rook’s throat in hard, sharp bites, leaving a trail of stair-stepped burns on his skin. “Strawberries, though. And coffee. I’d have brought champagne, but… work.” Another dig of teeth, this time into Rook’s bared collarbone, and he gasped, jerking back, but Dante wouldn’t let go. Not until he’d had his fill. It took an endless second of momentous torture before Dante moved on, the throb he left behind a clear promise of a mark Rook would wear for days on his pale skin. “Dios, you’re like fire in my hands, cuervo. I stroke you just a little bit and you… you are hot enough to consume me.”

  They made it to the bed. Barely.

  Rook’s elbow caught the tray Dante put on the nightstand, and they had a brief flash of coffee and fruit flying over the room before Dante grabbed at its edge, snagging its lip, then righting it. Half on the bed, Rook stretched out onto his back, his arm flung out and grunting when Dante stretched out on top of him, their feet hanging off the mattress.

  “Am I hurting you?” His lover shifted, easing the press of his weight on Rook’s torso. “We don’t have to do anything—”

  “No, I’m good. Some meds, a little horniness, and I don’t feel jack shit. If I don’t get some release, I’m going to break.” His dick was hard and tight, trapped between Dante’s hips and his thigh, but the friction felt good, welcome even. “’Sides, I was freezing before, and you, Montoya, warm me up just fine.”

  “I was just saying that about you.” Dante moved to the left, and Rook slid his hand down the back of his lover’s sweats, cupping his ass. The response from Dante was immediate, a thick ridge of arousal pressing into Rook’s thigh. He shivered at Rook’s questing touch. “What did you do? Stick your hands in ice water?”

  “Told you I was cold,” he groused playfully, squeezing Dante’s ass. “I like the no underwear. Makes this a hell of a lot easier.”

  “You’ve got some on?”

  “What? Underwear?” Rook crinkled his nose. “Yeah. Want to help me take them off?”

  “Best offer I had all morning.” He cocked his head, grinning. “Okay, second best offer, because Rosa helped me make the coffee.”

  “Dude, if I’m coming in second after Rosa with an offer to get nude and bump uglies, then I am definitely doing something really fucking wrong here.” Rook bit at Dante’s chest, closing his teeth over his lover’s nipples. “Want to get me naked? Or do you want to spend a couple of hours drinking Rosa’s coffee?”

  “Okay, I am very sorry about bringing up the coffee,” Dante murmured, sliding his hand under Rook’s shirt. “Move your arms up. Help me get this off of you.”

  The slither of cotton across his chest and back only made Rook harder, and when the cool air grabbed at his skin, it pulled out a shiver and a prickle of goose bumps. He was stripped quickly and carefully, with Dante pressing a kiss on Rook’s left hipbone before peeling Rook’s pants and underwear off. Dante’s sweats were easy to shuck off, the waistband curving down over the Latino’s firm ass and then down his powerful thighs. He kicked them off, sending them over the edge of the bed. Lifting himself up, Dante rested his weight on his knees, dimpling the bed next to Rook’s prone, half-naked body.

  Dante literally stole Rook’s ability to think. The churning thoughts bouncing around his head, random bits of information and whispers running noise through his mind quieted when Dante’s honey-brown gaze settled on him. Nude and in repose, his hands resting on his thighs, his cock jutting out from his body with its slight curve to the right, Dante’s powerful shoulders, arms, and legs were long planes of muscle and sinew. />
  His flat, sculpted abdomen twitched when Rook ran his fingertips through the silken, soft hair trailing around his navel and down to cup the base of his rampant cock. His dark brown hair stood out around his strong face, pulled askew by Rook’s hands threading through the strands, but the disheveled toss of mink and ebony around his face softened his hard cheekbones and scruffy jawline, gilding a vulnerability onto Dante’s intense masculinity.

  “Damn, you are gorgeous, cuervo.” Dante’s rasp underscored the heat in his accented words, his husky voice thickening with want. “I am a very lucky man.”

  Running his hand slowly over Rook’s long thigh, he leaned over, kissing Rook deeply. Their tongues did a slow dance, a flick against teeth, then another slide into the depths of each others’ mouths. Dante tasted of a nipped strawberry and a faint whisper of mint, but Rook wanted more, needed more of his lover in him.

  There was a bottle of lube liberated from a nightstand drawer, but the quick search was punctuated by nibbles and kisses, with Dante guiding Rook across the bed to lay his shoulders on the nest of pillows Rook’d gathered up from the rooms around them. A buttery morning sun poured in between the slightly parted gold curtains draped across the bedroom’s french doors, the patio beyond damp from the heavy dew left by LA’s marine layer. The shimmering fabric frosted the room in a faint glow, bronzing Dante’s tanned skin.

  His lover wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. He carried scars from a childhood played out on asphalt-hosted football games, and there was a slight chip on his right cuspid, a remnant of a battle fought over a game controller with a cousin wielding a broomstick. Rook knew the catch of that tooth on his tongue, felt the sharp ridge on his lip when it left a deeper, harsher mark, but they were all imperfections Rook loved to explore.

  He knew the whorl on the back of Dante’s head, intimately scritching at his lover’s temple with his fingernails while sitting behind him on the couch while Dante watched fútbol on the floor with Hank’s kids. There were golden spots along Dante’s shoulders and a tiny star-shaped dimple from a fishing cast gone wrong. Rook loved Dante’s right ring finger with its hooked-in first joint, the curve formed by a word-mad young Latino boy who’d written poems and stories before someone told him to stop dreaming and do something with his life that mattered.