Risk Assessment

by Parker St John

  Elliot reached out and snagged the mug with a lazy hand. He propped himself up enough to take a sip and hummed in pleasure. “You’re too good to me,” he said.

  Lucas held his own mug and sat with his back braced against the bottom of the sofa. He spread his legs wide and tugged Elliot into the V between his thighs. Elliot sighed and leaned back against his bare chest. The warmth of his body was more of a comfort than Lucas had ever imagined another person being.

  “I feel like I’ve got something to make up for, maybe,” Lucas admitted. “I was such a twerp.”

  Elliot craned his neck and kissed beneath his jaw. “You have baggage,” he said. “I need to be sensitive to that.”

  Maybe so, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel the weight of all that baggage pressing down on him. He felt… hopeful. If Elliot had forgiven him, when there was no good reason, it made Lucas want to believe that maybe they could work through whatever differences stood in their way.

  “Yeah, but so do you. I mean… I never should have used your age to hurt you. God, I’m sorry. You know I think you’re sexy as fuck. I was trying to hurt you just to see you hurt and I…” He groaned and buried his face against the side of Elliot’s neck. “I’ll work on it, baby. There’s no excuse for it.”

  “I know.” Elliot patted the hand clasped over his chest. “Working through things together seems like a good start.”

  “It was never about Julio, you know? That’s the shitty part. I don’t know if he’s innocent or not. I barely know the kid and I jumped all over you—”

  “Oh!” Elliot leaned forward and deposited his mug on the coffee table. He dropped a brief kiss on Lucas’s lips, lingered long enough to give Lucas a warm taste of whiskey, and then crawled out of his arms.

  “Where are you going?” He grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back for another kiss.

  “I’ll be right back,” Elliot assured him. He walked naked through the dim house, and Lucas was gratified that he was so confident in exposing himself to Lucas’s most appreciative gaze. His stupid, spiteful words from the night of their argument didn’t appear to have done any permanent damage. Thank God, because Lucas loved how Elliot looked. He’d be happy to spend the rest of his life proving it to him.

  Elliot returned to Lucas’s lap and handed him a couple papers.

  “What’s this?”

  “The signed confession of Juan Ortega, and the release papers for my wrongly arrested client.”

  “No way.” Lucas scanned the papers. “How the hell did this happen?”

  Elliot flushed and picked at a loose thread on the afghan. “I began to think you were right. Whether or not Julio was innocent, I gave up on him before even trying to ascertain the truth. I was afraid of being let down. I liked the kid, I really believed in him, or I would never have asked you to hire him. I felt like a fool. But he deserved better than that. So I went down to his neighborhood and asked around.”

  “You what? Jesus, are you nuts?” Lucas’s blood ran cold at the memory of how clueless Elliot was in that environment.

  “Foolhardy, at the very least.” Elliot’s smile was faint, and Lucas sensed there was a story there. Elliot dropped a reassuring kiss on his bare shoulder. “I took my coworker Miguel with me. He used to work out of the east precinct.”

  “Somehow I don’t feel like you poking around there with an ex-cop made you any safer.”

  “We were fine, in the end.”

  “What do you mean, in the—”

  Elliot covered his mouth with a gentle hand. “I’ll tell you the whole story, I promise. Stop sidetracking me. Juan confessed to the robbery, though I don’t suppose he knew he was confessing at the time, he was so agitated. The detective pressed a little harder on his accomplices, and they finally admitted they’d given her a bad name.”

  “Why did they accuse Julio in the first place?”

  “Well, here’s where Julio being a dumbass comes into play. You know how he borrowed money for his grandmother’s pain medication?”

  He nodded.

  “He thought he’d be smart and buy extra on the street, so they didn’t risk running out for a while. He paid half and told Juan he’d give him the rest the next day. I guess he thought he’d scrape it together somehow.”

  Lucas groaned.

  “I know. I’m sure it’s unprofessional to smack a client upside the head, but trust me, I didn’t let him off easy. Anyway, I guess Juan really needed the cash, and he couldn’t offload the pills quick enough, so he and his buddies hit the store. Juan got away, but they were all plenty pissed at Julio, so they tried to get him dragged in with them.”

  “Is Julio in trouble for trying to buy the pills?”

  “Nah. There’s no evidence, and I was there to keep the idiot from opening his mouth. The detective has bigger fish to fry.”

  Lucas carefully set the papers on the floor and cupped Elliot’s face. “You’re a damned good man, Elliot Smith.”

  “No.”

  Lucas kissed him. “Yes. You make me believe in things I never thought were possible.”

  Elliot moaned as Lucas’s tongue entered his mouth. He sucked on it lightly and let out a gratifying whimper of need. “You make me believe in love again,” he whispered when they parted.

  Lucas pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes. Love surged within him, stealing his ability to do more than whisper the word, “Yes.”

  Elliot seemed to understand. The joy in his face lit up the room.

  “Yes.”

  Epilogue

  Eight Months Later

  Elliot

  “Hey, man, don’t let Alex near the burgers!” Miguel leaped off the deck railing and snatched a platter from Elliot’s hands. “I saw his last cholesterol report. Dude needs to be held accountable.”

  “It’s all the stress,” Elliot said with mock sorrow. “Leaving early every day… stuck in three o’clock traffic. It takes a toll.”

  He had no idea how their employer heard them from across the yard, where he was speaking with Tracy and Arnold, but somehow he did. He raised a middle finger in their general direction without skipping a beat.

  “Dogs are ready!” Lucas called from the grill.

  For Christmas, Elliot had bought him an apron that said Pork Puller, but Lucas refused to wear it. Except for the night he opened the present and wore it to bed with nothing underneath. The memory still made Elliot smile.

  Instead of the apron, he was wearing his usual jeans and white t-shirt, and it was taking all Elliot’s willpower not to come up behind him and fill both hands with his tight, denim clad ass. But even though all their guests were friends and colleagues who wouldn’t give a damn, Elliot still tended to be restrained with public displays of affection, even after nearly a year to adjust to them.

  The best he could manage was a quick peck on Lucas’s mouth when he took the platter of hot dogs from him.

  “When can we get these people out of here?” Lucas murmured against his closed lips. “So we can fuck on our amazing new deck?”

  “You’re a fan of splinters in your ass?”

  Lucas scoffed and closed the lid of the grill. “Do you know how many days I spent sanding and staining this thing? It’s as smooth as silk. I even licked it just to be sure.”

  Elliot laughed. “You did not, you weirdo.”

  “Tradesman’s secret.” Lucas held up two fingers in a scout salute.

  “It is a pretty amazing deck, though, isn’t it?” Elliot couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of his voice. He scanned the yard. It was everything he’d imagined on those lonely nights on his back step, when he’d longed for something more than just four walls to crash between. It was more than just a deck. It was a place for people to congregate, a venue for building the family he and Lucas had both never really had.

  The best part was the way Elliot’s coworkers and Lucas’s friends mingled seamlessly, with a bare minimum of griping, despite their superficial differences.

&
nbsp; Julio helped with that. The kid had flourished under Lucas’s hard guidance and dropped his old hood bravado, exchanging it for the confidence of a young man who was beginning to understand his worth. The combined forces of the CLC had relocated him and his grandmother to a safer neighborhood, and with his record successfully expunged, he had a bright future ahead of him. He was well acquainted with everyone from the CLC, so he’d taken it upon himself to grease the wheels whenever Elliot and Lucas were busy with other hosting duties.

  It was the perfect weekend to inaugurate their new deck, because next week Lucas’s sister and niece were visiting from California. It was the first time he’d seen his sister since his sentencing, and Elliot knew how worried he was. There had been a live wire of tension running through his body ever since that phone call, and he spent all his extra time cleaning and decorating their spare bedroom.

  Elliot wasn’t worried. Lucas’s sister would see the fine man her brother had become, and she would cry on his shoulder that they’d spent so much time apart. And if she didn’t? If she had absorbed too many petty and mean lessons from their mother? Then Elliot had no qualms about showing her the door, and he would be there to pick up the pieces of his lover’s secretly tender heart.

  “What are you thinking about?” Lucas asked suspiciously. “You’ve got a sappy look on your face.”

  “Just how lucky I am.” When Elliot kissed him this time, it was long and deep and true. “I love you.”

  Lucas’s eyes were dark as the ocean. “I love you, too.”

  Hearing those words would never get old.

  “Hate to interrupt your moment of domesticity,” came a dry voice behind them, “but I’m afraid I can’t stay.”

  They broke apart. Elliot turned to see Maksim Kovalenko, looking strangely out of place in khakis and a polo instead of his normal designer suits. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and he looked relaxed, but Elliot didn’t like the remote expression on his handsome face.

  “Sure, as long as you can tell me you aren’t going in to work.”

  Maksim gave him a withering look. “I’m not going to the office.”

  “Raise your right hand and repeat after me,” Elliot goaded. “I do solemnly swear that I am not leaving a social gathering to stick my head in a brief. Unless it’s a pair of briefs and they’re on someone incredibly good looking.”

  “Smith, I swear to God, you get more annoying daily.”

  From this particular source, Elliot took that as a compliment.

  “Here, Maks.” Lucas took one of the dogs from the tray still in Elliot’s hands and passed it to the other man, who stared at it blankly. “At least eat that while you drive. Call it a working lunch.”

  Elliot had to restrain a laugh. Maksim Kovalenko didn’t look like he’d ever eaten a hot dog in his life. He could do with some fatty, salty goodness. There was a gauntness to his face that Elliot recognized. Symptoms looked the same on every workaholic.

  Maksim gave them a nod of thanks and headed toward the house. Elliot felt a pang at how isolated and alone he looked, even among so much friendship and happiness.

  “Hey, Kovalenko.” Elliot grabbed his arm impulsively. Maksim froze, his bicep tense beneath Elliot’s fingers. “We’ll be watching the game tonight. If you finish up early and want to come grab a bite… we’ll be here.”

  There was a flare of surprise in his expression before it smoothed back into its typical sardonic lines. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Elliot rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to hold his breath.

  “You know, he might show up.” Lucas wrapped his arm around his shoulders. “And then what will happen to all our scheduled deck fucking?”

  Elliot grinned into those smiling blue eyes and brushed his fingers against his unshaven cheek. “That’s the best part,” he said simply. “We have the rest of our lives for that.”

  The End

  Thanks for reading! Want to see a cute side story involving a flustered Lucas, a naked Elliot, and a room full of peach colored wall paint? Sign up HERE for my newsletter and get immediate access to all my exclusive fan content!

  Maksim’s story can be found for pre-order HERE.

  About Parker St. John

  I’ve been a fan of LGBT romance since before ebooks were a thing. Sharing all the strong, handsome characters in my head is a dream come true. I hope that my readers feel a little less alone in the world after reading one of my books.

  In between putting words on paper, I’ve been: a paramedic, a newspaper ad copy manager, a server, and a historical actor. Out of all those professions, writing is by far the best.

  If you liked this book (and even if you didn’t) please consider leaving a review! They really help indie authors like me.

  www.parkerstjohn.com

  parker@parkerstjohn.com

  Also by Parker St. John

  Murder Aforethought

  Other Than Honorable

  The Rules of Gift Giving:

  A Cabrini Christmas Collection

  Coming 12/3/2019