The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  “Roger that,” Chuck agreed. “I’ll stay in the vicinity. Hunter, you go watch Grace’s ass.”

  Hunter’s jaw dropped, and he stared at Chuck helplessly, scrambling for words.

  “It was an expression,” Chuck told him, rolling his eyes. “I’m not accusing you of impropriety. Grace is what? Sixteen?”

  “Twenty-one!” Grace shot back, obviously insulted. “I’m older than Josh because I came to the school system late.”

  “And he flunked all his placement tests on purpose,” Josh muttered.

  “Not on purpose. I just forgot I was taking them and snuck out the window to go buy snacks at the corner store instead.” Grace damned near licked his fingers, his amber eyes alight and glowing with mischief.

  “Sure you did,” Hunter said gruffly. “And I could get dizzy watching Grace’s ass, ’cause he never stands still.”

  Grace smiled with all his teeth, and Hunter’s chest gave a little burble. His mouth went dry. Augh! This was no good at all. Wasn’t he supposed to be bombproof?

  But he couldn’t break eye contact, and breathing was becoming optional. Goddammit, why this kid? Why Grace, who by his own admission was easy because he couldn’t entertain the thought of a long-term lover in his pretty little head? Grace, who was endlessly trying to irritate people so they could get mad at him for doing something on purpose instead of the stuff he did by accident?

  Grace, who could probably climb Hunter like a tree, swallow his cock in one thrust of his ass, and bob up and down there for a few minutes before he got bored and catapulted off, leaving Hunter boinging like a diving board and yearning for Grace’s full attention?

  “I’d stand still for you,” Grace said, that nuclear smile not dimming for an instant, and now Hunter knew how a cat toy felt.

  “Does that mean you want me to go be the muscle?” Chuck asked, but he sounded like he didn’t believe it.

  “Hunter will go,” Danny said mildly, and Hunter broke eye contact with Grace to look at Danny.

  Danny was regarding him shrewdly, with a little bit of gentleness. “Chuck’s good with people,” he said. “He’ll fit more easily into Tabitha’s life. We need somebody to keep an eye out for Julia and Molly as well as Grace and Artur. Coms will help, but Hunter, I think your particular skills will be more in need. Of course, Felix and I will be—”

  “Here,” Felix said shortly. “Or have you forgotten we both have day jobs?”

  Danny’s jaw dropped like that of a little kid. “But Felix! They’re going off having adventures!”

  Felix arched an eyebrow, like he had with Josh. “And you just started a new job six weeks ago. Give it some time before you start disappearing, yes?”

  “But—”

  “And I actually have a network to run, and I just got back. No—we can be at our computers and on coms when things are going down, but we’re going to have to trust Josh to run this one without us, okay?”

  “I could ask David and Marion if—”

  “David’s got a big exhibit coming up, and Marion is a thousand years old, Danny. They wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t need you. And remember the Gemstone Gala? The gala that was your idea to raise money? Lots of security and publicity and things? You can’t leave now. Grace may be able to come back and perform, but you’re still staging your own show!”

  Danny grunted. “Oh fine,” he muttered. “Fine.” His scowl lightened up a fraction. “But only because I want you all to see the carved gemstone collection. It’s really….” He shuddered happily. “You have no idea how amazing it is.”

  Pretty much everybody in the room narrowed their eyes with avaricious, serpentine smiles. It wasn’t that they were greedy people per se, but stolen sparkly things did have a certain appeal.

  Even if you had every intention of giving the stolen sparkly thing back.

  “So that puts you two back here on the sidelines,” Julia said. “And me in the thick of things.” She gave a delicate feline smile. “Oh, the trouble we can get into.” She raised her eyebrows at Molly, who grinned back. “But what exactly are we doing?”

  “The way I see it,” Danny said, finishing off his orange juice, “is that we need to do a couple of things. Grace?”

  Grace was in midstretch, his long legs split flush with the floor, his cheek pressed into his thigh. He didn’t even pause for breath. “We need to steal whatever Tabby’s grandfather is dropping off and then put it back so they don’t discover we know what it is.”

  “Very good,” Danny acknowledged. “Hunter?”

  Hunter knew his job. “We need to figure out how many of Sergei’s men are involved in the pickup and the drop-off, and what they’re there for. Are they armed? Do they take action with whatever’s in the bags? Is there a point man? Or is the bag given to another mule? Either way, we need to track it and see what it’s being used for so we know how big a splash it’s going to make when whatever-it-is doesn’t land in the pond.”

  Danny’s smile showed he appreciated the continuation of the ripple analogy. “Very good.” He grew sober. “You really do need to watch Grace’s ass, though. They can’t know he’s anywhere near that package. We don’t want him to bring their suspicion back with him on the plane.”

  Hunter nodded. “I’ll keep him safe, sir.” It was really the only thing he could do in relation to Grace.

  “Good man. Julia and Molly?”

  Julia looked at Molly, who grinned impudently. “Besides buy all the things?” she chirped.

  Felix was the one who chuckled. “Besides that, of course.”

  “We’re surveillance they don’t know,” Molly answered promptly. For all her impudence, she took this sort of thing very seriously. “They’ll be watching Artur and Grace, probably as they go about their day. We’ll be watching the watchers—and watching to see what happens after they get the gemstone, or whatever, that Grace has already stolen and returned.”

  “Very nice.” Danny chewed his lips. “Ladies, since you’re going shopping, you wouldn’t, perhaps, consider…?”

  Molly clapped her hands and twirled, her curls fanning out behind her in an arc. “Disguises? Can we wear disguises? Can I wear a black wig and stilettos?”

  Julia considered it. “Maybe a low-heeled pump, my dear. We may have to move fairly quickly.”

  “But the wig? I can wear a wig, right?”

  “Of course! We can go shopping tomorrow.”

  Molly pumped her fists. “Yes!”

  “I love a student who enjoys her homework,” Danny told her with a wink. “Stirling, we’re going to assume Josh is on coms and direction. What will you be doing?”

  Stirling blinked slowly. In another person, Hunter might have assumed a slow mind, or someone who wasn’t accustomed to the think-on-your-feet rhythm that the rest of the crew had, but Hunter had seen Stirling in action. He was organizing so he didn’t blurt out all the things at once.

  “Besides information, sudden hotel rooms, and all things electronic, I’ll be helping to look at the—” He bit his lip and looked at Felix shyly. “—ripples. Whatever ripples these people have left in their wake beforehand, and the ripples they’re probably going to throw afterwards.”

  Danny nodded. “Precisely. And if you like, I can put you in touch with Torrance Grayson to help. He’s a top-notch journalist, and he might have contacts you don’t. Now, if it’s at all possible—and the ripples are far reaching or could hurt a lot of people—we may want to stop that rock from splashing down. But we won’t know if we don’t get our homework done. Stirling can’t be the only one doing the research here. Hunter, you have contacts. Chuck, you too. Josh, you’re good with research, and you’re excellent at bothering people to get what you want. You all have got to be working in the background. Grace, I know you’re brilliant, boyo, but I want this item out, photographed, analyzed, and back before anybody knows it’s missing. You need to study the layout of all the places you’re going to be so you know the sixty-dozen ways you can steal and replace it,
do you understand? Start quizzing Tabitha as soon as she’s awake and get her to make her grandfather write out a schedule.”

  Everybody nodded, and Danny scowled at Felix.

  “I can’t believe we’re not going to Vancouver,” he told Felix. “It’s one of the few cities I’m not familiar with, and I would love to explore.” He smiled prettily. “Can we do a short reconnaissance trip this weekend?”

  Felix grimaced. “I have to work—”

  Danny grinned. “I don’t! Julia, you want to come with me to set up shop?”

  “Yes!” she crowed, and now it was Felix’s turn to pout.

  “That’s not fair!”

  She gave him an arch look. “Well, neither is promising you’d work less and leaving us hanging in the breeze.” She turned to Molly without compunction. “Come along, dearest. We need to plan before we drive to the city. Let’s take Tabitha while we’re at it. I have the feeling she’ll need something to distract her when she wakes up from her nap.”

  And with that, Julia led Molly away, and the rest began to disperse.

  Hunter waited until the room had cleared of everybody but Josh, Danny, and Felix, whom, he assumed, had business to talk about since Josh was running point, before following Grace up the stairs. Grace was about halfway up when he turned around and gave Hunter an evil little smile.

  “You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind if you watched my ass, as long as you thought it was a good ass.”

  “It’s a great ass,” Hunter told him, not responding to his smile. “But I’m not going to watch it if it’s not mine.”

  Grace’s eyes widened, and he stopped, practically stumbling into Hunter’s arms. Hunter caught him smoothly and set him on his feet, trying to keep his breathing in check at their touch.

  It was hard. Dylan Li was one of the most beautiful men he’d ever seen, and right now there wasn’t a touch of playfulness on his full mouth and no glint of humor in his amber eyes.

  “My ass is my own,” Dylan said, as though this had just occurred to him.

  “To do with as you wish,” Hunter told him gallantly, but inside, his hammering heart started to ache, which was unheard of.

  “Then why would you say something like that?” Grace asked, and for a moment, Hunter could almost believe he was hurt.

  “Because I don’t want to joke about it,” Hunter said gruffly. “I’m not staring at your ass during a job, and I’m not flirting with you before a job. I only do that with people who want to be mine.”

  Grace’s mouth opened and closed for a moment, and he looked truly out of his element. Hunter steeled himself, though. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t last long, and he wanted to be ready for whatever retort Grace had ready.

  It came out weak at best.

  “Caveman,” Grace huffed, pulling out of Hunter’s grasp.

  And that was it. With a little shudder, Grace went running up the stairs, not even looking behind him.

  Hunter breathed deeply, the cedarwood and vetiver smell that always reminded him of Grace lingering in the air as he ascended a little more slowly.

  He watched Grace’s ass the entire way up, his own word echoing in his head in spite of the foolishness of even thinking it.

  Mine.

  Tension

  “SEE?” GRACE hissed at Josh. “He’s staring at me!”

  Josh took off his earbuds and looked away from the tablet in his lap, casting Hunter a surreptitious look across the aisle of the plane. Hunter—his dark hair pulled back in a half tail, gray eyes hidden behind sunglasses—was reclined in his seat, hands folded on his abdomen, the picture of refined repose.

  “Not unless he’s doing it from his pores,” Josh muttered, yawning. He’d been really tired lately; Grace wasn’t sure why. Maybe he should eat more. Josh was always trying to slim down to get theater parts, but he was almost too thin for theater now.

  Grace glared at him. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “He is your friend,” Stirling said from Grace’s other side, eyes and fingers never leaving his laptop. “Anybody else would have smothered you in your sleep.”

  “If he was my friend, he’d admit Hunter doesn’t like me,” Grace grumbled, put out. Couldn’t they see? Yes, the ex-military man was taciturn and stoic mostly, but he smiled at Josh, was kind to Stirling, even flirted with Molly on occasion, which was easy to do because Molly was irrepressible, but still. He only ever looked at Grace when they were speaking about the op, and he stayed as far across the room as possible.

  Twice this past week, during dinner at the Salingers’, Grace had set the table, coming to sit down last with the express purpose of sitting next to Hunter. Both times Hunter managed to come up with an excuse to sit next to someone else. Grace had fidgeted unhappily during both meals. He’d wanted to sit next to Hunter. The man’s presence grounded him somehow. The eternal flitting, fluttering sensation that had driven Grace from lover to lover, from new and shiny to new and shiny, abruptly stilled, calmed next to Hunter’s muscular, immovable presence. And since that moment on the stairs, when Hunter had glared at him, half-mad, half-hungry, he hadn’t so much as looked in Grace’s direction without prompting.

  How was the man supposed to watch Grace’s ass during an op when he couldn’t even meet Grace’s eyes at the dinner table?

  Dammit!

  Josh turned and gave Grace a level look. “I am your friend, and I’m a good enough friend not to call you an oblivious dumbass for not figuring out what’s going on.”

  Grace narrowed his eyes. “I’m not dumb,” he sulked.

  “I know. You’ve got an IQ of a hundred buzzenteen. Whatever. You’re an idiot, and if you don’t stop pulling Hunter’s chain, I’m going to disown you. Hunter’s trying to be a good guy. Can’t you see that?”

  “See what? I’m just trying to get to know him!” Grace complained. “He’s your secret friend. You didn’t even introduce him to the rest of us until Felix needed help!”

  If he was honest with himself, Grace would admit that he was a little hurt. He and Josh had been best friends since the second grade. He’d confided everything to Josh: first blowjob, first time he’d gotten high (which had happened simultaneously, because junior high kids shouldn’t flirt with high school kids, that’s why), and every theft from when he’d stolen candy from the local convenience store to the time he’d shoplifted from the guy who discriminated against Stirling because he was Black.

  Josh had never berated him or shamed him—and, in the case of the shitty clothing-store guy, Josh had gone back and jimmy-rigged the guy’s security system and set up all his mannequins in obscene and hilarious positions in the storefront window, because Josh was solid that way.

  Josh was not as bent as Grace—for one, his sex partners had been few and far between and fraught with terrible things like “feelings” and “monogamy.” He also tended to consider the victims of his crimes, making sure that the person he stole from or messed with was an actual out-and-out bastard, instead of someone who happened to be in his way. But that moral compass in Josh more than made up for Grace’s decided lack of one. If Josh hadn’t been there, telling Grace, “No, that’s a bad idea. Please, for me, don’t,” Grace would have been dead, in prison, or addicted to something by now, if not all three.

  So when Josh had rounded up his friends to bail Felix out of a jam, Grace had been surprised, to say the least, to find that Josh had other friends besides him, Molly, Stirling, and (inexplicably) Chuck. Chuck was odd enough—who was this big, muscly guy with the Texas drawl who liked to take all the strangest humanity classes at U of C?

  But at least Chuck talked and laughed and joked—was, in fact, brutally quick-witted, which only made sense because Josh liked him. Josh was kind to people who couldn’t keep up with him, but he didn’t get close with a person unless they could follow his devious, questing mind. Josh may have given Grace crap about having an IQ of “a hundred and buzzenteen,” but Josh, in fact, was only a few points shy of Grace, which he knew beca
use they’d taken the same tests in high school. In fact, Grace suspected Josh of shaving points off his own tests just to give Grace the edge.

  Grace could privately admit he would have badgered Josh until death about being smarter than he was, because Grace really was that insecure.

  He couldn’t help it. Josh’s family may not have been conventional, but he’d had two parents who may not have been in love, but had certainly loved each other like a brother and sister, and who had definitely loved him. And whereas Grace’s parents would do pretty much anything to be out of the country while Grace hit milestones like first recitals and middle-school graduations, Josh’d had Uncle Danny. That man had snuck him postcards through a secret mailbox and actually flew into the country to appear at everything from play performances to birthday parties, all while avoiding Felix because they were broken up then.

  Danny had flown from Ireland to sneak in and out of Josh’s hospital room after he’d broken his arm and gotten a concussion—not once, but twice. Grace’s father had been unable to leave a business meeting in Chicago when Grace had overdosed after trying heroin for the first and only time in high school.

  Josh had, though. Josh had brought Felix and Julia, and they had stayed at his bedside for two days, and then they’d brought Grace home to their house, where he’d stayed until he and Josh had left for the dorms at U of C.

  Grace had given up drugs after that. Coke made him even more obnoxious, and after waking up in the hospital, an angry Josh at his side, he didn’t want to risk losing the one person in his life who gave a true goddamn about him.

  But that made Josh’s secret friendship with Hunter even harder to deal with. Apparently they’d been hanging out since January, and Grace hadn’t even known about him until they’d pulled the job to help Felix in late March.

  And judging by Josh’s irritated side-eye, he knew that was what this was about.

  “Hunter is quiet,” Josh said. “Chuck loves everybody, and you’ve known Stirling and Molly since grade school, but Hunter is quiet. He’s been to war, for fuck’s sake! He doesn’t need foolishness.” Josh gave Hunter a quick glance and scowled, obviously not convinced that he was sleeping. Fortunately, the flight attendants were coming by with drinks and snacks, and while the cart was in the way, Josh lowered his voice and murmured in Grace’s ear.