The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  “Which wasn’t much until I put it together right now,” Hunter said. He looked at Grace curiously. “You are a superfreaky genius. Why were you the last one in the room to get it?”

  Grace shrugged. “You know what you need?” he asked. “Some of that raw sugar. Or some of those international creamers that aren’t real cream. They taste good. The kind with chocolate and toffee? Yum!”

  Josh tried hard to put his eyes back in his head. “Because he had to go through three extra train stations, two stops, and a tunnel to get to the same place,” he said, and Hunter nodded in agreement.

  “As long as he enjoyed the trip,” he said loyally. “We’ll get a few groceries this week, Grace. Mostly I see us staying at Josh’s, but this place will be good a couple nights a week.”

  Grace grinned at Chuck and Hunter. “I’m loud,” he said. And there was so much pride in his voice, Hunter couldn’t even object.

  “Sadly enough, I know that,” Josh said, and Hunter had to laugh to himself. Brothers—they would always be brothers.

  “I coulda guessed,” Chuck said dryly. “But I also could have stood living my entire life without knowing.”

  “So Chancellor and Creighton are probably going to be at the gem gala,” Hunter said.

  “Yup,” Josh told him. “And also at the premiere night. I would put money down that Artur’s going to get a heads-up sometime this week. Sergei has used Artur too often for him not to have a part in this. I feel it.”

  “So,” Hunter said, wrapping his other arm around Grace’s waist, the better to pull him tight and feel him, warm and pliant, in his lap and keep him safe from all the scary things that they both knew were out there. “Do we have a plan?”

  Josh gestured to the almost empty box of donuts. “Are we awake? Are we sugared up? Have we had enough caffeine? Because I think it’s time to go back to my parents’ basement and come up with a couple. What do you say?”

  “I’m wearing Hunter’s sweats for the rest of my life,” Grace said happily.

  “You’ll have to change them to wash them,” Josh said. “And give him back his sugar spoon. Don’t think I can’t see it sticking out in your pocket.”

  Hunter grunted in exasperation. “Dammit, Grace!”

  Grace pulled it from his pocket and smacked it down on the table. “I’ll get it eventually,” he promised. “Don’t even bother to deny it.”

  “I’m not going to deny it,” Hunter muttered. “I’m just going to try to give you something better. I like that spoon!”

  “See?” Grace shrugged. “There is nothing better.” He kissed Hunter’s cheek, and Hunter cursed the fact that the only ideas he could come up with at the moment were how to hang on to his damned sugar spoon.

  THEY STAYED the night in Grace’s room, and Hunter spent a few moments lying on the soft mattress, his eyes roving the vaulted ceiling, taking in what he understood now was Grace’s real home.

  There were pictures of K-pop stars on the walls, and he had to smile, but there were also pictures of Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sergei Polunin, and Carlos Acosta.

  Heroes.

  Pictures of him, from the second grade on, perhaps, with Josh and his family at various school outings, Felix and Julia looking very young and happier than most married couples Hunter had ever known, including his own parents.

  A secret picture, probably smuggled to him by Josh, of Josh with Felix, Julia, and Danny. Danny and Felix were standing couple close—so before their breakup—and Josh was looking so very proud.

  Family. Hunter had a picture of his parents and brothers that he kept in his wallet against all protocol and good sense. He loved them, distantly, but since he’d joined the service, they’d been people he sent Christmas packages to. Grace had seized upon Josh and his family with two hands, but he’d always been afraid he’d be kicked aside.

  So easily wounded, Dylan Li.

  “Dylan?” he murmured.

  “What? Why are you still awake? Do you want to fool around?”

  Hunter grunted and ran his hand under Grace’s T-shirt and the waistband of his briefs. “Yes, but no. Are you going to be okay tomorrow?”

  “What’s to worry? Dance, dance, dance—it’s two weeks before showtime. Whatever.”

  Funny, how he was the male lead in the show, and he practiced for probably fifty hours a week, but he could blow it off as “whatever.”

  “But there may be bad guys around.” He felt like an idiot saying “bad guys,” but he wasn’t sure how much Grace had been paying attention. He’d noticed that sometimes Grace tended to dance to his own music—literally—and Hunter had gathered that the motion helped Grace focus. But they’d briefed for hours, doing things like asking Stirling or Danny to look things up, sending Felix out to make calls, and even, at one point, having Julia ask Phyllis, the housekeeper, if she knew some of the caterers who would be working the gala at the museum.

  “That’s not really what you want to know,” Grace said wisely. “What you really wanted to know is if I’m going to be okay the day after tomorrow.”

  Hunter let out a breath. Yup. That’s what he really wanted to know. He should have known better than to underestimate a man named Grace.

  “Yeah, so. Are you?”

  Grace grunted. “I’ll be way better if we have sex tonight.”

  Hunter buried his nose against the soft, fine hair at the nape of Grace’s neck. “If I suck you off, can you not make too much noise?”

  Grace made a decidedly evil sound. “Nope. My turn!”

  And with that, he turned around in Hunter’s arms and scooched down, taking Hunter’s boxers as he went. His mouth on Hunter’s cock was heaven, and the distraction worked. Hunter would wager neither of them were thinking about the next step in their grand plan—having to go visit Laslo and Gabriel Hu the day after tomorrow.

  Which was good, because Hunter wasn’t sure the newfound mature Grace, who wanted to be solid in a relationship, could have dealt with that at the moment.

  The Devil in the Dilemma

  “HOW FAR do we have?” Grace asked, and even though he knew it was for the umpteenth time, neither Hunter at the wheel, nor Josh and Chuck, sitting behind them, got impatient.

  “That depends,” Josh said mildly. “Do we need to stop for another milkshake?”

  “Yes,” said Chuck and Grace, and Grace turned expectantly to Hunter.

  “Please?” he added.

  “Sure,” Hunter said. “Let me find a place at the next off-ramp.”

  The map said it took three and a half hours to get from the suburbs of Chicago to Springfield, Illinois, but that’s because the map didn’t need milkshakes to keep up its moral courage.

  “Maybe we should have brought Tabby and Molly,” Grace said. “They’re girls. They’re merciless. They’d lay waste to Gabriel Hu before he could be all voodoo daddy and fuck me up.”

  “Gabriel Hu is not a big enough threat to need Tabby and Molly,” Josh said seriously. “You don’t need them to fuck him up for you. You can out-Grace him. It’ll be fine. You have us to make sure he doesn’t have security guards who think with their balls. Besides, Tabby would have gone after Hu with guns blazing. That girl’s got a show to do with you in two weeks. You don’t want her to have bruises or a strained knee or something from stomping his face in.”

  Grace thought of Tabby set loose on Gabriel’s handsome face and chuckled. “Damned shame,” he said, and the rest of the men in the car agreed.

  “That’d be something,” Chuck concurred from the back. “So, guys… how amoral are you? If, say, I had a chance to blow this guy and rip his dick off, would that be okay?”

  “Yes,” Grace said, at the same time Josh and Hunter snapped, “No!”

  “Oh my God,” Josh muttered. “You guys! As far as we know, he’s not a serial killer. Everybody sit back, let me talk to Laslo about the damned gems and where he gets his information sources, and we’ll see how this plays out. There will be no homicidal blowjobs, and no viol
ence unless someone offers it to us first, do we understand? At this point nobody knows we’re a crew. Nobody cares about Felix Salinger’s son—or Gideon Li’s! And Hunter and Chuck? You are off the radar. Let’s keep it that way. Jesus Christ. All I need is a top hat and a red coattail.”

  “And what?” Grace asked. He knew, but listening to Josh bitch was one of his favorite hobbies.

  “He’d be the ringmaster, and we’d be his monkeys,” Hunter said. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “Yes!” Grace cackled, and he ignored the haters in the back who said things like “Oh my God,” and “Are you kidding me?” “There! There! Do you see that? It’s a Wendy’s. We can get Frosties!”

  “And that’s what I’m talking about,” Chuck muttered. “Although a strawberry shake—”

  “There we go,” Josh said, sounding tired, which was funny because he wasn’t the one going to see his ex-boyfriend. “Look, a Steak ’n Shake. Everybody’s happy.”

  “Do you want a milkshake?” Grace asked. Josh hadn’t gotten one at the last stop either.

  “No, Grace.” Josh sighed. “I’m actually up for a part after your show opens. I can’t have baby fat.”

  Grace scowled. Josh was too thin. He’d had a borderline eating disorder in high school, and Grace knew it surfaced whenever he put too much pressure on himself.

  “Bullshit,” Hunter muttered, heading off the freeway. “If I have to stop, you have to get a shake. I’m getting cookies and cream.”

  “Me too! And fried zucchini.”

  Josh made gagging motions. “I’ll take a chicken sandwich and a plain Coke,” he said.

  “Killjoy,” Hunter muttered. “It will make Grace feel better if you order fat on the hoof.”

  “Fine! Banana!” Josh snarled, and Grace smiled over his shoulder.

  “And a chicken sandwich,” he said, pleased with himself. Then he looked at Hunter, who was driving with the same calm efficiency he showed in everything else he attempted. Hunter’s hair was pulled back into a queue, and he was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, looking professional and tough. But Grace was remembering the gentleness of Hunter’s hands in his hair when Grace went down on him, and the slow, sure way Hunter mastered his body when they were making love.

  Making love was a thing Grace had never done before Hunter, and now that he knew what it was supposed to be, he wasn’t going to mistake what two people did naked when they gave zero shits with making love ever again for as long as he lived.

  “What are you so pleased about?” Hunter asked him as Josh answered a call on Bluetooth, earbuds firmly on.

  “You’re taking care of Josh too. That’s good. He needs us.”

  Hunter nodded. “Well, he’s the smartest boss I’ve ever had.”

  “I thought Felix and Danny were our bosses?” Chuck asked from the back.

  “They are, for now,” Hunter said. “But can’t you tell by the way they keep pulling Josh aside? They’re trying to train him.”

  “They wanted to keep him out of it,” Grace said, remembering their flustered admonitions when Josh and Grace were kids. “But Josh was good at knowing where to draw the line, and he kept me out of trouble. But when Felix got in trouble, it’s like they decided to go all in.”

  “A family that cons together, stays together,” Josh said, pulling his earbuds out to indicate he was done. “And yeah. They love doing it, but Felix and Danny finally have a chance to be together and have seminormal lives.” He smiled dreamily. “And I do love the game.”

  “We can be like the School of Turin,” Chuck said.

  “That’s not a real thing,” Hunter grunted, pulling into the Steak ’n Shake drive-thru and getting in line behind an SUV full of kids.

  “Hell it ain’t,” Chuck said. “And it’s still going strong!”

  “What the hell’s the School of Turning?” Grace asked, and then Hunter ordered and Grace spent the rest of the trip lost in ice cream and stories—from the apocryphal to the real—about a famous gang of thieves that educated each other within driving distance of Antwerp, the diamond capital of the world.

  He didn’t even remember they were going to visit Gabriel Hu and his father until Hunter pulled off the freeway again and headed through some rural wooded land before turning off onto a private road.

  “More hidden fortresses,” Hunter rumbled.

  “Fantastic,” Josh muttered.

  “Truly,” Chuck said, completely serious. “I love the girl, but guarding Tabby did not nearly meet my adrenaline jones. Let’s hope they got lasers and Dobermans and the full bad-guy press, okay?”

  “Does an eight-foot wooden fence count?” Hunter asked as they drew near the gate. There was a guard at the kiosk there, a paunchy, sixty-something white male who had “retired cop” written all over him in Sharpie.

  “Only if I have to jump over it and there’s a moat with sharks on the other side,” Chuck said.

  Grace wrinkled his nose and looked over his shoulder at their multitalented friend. “I suspect,” he said thoughtfully, “that you may have led a life that makes driving to a friend’s house and knocking on the door look like small potatoes.”

  But Chuck didn’t take the bait. “Look, Grease Man, you may want to pretend that these people are friends, but I tell you what. Whether they’re willing or unwilling, they are feeding information into the hands of bad guys who are ruining people’s lives. I’m not sure you get that. These people aren’t your friends.”

  “Don’t worry, Chuck,” Josh said, his tone that of a man who wanted to take the intensity down a notch. “Gabriel and Laslo Hu are no friends of ours.”

  Hunter approached the kiosk and rolled down his window to the retired cop/security guard.

  “Please state your business,” the man said, and while his tone was bored, his eyes were roaming over the featureless black SUV with squirrel-bright intensity.

  “We’re here to visit old friends,” Hunter said blandly, and Grace barely managed to cover his mouth with his hand.

  “Who would be visiting?”

  “Dylan Li,” Grace said, sitting forward and pretending to be a grown-up. “I’m a school friend of Gabriel’s.”

  Something crossed the security guard’s features then that was hard to define. Was it pity?

  “Oh,” he said softly. “Well, in that case, come on in. Gabriel doesn’t have many visitors these days.”

  Grace couldn’t meet Hunter’s eyes. This didn’t bode well, and Grace’s stomach churned.

  “Oh, look,” Josh said as Hunter pulled through the gate. “There’s a bunch of foliage and a wooded area between the gate and the house. Chuck, what should we do with that?”

  “Well, Hunter could slow down and disable the locks so I can get out,” Chuck muttered. Hunter did exactly that, and Chuck slid out of the car, shutting the door quietly as he ran alongside the still-moving SUV. He disappeared into the trees as Hunter continued on at the same pace. As they pulled up to a large multistoried house with a paved driveway and a three-deep carport, Hunter caught his breath at the sight of a midsized man in semiprofessional dress training two large dogs in the front yard. He was holding a clicker and issuing commands, and the dogs were moving with the precision of competition field marchers.

  “Well,” Grace mumbled, watching what were possibly English mastiffs as they massacred an attack dummy, “they’re not Dobermans.”

  “If Chuck survives, he’ll be disappointed to hear that,” Josh murmured, and Grace had a moment to feel for his friend. Chuck’s survival was on his shoulders, even if Chuck had been the one who’d thought of getting out of the vehicle so he could reconnoiter. Josh tapped his earbud, and they all heard him as he murmured, “Ginormous fucking dogs close to the house, Chuck. Trained to kill.”

  “Good,” Chuck said, cheerfully undeterred. “I brought bacon!”

  “Roger that,” Josh murmured and tapped his earbud again. “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s impressive.”

  �
�He didn’t smell like bacon,” Grace observed as they pulled into a parking spot obviously reserved for visitors.

  “Maybe he kept it in a plastic bag,” Hunter said, and Grace flashed him a relieved smile, because apparently Hunter got him.

  “Recycled,” Josh said, and Grace had one of those sudden shafts of realization.

  He was loved. These people understood him, and no matter what horrors Gabriel Hu held for him, he could do this.

  They got out of the SUV and headed up the stone-paved walk toward the front door. The house had been built probably seventy-five years ago or so. Sturdy multicolored brick, covered in ivy, it stood three stories with a basement, probably. The white trim around the windows looked almost severe against all that brick-and-ivy tradition, and all of the draperies were dark colors too. No bright florals for those windows—not even in late spring.

  The man who opened to Josh’s knock was thin to the point of gauntness and may have been handsome once. He certainly had striking cheekbones, and his sunken eyes were probably a tarnished gold, but his hair was thinning, and he had the sallow complexion of someone with liver or kidney problems. There was an air of desperation about the man, and the decided odor of smoke, probably vaped in some way.

  It wasn’t until he said, “I’m sorry. Did you come to see me or my father?” that Grace recognized Gabriel Hu.

  He gaped for a moment, while Josh stepped in smoothly. “Well, we came to visit your father,” Josh said, “but it’s good to see you, Gabe.”

  Gabriel squinted at Josh and then widened his eyes. He took in Grace, and something terrible—dismay? anger? remorse?—flitted across his face so quickly it was like the shadow of a bird.

  “What are you guys doing here?” he asked. “Dylan? What in the hell?”

  “We need to talk to your father,” Josh said softly. “It’s business. Don’t worry—we don’t mean him any harm. We just need to ask him a few questions.”