by Aiden Bates
Logan lifted his dark eyebrows. "You don't think so?"
"Nah." Sam shook his head and gestured to Mike, who sat on Freddie's other side. "Mike, explain it to Mr. Trattoria here."
Mike leaned over the bar to glower at Logan, and Sam felt a little bad about that. No one in this place liked Logan. "You're some kind of sucker, you know that?"
"What makes you say that?" Logan straightened himself up a little bit, and his eyes went flat, but he didn't show any more aggression than that.
"You have any idea how many times we've had developers come in and try to eminent domain buildings around here?" Mike snorted and waved his empty glass at Sam, who took it and went to fill it. "Those buildings might be empty, buddy, but someone still owns them. And the town has been very firmly on the side of the people who own those properties for the past fifty years. If they own those properties and they're paying taxes on those properties, there's no way that the town's going to just take the property away from them and hand it over to some outsider in a suit. Not for condos, not for office space, and not for an ugly trattoria that charges an entire month's cable bill for dinner." Mike gave him a sneering grin, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth.
Logan sipped from his martini and met Mike's eyes. "You don't think that the town would be better served by having actual thriving businesses in those spaces instead of empty windows?"
"I don't know how they do things down in Connecticut, Mr. Trattoria," Freddie growled, "but up here in Maine, we respect private property. If a man wants to pay taxes on an empty building, he's welcome to do so."
Sam made himself smile at Logan, just a little. Why did they have to be on opposite sides here? "We don't just grab what we want up here, Logan. There's a word for that."
Logan's blue eyes widened at the veiled accusation. "We've been trying to negotiate with you guys. We've tried to negotiate with you on everything! You've said no to everything we've asked for. What the hell else are we supposed to do?"
Silas inserted himself back into the conversation, sliding between Sam and the bar. "Well, see, around here we tend to see no as a complete sentence, Trattoria. We don't sit around and think, Well, they won't shut down their business because I asked nicely, so I'll have them shut down because I'm better than them.” He waved at some guys who were leaving for the night. "The town won't let you get away with it either."
"Times are changing, Silas." Logan looked down and then back up at Silas. "I know you don't like it, and I'd sure as hell rather have done this the easy way. But you didn't leave me with a lot of choice."
"Sure we did." Sam gave Logan a big, bright smile. "You could have stuck to your own property and run your own business, the way you wanted, and let the chips fall where they would."
Logan's shoulders slumped. "You have no idea what's riding on this."
Sam glanced around. There weren't many people left in the bar. The one o'clock hour, mandatory closing time for bars all across Maine, loomed. "Probably some jobs," he said with a shrug. "Maybe your career. Not entirely sure why you think that our jobs, and our home, and a community that's existed since prohibition ended are worth less than those jobs and that career. And the homes of the people renting those apartments. But hey. You've got your priorities and we've got ours."
Logan looked away. "It's not like that."
"It's exactly like that." Silas glared at Logan and slammed his hand down on the bar. Then he turned around and rang the bell for last call.
Freddie and Mike paid their tabs and left. The few remaining patrons followed suit, and fifteen minutes later the bar was empty. Only Sam, Silas, Logan, and the part-time waitresses were left. Sam locked the front door and turned off the neons.
"Why are you still here?" Silas asked Logan, crossing his arms across his chest.
"I'll help you clean up." Logan sighed and stood up. His martini was empty.
Sam shrugged. "Ain't putting you on the payroll, but we can always use another set of hands to clean this place up." He winked at Logan and passed him a broom. With this many hands working, they made short work of cleaning up and finished earlier than Sam had expected.
Silas checked his phone and grinned. "Well what do you know? Hey, Sam, I've got someplace to be. Don't wait up, okay?" He headed for the door after the waitresses, ruffling Sam's hair on his way past.
Logan turned his head to look at Sam. "Where exactly does he go all the time?"
Sam huffed out a laugh. ""You don't want to know." Logan might be a neighbor, and he might have helped clean up tonight, but he was still trying to put the bar out of business. He didn't get access to privileged information like that.
Logan sighed and hung his head. He seemed to get that he was the outsider here. "Sorry. I'll head out."
Sam bit his lip. He knew that Logan wouldn't have stopped in, especially on a weekend, if he didn't need the companionship in some way. "Look, if you want to come up and hang out, that's cool. I recorded a show about the Kepler mission." He shrugged.
"The Kepler mission?" Logan blinked and followed Sam toward the "employees only" door. "What's that?"
"It's a space telescope that looks for planets outside our solar system. It's really cool — parts of the thing malfunctioned in 2013 and instead of sending an expensive and risky shuttle mission up to have someone repair it, NASA was able to reprogram it from Earth so that it can look for more things and function as it is." Sam smiled. "I like that. It's kind of like making do, working with what you've got." He led Logan over to the apartment he shared with Silas and let him in.
Logan looked around, but he didn't look disturbed or disgusted or anything. Sam had kind of expected him to. He sat gingerly on the edge of the couch. "You're really into space, I guess."
Sam sat down on the other side of the couch. "Yeah. Both of us are, always have been. We used to go out back behind the house and just look at the stars. We've got a telescope, too. A nice one, for amateurs." He blushed. "Oh my God, I sound like such a geek."
Logan chuckled. "Maybe a little. Everyone has something they're passionate about, though, right? I guess I'm just curious about why you didn't go into space, you know, professionally." He turned to face Sam.
God, Logan's scent was overwhelming. "What, like going to college and everything? Nah, that's not for me. It never was. Yeah, I like to learn about this stuff, but I don't want to sit there and take tests about it so some guy in a sweater vest can tell me I know about it. I always wanted to ride a bike. When I got older, I figured that I'd have to have a way to pay for that. Joe's is it. I like the work, I like the community." He laughed. "I can't see myself working with a lot of the guys I see on these shows, you know?"
"I guess." Logan opened his mouth like he wanted to say more, but he closed it again. Sam found himself grateful.
"Is your boss still in town?"
"Yeah." Logan closed his eyes for a second. "He wants this place gone, Sam."
"It's good to want things in life. It keeps us hungry and striving." Sam shrugged and stretched his arms a little. "It's like everyone was telling you before, the town isn't going to eminent domain a thriving and profitable business that pays its taxes in favor of a new business run by outsiders."
"You're awfully sure."
"It's not like it's the first time someone's tried." Sam smiled at him. "They tried to put an alcohol treatment center next door once."
Logan scratched his head. "You're joking."
"I wish. I felt bad for them, I really did, until they tried to pull the whole, Well, we're here now and so you have to shut down. Joe's has been there for decades." He shook his head. "Can we not argue, maybe? I know it's on your mind, and it's on mine too, a little bit anyway, but it would be awesome to just have a good and easy night. Saturdays are always a little rough, you know?"
Logan nodded. "I hear you." Then he relaxed with a sudden exhalation, like he was forcing himself to relax. Maybe he was willing himself to relax, like in those self-help books Willie was always touting. "I apologize
."
Sam licked his lips, without really knowing what he was doing. Logan could be so distracting, and up here there was no bar or trattoria to distract him. "So you're renting a place?"
"Yeah. I got an apartment in Portland. I figured that it would be a good way to meet people and stuff, except I'm literally never there. I'm always here, in Westbrook, next door. Which is fine, I'll be able to take more time off once the place is up and running. Please don't take this the wrong way, but you smell incredible."
Sam inched closer to Logan. "Oh yeah? Spilled beer does it for you?"
Logan laughed. "Yeah, that's exactly it. I have a fetish for spilled beer and cotton. You figured me out." He rolled his eyes and slid closer to Sam. "Ever since I first came into your bar, I haven't been able to get your scent out of my head."
Sam leaned closer. "What a coincidence. I was just thinking about what a distraction your scent is."
Logan put an arm around Sam's shoulders. "Garlic and tomatoes?"
"Yum."
Logan leaned in and touched his lips to Sam's. It was just a chaste kiss at first, and Sam certainly didn't get a lot of those. He reached up to touch Logan's stubbled cheek and that seemed to flip some kind of switch in Logan's brain. He leaned in again and this time, there was nothing chaste about his kiss.
Logan claimed every inch of Sam's mouth for his own. He sucked Sam's bottom lip into his mouth and moved up, putting his free hand very firmly on Sam's hip. Sam was more than happy to open his mouth for the demanding alpha and grant him access. Logan tasted like he smelled, like strong black tea, with the added notes of the martini Sam had made for him earlier and whatever he'd had for dinner.
Logan pulled back, and Sam whimpered. "Your brother is going to come back, and he's going to shoot me," Logan said. He didn't take his hands off of Sam, though.
"He knows I'm not some virginal little flower, Logan." Sam rolled his eyes.
"Okay, sure, but those are guys like you. I think he kind of wants to shoot me on principle."
Sam shrugged. Logan wasn't wrong. "Maybe a little bit. He'll be gone for a while, though, and if we're not right here in the living room he'll be calm about it."
Logan bit his lip. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
Sam led Logan back to his room, where Sam let Logan pull his black tee shirt up and over his head. Why should he be ashamed? He knew he had a nice body, and he knew that Logan appreciated his body when Logan's eyes lit up at the sight.
Logan traced the lines of Sam's tattoos, first with his fingers and then with his tongue. "You're beautiful," the alpha murmured, leaning his cheek against Sam's increasingly feverish skin. "So beautiful for me, Sam."
Ordinarily, Sam would want to object. He wasn't beautiful for any alpha, he was just beautiful. The idea of being beautiful for Logan shut him up, though, and he knew he'd worry about that later on. Right now there was only room for desire.
Logan had a nice body too, well muscled and with a thick cock that Sam couldn't wait to get his mouth on. He bent down to do exactly that, taking as much of Logan into his mouth as he could.
Logan didn't last long, but Sam didn't mind. For him, right now, that just meant that he'd done his job right. Besides, they were both exhausted. Logan did pull him up to meet him, and wrap one of those soft hands around Sam's aching cock to jerk him to a messy finish, and that was enough to satisfy him for now.
Logan even stayed with Sam for a good couple of hours afterward. He didn't stay the whole night, and Sam didn't expect him to. They both had to work the next day, and there was no way that Logan could go to work the next morning in the same clothes he'd left in the night before. Besides, Logan didn't want to run afoul of Silas.
Sam grimaced at the thought. Yeah, Silas would be mad, but right now he didn't care.
***
Logan headed home in the small hours of Sunday morning. He fell into bed and slept for a few hours, wanting to keep Sam's scent on him for as long as he could before he had to wake up and continue on with his life. When his alarm went off in the morning, he stifled a groan and buried his face in his hands.
What "rest of his life" was he really talking about here? He and Sam hadn't even had real, full-on sex and Logan was already lost.
He stripped himself down and headed for the shower. For a moment, he wished that he'd stayed. How would the crew at Trattoria Siena have reacted if he'd come staggering in wearing the same rumpled clothes in which he'd left the night before? At least he'd be able to remember waking up with Sam wrapped up tight in his arms. He'd gladly chance Silas' wrath for the chance to find out what it felt like to scrub all of Sam's beautiful chestnut hair in the shower.
Who was he kidding? Sam wouldn't want that, and Logan couldn't give it to him. He shook his head at himself as he ran his washcloth over his flesh. Sure, he could imagine being in Sam's apartment, with Sam. He could picture being in their bathroom, a space he hadn't even seen, using Sam's toiletries. He couldn't picture Sam here, shelling out piles of cash in exchange for a tiny one-bedroom in a building that used to be a brothel. He couldn't picture Sam out at the little cafes just around the corner, seeking out a delicate little brunch to fortify him before the long day ahead.
No, Sam was no more cut out for this life than Logan was cut out for Sam's. Sure, Logan had grown up in an apartment like Sam's. It had even been upstairs from a bar. That didn't mean that his life now needed to reflect that, or needed to include noisy downstairs neighbors and visits from the police. No, Logan had left all of that behind when he headed out to college, thank you very much.
He scrubbed until his skin was red. Sam might smell better than any omega had ever smelled before him. He might have a mouth that could make an atheist pray. None of that was any real basis for a relationship. That was just lust, just hormones, just momentary distractions that could screw up a lifetime of work. Logan had to remember that however far he'd come, he still had a long way to go before he could become a Wesley Utkin.
He got out of the shower and dried himself off. He needed to stop deluding himself and reset his expectations. He'd never be Utkin. Utkin was more than just a successful businessman. He'd been born wealthy. He'd grown up wearing a tie every day, for crying out loud. The idea of a "cash-poor" week (or month, or year) would have been absurd to him. Foreclosure would have been something that happened to other people, generally at his or his father's hands.
That didn't mean that Logan couldn't emulate Utkin, though. Utkin was a brilliant businessman. He could have sat on his trust fund and gone yachting for the rest of his life, with a bevy of omegas if he could convince them all to play nice on the ship. Instead, he'd channeled everything into growing what he had into an empire. He wasn't just invested in New England Restaurants, no. He had extensive real estate holdings. He was a venture capitalist and had stakes in several prominent biotech firms down in Boston.
The bevy of omegas he had, though. Logan wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but he guessed that he didn't have to understand that part of his boss. Maybe if he reached the levels of success that Utkin had, he'd have more steam that he needed to blow off too. In the meantime, he couldn't afford to claim even one omega until he got the trattoria up and running.
Once he did get that omega claimed, the omega needed to be the right kind of omega. He needed to be able to fit in with the other wives and omegas, not stand out like a tall, tattooed beacon who put the others to shame.
He toweled himself off and got dressed. So what if he couldn't claim Sam? Sam didn't seem to be all that keen on a claim himself. Sam had been more than willing to just screw around, and Logan shouldn't look further into it than that.
He headed out to the trattoria. Sam was at Joe's, of course, opening the place up. He gave Logan a wicked grin that set Logan's blood on fire, and he waved, but he didn't say anything as he unrolled the giant metal shutters.
Kaylee was out front and saw everything, of course. She nudged Logan with her shoulder. "Oh my God, boss, tell me you didn't."
&nb
sp; "I didn't." Logan headed back inside so he wouldn't stare at Sam's ass.
"You wanted to, though. Look at the color of your face." Kaylee chortled as she followed him back toward the kitchen. "Not that I'm blaming you. I've seen him without his shirt, remember? And let me tell you, those Marlowe boys did not fall off the ugly tree." She washed up at the hand wash sink and headed over to the prep area.
"Is this really an appropriate discussion for the workplace?" Logan looked around at the prep cooks and assistants in the kitchen and winced. All that he needed was for them to start seeing him as someone who could be teased like that. He'd been friends with Kaylee for years. That didn't mean that these other guys could take the same liberties.
"Like anyone sees you outside of the workplace, big guy. Hey, Miguel, I'm going to need all those boxes of onions minced. Logan, make sure the servers push the risotto; if we don't use up that smoked trout, it's all going to waste, and we're screwed."
