Stumptown Spirits

by E. J. Russell

  “Leave ’em.”

  “But my jeans. I can’t get them off over my shoes.”

  “I said leave ’em. This’ll do. For now.”

  He wanted full-body skin contact. Wanted to feel every inch of Riley with every inch of himself, but he couldn’t give in. Couldn’t weaken. He had to keep up this pitiful charade of Logan-as-uncaring-asshole, so Riley wouldn’t mourn him too deeply.

  This night would be enough. It had to be. It was a damn sight more than he’d ever expected and a shitload more than he deserved.

  He repositioned his legs, trapping Riley’s between his, and held up his right palm. “Lick it.”

  Riley’s tongue darted out, licking his lips, and Logan had to fight the urge to follow it back into Riley’s mouth with his own. “I—”

  “No talking. Do it.”

  Riley nodded, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. Gaze never leaving Logan’s, he dragged the flat of his tongue from the base of Logan’s palm to the tips of his fingers, then sucked the middle finger into his mouth, cheeks hollowing with perfect suction that was simultaneously heaven and hell.

  Logan ground his teeth and snatched his hand away before he shot from nothing but the heat of Riley’s mouth on his finger.

  “Don’t pad your part. I’m running this show. Get it?”

  Riley nodded, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips. “Got it,” he whispered.

  Logan leaned in and fastened his teeth on Riley’s earlobe, wrapping his hand around their cocks. “Good.”

  Yes. So fucking good. Thank God for his oversized hands. He pumped them both, skin against hot silken skin, pre-cum adding extra slick to his Riley-damp palm.

  He captured Riley’s mouth in a savage kiss, tongue-fucking him in time with the increasing speed of his fist. A nip of that swollen lower lip as he swiped his thumb over the heads of their cocks.

  Riley gasped. “Logan. God. I—” He threw his head back, and Logan caught it with his free hand before it could hit the wall.

  Riley shuddered, spilling hot and wet over Logan’s hand and onto the smooth skin of his own belly. The intoxicating musky scent pushed Logan right to the edge.

  But it was the sight of Riley, gorgeous in the throes of his orgasm, that sent Logan soaring out into space. His jaw tightened as shudders rippled up his spine, his spunk painting Riley’s skin from nipples to navel.

  With a sound that was part sigh, part chuckle, part snort, Riley nestled his cheek against Logan’s shoulder. That sound, totally ridiculous and incredibly dear, torpedoed the last of Logan’s resolve. Instead of pulling away, zipping up, and walking out as he ought to do, he wrapped his arms around Riley, holding him close, heedless of the cooling mess that transferred from Riley’s chest and belly to his own T-shirt.

  Fuck it. I’m taking this. Just for a little while. Just until the end. He buried his nose in the soft hair tickling his jaw, and gave up on the Plan.

  Damn thing was fucking stupid anyway.

  With all Logan’s talk of no-strings fucking, Riley hadn’t expected him to stay the night. But after their second round, when they’d made it from the wall to the floor—with the inevitable rug burn on Riley’s knees, but he didn’t care—Logan had dragged him onto the bed and fallen asleep with his hand cupping Riley’s balls.

  Not about to remind him that cuddling didn’t exactly line up with the no-strings agenda, Riley had snugged his ass against Logan’s groin and slept better than he had for months.

  Although Logan might talk tough and act like he didn’t care, Riley hadn’t missed the almost reverent way he’d stroked Riley’s skin, or his kisses more tender than raw.

  It let him hope.

  As daylight crept in through a gap in the curtains, he rolled onto his side, and tucked his hand under his cheek, studying Logan as he slept. God, he always looked so hot in the morning: hair rumpled, scruff another day scruffier, a satisfied smirk on his face even in sleep. Riley had taken a picture of that look with his camera phone once and shown it to Logan, who’d called it “the sleep of the well fucked.”

  He lifted the sheet and peeked at Logan’s body; it was still the toned work of art it had always been, although he might be a little leaner. Just what the man needed. More muscle definition.

  Riley’s gaze strayed to Logan’s cock, already half-hard. Well. Nobody had ever accused Riley of leaving a job undone, and he wasn’t about to let this be the first time. He grinned and crawled under the covers, the sheets enveloping him in a smooth white tent. Just him and Logan’s gorgeous cock. Yeah. The perfect way to start the day.

  Riley licked his lips, but before he could lick anything more to the point, a determined rap sounded on the door.

  “Who’s tap-dancing on the walls?” Logan muttered and buried his head beneath the pillow.

  Riley struggled out from under the sheets, and scrambled out of bed to the accompaniment of another round of knocking. He yanked open the drawer of the junior-sized dresser. Pants, pants, somewhere he had pants.

  He pulled a pair of sweats out of a tangle of T-shirts and underwear, shoved one leg in, caught his toes on the elastic, and nearly took a header onto the rug. Hopping across the room on one foot, he finally got the other leg in and the drawstring cinched around his waist.

  More pounding. “Hold on. I’m coming.”

  Logan’s evil chuckle was barely muffled by the pillow. “Not yet. Soon though.”

  Heat infused Riley’s bare chest, and a grin ambushed his face. “Shut up.” Shut up? Seriously? God, could he sound any more like a seventh grader? He probably looked like one too, the kid who’d just found out that his secret crush wanted to meet him under the bleachers after school. He leaned one bare shoulder against the wall, unhooked the privacy chain, and cracked the door open.

  Julie stood in the corridor, tapping her foot in time with the drum of her pencil against her clipboard. “Where did you go last night? I needed to go over . . .” Julie stared at him. “Oh my God. You had sex with Logan.”

  Her voice echoed in the hallway and a middle-aged man passing by with three pink Voodoo Doughnuts boxes in his arms turned a startled gaze their way.

  “God, Jules.” Riley glared at her. “Keep it down, will you? How can you possibly know that?”

  “How? For one thing, you have sex hair. For another.” Julie drew on her yellow pad and held up a picture of an alleged face—a circle with two dots for eyes and a zigzag for a mouth. “You’ve looked like this since rat-bastard sucktard Logan walked out last May.”

  Riley scowled. “My head is not that round.”

  She bent over her pad, pencil flying. “This is what you look like today.” She held up the pad with a new drawing, the zigzag replaced by a half-circle that extended all the way past the eye dots.

  “Shut up.”

  Her eyes widened. “Holy shit. He’s here now, isn’t he?”

  Riley clenched his teeth and nodded.

  “You want me to go away, don’t you?”

  He nodded again, more emphatically.

  “And I’ll bet you don’t want me to remind you . . .” she poked the knob of his shoulder, the only spot she could reach through the door “. . . that the asshole scum-bucket walked out on you without a freaking word five months ago.”

  “No. Now go away.”

  “Fine, but we’ve got a production meeting at ten, and if you’re not there, I’m sending Max down here.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me. Ten. Don’t be late.” She disappeared down the hallway.

  He hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and shut the door. Not that it would deter Julie, but what the hell. He could say he tried.

  He crawled onto the bed and lay on Logan’s back on top of the blankets, digging his chin into Logan’s shoulder.

  “I ever tell you your chin should be registered as a lethal weapon?” Logan rumbled from under the pillows.

  “No one can accuse me of carrying concealed. Pretty hard to miss it.”

/>   “Who was that?”

  “Julie.”

  Logan emerged from under the pillows and propped himself up on his elbows, toppling Riley off his back. “Julie Ainsworth?”

  Riley rolled to his knees. “The same.”

  “That chick has always hated my guts.”

  “Not really.” Not always, anyway. “But she thinks I’m too good for you.”

  Logan snorted. “No shit. Last time I saw her, I thought she’d serve my nuts as a side dish in a salad bar.”

  “She’s the one who got me this job.”

  “Job?”

  “That’s why I’m in town.”

  At the dumbfounded look on Logan’s face, laughter bubbled up from Riley’s belly, and he fell sideways onto the bed. “Oh my God. You thought I only showed up in Portland because of you.”

  Logan rolled onto his back and tucked his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling with a muscle jumping high in his cheek. Okay. Lie on the way. “No. Of course not.”

  Riley shucked off his sweats and burrowed under the blanket, straddling Logan’s hips and poking him in the ribs. “You did. You totally did. Are you hurt because I didn’t seek you out like my personal Holy Grail?”

  “No.” He batted Riley’s hands away. “What job? I thought you were doing research. On that study grant.”

  Riley wiggled his hips from side to side to line up their cocks more efficiently. Neither of them were fully hard yet. He’d work on that—with pleasure. “Not eligible, remember? Took a job with Julie’s TV show instead. We’re based in LA.”

  “She landed a gig in Hollywood and decided to share the love, eh?” Logan ran his callused palm along Riley’s side and rested it on his bare hip. A shiver chased it all the way down.

  “Yup. My old thesis advisor may never forgive her. Or you.” Riley pressed a kiss to Logan’s collarbone. “She had visions of me, I don’t know, trekking through the Balkans with nothing but a rucksack and a tape recorder, discovering original folktales under every village idiot.”

  “Dude. Who carries a rucksack anymore? Hell, who even makes rucksacks, let alone tape recorders?”

  “Well, she’s old-school.”

  “So what’s the show? Documentaries? A reboot of Faerie Tale Theatre? X-rated folklore exposés?”

  “Ever hear of Haunted to the Max?”

  “You’re shitting me.” Logan’s eyebrows rose halfway to his hairline. “That piece of crap?”

  “Now you’re being judgmental.”

  “Damn straight,” he growled. “You’re better than that.”

  “Don’t be an ass.” Riley pushed Logan flat against the pillows and propped his hands on the broad shoulders. “Think about it. Ghost stories, urban legends—they’re living folklore, as relevant today as the traditional tales like ‘Alison Gross’ or ‘Tam Lin’ or ‘Thomas Rymer’ were to the audiences who first heard them. They touch people, or their friends, or friends of friends.” He grinned at Logan’s skeptical scowl. “They’re like the social networking of the supernatural.”

  “Try the social networking of the stupid and gullible.”

  Riley smoothed the knot between Logan’s brows with his thumb. “There you go with the judgment again. You’re looking at it the wrong way. The appeal of this show, of any kind of supernatural investigation, isn’t what actually happens. It’s the anticipation, the thrill, of what might happen. Like Christmas morning, only with no presents.” He dropped a kiss on the corner of Logan’s frown. “And more screaming.”

  “Screaming, huh?” He pulled Riley down and rolled on top of him. “I can think of better reasons to scream.”

  “I suppose . . .” Riley trailed his hands across Logan’s biceps “. . . in a way, you are the reason I’m here.”

  Logan’s grin was positively wolfish. “I knew it.”

  “Don’t get a swelled head.”

  Logan shifted his hips, and his dick, hot and hard, slid against Riley’s leg.

  “Well, okay, that head can swell all it likes. But think about it.”

  “I’ll think about it later. Right now, I’m going to fuck you.” He licked a path from Riley’s shoulder to his ear, and Riley shivered, parting his legs so that Logan rested between them, both of them fully hard. Yes! Ready for round three. “You got time?”

  Riley undulated his hips, loving the feel of Logan’s weight on him, of the slide of secret skin. “An hour.” Logan sucked on the spot behind his ear, and he gasped. “We’re touring the Witch’s Castle site this morning but—”

  “What?” Logan pushed himself up on his hands, staring down at Riley with eyes suddenly gone flat. “Why?”

  “That’s the story we’re doing. The hanging of Danford Balch and the alleged supernatural family feud in Forest Park.”

  Logan tossed back the blankets, and rolled off Riley to sit on the edge of the bed. Gooseflesh rose on Riley’s skin that had less to do with the chill air and more with the rigid line of Logan’s bare spine.

  “Logan?” Crap, why did his voice have to sound so tentative? “What’s wrong? You’re the one who told me the story in the first place. Your grandfather—”

  “I didn’t tell you so you could broadcast it to the world.”

  Riley scrambled to his knees. “I’m pretty sure the show’s total audience is closer to the population of Winnemucca, Nevada. We don’t have a world kind of reach.” He rested his palm on Logan’s back, but Logan flinched away and stood, spine rigid, and moved to the window.

  Damn it, Logan, don’t shut me out. Not again.

  Logan hunched forward, his fists propped on the window ledge. “You won’t be able to get permission to film in the park at night.”

  “Already done. Everything’s in place. Even Max is reconciled to being here.” Riley wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. “It’s a real chance for us to rescue this show from its descent into camp. Even if the ghosts don’t manifest, the history itself is still compelling.”

  Logan swore under his breath. “Do you know what that fucking ghost story did to my family?” He stared out the window, his scowl superimposed on the freeway vista beyond the rain-speckled glass. “My grandfather was a war hero. They gave him a fucking parade when he came back from France. But after that night in the park? After the ghost war? Nobody would talk to him. He lost his job. They accused him of murder, for Chrissake.”

  “Why did they accuse him of murder? The ghosts had been dead for nearly a century by then.”

  “Because . . . because he wasn’t alone when he saw the ghosts. The other man, the man who was with him . . . he disappeared that night. Never found. Granddad swore the ghosts took him.” Logan’s laugh was closer to a sob. “They decided Granddad was too crazy to go to trial so they institutionalized him. Hell, they wanted to fucking lobotomize him, but my grandmother wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “I’m sorry, Logan,” Riley whispered around the lump in his throat.

  “Sometimes I think it would have been kinder. At least he wouldn’t have known how contemptuous everyone was of him. All he had to do was say it wasn’t true, and they’d have let him out. But he believed in honesty, and he wouldn’t.”

  “There have been other witnesses, other anecdotes. The ghost war shows up on a half-dozen different paranormal tracking websites. We can leave him out of it. We won’t mention his name.”

  Logan snorted. “His name. That’s a laugh.” Logan unfurled his left fist and stared at the thick scar that ran diagonally across his palm. “My dad was so freaked about the scandal of having a crazy father that he changed our fucking name.”

  “Your name’s not Conner?”

  “O’Connor.” He held up his tattooed forearms. “I got the Celtic knot work just to piss Dad off. I think my father would have preferred a murderer to a lunatic in the family. Once he hit adulthood, he never visited Granddad again.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known—”

  “So kill it.” Logan leaned his forehead against the window, and hi
s shoulders lifted in a deep, shuddering breath. “Please. Kill the story.”

  “I can’t. Not now. I don’t have the kind of clout to pull an episode that’s already in production.” Riley drew the blankets tighter, wishing they were Logan’s arms, an option that seemed to be slipping further away by the second.

  “Then wait a week.” He shoved away from the window and paced to the end of the bed. “What can it matter?”

  Riley raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? Do you have any idea how much of a budget-Nazi Julie is? If I suggest even a day’s delay, her head’s likely to explode. Besides, from everything I’ve been able to dig up, the full ghost war only manifests on the anniversary of Balch’s hanging, the seventeenth. If we delay, we won’t have a story. I’ll seem like the incompetent idiot half the crew already thinks I am.”

  “So get another job.”

  “Maybe I like this one.”

  “Why?” Logan’s face had lost all trace of the lazy lust of the morning. He wore the locked-jawed, hard-eyed expression from their first encounter outside Stumptown Spirits. God, Riley hated that look. “It’s not like this is your real career.”

  “Jesus, Logan. You’re as bad as my old advisor. Why do you assume this show has no value? That it’s less valid to try and make something real out of it than it would be to sit in a library somewhere, cross-referencing articles about Vlad the Impaler?” Riley snagged a pillow and pulled it inside his blanket cocoon to give himself something to hug. “Why did you tell me this story the night we met anyway, if you didn’t want help clearing your grandfather’s name?”

  “Maybe it was just a pickup line, folklore boy. The quickest way into your ass. Worked, didn’t it?”

  As Riley struggled out from under the blankets, Logan squatted to sort through the tangle of clothing on the floor so he wouldn’t be tempted again by that smooth skin, or distracted by the hurt tugging the corners of Riley’s mouth and wrinkling his forehead.

  His temples throbbed like the engine of a badly tuned motorcycle. Consequences. Christ, they sucked. The night Trent disappeared, Logan, in teenaged-male hysterics, had run to his father for advice. He’d wanted to go to the police, tell them the whole story, but his dad had told him to shut the fuck up.