Austin lay there with JT’s massive arms around him, arms that could break him but would never do that. It had been Austin who’d come up with the handcuffs, but they’d always been for show. They’d been to make JT feel safe, not Austin. These arms would never hurt him. One slid down to his waist. JT’s hand wrapped around Austin’s balls snug and warm.
And Austin hadn’t been afraid in that basement. He’d been on edge and nervous, but not afraid. Because JT had been holding him exactly the way he was holding Austin now, and nothing could hurt him while JT held him that way. Nothing could hurt either of them so long as they held each other.
This had been a terrible mistake. Austin should go.
Men never stayed. So JT wasn’t used to a man in his bed, let alone holding one so tightly against him. He couldn’t sleep this way. He made a virtual round of his home checking doors and windows. He stretched his senses beyond the house and into the grounds. Turret cameras showed dark desert. He cycled through infrared and ultraviolet and saw only a fox.
There was nothing to do but be with Austin, though he didn’t know how. He couldn’t sleep this way, but he wouldn’t let go, either. He drifted in and out of sleep, the reality of Austin’s perfect body against him mixing with strange dreams, leftover glamour visions of smoking battlefields smelling like hot road, and JT comfortably dying, speared through by an incomparable elf.
JT’s ass was sore. His hole burned a little, tingled a little. It felt stretched out and tight as a rubber band all at once. It would feel like that for a day. His cock was tucked along the crack of Austin’s ass, harder than ever, but right now JT didn’t want any more than this here. Maybe in the morning he’d take Austin the way Austin had taken him.
Maybe that’s what was making Austin nervous. JT could smell the anxiety on him.
And Austin also smelled like sex: like gym sweat, and the clean soapy smell of all their mingled come. JT licked the back of Austin’s neck. He tasted the salt there and got himself high off the faint scent in his hair: battlefield smoke, hot road, glamour.
It had taken a week for JT to fall in love with Austin way back when. Another week to realize that Austin didn’t love him back. That for Austin, the sex had just been sex. And then a year for JT to convince himself he had only thought he was in love. It had just been the glamour. Austin’s glamour was a beautiful, strange, and frightening lie constantly whispering into JT’s ear.
Like just now: it was so easy to imagine the two of them like this always. Too easy. He should tell Austin to go. He would tell him. In just a few minutes. He could stand to listen to the lie just a few minutes more.
Neither of them moved. Austin didn’t go. JT slept and held and listened.
Dante’s ex was Mathew Carter. He’d been nothing but trouble, goading her on, promising her sex and drugs and love if Dante would only do everything he asked. “Just a little more money, baby, and that’s the last time you gotta steal for me.” Every week he’d said that. Every week she’d believed him.
So, okay, she couldn’t blame everything on him. There’d been the drugs, and she’d have jacked those cars with or without him, but he hadn’t helped none either. And it wasn’t until Jason Taylor (the infamous JT) had knocked some sense into her head—literally knocked some sense into her head—and shown her what Mathew was doing, that Dante had had the strength to leave him and the drugs and move on. It was JT who’d showed her that, so Dante owed JT her life. It was simple as that.
And, yeah, so it was naïve to look up to JT the way she did. JT wasn’t no fucking saint, after all. Dante knew that. Dante knew JT was a thief and a killer. She knew all the rest. And Dante knew it was ninety percent jealousy she was feeling just now. JT was going to start spending all his time with that elf and less time with her until JT forgot all about Dante Riggs. She’d seen it before, dozens of times. Her mother had gone chasing off after whatever boyfriend had been the flavor of the week and forgot all about Dante every time. She knew how it was.
And so it hurt—goddamn, it hurt—to watch JT fall into that fucking elf’s trap. Because Mathew and that elf, they were the same kind of people: users and liars. JT couldn’t see it because JT was too close (Or maybe it was because of elf magic just like JT told her. Hadn’t JT been the one to warn her?), but Dante could see it. Dante saw it all perfectly clear.
And she felt a little guilty for watching them fuck, but, Christ, they’d been doing it right there in the lot, so how could she not fucking see? They might as well have put up a goddamn sign.
Well, it was a sign, wasn’t it? That had been JT’s way of calling for help, Dante was sure. Dante could save him. She just had to think of a way to get that elf gone for good.
Dante spun on a wheeled office chair in the printer control booth and brainstormed. The 210-centimeter monitors all held a rotating view of the vehicle she’d been designing—her journeyman’s project. The main holo projector on the floor threw up a blue 3-D life-sized projection of it. It still had a long way to go; she had a lot left to learn. Dante hadn’t so much as glanced at it in over an hour. She spun the chair and thought.
The door of her holographic vehicle swung open and out stepped a woman.
Dante nearly shit herself. It wasn’t supposed to do that. It wasn’t animated at all. She jumped up so fast that the chair shot out behind her. This was some prank of JT’s. But JT would never have messed with her project. Not ever. And she could feel the woman’s presence blossom into the compound’s cyberspace, and she could feel the woman’s melancholy tug at her heart.
The woman said, “Help me, Dante Riggs. You’re my only hope.”
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I’d like to thank Barb, Ben, Kij, Lane, and Amy for their support and encouragement. Shawn Casey for his technical knowledge (any mistakes are mine), and for loaning me his impressive collection of Chinese martial arts movies (which I will return, eventually). My agent, Sara Megibow, for her tireless work and wisdom. All the wonderful folks at Riptide for their enthusiasm and expertise. And Travis, for everything.
Blue Unicorn series
Apocalypse Alley (coming soon)
The Burning Magus (coming soon)
In his night job, Don Allmon writes science fiction, fantasy, and romance. In his day job, he’s an IT drone. He holds a master of arts in English literature from the University of Kansas and wrote his thesis on the influence of royal hunting culture on medieval werewolf stories. He’s a fan of role-playing games, both video and tabletop. He has lived all over from New York to San Francisco, but currently lives on the prairies of Kansas with many animals.
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Website: donallmon.com
Twitter: @dallmon
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