by Rhys Ford
Cradled between Damien’s thighs, Sionn let his hands roam up his lover’s hips and over his stomach. He reached for Damien’s nipples and played with the deep-plum nubs, coaxing them into tight peaks before grabbing at the lube bottle nestled into the curve of Damien’s side.
“You ready for me, a rún?” He didn’t wait to hear Damien’s answer. It would have been difficult to make it out amid the whimpering cries coming from his lover’s nibbled-on lips. A quick dab of lube on his fingers and Sionn was in, pressing into the crinkled ring tucked between Damien’s quivering ass cheeks.
They wouldn’t last long. Something taut was in the air between them. The secrets they’d shared under the sheets of the room whispered around them, tying the men together. Sionn found part of himself he’d never scraped off his mind, opening up tiny enigmatic pockets inside of himself that Damien took in, handling every soft word and choked-on cry as if it were a delicate treasure.
Shed blood no longer haunted Sionn’s dreams, tucked back away into the recesses of forgiveness. The aching plunge of the scar in his thigh was a reminder of him giving everything he could. Although he would always mourn having to kill a man, he’d found the acceptance of it, knowing he’d kept a family safe from being torn apart by the man’s bullets. Despite his avowal of being thick-tongued, Damien’s murmured wisdom struck him in the heart of his misery, and Sionn’d been grateful for the relief.
He’d pried as well. Damien’s anguishes were hidden deep, buried under layers of sarcasm and deflection, but in the warm, lightning-ripe darkness of their retreat, Sionn found the key to the chains binding Damien to his nightmares. Drawing the man out was difficult. Kissing away his tears and promising a forever was even harder, because Sionn was faced with a sea of suspicion and disbelief.
It was an ocean he swam through every night and day he spent with Damien. Every second, every kiss and every caress bringing him one stroke closer to the solitude Damien imprisoned himself in.
Miki was there. Sionn knew that and welcomed the mercurial singer. Encouraged by Damien’s guttersnipe of a best friend, he pushed on, and when he’d paused at the doorway, watching Damien spin out threads of sound, Sionn realized every achingly hard moment was worth it just to see a gentle, sweet smile from the man beneath him.
“You are worth everything, love.” Sionn delved into his lover’s heat, skimming as much lube as he could onto his rim. “I cannot wait to spend a forever with you.”
“Forever’s what you are taking here….”
He didn’t let the man finish. Damien’s impatience was expected, as was the surprised gasp when Sionn parted his cheeks, fitted the head of his cock into the dip of Damien’s body, and pushed in. Hooking Damie’s legs over his shoulders, Sionn rocked his hips slowly, trying to take his time.
“Swear to God, I’m going to kill you,” Damien ground out. He lifted his arms, wrapped his hands around Sionn’s neck, and pulled him down, forcing Sionn to roll his shoulders forward. “What part of fuck me now didn’t you get, Irish?”
Giving in, Sionn snapped his hips up, burying himself in Damien’s hot clench. Knotted up in his lover’s legs and arms, Sionn grasped Damien’s torso and shifted him until the man’s shoulders were up against the wall. Curved around Sionn’s cock, he was nearly bent over, holding on tightly as Sionn slammed into him, their bodies slipping in the sheen of their thickening sweat.
He’d known as soon as he breached Damien’s tight ass he wouldn’t last long. Damien’s sharp teeth found a bulge of muscle on his shoulder and latched on, digging until Sionn felt his skin give, cut raw by Damien’s bite. The sharpness of the pain drove him on, his cock catching on the man’s constricting rim before sliding along the oiled channel beyond.
There was no warning. No trembling of Damien’s muscles around Sionn’s thrusting shaft. One moment his lover was moaning and pleading for more, the next, a splatter of hot seed erupted between them, coating their bellies with Damien’s salty release. Sionn quickened his strokes, finding the spongy crest of Damien’s center rumpled under his shaft, and he angled in, punching into the spot over and over as he milked the final drops of Damien’s release from his spurting dick.
His entire body tingled, the skin along his back and arms prickling with the power building up in his balls. The sac between his legs roiled, curling up and tucking into the hot space under his cock, his thighs pressing his hollow in. Damien’s teeth were gone, and he welcomed the come-tinged air hitting his lungs. It was a scent he’d grown to love, a milky spice of his own sweat and Damien’s spill playing through a rain-heavy fog.
Sionn’s orgasm struck, leaving his body in a rush of salt and desire. Burying his face in the curve of Damien’s neck, he filled his lover to the brim, his shoulders jerking uncontrollably with each jolt of his cock. Veiled by Damien’s black hair, Sionn floated on the rippling aftermath of their sex, Damien’s ass still clenched tightly around him, and they both sighed, their mouths touching long enough for their breath to mingle.
“Christ, you’re going to kill me, Damie love,” Sionn murmured, trying to catch his breath. He tried to roll off of his lover’s belly, but Damien held him still despite Sionn’s softening cock slipping free of the other man’s body. “We’re going to be a fecking mess if I—”
“Stay.” It was a single word, but flushed with deep affection. “I love you lying on me. Hell, I just love you, so please… don’t go, Sionn. Just… stay.”
“It would be a pleasure to stay, a rún,” he whispered, kissing Damien gently. He heard what Damien was saying, the blossoming tangle between them peeking out from Damien’s plea. Caught between the spaces of his words, Damien spoke of a future between them, his stitched-together heart pounding hard enough for Sionn to feel it against his ribs. “A simple bloody pleasure.”
Chapter 18
There’s a door in the back
At the back of this bar
Death waits there
Even leaves it ajar
Don’t wander there, boy
Don’t dance too close, son
Else the Devil’ll come take you
’Fore the night’s even done
—Devil’s Waiting
“HOLY fucking shit.” Damien sat up quickly, nearly kicking his guitar off the couch. His mind was racing, pulling up edible tidbits from the burned soup of his memories and shocking him with unexpected information. “I just fucking remembered Beaker’s not a chick. Holy crap! This fucking blows my mind. Again. Fucking hell. Miki dude… did you know Beaker’s a guy?”
The singer looked up from the music sheets Damien had dropped in his lap, his nose wrinkled in disgust at Damie’s feet shoving his knee. “Not only do I not give a fuck, I don’t even know who the hell Beaker is.”
“Fuck you. You’re broken. Why do I even talk to you?” he sniped back, kicking his friend again as he twisted around to sit sideways on the couch. Waving at his lover, Damien caught Sionn coming out of the kitchen, Kane tight on his heels with a cup of coffee. “Sionn… babe… did you know Beaker’s a dude?”
“Who the hell’s Beaker?” Sionn frowned, moving aside to let his cousin by. “You didn’t know he was a boy? Switching over or summat?”
“Fuck you too.” Damien sighed, lightly banging his forehead against a cushion. He was alone in his stew, searching for someone who’d share his delight. “Kane…?”
“Wait, Beaker’s a dude?” Kane stopped in midsip, his mug poised below his lips. “You sure? I thought she and Dr. Honeydew… wow. Well shit, that changes things.”
“Nah, it’s all Bert and Ernie again.” Damien grinned at the cop, suddenly quite overly fond of Miki’s lover. “Stealthy Muppet homoerotic overtones.”
“You are a sick fuck, D,” Miki scratched notes on the song he was working on. “You’re talking about puppets getting it on. Sionn not giving you enough?”
“This from the person who wanted to see two armadillos fuck?” The kick this time came from Miki, his rigid toes smacking Damien’s knee. �
�Dude, you made us stand in the damned cold and watch those two at the zoo. Then we find out they’re both girls.”
“Fuck you. I was curious.” He rattled a piece of sheet music under Damien’s nose. “Can we get back to this?”
“Actually, I’m going to have to be grabbing Damie from you,” Sionn apologized softly. “He’s got a doctor’s appointment this morning.”
“And Edie’s getting here in a couple of days.” Kane bent over to kiss Miki’s neck. “We’ve got to get the other guest room set up now that we’ve got these two squatters in the main room. So, you two, no running around naked on the second floor while she’s here.”
“Like she’s not seen everything I’ve got already.” Damien snorted.
“I don’t even want to know how that happens.” Sionn fished his keys out of his pocket. “Come on, boyo. Let’s get your head checked out, and maybe he’ll clear you to drive. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“What would be nice is if I could get my life back,” he complained loudly, but he climbed off the couch, tagging Miki on the side of his friend’s head with a snap of his fingers. “Get my money back. My own place… keep Miki’s boyfriend in my basement.”
“Bitch,” Miki grumbled at him, waving Damien away. “Go get your head checked. Maybe if they look hard enough, they can find your brain.”
A familiar anxiety kept Damien on edge through the car ride, and by the time they pulled into the hospital’s underground parking, he was about to go out of his mind. Slippery tangents swarmed about his head, buzzing and stinging like a nest of angry wasps suddenly woken up by a stupid bear. Rubbing at his forehead, Damien nearly fell out of the Jeep as he got out, and Sionn hurried around to pull him up.
“Damie, look at me. Are you doing okay?” Sionn wavered in Damien’s vision, then snapped back into focus. Two of Sionn’s fingers were thrust up under Damien’s nose, and he reeled back in surprise. “How many do you see?”
“One,” he sneered, slapping Sionn’s hand away. “One asshole. Dude, I’m fine. Just too much… crap coming up. Doc said it would happen, remember? I just got dizzy. Let’s go in so I can get the hell out of here. I’m kind of over hospitals right now.”
It was torture to walk through the brightly lit halls of the medical center. Flashbacks of heavy-handed orderlies and a phantom whiff of fire lingered in his mind. Someone dropped a metal pan on the floor, and the clatter sounded too much like a burst of gunfire going off in the cold darkness of a Montana winter night. Panic set in, and Damien clutched at Sionn’s arm, forbidding himself from diving behind a nearby potted plant for cover.
“We’ll take it slow, a rún.” Sionn soothed Damien’s nerves with a soft stroke of fingers along Damie’s nape. “When you get inside, you tell the doc you’re having some trouble—”
“Oh hell no,” he cut his lover off quickly. “Fucker will have me in a loony bin.”
“No, he won’t.” The man chuckled softly and tugged Damien down the hall, forcing him to take longer steps. “He’s here to help you. He can’t do that if you don’t tell him what’s going on.”
In the end, the damned Irishman was right. The doctor spent half an hour reassuring Damien he wasn’t going crazy. A soft-faced balding man, he would have faded into the beige background if not for the loud paisley bow tie he’d knotted at his throat. The bright colors were hard for Damien to shake off, and when he blinked, echoes of the pink, purple, and yellow swirls remained behind. A few flashes of light into his eyes and more questions, then Damien was outside, thankfully sucking in the garage’s exhaust-perfumed air.
“Here, more for my how-to-care-for-your-guitarist manual.” Sionn tossed Damie a folder thick with papers once they’d gotten into the Jeep.
“I should look through this and see if there’s anything about not giving it sex after midnight.” Damien breathed a sigh of relief when Sionn started up the car and backed out of their parking space.
“Planning on burning it if you find it?”
“Hell yes,” he muttered, reading through the doctor’s assessment. “I do my best work after midnight.”
As they eased out into traffic, Sionn’s phone beeped, and he handed it over to Damien. “Check if that’s Kane. He might be wanting me to grab something to take back to the house.”
It wasn’t. Instead the text spat through an unfamiliar phone number, then a message from a technician asking Sionn to meet up at his loft apartment. Damien felt the blood drain from his face and a stone form somewhere beneath his sternum.
“Eh, what’s the matter?” Sionn glanced at him, obviously concerned. “What happened? Miki—?”
“No no, Miki’s fine.” He took a deep breath, trying to use one of the calming techniques the doctor taught him. It was for shit, but he was going to try. “One of the cop techs needs to meet you. At your place. Something about checking if something’s evidence? I don’t know. I don’t speak cop.”
“I’ll drop you off—”
“Dude, that’s like an hour through traffic, and then you’ve got to fight your way back to Chinatown during lunch.” Damien swallowed the chunk of stress swelling in his throat. “I can handle this. I’ll just stay in the car or something. Not like I’ve got to go up.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind dropping you off and coming back. Just text him back and tell him I’ll head over in a bit.”
Sionn was right to look worried. Damien didn’t want to go back into the loft. He didn’t want to imagine the woman he’d hoped would protect him as a child spread out over the place he’d made love in. The idea of her dissected body on Sionn’s sofa where they’d kissed and napped was repulsive. It turned to horrifying if he dared even think about the bedroom.
“No, it’s okay,” he said, texting back furiously, his nimble fingers flying over the screen, getting a nearly immediate reply. “I’ve got to deal with some of this shit, you know? I can’t keep running away from crap. I’ll be fine. He said he’ll meet up with you inside.”
“Shouldn’t be long,” Sionn promised. “I’d already gotten the all-clear to go back. Maybe he just wants to ask something and hand over the spare keys I gave them. After that, we can head up to Hang Ah for lunch. How about that?”
“And the guys back home?” Damien chuckled at Sionn’s evil grin.
“Fuck them. If they wanted dim sum, they should have come with us instead of pretending they’re not fucking like bunnies on the couch.”
“Oh, dude, not the couch.” If the mental image of his mother was bad, the thought of Miki splayed out in an erotic pose on the sofa was enough to overload his brain. “We sit there, man. I don’t want to be sitting in their spunk. We all agreed. One rule. No sex anywhere we sit or make food.”
If anything, Sionn’s laugh was more evil than his sardonic smile. “And once more, what makes you think you haven’t already?”
MIDMORNING Chinatown on a Tuesday was a nightmare Dante himself could never have imagined. The storms rolling over the city were huddled on the horizon, plotting their next takeover and leaving the waterlogged sunshine its delusion that it could dry the streets out before they hit again.
More deadly than a plague of locusts, swarms of tourists ambled through the tight streets, their attention less on the traffic and more on the city surrounding them. Sionn cursed himself for turning up Grant Avenue. Trapped in a slog of bodies and vehicles moving slower than molasses on a cold day, he was tempted to get out of the car, hand Damien the keys, and walk the seven blocks to his building.
The curious scents and sounds of the neighborhood reached them before the dragon gate actually came into view. A mingle of anise, black tea, and cardamom wafted through the Jeep’s open windows, tickling Sionn’s nose. Somewhere hidden in the crust of cement and bricks, jasmine bloomed, sweetening the harsher smells rolling down through the gate. By the time they reached the base of the hill, Sionn’s stomach was growling furiously, angrily reminding him they’d not had anything to eat, and the mouthwatering aromas coming from the neighborhoo
d’s restaurants were a maddening torture.
“Swear to God, if you take longer than five minutes, I’m going to go hunt down someone and chew off their leg,” Damien threatened softly. “When did it get to be almost noon?”
“Right after it turned eleven thirty,” Sionn muttered. “And if you do grab someone, save some for me. All I’ve had is coffee.”
“I’ll look for someone plump. We can gorge,” Damien promised, darkly eyeing the crowd for a ripe specimen. “Something that’ll go good with har gow, though. It’ll be like a surf and turf thing.”
“Only if you find a vegetarian.”
“Tell you what,” Damien drawled. “I’ll lean out the window and moo. You grab whoever answers.”
Grant’s traffic opened up a bit once they got past an old boarding house turned hotel. Taxis jostled for space on the road, pulling off to the side and blocking off alleys as they grabbed fares, and Sionn huffed in frustration when they were forced to stop for the fifth time in fifty feet.
It took them another half an hour to get to Sionn’s building, and he threw a quick prayer of thanks for the open space near the lobby’s entrance. Sionn played a bit of Frogger getting out of the Jeep, then hurried over to the passenger’s side of the car. Leaning through the open window, he hooked his hand behind Damien’s head and pulled the man into a kiss, suckling at Damie’s lips until the other man laughed and turned his head to get away.
“Stay here. Don’t let anyone steal you,” Sionn warned him, playfully shaking his finger under Damie’s nose. “Maybe while I’m gone, give K and Miki a call. If they’re not too tired from rocking the bed, maybe they’ll be wanting to join us for lunch.”
“Okay, I’ll call.” Damie rubbed at his lips, and Sionn beamed, liking the pink flush he’d brought up to the man’s cheeks. “Hurry back.”
