Boston Avant-Garde 6: Chiaroscuro

by Kaitlin Maitland

  This was no time to rehash the past. He had no good options on the table. He didn’t want to play champion in Jason’s illicit fight club, but helping Jason perform some jacked-up occult ritual with Daniel Hyde would be the height of stupidity. With Owen’s luck, they’d piss off some ancient deity and kick off a supernatural war. Not to mention Mattie’s unwilling involvement in that scenario. Or the fact that Jason was dangling a chance for Owen to go home, even if it was only for a little while.

  I can’t remember the last time I had a sense of homecoming.

  “Well?” Jason’s voice gained a menacing note.

  “When?”

  Now his brother looked downright smug. The dick. “Halloween.”

  “Whatever.”

  If Jason’s broad smile was any indicator, he didn’t even consider the fact that “whatever” wasn’t an agreement or a disagreement. At this point there was no need to start shit with Jason when Owen might be able to use him for information while he tried to diffuse whatever nonsense Hyde was cooking up with Mattie. However, there was no way in hell Owen would participate in a ritual that promised to give the goatkiller some extra mojo.

  Jason slapped Owen on the shoulder. “Cool. So I’ll contact you in the next couple of days to give you the details.”

  “Sounds good,” Owen said. Especially since I’m going to use those same details to make sure this never happens.

  He watched Jason, Phil, and Tony head back toward Triptych’s front entrance, feeling as though he carried the entire world on his shoulders.

  LARS MEMORIZED EVERY detail he could about the three losers walking away from Owen. They’d been too far away for Lars to hear more than a few snippets of conversation, but it was enough for him to know it wasn’t good. They obviously wanted something from Owen. It would be up to Owen whether or not Lars ever found out what.

  Owen looked haggard. His neutral expression was set in stone as if he had retreated behind a mask. Strands of long dark hair had escaped the elastic tie at the back of his head and hung like loose silk around his face. He stood with arms crossed and feet spread like an immovable statue guarding the door to Triptych’s exclusive Underground. Lars knew better.

  Even through the cacophony of club noise, Owen’s low voice was discernible. “Can’t stay away, huh?”

  “I think it would be more accurate to say that I don’t want to stay away.” Lars wondered at the wisdom of making such a bald statement.

  “I can’t deal with your emotional bullshit right now,” Owen said wearily. “But if you can keep your fucking head on straight for five minutes, I could use your help. It involves Mattie.”

  Owen’s mask slipped, and Lars’s gut clenched at the desperation concealed beneath it. Everything else slid into the background—Lars’s family issues, his mother’s expectations, his own personal battles, and even his doubts about his manhood became unimportant. The only things that mattered were the two people whose lives had become inexplicably linked to his.

  Lars took a deep breath. “Try me.”

  Instead of speaking, Owen motioned to Trace, one of Triptych’s other managers. “Can you cover for me an hour or two?”

  Trace raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word. He stood in front of the door and took up a stance Selena often referred to as “troll mode.”

  Owen motioned that Lars should follow. “Come down to my suite. I don’t want to discuss it up here.”

  Lars followed Owen down the familiar path, feeling as if every step pushed him just a little farther over the edge. He didn’t know what Owen had to say, about them, about Mattie, about what had happened. Lars wasn’t even sure he cared anymore.

  He had a little less than two weeks left until he was scheduled to fly back to London. The problem was, he didn’t really want to go. Oh, there was a still a big part of him that wanted to escape Boston and his mother and her expectations and the reality that he was eventually going to have to come clean with her. Not to mention this whole clusterfuck with Isabel suddenly showing back up in his life. Somehow all of that paled in comparison to what was going on with Mattie and Owen.

  Owen unlocked his door and pushed it open so they could enter. The medieval-style oak slammed shut behind them. It sounded final. Appropriate considering the fact that if Lars didn’t lay all his cards on the table, he would have no choice but to walk away for good. He couldn’t keep doing this to Mattie, to Owen, or even to himself. It wasn’t fair. He was either in or he was out, and Selena’s words kept ringing in his head.

  “You have to tell her.”

  So even though Lars didn’t know if he was brave enough to look Mattie in the face and explain he could never give her what she wanted most in the world, telling Owen seemed different.

  Lars opened his mouth, and the words just tumbled out. “I have to tell you something.”

  Owen rubbed a hand over his face. “I told you I didn’t have the stomach for your—”

  Lars didn’t let Owen finish that thought. “This isn’t emotional bullshit. I just need to tell you a few things before we go any further with”—Lars didn’t even know what it was they were discussing—“anything.”

  Owen crossed the room to a small kitchenette. HIs phone, wallet, and keys went on the counter before he pulled a beer out of the fridge. He held it up to ask Lars if he wanted one, but Lars shook his head. He couldn’t drink right now. Not with his stomach in knots.

  “So?” Owen twirled his fingers in the air to tell Lars to continue.

  Lars was suddenly at a loss. How was he supposed to start a confession like this? Just dump it out there? “When I was twenty-two, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.” Owen’s expression didn’t shift at all. There was no hint of pity or disdain. The steadiness of his lover’s regard strengthened Lars’s resolve. “They had to remove both testes. I had them—replaced—with implants.” Whatever courage he’d found began to drain away. He couldn’t meet Owen’s dark gaze any longer. “I…I have to eat these tablet things”—he gestured to his mouth—“for hormones. I used to do injections, but the mood swings were…” Lars trailed off, feeling more vulnerable in that moment than he did when Owen was fucking him in the ass.

  “You thought telling me this would change how I see you,” Owen said quietly. He took a long swig of beer.

  Lars shut his eyes, trying to get his bearings. “How could it not?”

  “For a guy with no balls, you sure have a lot of brass.” Owen set the beer down and grabbed Lars. Owen pulled him into a hug. “You’re no less of a man today than you were yesterday, and I say you’ll still be one hell of a man tomorrow.”

  Acceptance washed Lars like warm rain. He wrapped his arms around Owen’s broad frame and hugged him hard. Lars hadn’t realized until that moment that he needed so badly to hear Owen say the words.

  One second they were hugging, the next they were grappling with clothes and kissing as though they were starved for the connection. Lars grabbed Owen’s T-shirt and yanked it up and off. Owen groaned when Lars curled his fingers into his thick deltoids before skimming Owen’s sleek torso on the way to his waist.

  “Nothing has changed for us,” Owen growled. “I want you more now than I ever have before.”

  Lars peeled off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, gratified to feel Owen caressing his bare chest. His cock was full to bursting. Lars unfastened his slacks, and then unzipped Owen’s jeans. Owen bracketed Lars’s hips. He pulled him closer and ground their erections together.

  It was pure torture for Lars to feel Owen’s rock-hard shaft nestled against his own. He slid his hands around Owen’s sides and stabbed them into his lover’s jeans to cup his firm backside. Their mouths met in a tangle of tongues and teeth as both wrestled for dominance.

  Owen began pulling Lars toward his bed. For the first time in Lars’s life, there was no voice of doubt in the back of his mind. When Owen relaxed back onto the rumpled sheets, there was only desire between the two of them.

  “Take off your pants,�
� Owen told him.

  Lars toed off his dress shoes and skinned his pants and underwear to the floor. He watched while Owen removed an eight-inch Bowie knife from its place against his right calf before unlacing his boots. Once Owen was naked, Lars climbed onto the bed beside him.

  Owen brushed his fingers across the pale lines near Lars’s hips. “I’m guessing these are scars from your surgery.”

  Lars started to nod but froze when Owen leaned down to run his tongue over each crease. Arousal made Lars’s belly shrink reflexively while he groaned. Sensation exploded through his system. Owen licked a path down the grooves on either side of Lars’s abdomen, heading toward his cock.

  Owen shifted on the bed, pushing Lars onto his back and stretching out alongside him. The position put Owen’s thick erection within reach of Lars’s mouth. The temptation was too great to resist. Lars palmed the thick shaft of Owen’s cock and puckered his lips around the head. He sucked lightly and tickled the hole with the tip of his tongue.

  Owen growled like an animal and thrust against Lars’s hold. “You sure you want to tease like that?”

  Lars would have responded, but Owen chose that moment to swallow Lars’s cock whole. The crown rubbed up against the soft flesh in the back of Owen’s throat, and Lars almost came undone. Owen’s tongue rubbed hot trails along Lars’s skin. The sensation was so intense. Lars fought the urge to ejaculate. Forcing himself to focus on something other than the hot pressure wrapped around his cock, Lars put Owen’s dick inside his mouth and sucked hard.

  For every wet stroke of Owen’s tongue, Lars gave the same. He lost himself to the rhythm of oral sex, to the give and take of pleasure. Lars felt his orgasm begin to build. Heat lanced through his nerves and settled in his haunches. He clenched his ass. His puckered anal entrance felt achy and empty, yet he wouldn’t have pulled his cock from Owen’s clever mouth even to feel his lover’s cock in his ass.

  Lars cupped Owen’s balls. He felt their heaviness and marveled at the life held within each sphere. Kneading gently, he stretched them away from Owen’s body and was rewarded with a deep groan that vibrated against Lars’s shaft. The sensation spiked Lars’s arousal past the breaking point. He sucked on Owen’s cock and moaned as he came hard.

  Owen stroked Lars’s sac as Lars continued to come. The gentle touch transcended the sexuality of their experience and went deeper. Lars sensed Owen’s acceptance in every touch. A shot of emotion Lars was afraid to examine made him giddy. He wanted so badly to give Owen the same kind of pleasure he’d received.

  Lars renewed his assault on Owen’s cock. Gripping the base with one hand, he stretched Owen’s sac with the other and bobbed his head up and down as quickly as he dared. Owen arched his back and thrust his hips. Seconds later Lars felt the warm spill of semen on his tongue. He swallowed it down, licking up the remnants and savoring every drop.

  The tension left Owen’s body, and Lars let go of his cock. Both men lay on their backs, chests heaving as they shared a companionable silence. Owen idly ran his fingers over Lars’s calf. When he rolled to his side, Lars gazed into his face and knew he would never say never again.

  Chapter Nine

  Owen waited for the words, but they never came. Seconds turned into minutes, and the knot in Owen’s belly began to ease. He’d brought Lars back to his suite to talk. He’d never expected his lover to confess something so incredibly personal. It went beyond the casual boundaries of their relationship and into unfamiliar territory.

  He should’ve been pissed. This wasn’t the time in Owen’s life for touchy-feely emotional bullshit. The problem was that the only thoughts Owen could muster involved what his life would’ve been like had Lars died of cancer before Owen had ever met him.

  The idea left Owen cold with dread. It pushed even the shadow of violence in Owen’s past into the background. Nothing mattered but Lars. The last five months had been full of ups and downs, but they’d been full. Before that, Owen had lived a half-life, day to day going through the motions. Doing his job at Triptych, living at the club, taking extra shifts because he literally had nothing else to do.

  What the fuck was I doing?

  Then Lars came along, stirring up trouble. Owen could still remember the first time he’d seen him almost a year ago. It’d been before Selena got involved with Malachi and Demon. When she and Lars had been trying to get into the Underground without a pass. Owen had liked Lars from the start. Mostly because of the other man’s sassy personality, though there’d been a strong physical attraction too.

  If Lars had died, Owen would’ve missed out on every lively exchange between them. He would’ve never discovered a lover who could match him wit for wit before igniting the kind of fire between the sheets Owen had never expected to find in this life or the next.

  I would have never met Mattie.

  Owen hadn’t thought beyond a night’s pleasure before. Lars had changed that. What the two of them shared was hot. It was wild and satisfying in ways Owen knew he’d never find with another man, but there was still an element missing. Until they’d added Mattie to the equation, Owen couldn’t have said what it was. Maybe he hadn’t even taken the time to acknowledge that he felt its absence.

  Lars made a low noise and flopped over onto his stomach. He folded his arms and rested his chin on top. “If you’re waiting for me to leave, you’re wasting your time.”

  “If I wanted you to leave, I’d kick your naked ass to the curb.” Owen made himself comfortable, smashing a few pillows into position and lounging against the headboard.

  “Good to know.”

  There would be no better opportunity for Owen to get his questions answered. “What did Mattie say to you that sent you running away from her?”

  Lars briefly covered his face with both hands, looking as if he’d been gut kicked. “You have to understand that Mattie has a bone-deep desire for a family with all the trimmings. She told me she loved me. That she could see the two of us having a future together.”

  Owen had suspected as much. “So you ran.”

  “I panicked.”

  “And now?” Owen wondered if the two of them were so far gone down the path of self-destruction they would be unable to turn back even if they wanted to.

  “You think I don’t wish it was different? I can’t give her what she needs, Owen. I can’t!” Lars got to his knees, his soft cock lying against his leg, and his sexy-as-hell body looking like an open invitation.

  Owen thought of a thousand reasons he should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t. “I can.”

  “What?” For a split second, Lars looked ready to throw down. Then comprehension broke over his face, and he seemed to waver between hopeful and appalled. “Just because the three of us enjoyed a little ménage action does not mean we can waltz into a committed threesome relationship. Are you insane? Do you have any idea how complex that kind of thing is?”

  “I live at Triptych,” Owen said irritably. He couldn’t believe he was the one arguing in favor of a long-term attachment. Had he lost his mind?

  “So watching the relationship between my cousin, Malachi, and Demon is a shining example of how to make it work?” Lars’s expression oozed sarcasm—something Owen of all people could well appreciate. “First of all, Demon and Malachi were a committed couple for more than a decade before adding Selena to their relationship. The three of us are practically strangers.” Lars climbed off the bed and started pacing. “It’s all moot anyway. What are we supposed to do? Go knock on Mattie’s door and tell her we’ve got a fucked-up solution to an even more fucked-up problem? She probably hates us by now.”

  Knocking on Owen’s door interrupted Lars’s tirade. He froze midstride and gazed at Owen as if to ask how he wanted it handled. Owen appreciated the gesture, but at this point he couldn’t care less who knew he was fucking Lars Aasen. In fact, Owen was ready to take out an ad in the Herald if it would shut Lars up.

  Owen got off the bed and walked to the door. The massive piece was a replica of som
ething Malachi’s former mistress, Seraph, had seen in an Italian castle. It was heavy and lacked any sort of peephole.

  “Who is it?” Owen asked.

  To his shock, it was Mattie who answered. “Please let me in, Owen. I need your help.”

  Owen paused for exactly ten seconds to consider the ramifications of letting Mattie know he was in his room with Lars, and they were both naked. We have to open the topic somehow. Owen slid the bolt and yanked the door open. “Come on in, baby.”

  EVERYTHING MATTIE INTENDED to say flew right out of her brain the minute she saw Owen’s gorgeous naked body at the door. The man absolutely belonged in the primitive corridors of Triptych. Inside his room she noticed a thick area rug in rich earth tones, a tiny kitchenette in one corner, and a massive bed in the other. The style was medieval, yet the space had a Spartan feel to it. If he lived here, where were the pictures and knickknacks? He didn’t seem like a warm, fuzzy guy, but he had to have some kind of personal stuff.

  Mattie hadn’t come to Triptych to see Owen. She’d been hoping Malachi could dig up information to shed some light on the Wheel of the Year her mysterious visitor had left on her tree. Now that Selena had directed her to Owen, she couldn’t deny she was happy about it. Maybe even a little excited. Except Owen seemed a little apprehensive. What if he was entertaining someone else? Surely he wouldn’t have let her in if he had another woman or a guy in his room. Would he?

  Then she caught a glimpse of Lars, also naked, standing near the bed. Horror, anger, and betrayal lanced through her body and left her breathless in their wake. How could she have been such a fool? They’d used her like a toy and then told her it was over between all three of them.

  Except I didn’t feel used, I felt pleasured beyond belief. And I could’ve sworn they were telling the truth.

  Doubt ate away at her confidence. How could she be so wrong about so many things? Maybe the problem was hers. Maybe it was time to seriously pursue a way to neutralize the “English” curse. Family legend held that someone had hexed them generations ago, and Mattie was starting to believe it.