Broken Protocol (Smoke & Bullets)

by A. R. Barley

  Dante Green’s a police officer with a solid career—a career that for the past ten years has kept him far away from the one temptation he won’t let himself give in to: his younger foster brother. But when he bumps into the now-out-and-proud firefighter at Smoke & Bullets, he finds himself wrestling with fantasies and desires he thought were long behind him.

  Luke Parsons fell in lust with Dante when he was thirteen years old, but he’s not a kid anymore. He’s a New York City firefighter, and he’s done chasing after things he can’t have. Until he and Dante witness a hate crime, and it becomes clear that Dante might not be as straight as Luke always thought.

  With Luke to introduce him to the local gay scene, Dante dives into an unsanctioned investigation as the attraction between them grows. Unfortunately, Luke is completely and totally off-limits. Dating him would be a betrayal of their foster father’s trust. But Luke isn’t about to let anything get in the way of their happily-ever-after—even Dante’s fear of commitment.

  This book is approximately 60,000 words

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Alissa Davis

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my friends, family and everyone who’s ever bought me a cup of coffee.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Excerpt from Out of Bounds by A.R. Barley

  Acknowledgments

  Also by A.R. Barley

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Smoke & Bullets was a dank basement bar on the wrong street corner in Hell’s Kitchen, and so dark it always took Dante’s eyes a moment to adjust. He crossed his fingers and said a quiet prayer that he could have a beer with his new partner here without running into a certain somebody.

  Finn took two steps inside and stopped short. “I thought we were going for a drink. Not catching typhus.” He wrinkled his nose at the sour scent of days’ old beer clinging to the chipped linoleum.

  Finn freaking Pride. A detective so green he could go undercover as a fern.

  “It’s a fucking cop bar.” The beer was cold, their fries almost edible, and on occasion they played music from the jukebox. Dante led the way through the round tables and rickety chairs. A dozen faces turned in their direction, and despite his long absence he nodded a greeting without stopping to talk to anyone. He was here for a drink and to introduce his partner to the scene. That was it. Twenty minutes tops, then he’d be going home to the comfortable silence of his Inwood apartment.

  “Beer,” Dante told the bartender when he finally got up to the counter. “Whatever’s on tap.”

  A frothy glass of beer appeared in front of Dante. He handed over some cash. “Keep the change.” He took a long sip. The beer was bitter.

  “You didn’t get me a drink?”

  “This isn’t a date.”

  “No shit.” Finn leaned in to order. “Whiskey. Neat.” While his drink was poured, he looked around. Every thought he had was telegraphed across his face.

  He’d be crap at undercover.

  A tumbler landed in front of Finn and he took a quick sip. His mouth twisted. “Everyone in here wears a badge?”

  “Except for the firefighters.” And there was the other reason Dante normally avoided Smoke & Bullets like it was a one-way ticket to food poisoning. Hose jockeys were friendly assholes. Where there was one there were five more.

  “So if I wanted to ask someone about the Donnelly gang?” Finn went to take another sip, thought better of it, and placed his glass carefully on the counter. “Or how to avoid getting on the captain’s bad side?”

  “Or the best way to put through a special warrant request, or who’s been keeping a close eye on the usual suspects, or whose ass you need to kiss to get promoted.” He could watch the tumblers clicking into place behind Finn’s hazel eyes. Maybe he wasn’t a complete idiot after all, even if he was young and inexperienced. “Only so much gets put down in reports. A good cop bar is where you go to find the rest of it.”

  “And this is a good cop bar?”

  “One of the best.”

  Something heavy knocked into him. “Sorry, dude,” someone said from behind him. “Let me buy you a beer.”

  “No thanks. I’ve already got one.” Dante headed for the last quiet corner at the far end of the bar. The little patch of countertop between the dirty dishes and the bottle rack wasn’t exactly palatial but he pulled over two bar stools and squeezed himself in. At least with his back to the wall no one could bang into him by surprise. He pulled his beanie out and tugged it down over his head, the soft wool comfortable and familiar, the slight pressure against his scalp reassuring, and pasted his practiced smile onto his face.

  Finn frowned. “You look like a pitbull with a hangover. Does that smile work on women? Guys in Homicide say you have a reputation for booze, babes and busting heads.”

  “Yeah, well, that hasn’t been me for a couple of years.” In his early twenties the sex had been fantastic, the women gorgeous, and if he’d mostly been too drunk to remember the sex, he’d also been too drunk to feel guilty when he moved on to someone new.

  That had all stopped when his foster father had taken him aside after one particularly public escapade. “You’re a police officer,” Charlie Parsons had said. “A man. It’s about time you started acting like one. Find someone you can’t live without. Settle down. Have a couple of kids.” He’d slapped Dante on the back. “Make me a grandfather.”

  Kids were out of the question, but Dante had taken the rest of his advice to heart. He’d cut back on the booze and lately he’d dropped women entirely.

  Fuck.

  He might as well be a monk.

  There was a crashing sound over near the battered pool table near the back—fire department territory. A dozen glasses shattered against the ground. It was followed by thunderous applause.

  The crowd parted, giving Dante a clear view of a man leaning over the pool table, larger than life. His muscular body was packed into a pair of skintight jeans, and a green T-shirt clung to his chest. The rich color perfectly complemented teak skin that gleamed under the low lights. Mahogany curls framed symmetrical features. His nose was straight. His lips were full.

  His eyes were too far away to see clearly, but Dante knew without a doubt that they were a grass green that deepened to a mossy color when he was concentrating.

  And gleamed like emeralds when he was horny.

  Luke freaking Parsons. The reason Dante had spent so much time on out-of-town undercover jobs.

  Dante’s heart stuttered. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He should have known that the social lives of New York City cops and firefighters were too incestuous for him to avoid Luke for long. No matter how hard he’d tried.

  His foster brother had broken with Parsons family tradition to join New York’s Bravest instead of New York’s Finest wh
en he graduated from college a few years earlier. His engine house was only a few blocks away from Smoke & Bullets, tucked into one of the many pocket neighborhoods that made up lower Manhattan. They’d probably walked over as a group after shift change to join the rest of their friends waiting at the bar.

  Luke shifted forward onto the balls of his feet and leaned down to make his shot. His shirt pulled free from his jeans, displaying a long strip of muscular flesh over a heart-shaped ass.

  Not that Dante noticed.

  Or cared.

  He’d built a career out of not noticing Luke Parsons, taking on extra shifts instead of going to family dinners and volunteering for undercover assignments when the pressure got to be a little too much to bear.

  Finn was grinning. “Damn. I don’t care what he does for a living. Just tell me he’s gay.”

  “You touch him and I’ll gut you,” Dante growled, the words ripping out of his throat before he could stop himself. He couldn’t make that kind of demand. He didn’t have the right. Not when he’d been avoiding his foster brother for so long it had turned into a habit. How many years had it been since they’d occupied the same space? Too many. That didn’t stop him from glaring his partner down.

  “That’d be a crying shame.” Finn frowned. “Why do you care? He a friend of yours? Old partner? Arch nemesis?”

  “Something like that.”

  Luke made his shot. It must have been a good one because there was a whoop of excitement from the men near the pool table. One of his friends wrapped his arms around his waist and gave him a tight squeeze.

  Dante’s hands clenched tight into fists.

  Then the hand on Luke’s hip dropped a few inches to knead his ass. Luke batted him away as he bent forward to line up his next shot. Then the hand went in for another squeeze.

  Dante’s mind went blank.

  Instinct took over as he charged across the crowded bar.

  *

  Luke laughed when he felt a hand on his ass just as he was going to take a shot. Alex Tate was happily engaged to the love of his life, but he’d do anything to win a game of pool. Cheater.

  And then the earth moved.

  Alex let out a rough yelp as his hand was yanked away. His feet came out from under him and he stumbled, hard, into the pool table as a hard body in a white button-down pushed him to the side.

  “What the hell?” Luke demanded, his face jerking upwards. His eyes widening as he met a familiar pair of mismatched eyes. “Dante.”

  Dante’s succulent lips twisted into a shit-eating grin. His focus didn’t leave Alex. “Touch him again, and you’ll be bobbing toes-up in the Hudson.”

  The scrape of Dante’s rough voice on Luke’s frayed nerves was enough to set his skin tingling and his blood burning. He gulped down the sudden burst of emotion. This wasn’t the time or place for his stupid childhood crush to make a resurgence.

  Not when other people had started to notice the commotion at the pool table. A dozen different men had started moving in their direction, hands forming into fists.

  “You’ve got to come up with a new threat.” He stepped forward, grabbed Dante’s hand, and pried him off Alex. “You’ve been using that one since I was nine years old.”

  “You were a cute kid. Ears too big for your head.” Dante shrugged. “Then you grew up.”

  “My ears are still too big for my head.” Luke waggled the appendages in question. That actually earned him a smile and a noise that in someone else might have qualified as a death croak but he was taking as a laugh.

  “Luke, you want to explain what’s going on?” At six foot three with muscles built to carry sixty pounds of equipment upstairs in a towering inferno, Alex’s boyfriend, Troy Barnes, was built like a tank. And with years of training courtesy of the US Army, he knew how to fight.

  If Luke didn’t defuse the situation carefully, the resulting explosion could end with someone getting hurt. For a minute he almost considered letting it happen. At least if Dante was bruised and broken on the floor, he wouldn’t be able to run off again.

  But Dante liked to fight dirty, and Troy was still getting over his own wounds.

  Luke held up his hands. “Just a misunderstanding. It’s all over now.”

  “It’s not over until that guy apologizes.” Dante glared at Alex, who’d taken the opportunity to slip behind his boyfriend. “He grabbed your ass. You told him no—I could see it from all the way up at the bar—and he did it anyway.”

  “Thanks for your concern, Detective, but I’m not in any danger from Alex. He was just joking. He’s a friend.”

  Dante didn’t seem to hear him. His eyes narrowed dangerously and he shifted forward onto the balls of his feet like he was spoiling for a fight.

  Some things never changed.

  Luke took one deep breath then another, forcing blood back into his head and out of his groin.

  Damn it.

  Maybe his foster brother hadn’t changed, but Luke wasn’t the same kid who’d fallen hard when Dante moved into the room next door. He was a grown man who knew the difference between a hard-on and true love.

  Especially when it came to someone like Dante.

  His surging libido crashed back down to earth as he recalled the look Dante had given him when he’d brought a date to his police academy graduation. The storm clouds on Dante’s face had made it clear exactly what he thought about Luke’s relationship with another guy. He’d ignored them both all night long.

  Worse, he’d been avoiding Luke ever since. They’d grown up together, damn it. They weren’t best friends, but they were family. It was a bond that couldn’t be broken. Right up until Dante tossed him away like so much trash in an alley. Their father said it wasn’t Dante’s fault that he didn’t come around anymore. He was working double shifts or going undercover, fighting the good fight, but that didn’t make it hurt any less to see the empty chair across the table at family dinner.

  Going mano a mano with the other man was a bad idea. He’d lost enough wrestling matches as a kid to know that, but he wasn’t afraid to fight dirty.

  His lifestyle made Dante uncomfortable?

  Too damn bad.

  The handsome detective was in Luke’s world now. Smoke & Bullets might not be one of the gay bars in the Village with their pounding music, pulsing lights, and twinks eager to grind against him on the dance floor, but plenty of cops and firefighters were gay, bi, or questioning.

  Luke’s lips tipped up into a smile.

  Time to get his flirt on.

  Starting with the sexy blond standing a step to Dante’s right.

  Chapter Two

  Dante had lost control of the situation. He’d known it when he put his hands on the wheat-haired man at the pool table, but he hadn’t realized quite how much trouble he was in until a familiar smile flashed across Luke’s sweet face. Emerald eyes framed by thick black lashes opened wide—too innocent for words—as soft lips that probably got the kid more attention than he could handle twitched up into a devious smile.

  It was the same smile Luke had worn at thirteen when he’d short-sheeted Dante’s bed, the same smile he’d worn when he’d stolen Dante’s truck for a joy ride, and the same smile he’d worn at eighteen when he’d shown up to Dante’s police academy graduation with another boy.

  And hadn’t that been a kick in the pants.

  Up until that night Dante had been able to convince himself any emotion he felt toward the younger boy was purely platonic—brotherly even—but watching Luke wrap his arms around someone else’s waist had given him a rude awakening. He’d wanted him. Damn. Every thought flashing through his head had been erotic, transcendent, and forbidden. Luke was his little brother. He was supposed to be protecting him from jackasses trying to get into his pants, not imagining himself in their place.

  Dante had moved out of the house two weeks later. He’d volunteered for every extra shift he could find to get out of going home for family dinner. And, when the brass had come around looking for volunte
ers to go undercover? He’d jumped at the opportunity. Anything to put more distance between him and Luke Parsons. Anything to keep his mind busy, to stop him from fantasizing about off-limits lips and emerald eyes.

  Forget going home early.

  If Luke was looking for trouble then Dante wasn’t going anywhere.

  Even if he could taste bile in the back of his mouth when Luke leaned past him to smile at his partner. “Hello, gorgeous, how can I help you?”

  “Leave him alone, Luke.” Dante’s fingernails sliced into his palms. Luke’s voice was low and throaty. It left prickles of awareness running across his skin. Up until that instant he hadn’t realized a man could purr.

  “Luke?” Finn raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Nice name.”

  “Leave him alone,” Dante insisted. “He’s just a kid. Too young for you.”

  “I’m twenty-six.” There was no purr in his voice for Dante, just a hard edge that he couldn’t name and didn’t like. “I’m a man.”

  Dante tried to keep his gaze fixed straight ahead. It didn’t work.

  Like some powerful magnet, Luke drew his attention in close and—damn—he wasn’t a lanky teenager anymore. He wasn’t quite six foot. He’d never be a giant, but he’d given up the string-bean act and put on some real muscle. Had it really been that long since they’d seen each other? But there was no way Dante would have missed the firm biceps that tugged at the arms of his green cotton T-shirt or the tree-trunk thighs straining his faded blue jeans.

  While Dante was running down gangbangers and being loaned out on assignment to the feds, Luke had turned into one hell of a man.

  Fuck.

  Could this night get any worse? Teenage Luke Parsons with his lean frame had haunted Dante for years, tearing at his dreams and making him hate himself every morning when he woke up with a hard-on. Grown-up Luke Parsons with all the pretty muscles Dante wanted to trace with his tongue?

  They might not share blood, but they were family. Brothers. Touching him? Fantasizing about him? It wasn’t just a bad idea. It was a sin.

  Dante was a sucky Catholic. He didn’t believe in much, but he knew that truth down in his bones. He was going to hell.