Leashes & Lace Books 1-3: MM Romance Boxed Set

by Shaw Montgomery

  Eli nodded, and the drama queen in him faded away, replaced by the professional side he didn’t let the world often see. “Yes, we should be prepared for both, but I don’t know what they were thinking. We’ll keep most of them fairly simple and can tweak things later if we need to. Adding in some flowers or a Christmas tree to the background won’t be hard, if it comes to that.”

  Preston shrugged. “I agree. I’ve heard there was some significant turnover at the company over the last year. The new fashions that have been coming out are beautiful, but the marketing department can’t seem to coordinate with the designers. If they don’t get everything worked out, I think they’re going to struggle in the long run.”

  Roman was setting things up for the next part of the shoot, looking like he was ignoring Eli and Preston. Evidently, though, he’d been paying more attention than I’d thought, because he looked over at them. “Was this the same company that you had problems with last time?”

  Nodding, Preston moved toward the rack of clothes. “Yes, the quality is improving, but it’s odd, I don’t know if they’re just going through growing pains or if it’s something else.”

  I had a feeling it was something else, but it wasn’t my place to say. Casey had told me some things in confidence, but even though they were vague, I wasn’t going to step in unless it would hurt Leashes and Lace. But Preston and Eli seemed to realize something was up, so I wasn’t really worried.

  Eli got a wicked glint in his eyes. “Might be time for another lunch date with Casey.”

  Preston cleared his throat awkwardly, making the rest of us fight not to smile. “I wouldn’t call it a date. But yes, seeing if he has any more information might be a good idea.”

  They were both so funny.

  Preston wasn’t sure how to read Casey, and Casey was being so shy about what was going through his head I wasn’t sure they would ever do more than just have meetings and discussions. I tried to stay out of it, but as I looked at Preston, I realized it might be time to give Casey a kick in the pants. Not that it would take much. He nearly vibrated with excitement every time he talked about Preston.

  Preston and Eli spoke for a few more moments before he nodded and turned to leave. Calling out quick comments and goodbyes, he headed downstairs. Roman cleared his throat and gave us all pointed stares as Preston left. “Time to get back to work, and with the additional pictures, I think we’re going to end up being here a little longer. So let me know if anyone has plans that will interfere with that.”

  Several months ago, the idea of changing things around at the last minute would have driven him crazy. The fact that one of the other models said they wouldn’t be able to stay late would’ve only made it worse. But now, he just shrugged it off and said he’d work around it. All the doubtless dirty things that Eli was whispering in his ear probably helped, however.

  Eli seemed to know how to distract Roman and keep him on a more even keel.

  Of course, I could have said the same about Eli. Roman seemed to know when Eli was getting ready to go off his rocker and he knew just what to do to bring Eli down. If anyone had told me several months ago they would actually work things out and have a functional relationship, I would have laughed.

  “All right, Lane, turn this way and kneel down. I want to see what you were envisioning.” Roman started around the space, adjusting lights and looking through his lines. As I lowered myself to the ground, Eli came over and started fidgeting with the nightgown.

  While Roman was making last-minute adjustments, Eli spoke quietly. Thankfully, low enough that it was just for me. “This could be the start of a really fabulous BDSM shoot. It wouldn’t work for the site, unfortunately. But I think you should at least consider it.”

  “Maybe.” But I just couldn’t picture saying yes.

  If I could tell Eli the idea made me uncomfortable, he would lay off the pressure. But then he would start asking me why, and that was a discussion I wasn’t ready to have. So with the mixed signals I was giving off, he wasn’t going to let go of the idea.

  Relief flooded through me when Roman finished before Eli could start in again. As Eli moved away, I knew he was picturing a different type of shoot altogether, and for a moment, I wished I was confident enough to do it.

  But fantasies didn’t always transfer into reality well.

  * * * * *

  Without the afternoon caffeine, I would’ve been yawning as I worked on the last of the reports. Unfortunately, though, the late-in-the-day coffee that gave me the energy for the shoot and for working on the financial data would also make it hard to sleep.

  Wandering around my small apartment late in the evening was becoming so routine that I’d stopped griping about the fact that he didn’t take his coffee break earlier. Because of the odd hours the shop was open, it was probably his lunch break, but my body didn’t need caffeine at three o’clock in the afternoon.

  I was one of those people that it kept up all night. But there were only so many times you could order hot chocolate when you went into a coffee shop before they thought you were weird. Especially when you were there so often.

  The only good thing about the late hours was that my clients liked having the data available first thing in the morning instead of having to wait until later in the day. Contrary to what my mother thought I did, I didn’t actually run a blog. Well, just the one for Leashes and Lace. After college, I’d tried to explain to her what I wanted to do, but she’d thought it sounded ridiculous and impractical—mainly because she couldn’t understand it.

  I’d worked in the finance industry while I was going to college, a combination of part-time jobs and internships. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that while there was a lot of data available in the different companies, most of the salespeople didn’t understand what to do with it.

  They had ridiculous amounts of information available in different spreadsheets and Excel documents, but there was a big disconnect between the portion of the companies that generated the raw data and the information that was sent to the salespeople. Just because someone could sell a product, didn’t mean they’d have the background in statistics to interpret the data. It hadn’t taken me long to see the business opportunity in front of me.

  So instead of staying with one firm and doing an eight-to-five desk job forever, I started my own business.

  Salesmen would send me the raw data they found boring and unintelligible, and I would send back information they could use. Mostly it was just a matter of feeding the raw data into some programs that I’d set up so it would give them information in an easier format. I was starting to build up enough clients that the job was actually paying my bills, but I couldn’t imagine leaving Leashes and Lace, no matter how successful the data analysis business was.

  I was curious enough about the lingerie that when I’d seen the advertisements, I wasn’t shocked by the idea of working there. I’d originally thought it would be just a part-time job to keep me from having to eat Ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese every meal until I built up the business. But it quickly became more than that. They were like a family now.

  I just wished my family was as open-minded and understanding. I knew they loved me, but they’d been easier to deal with when I was back in college and doing everything they’d expected. Once I started running my own life, things had begun to unravel. Finding out I was gay hadn’t been that much of a shock to them, but I had a feeling that the lingerie and other things I’d discovered would horrify them.

  Having a son who was gay was one thing, but having a son who liked panties and more feminine things, and was drawn to tattooed guys, would have given them a heart attack. Luckily, aside from a few conversations a month and the occasional family dinner, they weren’t in my life much. Recently, though, my mother had decided to start fixing me up, but I was hoping that it was a phase that wouldn’t last very long. I couldn’t imagine her understanding what I liked in a guy.

  One day, I knew I would stop hiding from them and just
let the cards fall where they may, but I wasn’t in any hurry. Not because I was ashamed or hiding, but the conflict and drama would make me crazy.

  Eli and Roman had already nearly given me an ulcer, and that was just watching their relationship.

  I didn’t like conflict; it was one of the reasons I’d stayed in the closet until college was almost finished. I wasn’t hiding from myself and had actually dated a few people seriously, but telling my family had been hard. They liked arguing and debating issues to death. Even if they didn’t care that I was gay, I knew it would be a difficult conversation—and I’d been right.

  So I’d just stopped telling them things. It’d made everything easier.

  When my small apartment was clean and there was nothing else to burn my energy off with, I flopped down on the couch and turned on the television. Flicking through the channels, I let my body relax and tried to calm down.

  Before I’d run into the tattooed guy, whose name seemed to be something like Will from what I’d managed to hear from the barista, I hadn’t usually had any caffeine from lunch onward. Even iced tea at dinner would keep me up most of the night. It’d been helpful in college when I’d needed to stay up all night, but most of the time, it was just frustrating.

  I kept telling myself that it would help me work up the nerve to talk to him sooner just so I could stop going in for coffee as often, but so far, I hadn’t managed to do it. Eli had started making a habit of coming with me for moral support, though, and I had a feeling he was losing his patience. Thankfully, he understood how hard it was for me and hadn’t pushed too much.

  My goal was to at least say hi to the guy before Eli did something helpful.

  However, knowing Eli, that might’ve been his intention the entire time. It was hard to tell, though. As the channels went by, I tried to picture how the meeting would look. Just saying hi to the guy wouldn’t tell me if he was gay, but at least it would be a start.

  A greeting one day, asking what he was reading the next, and eventually, it would all lead to a real discussion. Life would’ve been easier if I’d been attracted to more clean-cut guys, as my mother would have described them. But I didn’t want to date a banker or lawyer, that wasn’t the kind of man I was drawn to. Unfortunately, the average bad boy that was covered in tattoos was generally an asshole straight guy. But not always; sometimes they were polite straight guys.

  I tried going to a biker bar one time that advertised it was for LGBT riders. It had been a little like heaven and hell at the same time. Most of the men had been a lot older than I’d expected, way too old for me. There were some guys that were in the right age range, but they’d either ignored me as someone who was just there to gawk, or they’d come on so strong I’d been uncomfortable.

  If I’d been a more confrontational person, I could’ve made it work. But I’d just frozen and hadn’t been sure what to do. Dating in college hadn’t prepared me for anything like that. So while it intrigued me and had led to countless fantasies, I hadn’t gone back.

  When I’d been spending countless hours getting the business started, it’d been easier to ignore my lack of a love life. Unfortunately, I didn’t need to keep up the frantic pace any longer, and it left me with too much time on my hands.

  As I flicked the channels, slightly lonely with just the television and numbers to keep me company, I vowed to at least say hi to the guy on Friday. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be a start. And that was better than nothing.

  Chapter 3

  Tattoo Guy

  The week would’ve passed faster if I’d known what I was going to do on Friday.

  It shouldn’t have even been a debate, really. But as I put aside the project I was supposed to be working on and stepped away from the kitchen table, I admitted to myself that there had to be a reason he was still on my mind.

  The sketches I should’ve been working on would have to wait. My brain just wouldn’t focus. Normally, my art let me push everything else aside. It’d been that way since I was a child. My earliest memories were coloring while my parents fought in the living room.

  Over the years, it had developed into a passion that had given me a focus for my life.

  I didn’t know where I would have ended up without it—certainly not in a brightly lit modern downtown loft. In college, I’d spent more than a few nights worrying that I’d picked the wrong majors. Double majoring in English and art might not have been the most practical decision, but since I was paying for everything myself, I’d wanted to spend my money on something I loved.

  Glancing back at the sketches on the table, I wished there was a way to go back in time and tell my younger self that it would all work out…just not in the way I’d ever envisioned.

  I’d been surrounded by interesting individuals on all sides, and working as a tattoo artist to put myself through school hadn’t been the most outrageous part-time job I’d seen. I’d just always imagined that it would be something I’d quit when my real career took off. But over the years, it’d turned into a real career I couldn’t imagine walking away from. Luckily, both of my passions were things that didn’t require traditional hours.

  Three or four days a week, I did tattoos, although some weeks I was there a lot more depending on the demand. The rest of the time, I spent working on my art. When people looked at me, they thought the tattoo artist label made sense.

  A big, brawny guy with tattoos equaled tattoo artist in their head, or leader of a motorcycle gang, depending on what kind of romance novels they read. Those women got nuts. Finding out I also illustrated children’s books always threw them for a loop.

  Sometimes that was fine, but it had gotten to the point where I was tired of being stereotyped.

  In college, it hadn’t really mattered what I’d looked like. Art majors were supposed to be different, and most of my friends in the English department were so buried in their books and papers that they were lost in their own world. I’d gotten some pushback from my professors early on, but when they realized I wasn’t just a moron with tattoos, they’d changed their tune.

  It made me wonder what my stalker saw when he looked at me.

  Did he just notice the tattoos or had he seen past that?

  Before I’d started reading on my lunch break, I’d gotten more than my fair share of phone numbers from women who were just looking for a bad boy to have a good time with. Was that what my stalker was looking for? Did he just want the fantasy of a badass straight guy?

  If he did, he’d be disappointed.

  Part of me wanted to say yes and shove it out of my mind. But something about the way his friend had spoken made me question it. I liked the idea of finding someone. I wasn’t going to lie about that. I’d been single for a while and had crossed the bridge from content into loneliness. But that couldn’t be the only reason I found my shy stalker constantly on my mind.

  Grabbing my phone off the table, I made my way over to the living room and started to dial. Staring out the window, I started to relax. I loved the way the lights twinkled in the darkness. I’d tried to capture it dozens of times since I’d moved in, but I hadn’t been able to find the right medium.

  As the phone rang, I glanced down at the time and shrugged. It was almost midnight, but with the time zone differences, I wasn’t worried. Besides, he’d always been a night owl.

  When the phone connected, chuckling came over the line. “Wildman, why don’t you ever call me at a normal time?”

  “I am way too old for that nickname. Besides, if anyone was wild, it would’ve been you.”

  Gray laughed. “Yeah, maybe. What’s up?”

  I scoffed. “Can’t I call you just to chat?”

  “Technically, but you never have.”

  I had a feeling I’d captured his full attention. “One of these days I will, and you’re going to have a heart attack.”

  “I’m not going to hold my breath for that. Did you get the news on that contract already?” Gray had always been one of the few people who never even
blinked when they’d found out what I wanted to do. He just shrugged and wished me luck. At first, I thought his nonchalance was because he wanted the room I was renting out. But no, that was just who he was.

  “Not yet. It will be another week or two before I hear back. I just wish they’d have taken my suggestion. I still think the book would look better in color.” I wasn’t sure if the pen and ink drawings had been the publisher’s idea or the author’s, but after reading the book, I’d pictured the scenes in watercolors. “I’m not even sure if I want the commission anymore. I have a feeling that we’re not going to see eye to eye about any of it.”

  Getting to the point where I could turn down a job was wonderful. Readers didn’t always know the names of the illustrators, but I’d built up a bit of a reputation in the publishing industry and could now pick and choose which projects I wanted to work on. It’d helped that I could live on what I made from the tattoo parlor, but it had been almost a year since I’d had to touch that income. Being able to live off my art was something I’d never imagined would be possible.

  “So why are you calling me instead of working on something else? You usually ignore any phone calls this late at night.” Gray was right. I should have been so focused on work I didn’t even hear the phone ring, much less wander off and make a phone call.

  “When we were roommates, you said that straight guys got blow jobs from other men all the time, and that it didn’t mean anything. Right?” Evidently, Gray hadn’t been expecting anything like that because he started to choke and cough.

  By the time he’d gotten a hold of himself, I’d begun to regret the phone call. Shaking my head, I started to end the call. “Listen, I’ll just—”

  Gray jumped back in as soon as he could breathe. “No, you just startled me. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but in my defense I was drunk, and you were hot. But yes, straight guys get curious. It doesn’t make them gay or bi.”

  “Then what does?”

  Gray sighed. “Just once I’d like you to call for absolutely no reason and just ask about the weather.”