by Rhys Ford
IVO’S HAIR was a different color than the last time Ruan saw it. Or at least he thought it was. Sometime between day before yesterday and the early hours of a morning Ruan hadn’t expected to be awake for, the streaks in Ivo’s hair had mutated to something closely resembling a slick of oil gathering on gutter water. Within a minute of the attempted robbery being called in, the front of the tattoo shop was swarming with cops and Ruan began delegating assignments, wishing he’d asked Ivo to make a pot of coffee or something to jolt him awake. The adrenaline running through his blood at the sight of Ivo being held at knifepoint was long gone, leaving him exhausted. Between the bad street lighting and the chaos of squad cars disgorging an army of uniforms, Ruan kept losing track of the long-legged, snarling man he’d rescued.
Still, Ruan always seemed to eventually find him. Whether he wanted to or not.
Ivo Rogers was taller than most of the cops gathered around the scene. A little bit of it was the fuck-me leather boots he wore, their heels taking the man up a few inches, but most of it was his natural height and the way he threw his shoulders back, his slightly scruffy jaw tilted up, daring the world to take its best shot.
Despite the weird colors in his hair, Ivo was gorgeous in the way only a fallen angel made mortal could be, an ironic image Ruan couldn’t seem to shake. There was no question about his bad-boy cred, and it certainly drew the eye. Every inch of his lean, muscular body screamed tangling with him in any way was a poor life choice, but the charming tilt of his handsome face and the erotic purr of his baritone was enough of a lure to make anyone cross the line. Ruan would’ve had to be dead not to be affected by the tattoo artist leaning against the post a few feet away, but there was also a good chance that even if he were a corpse, Ivo would somehow get under his skin.
The artist certainly was getting under more than a couple of the responding officers’ skin just by standing there. Gomez kept shooting looks toward Ivo, the sloe-eyed cop’s mouth seemingly torn between a come-hither smirk and a scowl whenever he caught Officer Tignell laughing as she guarded the perimeter of the scene, talking Ivo up as she warned the occasional person away from the sidewalk.
“Did you hear me, detective?” Sergeant Baker was the lead officer on the scene, a seemingly straightlaced, middle-aged black woman with a thick Boston accent. Her voice was a brisk slice of cold through his hot thoughts, demanding his attention. “You can go now. I think we’ve got everything handled.”
Ruan was thankful she didn’t question what he was doing out in the wee hours of the morning, and he was never more relieved at not having a shot of bourbon after coming off shift. He’d been bleary-eyed and worn out but wound too tightly to sleep. So even though he didn’t live in the best of neighborhoods, he strapped on his off-duty piece and made the long slog down to the piers, hoping the walk would tire him out enough so he could catch a few hours before going back on again.
He’d debated going past the shop just to see if Ivo was working, and even though he dismissed the idea as juvenile, his feet seemed to think otherwise. Everything was upside down in his head, starting from the moment Ruan practically choked on his own tongue when the pretty boy he’d rescued a few years before opened the front door of the sympathy-notification call he had to make to Mace Crawford, to now, when he was flirting with taking things further with Ivo.
That whole case had been a clusterfuck. There were a few times when it was difficult to put aside a murder victim’s bigoted and poisonous existence, but he’d sworn to uphold the law, and the moment he compromised those values would be the day he turned in his badge. Crawford seemed like the only good thing to come out of the victim’s life, and from what little Ruan gleaned from interacting with the firefighter in his adopted family, the man Mace became had more to do with the four men he called his brothers than the man who’d been his father.
Seeing Ivo Rogers had just been the rancid cherry on top of the shit sundae he’d been served that day. Ruan’s thoughts already seemed to circle back to the night he found Ivo sitting on a cop car hood with bloodied fists and sparkling shoes. Waiting on the doorstep to deliver difficult news was the last thing any cop wanted to do, but combined with getting hit by the full force of Ivo’s lush mouth and long-lashed blue eyes, Ruan knew he was never going to be able to dislodge the inker from his mind.
Especially when his brain—despite being there to inform a man of his father’s death—latched on to wondering what Ivo tasted like.
“Detective?” Baker’s irritation rumbled through her voice. “Is there anything else you need, Nicholls?”
“Did you need anything else from Rogers?” he heard himself ask. It must’ve been his lack of sleep and the caseload he was carrying, because Ruan couldn’t seem to shake the fog from his brain. “If you’re done, I can walk him up to where he’s parked, just in case that other guy circles back.”
There was no chance in hell the other assailant was going to circle back, not through a sea of cops and certainly not to have another go at Ivo, who’d made a terrifying sight holding a baseball bat while wearing high-heeled boots.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Baker remarked. “If you could, that would be a great help. I can cut some of these guys loose to go back on patrol as soon as you give the all-clear. Yeah, we’re done with him, so he can go. If we need anything else, we can hunt him down. We got all the contact information we need.”
“Have a good night, then.” Ruan hoped he sounded more in control than he felt. “See you around.”
“Only because you live here,” she shot back. “Seriously, Nicholls, sometimes you’ve got to put the badge down and have a life.”
“That’s what I was doing. Sort of. Before all of this happened.” He shrugged, giving her a final wave. “Sometimes, you go for a walk to clear your head, and the next thing you know, you’re back to being a cop again.”
DETECTIVE RUAN Nicholls.
Ivo rolled the man’s name around on his tongue, tasting at the bitter edges of it. It suited him. It was a hard name, carved out of stone and gilded with steel instead of gold. He listened as the female cop chattered to him, slipping slivers of information about the stormy-eyed man who’d ridden in to rescue him twice now.
Even if Ivo hadn’t needed rescuing.
Okay, he conceded, Ruan helped. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe he couldn’t use some backup in a fight. He left that kind of woeful ignorance to his older brother Gus.
The detective was worn around the edges and wearing the world’s dirt on his soul. Even taking into account it was the early hours of the morning, Nicholls was ground down to the bone. His green eyes were flat and faded in the washed-out light, and every line on his face was picked deep with shadows. He was only an inch or two shorter than Ivo, but he seemed shorter tonight, more folded in on himself. His expressions during the circus act of the cops milling about ran a tight spectrum between rigidly authoritative and sheer exhaustion.
Ivo wasn’t a nurturer, or at least not to anyone outside of his brothers, but there was something about Nicholls that made him want to open up a can of soup and force-feed it down Ruan’s throat.
Fisherman’s Wharf was very different in the wee hours of the morning. Nearly empty of people, it was kind of like walking through a circus once the crowds left the final show. The lights were still on, flashing bright neon swirls meant to pull in disinterested passersby, performing their illuminated acrobatics to a deserted wasteland of fast-food wrappers and the occasional cop. In a few hours, kitchen staff would be trickling in to prep for another busy day of tourists and heavy rush hours, but for right now, the broad street and curving sidewalks were quiet.
There was more than a whiff of the bay in the air—that odd kelp-kissed, salty brackish perfume with a hint of fish and a slap of metal and diesel from the boats anchored off the piers. If Ivo listened carefully, he could hear the sharp barks of sea lions arguing their way through an interrupted slumber, probably jostling for space. It was odd not to smell food or even the ac
rid sting of alcohol from the legion of bars strung up and down the walk, but those would return once the sunrise hit the horizon.
He hoped to be home and passed out by then, but there was still the small question of waking Bear up to tell him why there was plywood across the shop’s front window. Nicholls’s gaze shuttered, any spare light in his eyes dimming down until nothing remotely lifelike remained in them. The set of his mouth thinned out his lips, and his jaw worked, a muscle jumping along its length. The shadows played with the shape of his face, catching on his once- or-twice-broken nose, throwing it into silhouettes against a fast-food joint’s illuminated advertising panel. Standing on the sidewalk a few feet away from the shop, there was enough space between them and the cops to give the illusion of privacy, but Ivo edged closer around the building, silently drawing Ruan along with him.
“You okay, man?” Ivo asked. “Because you don’t look okay.”
“I’m… good,” Ruan muttered back. “Nothing a good cup of coffee can’t solve.”
Ivo’d spent years watching people, listening to them as they spoke about the things that were important enough for them to want to wear on their skin. He’d learned along the way that sometimes the tiniest red heart on a woman’s ankle was as much of a shout out against the establishment and oppression as a full back piece of social activists’ portraits. He might not have been as insightful as Bear, but he’d learned enough over the years to know when someone was lying to him. Detective Ruan Nicholls was spinning such a huge tale his nose should have been as long as his right leg.
Pursing his mouth for a moment, Ivo considered letting the lie go, but his curiosity and the seemingly unshakable need to know more about Ruan egged him on. He didn’t put any heat on his words but enunciated enough to be quite clear.
“Bullshit.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, watching Ruan’s expression heat up, putting life back in his pale green eyes. “Life’s too short to be fucking around and not saying what you mean. Sure, I might have to work at some diplomacy, but at least you know what you see with me is what you get. So I’m calling bullshit on you being okay. Don’t make me kick your ass in front of your siblings over there.”
The uneven lighting bleached the color from Ruan Nicholls’s features, composing him out of shades of gray and white. The weariness Ivo saw in him deepened, chain links forged by countless days of slogging through God only knew what, and the borderline sarcastic smile the detective gave him did nothing to lift that weight.
“Right. Sure, you’ll kick my ass.” Ruan glanced down at Ivo’s boot, smirking. “I can just walk away. Not like you’d be able to run in those things.”
“Dude, you have no fucking idea what I can do in these things. I’ve sprinted in worse across campus when it was full-out raining and worked the shop in them when I was interning,” Ivo snorted. “Kicking your ass to next Sunday is nothing. I didn’t go out into the world to play.”
“Really, because from where I’m standing, that’s all you’re doing to me.” Nicholls didn’t seem like he was that bothered by anything, but he was hard to read. His broad shoulders were relaxed and his chest wasn’t pushed out, his balance resting on his whole foot and not just his heels. Still, flint and steel hardened Ruan’s gaze, his stern expression at odds with his casual lean toward Ivo. “What the fuck were you thinking? Coming out of the shop with a damned bat? You could have been killed.”
“What the hell were you doing down here this late? That’s what I’m asking,” Ivo replied, ignoring Ruan’s question. It was something he’d learned to do when arguing with Gus and Mace—distraction at its finest, but Ruan wasn’t going to let go of the virtual bone he clenched in his teeth.
“Don’t even start with that shit. I live up a few blocks, remember?” He stepped forward, tightening the space between them. The saltiness of the pier air dipped, dropping away under the sharp tang of a citrusy soap the detective used. “You’re damned lucky I decided to take a walk after I got home, or Harry and his friend would have carved you up for breakfast.”
“Nobody asked you to stop,” he pointed out, and Ruan’s upper lip curled into a snarl. “You could have just walked away.”
“I should, because God fucking knows, you’re not good for my blood pressure, but apparently with you, I just don’t know how to walk away.” Ruan sighed heavily. “Seriously, coming down the street and seeing you there… almost fucking killed me.”
Ruan took another step, and Ivo could feel his warm breath ghost across his cheek. Ruan’s fists kept clenching and unclenching, almost as if he wanted to punch something… or someone. Or least that’s what Ivo believed until Nicholls reached forward, tangled his fingers into the hair at Ivo’s nape, then tugged him forward into a fierce, mind-blowing kiss.
KISSING IVO Rogers when he was dead tired and wrung out was possibly the stupidest thing he’d ever done. It was right up there with the time he tossed his loaded weapon onto his bed when he first came home from the police academy. It’d taken two days, a lot of spackle, and a whole lot of begging to get the old lady who lived next door not to take him down.
It was stupid, because there was never going to be anything between them. There couldn’t be, but damn if Ruan didn’t want something. Anything.
The tattoo artist lived in a different world—a cotton-candy, super sweet utopia where wearing eyeliner and high heels wouldn’t get his face punched in. He was swaddled in a protective layer of recklessness and ignorant youth. He would never understand the need to keep his desires locked away, to bite the inside of his cheek when someone called him faggot, or to walk away from an uneven fight. Ruan already saw that happen once. There was going to come a time when Ivo Rogers picked a fight with someone bigger and stronger than he was, and all that would be left of him would be a smear on the sidewalk and the broken pieces of his skull lying in the gutter.
Ruan already had the blood of someone he cared about caked beneath his fingernails. He couldn’t stand the thought of being there when it happened to the brash, smart-mouthed man who’d snagged his attention and wouldn’t loosen his grip on Ruan’s cock—even if Ivo didn’t realize he was holding Ruan hostage.
He just wanted a taste.
One small sip from the fiery, cinnamon-scented lava of Ivo’s mouth.
He should’ve just flown to the sun, stuck a straw into its depths, and sucked in as much as he could before he burst into flames.
Ruan was lost as soon as his lips touched Ivo’s. Every second slowed to what seemed like a year. His senses were hyper sharp, drinking in everything he could from that eternal moment. He expected Ivo’s hair to be rough from its unnatural colors, but instead it was as if he was running silk strands across his fingers. Tightening his grip made Ivo gasp, a plume of candied sweetness blooming in Ruan’s mouth as he sealed their kiss tightly, capturing Ivo’s lips. The brush of his thumb against Ivo’s high cheekbones was a study of textures—the rasp of a day-old scruff, then the powdery smoothness of the skin beneath his ear.
His cock hummed and danced, or at least that’s what it felt like. His stomach tangled in on itself, finding razor blades within its folds so Ruan sliced himself open every time he thought to take a breath. He was scared as hell to let Ivo go, not wanting to face the condemnation and those complicated, stormy blue eyes or maybe even the sneer on his beautiful mouth when Ruan pulled away.
If only he could keep their kiss from ending, Ruan could balance on the dangerous edge between falling for a man he couldn’t understand and not caring if he broke his heart into a million tiny pieces when Ivo flung it away. It was stupid to want another man as much as he did, even dumber to weave lust and an unhealthy obsession together into a basket he would probably live in for the rest of his life.
Ruan knew he could still walk away with most of his soul and mind intact… if he could just let go.
The kiss fell away, ending as savage and sweet as it began with Ivo’s heavy breathing on Ruan’s flushed face. Gasping for any bit of air, Ivo’
s laughter was punched through with sliced hiccups, serrated holes of silence as Ruan tried to find the edges of his sanity. Ivo rested his forehead against Ruan’s, chuckling as he finally was able to catch enough of a breath to speak.
“Well shit,” Ivo stammered, the whispering touch of his words sliding over Ruan’s face, mimicking the kiss they just shared. “If that’s what you can do in public, I can’t fucking wait to see what you can do on that couch of yours. Because hell, Ruan… what you do to me. No fucking way I’m walking away from you.”
And with that sibilant murmur, Ruan was lost, aching hard and filled with ghosts of what-ifs at the idea of Ivo Rogers in his life.
“Okay,” Ruan muttered and sucked in one more deep inhale of Ivo’s masculine scent. “How about if we go over to Frankie’s and see if we can’t find an open booth. You and I’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Seven
IVO WANTED nothing more than to find a booth down at Frankie’s and share a plate of messy fries with the cop who’d come out of the shadows to rescue him, but the achingly familiar sound of a vintage International Harvester Scout’s rattling frame sent glacial chips through the heat simmering through him. Ivo intimately knew the sound of the two-door proto-SUV’s throaty engine and its somewhat dubious creaking suspension, especially when driven over the uneven one-way street running down toward the pier. He’d listened for that sound late at night while reading in bed, way past his bedtime and eating up the hours before he had to wake up for high school. There would be no hiding, especially not since the Scout’s beams painted them in bright light. Even with his back facing the Scout’s approach, there was no way he could mask who he was—not with his height, not with his build, and certainly not with the high-heeled boots he’d put on that night.
