Bad Company (23 page)

Jack wasn’t watching TV or in the kitchen, and the silence in the house made Tony’s stomach too lurchy with nerves to make him want his usual post-work snack. He went upstairs and found Jack awake, lights on, laptop open as he sat in bed, his reading glasses perched on the end of his sharp nose. Jack thought they made him look old. Tony thought they made him look adorable, but he kept that to himself.

“Hey.” Jack glanced up from the screen. “Gimme a second.”

“Sure.” It wasn’t like Tony was all that eager to get the conversation off the ground. He dropped his jeans and his T-shirt over a chair and ducked into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He rehearsed a couple of openers in his mind while his teeth got the kind of brushing that would make a hygienist weep with joy.
You’re stalling, buddy
.

Straightening from spitting in the sink, he found Jack standing behind him and almost swallowed the brush. Naked Jack. Very nice. Tony rinsed again and raised his eyebrows at Jack’s reflection.

“You’re right. We do look hot.” Jack slid his arms around Tony’s waist.

They were almost the same height, Jack a little broader in the shoulders and narrower at the waist and hips, the bastard, but the contrast of Tony’s spiky blond hair and tan skin and Jack’s dark longer waves and creamy skin looked better than hot. The heavy press of Jack’s cock against Tony’s hip meant he wasn’t the only one enjoying the view.

Tony dropped his toothbrush in the holder and turned in Jack’s arms. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind about some mirrors in the bedroom?”

“No.” Jack kissed him, and from the first touch of lips, Jack licked into his mouth as if he’d just started the toothpaste diet.

Tony shifted, trying to find space to catch enough breath to say the joke out loud, but Jack didn’t let him, hands coming up to hold Tony’s head, the kiss going so deep it was like Jack wanted to crawl inside him. It wasn’t that Jack wasn’t usually enthusiastic about knocking boots, but Tony wondered if Jack was trying to eat him whole. For a second, the generator in his head launched on a zombie, alien, pod-person, werewolf track and then got back with the program when Jack eased up a fraction on jaw-splitting.

Tony rubbed a thumb across the sharp arch of Jack’s cheek, and that only made him hold on tighter, kiss harder, hungry noises spilling from his throat. He let go of Tony’s head and stroked his dick, but between the tongue in his mouth and the noises from Jack, Little Tony didn’t need much encouragement.

Jack spun away, breaths rough and heavy, and slapped his hands on the counter. “Fuck me.”

Tony ran a hand over the muscles in Jack’s thighs, the hard curve of his ass. It would take a stupider man than Tony’s mom had raised to turn down an offer like that. He kissed the top of Jack’s spine then let his lips drift lower. “Well, okay.”

Jack stopped him when Tony had licked down to Jack’s ass, catching Tony’s hand and moving it so he could feel how slick Jack’s hole already was.

“Hmmm. He comes pre-lubed. How convenient.” Tony tugged Jack toward the bedroom. “C’mon.”

“No. Here.” Jack slapped a condom on the counter and nodded at the mirror.

There was only one answer to that. “Okay.” Tony picked up the condom, but he rubbed his bare cock along the slick crease of Jack’s ass, the heat and the wet grabbing his skin, making it tighter, harder, until the veins throbbed and ached.

Jack spread his legs farther so that the next rub almost drove the head of Tony’s dick inside him.

“You can skip it if you want.” Jack’s voice was hoarse, full of pleading and so unlike him that the sharp edge of need in Tony’s gut dulled, and he stepped back. It wasn’t that Jack didn’t love a dick in his ass. Or a dildo, or half Tony’s hand. The guy liked his ass fucked, and Tony loved doing it. But Jack didn’t do sub stuff, didn’t get off on begging for it, didn’t make sounds like he was going to die if he didn’t get it in the next second. And as for the raincoat—yeah, that was something else they needed to talk about first. Other than a split-second you-negative-me-too pause as they ripped off each other’s clothes that first time, there hadn’t been any discussion, and they’d always used condoms when they fucked.

Tony hadn’t wanted to waste time on conversations, just wanted Jack, but now he was starting to think that maybe a little more talking and a little less fucking might be in order. After a quick glance in the mirror to make sure he hadn’t turned into a girl, Tony tore the condom wrapper with his teeth and rolled it down.

Jack bent his knees and leaned across the counter, so Tony pushed inside. Tight, Jesus, too tight. As Jack sucked in a pained breath through his teeth, Tony backed off.

“No.” Jack reached behind them to keep Tony inside. “Stay.”

Tony held still as Jack’s muscles pulsed and pulled at his dick. The tension slipped from Jack’s back, his ass, and his hand on Tony’s thigh all at once, and Tony started to thrust.

Can love repair a shattered life in time to save the world?

The Salisbury Key

© 2011 Harper Fox

Daniel Logan is on a lonely quest to find out what drove his lover, a wealthy, respected archaeologist, to take his own life. The answer—the elusive “key” for which Jason was desperately searching—lies somewhere on a dangerous and deadly section of Salisbury Plain.

The only way to gain access, though, is to allow an army explosives expert to help him navigate the bomb-riddled military zone. A man he met once more than three years ago, who is even more serious and enigmatic than before.

Lieutenant Rayne has better things to do than risk his life protecting a scientist on an apparent suicide mission. Like get back to Iraq and prove he will never again miss another roadside bomb. Yet as he helps Dan uncover the truth, an attraction neither man is in the mood for springs up against their will. And stirs up the nervous attention of powerfully placed people—military and academic alike.

First in conflict, then in passion, Rayne and Dan are drawn together in a relationship as rocky and complicated as the ancient land they search. Where every step leads them closer to a terrible legacy written in death…

Warning: Contains bombs, archaeology and explicit M/M sex, not necessarily in that order.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Salisbury Key:

I had tensed up momentarily, almost unable to bear this new touch. Now, having let go and leaned briefly into it, I could hardly bear the thought of it stopping. I eased back, ending it myself. I wanted his passion, didn’t I? That was all. “I know,” I said. “I know. Thank you. Now come to… Come with me.”

Because
come to bed
was a problem. I was still sleeping on my own side of the double up there, and what I should have spent today doing was clearing out Jason’s clothes, which I didn’t need, not pretending to sort through his books, which I did. I tried to envisage rolling around in the sheets I still hadn’t changed, the wardrobes looking on in silent witness. I came to a halt in the hallway and felt Rayne gently collide with me. We both looked through the open living-room door at the sofa.

I said faintly, “What do you… What do you want?”

“Christ, Logan. I think I want you to fuck me, and I’m not even sure what that entails.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Not seriously.”

“What—about the fucking…?”

“No, you idiot—about the not
knowing
. I can’t—”

He cut me off impatiently. “No, for God’s sake. I know the—biological details. I just can’t imagine it being good.”

“Well, I’ll attempt to show you, but…” The sofa wouldn’t do for that. Quite apart from recent memories of Jase ploughing me down onto it—he loved that, to consummate passion while people went about their ordinary business, back and forth on the pavement outside—I needed space, or the demo would end up just as uncomfortable and awkward as Rayne probably feared.

I saw him seeing my problem. He was so alert. I could imagine being in a relationship with him, enjoying his delicious quickness, the sense of his being in pace at my side. No. Just a fuck. A good one, for preference, but that would be all.

He glanced upstairs and made a wry face at me. “I get it. Want to go to a hotel?”

Now there was a certain seedy, dreadful charm in that. Salisbury wasn’t long on establishments where you could book an afternoon room, but maybe we could find somewhere. Stay overnight to make it look good, screw each other blind and stupid and maybe get all this out of our systems in one fell swoop.

I swallowed, feeling faintly sick. That prospect felt worse—by just one shade, but definitely—than doing it in Jason’s bed on the day after his funeral. “God, no.”

“Okay. Well—don’t you have a spare room up there?”

I thought about it.
Dan’s rumpus room
, Jase had once called it, in affectionate disgust, passing by its open door. “Yes,” I said. “Of sorts.”

“Neutral ground?”

“Just about.” It would have to be. Apparently there wasn’t enough guilt in the world to stop me starting my slow burn. Heat like summer lightning, flickering all over the surface of my skin… He saw that problem too, and this time he didn’t say anything. He just took my hand.

So we each took up a position on either side of the bed, and between us we cleared it in painful silence. I would have felt much better if he’d laughed at me for my untidiness or for the range of my taste in books. I hadn’t always been a serious-minded student, and there were layers of history here—Frederick Forsyth novels and training manuals from the short time in my life when I’d wanted to be a commercial airline pilot.

But Rayne had thoughts of his own to occupy him. His hands moved efficiently, lifting off one stack after another. Eventually the mattress appeared. There was a pale blue undersheet on it, but that was all. I reached to brush dust off this and to tug it straight.

“God,” I said. “That looks a bit clinical. I’ll go and get a duvet.”

“No,” he said. I looked up at him. He was standing with his hands on his hips, surveying the mattress in much the same way as I’d seen him assess our next bit of dangerous ground on the plain. “Don’t. Putting a duvet over this isn’t gonna make it any better.”

I straightened up. Leaning on the wall, I folded my arms. “Better?” I echoed. There were things that I could tackle in a lover—initial shyness, mistaken ideas about anatomy—and things that I could not. Things that people had to straighten out for themselves. “Do you think what we’re going to do is bad?”

“What—morally? God, no. It just doesn’t fit…what I thought I was. What I thought I was going to be.”

“Which is?”

He shrugged. “Very boring. Wife and kids.”

With anyone else, I’d have laughed. I wondered what he thought was going to happen to him here on the spare-room mattress that would deprive him of the power to marry and reproduce. But he was pale, the rainy light and the expanse of sheet setting tired, nervous shadows under his cheekbones and eyes.

I said, “You can still have those things, can’t you? Did it ever occur to you that not getting killed in Iraq might be a better idea, if that’s what you really want?”

“Oh, I don’t really want them. I just…” He went to the window and carefully pulled at the cords of the blind until the slats were almost closed. Then he turned to face me. “Do you know what I wanted? I wanted to find some poor woman, marry her and squeeze a handful of kids out of her. Then be a perfect husband and father for the rest of my life, so I could shove my perfect fucking family in the face of…something that I don’t think even exists anymore.”

I repressed a whistle. His eyes were blazing. “Okay,” I said. “You can still have
that
, I suppose. But those are some bitter bloody reasons, Rayne.”

“You think I don’t know?”

I dropped a last handful of books and came towards him. We met in the narrow space at the foot of the bed. He went into my arms with a faint noise of surrender, and for a moment I held him there, tight as I could. He was shaking.

“C’mon, soldier,” I whispered to him. “You’ll be all right.”

I left him unsteadily beginning to unfasten his shirt and went into the bathroom, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my fingertips. They fumbled at the door of the cabinet, and I stopped for a minute, trying to calm myself. There were considerations, weren’t there? Things I hadn’t had to think about in years. Jason and I had stopped using condoms almost immediately, once I’d moved in. I’d had my blood test, just in case, and it never crossed my mind to question him. He was my professor. He was Jason. I supposed, staring at my hollow-eyed self in the bathroom mirror now, that that might have been stupid. That I might have told my younger self to act different.

Did we even have any? I started pulling things out of the cabinet to see. Oh, Christ—there was one of Jason’s exquisite little jars of lubricant. I set it aside, shuddering. I’d need something—lots of it, with a first-timer—but even the scent of that stuff would make the introductory session a short and disappointing one. My cock was softening now at the sight of the bloody jar. Thank God—farther back, a tube of the KY we had used for less ceremonial occasions. That would do, but still didn’t solve the problem of the—

“Logan?”

I started, dropping the tube into the sink. Turning round, I saw Rayne leaning in the bedroom door. He was stark naked, and even with the light behind him, that was a sight to stop my breath. He had something in his hand. “Bringing condoms seemed presumptuous,” he said thoughtfully, giving the packet a chuck and catching it. “But then
not
bringing them seemed a bit presumptuous too, so…”

Love was never part of his plan…until it pounced.

With Abandon

© 2011 J.L. Langley

As heir to an old and proud heritage, Aubrey Reynolds works and lives for his family, his employees and his pack. Agreeing to watch after a visiting werewolf is no big deal—until he discovers the newcomer is his mate. His very
male
mate…which is a very big deal, indeed. Revealing his sexuality was never part of Aubrey’s well-ordered life plan.