Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty (9 page)

“Thought I’d bring you some food,” Ichi replied, hefting the bag for Bobby to see. “Jae called to tell me Cole’s bruised up, and I thought you’d be too. So—”

“And since I don’t have my own personal Korean love toy, you’d thought I’d go for a—” He cut himself off, weariness digging lines into the corners of his eyes and mouth. “Sorry. That was… uncalled for. Fuck, I don’t know where my head’s at. Well, I
do
know, ’cause the damned thing is pounding like crazy. Thanks for the food, but I don’t know if I want anything other than liquid oatmeal right now.”

“Are you mad at me for leaving the other day?” Ichi grabbed the proverbial bull by its horns, damning himself to a fight. When he’d woken up in Bobby’s bed, he’d done a quick body and smell check to see if he’d had sex and was left more embarrassed for getting passed-out drunk on the man who’d rescued him from a family interrogation. “I probably should have left a note or something. Not like we—shit—I should have said thanks. So,” he continued, holding up the bag he still had in his hand, “this is my thank you, because everyone on God’s green earth knows you’ve had a shitty day.”

“They teach you American sayings in one of those fancy Japanese schools you went to? I don’t think anyone under sixty says God’s green earth anymore.”

“Shows how much you know. A rodeo guy used to say that all the time.” Ichiro padded over to a kitchen area he’d barely recalled and put the bag down on the counter. “But then I think he was from Kansas. Is it green there? I thought it was mostly gray.”

“Some green. A few hills. Don’t really remember. I think I drove through it once.” Bobby bent forward to get up, but Ichiro shook his head.

“Nah, don’t get up. I got some stuff to make
daeji
bulgogi
, and I grabbed some rice, because chances of you having a rice cooker are about as good as me having one of those hamburger grill things in infomercials.”

“Hey, I had one of those grill things. It was awesome. I think I lost it in the move.” Bobby grunted in muted pain when he shifted on the couch. “You want to do me a favor and toss me that bottle of ibuprofen? Damned ribs hurt a bit, and I think I’ve got to beat your brother to shit tomorrow morning.”

“Really? He’s not moving too well either. You guys do that every day or just after buildings fall down on you or something? It’s like you think you’re Batman.”

“Nah, that’s—okay, Cole can’t be Batman. He does some sick shit. He’s more Captain America or Shazam. Is he still around?” He caught Ichi’s soft lob of the pill bottle with his left hand, snatching it out of the air. “Don’t give me that look. Shazam. You know? Captain Marvel? Big lightning bolt?”

“Nope. I don’t know who that is. Only one I know with lightning bolts is Thor.”

“Christ, make me feel old already. Bad enough I got taken down by some kid who can’t even grow enough hair to shave.” Bobby rubbed his temple with his fingertips.

“That beer isn’t going to help you with that headache—”

“Seemed to help just fine before you showed up.”

“Yeah, well not now.” Ichiro mimicked Bobby’s rolling grumble back at him. “Let me find something to grill the meat on, and I’ll help you.”

“The ibu should kick in soon. There’s a grill thing that goes on top of the burners.” Bobby pointed at one of the cabinets. “But nah, I’m good.”

“Found it. How about if I put the meat on later? It’ll cook faster than it’ll take me to soften that hard head of yours.”

“I’m not sure I can take your hands on me right now,” Bobby grumbled. “This thing—you and I’ve got—”

“We’ve got a thing? I thought we both agreed we’re assholes? Only civil to each other because you’re Cole’s best friend, and I’m his favorite younger brother.”

“I don’t let assholes come into my house, get drunk, and tell me stories about their shitty childhoods.”

“Ah, then I’m good still being an asshole, because I don’t think my childhood was shitty,” Ichi replied dryly. “Just my father. We can make things even. You can tell me your dad was shitty.”

“Can’t. Didn’t really know him. He caught a bullet before I was really old enough to know who I’d be missing. A guy can’t really know his father until they’re both men, I don’t think.” Bobby’s face hardened again, and the tired stretched even further from his eyes, sinking into his expression. “My Uncle James—my dad’s brother—kind of stepped in. He’s a tough old goat but only if you’re a thug. Old-school kind of cop. Up until last year, he was still out on his lawn screaming at kids to pull up their pants. Now he’s at one of those senior apartment things, yelling at the staff because the rice pudding is too runny.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever had rice pudding.” Ichi wrinkled his nose. “What’s it like?”

“It’s like tapioca pudding. Sweet, creamy. Some people make it with nutmeg or cinnamon. It’s got… chewy stuff in it. You know, tapioca—but rice. You know rice, Sunshine.”

“Yeah, but normally we pound the shit out of it until it’s gooey and then make it sweet. So the tapioca? It’s like
boba
?”

“Those little fish-eyeball things you guys get in your slushie drinks?”

“Yeah, those.”

“No, those are disgusting. This is edible and tiny. Like they should be,” Bobby retorted. “Now I’ve got to go to the store every week for rice pudding before I go see him, or there’s hell to pay. I give him one of those fish-eye things, and he’d use it in his nine-mil to aerate my butt.”

“Head massage or pain?” Ichi leaned on the counter, slightly lost in the conversation’s traction. “It’s a thing-free offer. No strings. No puke. Just a head massage because you look like shit.”

Bobby studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly, as if moving his head too quickly would break him apart. “Yeah, okay. Because hell, anything to take the edge off would help.”

It was a short distance to the couch set in the near middle of the loft. Bookcases and screens portioned off a bedroom from the space, taking up the west-facing side of the end unit. The lower bank of tall windows were covered with heavy burgundy drapes, but the upper rows of broad louvers were left undressed, some partially cranked open to let out any built-up heat. The ceiling was painted black, as was the ductwork running above them, with wooden beams tucked in between industrial air-conditioning vents to support hanging pendulum lights.

A bathroom was carved out of the space next to the kitchen, a high drywall enclosure that looked big enough to hold an orgy Caligula would have been proud of. Ichiro couldn’t imagine what Bobby had installed in it—and since he’d fled the loft without even taking a piss, he’d probably lost his one chance to find out.

But then again, maybe he had used it, and it was drowned under the sea of tequila he’d tried to suck into his body.

“Thanks for… well, letting me get puking drunk the other night. I needed it.” Ichi dragged a high-back chair over to the back of the couch, then handed Bobby a wet washcloth he’d rinsed in ice water. “Here, put that on your forehead. I’ll sit behind you and massage your scalp.”

“Dude—you sure you know what you’re doing there?”

“Now you sound like Cole. Why the hell are you guys so suspicious?” he teased. “Trust me. I learned how to do this when I worked at the hair salon. Part of shampooing. Bonus points if you can get the client to fall asleep so the stylist can finish who they’re working on without someone bitching.”

“Really? A hairdresser? Was there a gay-boy checklist you were marking off?”

“Yep. Your asshole status is secure. And no, interning at a tattoo shop doesn’t pay the bills, so I needed a job. If you want to learn how to ink, you pretty much volunteer to get abused.” Ichi settled into the chair. “I’d cut ties with my father, and I didn’t want to touch the money my grandfather left me in case I really needed it later. So sweeping floors and washing hair wasn’t too bad of a job, and the salon’s owner was my teacher’s wife, so she rode his ass to be nice to me. Win-win in my book.”

Bobby’s hair was coarse silk under his fingers, with unyielding tight skin and bunched cranial muscles lying beneath his scalp. Starting at the connective points, Ichiro stroked back and forth, easing the tension along the stretch of knotted fibers.

“Okay, I don’t give a shit if you drank all my tequila and peed on the hallway plant,” Bobby moaned. “Just… don’t stop.”

“I peed on a plant? Really?” He looked around the loft, wondering if Bobby’d tossed his unfortunate victim. “I didn’t even think you
had
a plant in here.”

“I was joking,” he muttered. “I’d have liked to see the look on your face when you heard that, but fuck it, this is too good. Shit, I didn’t even think I had muscles there.”

“Yeah, everyone’s got connective tissue and muscles up until… well kind of like if your bone had male pattern baldness.”

“I’m scared to ask you how you know that.”

“Artist, remember? Can’t draw something if you don’t understand how it works.” Bobby’s skin tightened as he frowned, and Ichiro tugged at his hair. “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Making faces. Am I hurting you?”

“No.” The denial was tentative, a low, growling tumble of sound and inflection. “Just trying to get… comfortable.”

“Huh.” He went back to work on Bobby’s scalp, rubbing outward spirals from the center of his forehead and back down to his neck. As the tension eased slowly out of Bobby’s body, Ichi teased lightly, “So this thing—the one you and I have—what exactly is it?”

“You want me to be honest?” Bobby’s voice dropped to a husky rasp, and Ichi slowed his fingers in response.

There was something about the man’s voice—something hard and steely he hadn’t tripped on in another man before. There’d been others he’d sniffed at—leather jacket, hard-core bad boys who were more puff-of-air bravado than gritty integrity. Bobby Dawson didn’t fit in that niche. He worked to keep his body brawling fit and his demeanor slightly prickly, sharp enough to ward off anyone soft from coming too close, even as his off-kilter, come-bend-over smile lured them in.

His hands and smile promised a hard, rough ride, even when he was rescuing princes in distress as they drank themselves into a stupor over lost somethings they couldn’t name. The touch of silver in his brown hair and the slight burr to his face from hard-won years drew Ichiro in.

And as he caressed the man’s strong neck muscles, Ichi began to wonder if Bobby tasted as molten hot as his rumpled suede voice swore he would.

“Yeah, be honest.” He was going to throw it out there. Ichi had nothing to lose, and Cole—it wasn’t like Cole had to find out he’d teased Bobby before the man tossed him out on his skinny ass. “Why would you change now? You think there’s something between us? Like what?”

“You know there is. And fuck me, if it doesn’t get me to wondering a few things sometimes.”

“More things? Other than this one thing?” Ichi dropped his hands to his thighs, waiting for Bobby to make the next move. “Like what exactly?”

“Like whether or not you want to be bent over a bed or lying on it,” Bobby purred as he tilted his head back. “You know, when I fuck you.”

There was no mistaking the challenge in the man’s darkening eyes or the cocky set of his grin as he twisted sideways to stare at Ichi over the back of the couch. It was a game Ichi knew well—one he’d played a thousand times before—the shoving out of a chest and the tossing of salt into a
dohyō
. It was a look he’d gotten right before he suckled down the gummy, hairy insides of a fertilized duck egg and shouted in triumph when he extracted the beak before he swallowed it. And it was a smile much like the one he’d gotten before he’d shot across a bed of salt flats in a broke-assed Harley held together with spit and a prayer.

Folding his arms across the back of the couch, Ichiro leaned in and gave Bobby a cocky smile of his own, tilting his head as he drawled slowly, “What makes you think you’re the one who’s going to be doing the fucking?”

Chapter 6

“C
OCKY
SON
of a bitch,” Bobby growled at the man behind his couch. “Let’s knock that smirk off that damned pretty face of yours.”

If there was a hell, Bobby expected his eternal torment would be the sweet taste of a demon’s mouth, then a forever spent longing for more.

Ichiro tasted of that hell—a hot blast of sex, sweet, and trouble with a side of forbidden to spice things up—of fire and ink, and Bobby knew with the touch of that mouth on his, he’d be jonesing for that taste for the rest of his life.

It was no wonder the Devil threw off his wings and plunged into the depths of depravity.

They fought, tongues and mouths, with grappling hands tugging at hair and arms until their skin shone with the exertion of consuming one another. The sofa became a wall, then a desert between their lusting bodies, a separation Bobby knew he had to demolish. He hooked his arms around Ichiro’s waist, then bent forward and yanked the man up out of his seat.

He dragged Ichiro over the back of the couch, long limbs catching on the cushions, and there was some moaning noise—either consent or grumbling at being manhandled—but he came over anyway, tumbling into Bobby’s embrace. Ichiro’s slender hands busied themselves with sliding under Bobby’s shirt, his fingers raking over Bobby’s back and catching on spots of abraded skin.