Love, Like Water (19 page)

“I’m not a kid, I’m not a fucking desk jockey, and I’m not soft. I’m a tired old junkie with a whole lot of problems fucking my head up, and one of them is that I haven’t gotten laid in a fucking long time. So yeah, I want to know where I can go to get cock.”

Eli’s face had gone blank. In a flat voice he said, “Well, if you’re planning on picking up some stranger, I’d recommend you get in shape fast, because the meat markets you’ll be hanging at only let in decent-looking guys. You
look
like a goddamned junkie and you won’t get past the bouncer.”

“Fuck you, Kelly.” Joshua felt like Eli’d punched the breath out of him. “Fuck you very much.” He slammed his chair back and shot to his feet, intending to head for the kitchen door.

“Shit.” Faster than Joshua expected, Eli caught his arm and jerked him around. Joshua fell against Eli’s solid chest, and Eli’s arms came around him. “I’m sorry,” he breathed in Joshua’s ear. “
Mijo
, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of that.”

“Yeah, you did,” Joshua said. “And it’s all true. I do look like a junkie, and nobody’s gonna let me in a club like this.”

“Shh.” Eli rubbed his back comfortingly. “You’re looking healthier every day,
niño
, and when you’re better you’ll be beating ’em off with a stick.”

It was so easy to stand there, with Eli holding him. Joshua rested his chin on Eli’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of horse and soap and sweat and man. His arms came up and locked around Eli’s waist.

“Josh,” Eli murmured. “Oh, Josh.”

He felt Eli’s head turn and he turned his face to meet it. Their lips brushed once, gently, then one of them—Joshua wasn’t sure who—leaned in closer, pressing harder. Eli’s tongue touched Joshua’s lips, then invited itself inside, tenderly exploring. Eli tasted of peppermint and Coke.

Joshua let go a soft sigh, then tightened his arms around Eli, pulling him closer and shifting his hips so that he was rubbing against him. It felt so good, even that small contact, the first in such a very, very long time. When he felt Eli’s hands slide down his back to cup his ass, he smiled into the kiss they still shared, and he rocked forward, hungry for the friction.

But when Eli drew back and dropped to his knees, Joshua almost fell over in shock. “Wha…?”

“Shh,” Eli said again, and just as deliberately, just as efficiently as he’d stripped the horses of their tack, he took care of Joshua’s jeans, sliding them down to his knees. Then he leaned forward and kissed Joshua’s thin hip. “Oh,
mijo
,” he breathed, then turned his face to lick the rising length of Joshua’s cock. “Beautiful,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “So strong, so beautiful.”

His tongue swept over the head and under the edge of the retreating foreskin. Joshua buried his hands in the blond hair and leaned back against the door for balance. “God, Eli,” he said roughly.

“Shh.” Eli licked again, then Joshua cried out as his mouth took him deep. Eli sucked him in, his tongue rubbing the underside of the shaft, while his hand came up and caressed Joshua’s balls.

Then he let Joshua slide from his lips and Joshua almost cried. “Bedroom,” Eli croaked, and got up, dragging Joshua’s jeans up over his hips. He left them unbuttoned, though, and took Joshua’s hand, leading him through the little living room to the equally tiny bedroom, with its double bed taking up most of the floor space.

Beside the bed, Eli stripped Joshua’s boots and jeans off, then reached for his T-shirt. Joshua jerked back, but Eli’s eyes were patient, even as they burned with warmth. “It’s okay,
mijo
. I know what you look like.”

So Joshua let him pull the shirt over his head, displaying his bony, tattooed chest and arms. He shook a little, afraid that it would turn Eli off, but all Eli did was bend and drag his talented tongue across one nipple. Joshua whimpered. “Bed,” Eli said, and pulled back the coverlet, pushing Joshua gently down.

Joshua watched as Eli stripped off his own shirt, pulling it over his head without unbuttoning it, then peeled out of his own boots and jeans, letting them drop on the floor. He went to the nightstand and took out condoms and lube.

“You bring tricks here?” Joshua asked, his voice trembling in anticipation.

“Nah,” Eli said. He tore open one packet with his teeth and rolled the condom down Joshua’s dick. “I use ’em when I’m jerking off—easier to clean up. Sarafina
does
housekeep for me—it’s only polite.” He bent and took one of Joshua’s balls into his mouth, and Joshua lost interest in the conversation—the sensation of warm wetness was far more interesting.

When Eli moved up to Joshua’s cock, which was now so hard Joshua thought he’d pass out from lack of blood to the brain, he curled one hand around the base. Then he started a slow, maddeningly slow glide, down to his fist, then up again, licking on the downward glide and sucking hard on the upward. Over, and over, and over again, the same intense feeling, the same slow pace. “Eli,” Joshua moaned. “God, Eli….”

The vibration of Eli’s chuckle almost drove Joshua out of his mind.

Finally, he sped up a little, enough that Joshua was bucking against his hand, desperate to get off. When he finally climaxed, he felt his ass leave the bed as he arched, the explosion of sensation darkening his sight for a moment. He shoved his hand into his mouth to stifle his shout.

E
LI
felt the heat fill the condom and let Joshua slide from his mouth, rocking his fist up and down Josh’s cock, stripping the last of Joshua’s come from him. Then he eased the full condom off and tied it, tossing it into the garbage can near his desk. With a soft kiss to Josh’s hip, he whispered, “Be right back,” and stumbled to his feet, staggering into the bathroom across the hall and closing the door. There, he jerked off quickly into the toilet, a couple of hard pulls with one hand, the other propped against the wall behind the john, holding up his weak legs. “Fuck,” he groaned quietly.

He gazed at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. The face that looked back at him was flushed with arousal, but inside he felt gray with fatigue. “Oh, son,” he said to his reflection, “what the Sam Hill have you got yourself into?”

No point worrying about it now. He found a clean washcloth on the shelf and soaked it with warm water, washing himself off before rinsing it and bringing it out to the bedroom.

Josh was dozing, but he opened his eyes when Eli knelt on the bed, and began to clean him off. Not that there was much to clean; they’d been pretty tidy. Still, Eli heard a sigh of contentment as he washed Joshua’s balls for him. “Feels good,” Josh murmured.

“Yeah, I know.” Eli tossed the rag on the carpet and crawled into bed beside Joshua. “Can’t stay here long. Gotta get back to work. But you can stay long as you want—I’ll just let Tucker know you decided to take a nap.”

“Here, instead of my room?” Josh’s expression was wry. “I’d think he’d figure things out.”

“He don’t know you’re queer,” Eli said.

“It wouldn’t be hard to figure out, if he found out I fell asleep in your bed.”

“Mm,” Eli said. He hiked himself on one elbow and studied Josh thoughtfully. At his inspection, Josh flushed and reached for the sheet to draw it over himself, but Eli stopped him. “No,” he said, “let me look.”

“Nothing worth seeing,” Joshua said. He shifted uncomfortably, but let Eli look.

There was a tattoo on one side of his chest—a traditional one, of a large heart surrounded by flowers, with a doubled-back ribbon across it. The top fold of the ribbon said “Hannah,” the bottom, “Catherine.” A stranger looking at it might think it was all one name, “Hannah Catherine.” “The only two girls I’ll ever love,” Joshua said.

“Mm,” Eli agreed.

“My father always referred to my mother as ‘Ana’, so everyone in the gang thought Hannah Catherine was a girlfriend, back in Cincy. They thought I’d been in a gang there. The Bureau built up a fake arrest record so realistic that sometimes I worried that I’d end up in jail for real, that they’d forget that the whole thing was a fake.”

Eli traced the outline of the tattoo on his upper arm. This one was less gentle, being a hooded skeleton holding a machete to the skull of another skeleton kneeling before it. Underneath, on a banner was the name “Los Peligros.” “The dangers?” Eli translated.

“The name of the gang I belonged to in Chicago. They weren’t just dangerous, they were Danger itself.” The humor that had lightened his voice when talking about the other tattoo was gone, and the tone was flat and dead.

“So they didn’t forget and throw you in jail to rot?” Eli changed the subject.

“No. Robinson, my Bureau ‘handler’ for the assignment, made sure he and the other Chicago field office agents were in on it when the sting went down. Robinson made a big stink at the arraignment that I had a series of warrants out in Ohio, and since I was ‘arrested’ on federal racketeering charges, they didn’t have to wait for extradition to ship me back there. Robinson took me out of there and straight into rehab.”

“Is the trial over?”

Josh snorted. “You know the judicial system—or maybe you don’t. If not, you’re lucky. It’ll be years before it all comes to trial, unless some of them cut a deal and turn state’s evidence. There was a hearing, though, and once the main actors were refused bail, Robinson figured I’d be safe enough to resume my real identity.” He looked down to where Eli was idly tracing the outline of the heart on his chest. “My main concern is for Mom and Cathy, but through the whole time I was undercover, there was no indication that anyone knew my real name. I was José Rosales, son of Alberto Rosales. My grandparents were dead by that time, but even while they were alive, they had no truck with ’Chete Montenegro, the gang’s leader. He’d grown up with my dad, which gave me an in with Los Peligros, but my grandparents blamed him for getting my dad in trouble.”

Eli snorted.

“From what Mom told me, Dad put plenty of his own energy into getting into trouble on his own. Anyway. I worked hard to get evidence to Robinson that could be independently verified, so that I didn’t ever have to testify, because that would put my whole family in danger.”

“What if you did?”

“Witness protection, likely. But I played the whole game with that thought in my head—get the evidence, get them taken down, and do it so that I would never get caught. During or after.”

He flinched as Eli trailed his fingers down his arm to the healed marks on his forearm, but neither he nor Eli said anything. Instead, Eli laced his fingers through Joshua’s and kissed his shoulder above the Los Peligros tattoo.

They dozed together for a few minutes, but when Joshua’s breathing evened out into sleep, Eli slipped quietly from the bed and dressed. Then he bent over Joshua’s sleeping form and kissed his forehead, and went back outside.

Chapter 17

T
HE
temperature had dropped some since they’d ridden back from the canyon, and it felt good. Joshua had woken from his nap alone, but the crackle of paper when he’d rolled over into Eli’s space alerted him to his lover’s absence. “Gone back to work,” Eli had scrawled. “Sleep in. I’ll see you later.”

He hadn’t needed to sleep any more, so he got up, took a quick shower in Eli’s tiny bathroom, and dressed again. When he left the cottage, he made sure no one was around to see him. Then he went looking for Eli.

He was in the arena behind the stables, working with the new trainees who’d arrived last night. Joshua hadn’t met them yet. They stood now on the periphery of the arena, watching Eli. One of them was an older man, in his forties, at least, who’d been training for a while, but wanted to learn new skills with problem horses. Another was in his twenties, from a horse-racing family in Kentucky, who’d decided he wanted to train horses rather than just watch them run. And the third, of course, was Jesse.

All three were rapt, watching him work with one of the horses that had been so abused it had been nearly unapproachable. As Joshua leaned up on the fence, he saw the horse, a brown and white paint, stop its nervous dancing and stare at Eli, who stood completely motionless in the center of the arena, his hands lax at his sides, the lead rope limp, talking in a low, patient voice. The paint’s head was still up, its eyes white, its nostrils flared, but it was standing still, braced on splayed legs.

Eli kept talking.

“Horses are prey animals,” he said in that low, calm voice. “They’re designed to flee from danger, but they’re also pack animals, and will fight to defend the herd. Or if they feel cornered. Technically, this animal is cornered—the fence is just high enough that he’d have to get a good running start to clear it, but that would take it past me, and it doesn’t want to do that. So it’s gonna feel cornered. That’s okay. What you
don’t
want is for it to feel threatened, because then it
will
fight. You don’t make sudden moves, you don’t talk loud, and you
don’t
look him in the eye. That’s a challenge, and a threat. Right now, he doesn’t feel threatened, because he’s not sure what I am. I look like the thing that abused him, but I don’t sound like it, and I don’t act like it.