Shades of Gray (16 page)

“Shit… that feels so good,” Danny gasped, lifting his head to watch Miller’s hand pumping.

Having Danny in his hand was different from touching himself, but recognizable too. Miller knew what felt good, knew Danny’s hand on his meant he wanted more pressure, knew what Danny’s increased breathing signaled. It felt like walking familiar land even though it was nowhere he’d traveled before.

“Oh, Jesus… yes.” Danny spread his thighs as much as he could within the confines of a narrow couch and knee-high jeans. Miller felt a surge of accomplishment, proud of the fact Danny wanted him this way—his green eyes losing focus, his back arching as Miller increased the tempo.

“I can’t… fuck, Miller, I can’t hold back,” Danny groaned. His fingers dug into Miller’s arm. Miller watched, mesmerized by the way Danny bit his own bottom lip as he came, the tender flesh sacrificed to his pleasure.

Danny opened his eyes, giving a lazy smile as he ran a hand through Miller’s hair. “Your turn,” he murmured, ducking his head to roll one of Miller’s nipples between his lips, moving down Miller’s body with a trailing tongue.

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“Ow, fuck!” Miller exclaimed as Danny’s knee came to rest on his swollen hand.

“Shit, sorry.” Danny paused for a moment and then picked up Miller’s hand, giving the sore knuckles a tender kiss.

Miller couldn’t look away, watching as Danny released his hand and moved lower. Danny took Miller’s cock in his palm and brought his mouth down to close over the tip, tongue swirling. Miller laced his hand through Danny’s hair, not holding him there, not wanting Danny to feel forced, but simply touching, loving the softness of those short strands against his fingers.

He groaned as Danny took him in deep, a sound he’d never heard from his own mouth before bubbling up from somewhere deeper than his lungs. It took them a minute to find their rhythm, Danny’s hand pumping too slowly at first. But Miller put his hand over Danny’s to speed things up, moaning as Danny’s tongue found the right spot.

Miller looked down and knew that if he lived to be a hundred years old, this—Danny’s eyes raised to his, Danny’s mouth covering him, his lips wet and shiny, Danny’s naked chest cradled between his legs—would always be the most erotic moment of his life.

Miller’s toes curled downward, the nubby fabric of the couch rubbing against his feet. “I’m going to come,” he whispered, warning Danny the way he always did with Rachel, but Danny didn’t back away. Miller jackknifed forward as his orgasm ripped out of him, Danny’s eyes dark and glittering on Miller’s as he swallowed. The knowledge of what Danny was doing caused Miller’s hips to buck involuntarily, a throaty moan accompanying the movement. It felt like more than sex to Miller, more than release. It felt like the answer to every question he’d never dared to ask himself.

Danny lingered for a moment, licking him clean, kissing his thighs and stomach, gentling his trembling flesh. He dropped one last kiss on Miller’s shoulder as he maneuvered into the space between Miller’s body and the back of the sofa. Miller closed his eyes, listening to Danny’s steady breaths, feeling the warmth of Danny’s hand on top of his own.

122 | Brooke McKinley

What the fuck are you doing, Miller? One good blow job, that’s
all it’s going to take to ruin your career?

Miller brought his free hand up to cover his face, turning his head away from Danny. He tried to concentrate on the pleasure he’d felt, both giving and receiving, but his internal voice had disengaged its mute button and would not be silenced.

You keep this up, the life you know, it’s going to be over. For
what? For something you don’t even know if you want? For something
that can never last? He’s going to go back to his life. And you’ll go
back to yours… what’s left of it, anyway, after this disaster.

The sofa cushions dipped underneath his back as Danny shifted his weight. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his lips pressing soft kisses against Miller’s arm.

“Danny, I can’t….” Miller hated how weak his voice sounded, how reedy and close to tears. He pushed himself upright, yanking up his jeans with one hand. He looked over his shoulder at Danny, who was watching him with no judgment in his eyes, his dark hair tousled like a little boy’s.

Miller leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rested his head in his hands. He wanted his old life back, the one where he was sure about who he was and where he was headed. The one where he could keep a lid on the doubts and fears that had been trailing him around every corner of his life for as long as he could remember. The life where he was going to marry Rachel and have three kids and that house in the suburbs. The one where he knew the difference between right and wrong and was sure about who was good and who was evil. The one where he’d never met a man with black hair and green eyes and a jeweled snake painted across his back, a man who pushed into all Miller’s private spaces and made himself at home.

Danny put one hand on Miller’s back, his thumb stroking a slow half circle. “What do you want, Miller? What do you want to happen here?”

Miller could smell Danny on his fingers. He dropped his hands from his face with a weary sigh. “I want to be the man I was before I Shades of Gray | 123

met you.”

Danny swung his legs over the edge of the couch, hiking up his own jeans as he moved. He sat next to Miller without speaking, their bare shoulders touching. Miller risked a glance at Danny’s face, prepared for anger and steeling himself for scorn, but Danny was looking at him with compassionate eyes, telling him without words that it was all right. And for the very first time in his life, Miller felt understood—felt that someone was seeing him all the way through and not turning away.

Danny cupped Miller’s jaw in his hand, that simple touch making his stomach cartwheel to the floor. “It’s too late for that. It’s too late to go back,” Danny said, gentle but firm. “Now you have to decide the man you want to be from here on out.”

124 | Brooke McKinley

MILLER hated college. He felt disloyal even thinking the thought; it
was no secret what his family had sacrificed to get him there. But he
didn’t fit in, and after two and a half years, he knew he never would.

Kansas State University was hardly upper-crust, privileged, Ivy League
ground, but it might as well have been to Miller, who’d grown up on a
desolate farm where the nearest town boasted a whopping 400

residents.

Driving into Manhattan the first day of freshman orientation, his
father at the wheel of his rusted-out pickup and Miller in the middle
where the broken spring cut into his back, it felt as if they’d landed on
Mars. The noise in the small city made him want to cover his ears like
a little boy, the sheer volume of people and the speed at which they
moved hurting his eyes. His father had given him a slap on the back
when they’d dropped him in front of the dormitory, telling him, “Good
luck, boy,” before hopping back in the truck. Junie had been slightly
more emotional, hugging him close and saying she’d see him at
Thanksgiving. Then they’d driven away, leaving him standing on the
sidewalk with his thrift-store backpack and a threadbare suitcase that
had been his mother’s
.

From the very first, college had seemed dangerous, like he was
navigating a series of land mines. He felt pried into; his personal space
felt invaded, the way everyone wanted to talk all the time. Miller’s
fellow students were full of rabid curiosity, always asking questions
about his past and what he planned to do when he graduated.

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Professors wanted to know his opinions on books, current events, and
philosophy. He soon learned that grunting and ducking his head was
not an option unless he wanted to end up back in Fowler with his tail
between his legs, facing a furious father who had somehow tied
Miller’s success in college to the memory of his lost wife. Over time, he
got better about talking, could answer a question in class without
feeling the prickly heat of embarrassment staining his cheeks, and
could make small talk in the library without hiding behind a textbook.

But he was always careful about what he said, forever thinking out his
answer before he spoke.

He made a few friends, but more on the order of drinking
buddies, guys to catch a basketball game with, no one destined to
weather a lifelong friendship. He learned from the other boys, though,
how to pretend he liked the overcrowded bars packed with too many
people drinking too much, how to walk around campus with his head
up, waving to students he recognized, how to smoke a joint without
choking and make crude jokes about girls he’d slept with once or
twice. Girls he met out at the local bars and then followed back to their
rooms or apartments for fumbling, drunken sex. The sex always felt
good enough during, though never “mind-blowing,” as Scott had once
described it. But afterwards, walking back to his own place, he was
always lonelier and more confused than he’d been the night before. He
learned to live with constantly feeling like a stranger in his own life,
inside his own body, and the little voice in his head stayed mercifully
quiet.

He never asked himself what exactly he was hiding from, what he
was so terrified
might be revealed. That was an answer he had no
interest in hearing.

MILLER loved the FBI Academy. From the first day he arrived at
Quantico, he felt safe. No one cared about his inner thoughts, about
discovering who Miller was. They cared about making him a good
agent, teaching him tricks and techniques for success, molding him into
126 | Brooke McKinley

a man who believed he was acting on the side of the good and
righteous, and it turned out to be a perfect fit.

He was expected to remain neutral in the interrogation room, to
coax a suspect into talking using a variety of methods, gain their trust
if possible—more information was revealed that way. But if not, he
could be a hard-ass with the best of them, dish out a little dose of fear.

Outside the interrogation room, Miller was to remember he was one of
the good guys. The bad guys were the enemy, and he was a barrier
between them and the rest of society. He wasn’t to let empathy sway
him—these people were getting what they deserved.

Being a good agent required compartmentalization, and Miller
was gifted at locking
away parts of himself. Things he didn’t want to
examine were shuffled to the back of his mind and never thought of
again. His mental filing system had been serving him his entire life and
never more so than in his early days as an agent.

He was damn good at his job. He felt confident, even living in a
city with all its bright lights and overcrowded sidewalks, shielded
somehow by his new “us versus them” mentality. He was able to walk
into an interrogation room and remain professional and objective with
the men sitting across the table. He was able to get them to open up,
tell their darkest secrets, believe Miller was there to listen and might
help them cut a deal, and then he could walk away at the end of the
day, go have a few beers and laugh about what scum-sucking pieces of
shit they all were. And he slept just fine at night.

He received commendations from his bosses for his ability to
uncover the truth, to instinctively recognize when a suspect was
withholding or outright lying. But about five years in, a funny thing
started happening to him—the better he got at ferreting out the truth,
the more often that little voice in his head started clamoring to be
heard. It wanted to ask questions Miller had spent thirty years
avoiding. He’d get up in the morning and look in the mirror, and he’d
hear his own internal voice, the interrogation room one, smooth and
slick, turning its intuitive powers on him. He managed to drown it out,
choke it down, most of the time, but the effort wore on him, leaving him
exhausted and disillusioned too.

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He started feeling sick when he lied to a suspect, making them
believe things were going to work out all right in the end, when in
truth, they were going down hard and the ride would be ugly as hell.

He began wanting to lunge across the table and smack the ones who
smarted off to him, daring to challenge his authority. He was slipping,
and he knew it. He thought maybe he could get it back if he could just
silence that voice, that fucking voice… the voice that had gained its
strength from how good Miller was at his job, how skilled he was at
uncovering lies. His ability to take cover inside his FBI skin unraveled
in direct proportion to his talent as an agent. It was a Catch-22 of
which his dreaded English professor would have been proud.