Whiskey and Wry (Sinners Series) (14 page)

“Someone’s trying to fucking kill you, Cowboy.” Sionn yanked on a pair of sneakers over his bare feel and grabbed a thick sweatshirt to ward off the incoming rain. “Have you forgotten that?”

Despite the storm, he had to fight through people on the sidewalk, slowing him down. Cursing Damien under his breath, he passed by the coffee shop, hoping beyond hope the lanky musician was waiting in line for a morning fix.

There were a lot of people behind the glass, but none of them were pretty-mouthed, long-legged trouble in jeans.

If fear had a taste, it was remarkably like fried copper, crawling up from his twisted belly and into his throat. His saliva thickened on his tongue, and Sionn spat onto the street to get rid of the foul tang. Picking up his pace, he jogged up a nearby hill, wondering how long of a walk Damien thought he’d needed or if he’d even gotten farther than a few feet before he’d been taken.

There were too many ways for a man to die, and Sionn’s brain seemed to flick through each and every one of them. His mind became a slideshow of terror, snapping quickly through its cycle, pausing at some of the more grisly options as if the first imagining wasn’t enough.

He’d almost missed the alleyway. Its narrow opening was hidden behind a rack of umbrellas, set out as lures for tourists unwilling to give up their vacation because of a storm. A mirthful laugh snapped his head around, and Sionn took a few steps back and stared at the man on his shins with his arms spread out, welcoming down the pounding rain.

Sionn was too big to get through the space between the rack and the alley’s side wall, and he pushed it aside, ignoring the shop owner’s outraged shouts over the clatter of the umbrellas hitting the walk. Sprinting up the long alley, he nearly slipped on a pile of spilled cabbage leaves, and his hand stung where he used it to grab at the uneven brick wall for balance. A sharp twinge of pain snapped in his thigh muscle, but he barely felt it. Only fear from seeing blood on Damien’s upturned face and the shuddering tremors going through the man’s body resonated in Sionn’s mind.

It took Sionn only a few seconds to get to Damien, but it seemed like a forever made out of jagged glass in his mind. He grabbed Damien’s arms, yanked the man to his feet, and stared down at the blood, smearing it away with his fingers as he tried to find any cut or wound on Damien’s face.

“What’s going on about this?” Sionn heard himself sliding into Gaelic, cursing the rain and the blood on his hands. “Damie boy, what’s happened? Are you okay? Talk to me, damn it.”

The blue eyes Sionn’s heart had fallen into and drowned blinked, and Damien’s grin grew even wider. “I’m fine. I’m fucking fantastic.”

“Come on, we need to get you out of this rain. You’re soaked through down to the bone.” Sionn bent down, hooking his arm behind Damien’s waist. The man was freezing, no hint of warmth in his body. Sionn’s fear returned, filling him with dread. “Let’s get you home.”

Damien staggered to his feet, legs buckling when he tried to take a step. Shaking off Sionn’s support, he gestured behind him. “You see back there? About a block down is Shing’s—”

“Yeah, I don’t eat there. The food’s shitty. Come on, I can help—”

“Fucker deserved what he got,” Damien muttered. “But see, I remember! I fucking remember this alley and that place… shittiest
chow fun
I’ve ever had, but Miki worked there. That fire escape… that’s where I found him.” His smile grew wistful. “Where he found me.”

“Great, you can tell me all about it… once we get you warm, love.” Sionn began to wonder if Damien was drunk. The man wove his hands in the air and leaned heavily on Sionn’s arm. Sniffing at Damien’s breath turned up nothing but the whiff of blood on his skin and the stink of city rain.

“Fuck, you’re going to get us killed here, Irish,” he grumbled when Sionn slipped on the same cabbage leaves that nearly brought him down before.

“I know you’re too cold. We’ve got to warm you up. You’ll get sick.” The shivers hit Damien again, and the man rocked uncontrollably in Sionn’s arms. “Shite, love, there’s not enough meat on you as it is.”

“Dude, you don’t understand what this means.” Damien’s fingers twisted in Sionn’s shirt. “I kind of know where I can find Miki. I was looking in the wrong places. The damned warehouses are off someplace near Russian Hill. I just need to find them. I know where the fuck I am—here, this place. This is where we—
I—
began.”

“And what does that mean, Damie boy?” Sionn was afraid to hear the answer, and he continued to push Damien along, hoping to lose the man’s words in the rain. It was a futile hope. He heard every whispering syllable… every aching word twisting a knife into his heart.

“It means I can go home.”

Chapter 8

You’ve danced around us for far too long

Hooked your fingers into my soul

You flirt and wink, pulling me along

What you want us to be

Just ain’t going to last

I’ll take a sip of your mouth

Then I’ll be walking out fast

—
No Good Johnny

“I
FUCKING
hate lima beans.” Damien grinned up at Sionn’s bemused face. Cupping the Irishman’s cheeks, he pushed his palms in until Sionn’s mouth puckered up. “I mean, I
really
fucking hate them. Isn’t that great?”

He couldn’t remember the last time he actually ate one, but the graininess on the roof of his mouth was distinct and… green. The taste triggered something else, a flash of fluffy trees and oily orange gloop. Giddy, he bent forward and kissed Sionn full on the mouth, making smacking noises against his lips.

“And broccoli. I hate that shit too. Especially with that fake cheesy crap on it.” He laughed and flung himself back onto the bed, pulling out of Sionn’s grip. His wet hair hit a pillow with a splat. “And fake peach anything. Like those fruit roll-up things. I fucking
hate
those.”

“Stop wiggling about, Damie boy.” Sionn grabbed his foot and tugged a sock up over his cold toes. “We’ve got to get you warm.”

He was freezing; he had to give Sionn that. It was cold all the way down past his chest and into his spine, spreading out and gripping his limbs, making him clumsy. The shivers hit before they’d gotten to the street corner, and he’d barely been able to put one foot in front of the other. Sionn nearly carried him the rest of the way, his thickly muscled body feeding its warmth into Damie’s icy skin.

Damien would have been ashamed of the hard-on he got from Sionn’s hands roaming over him, but it seemed like the only warm spot on his whole body. Of course, his cock should have had the decency to soften a bit once they’d gotten inside and Sionn began stripping the wet clothes from his body, but it had other ideas, poking its head up as if to see what was going on. No, being too cold to keep his teeth from chattering like a rabid Chihuahua definitely cut into the possibilities of pulling down Sionn’s pants and exploring what he found there.

Mostly because he was afraid his jaw was rattling too much and he’d bite something off he’d want inside of him later.

God, he remembered
sex
.

Miki aside, sex was possibly the single most fantastic memory sparking through his aching brain.

And he wanted it with Sionn.

There was something about Sionn that hooked into a part of him he couldn’t identify, and Damien wanted to steep himself in the man’s warmth, bask in his smile, and most of all, lay naked under the man’s rough hands.

Instead, he was lying down on the man’s bed with damp hair and all of his blood currently dancing a happy dance in his cock.

Those hands were now gone, tugging at the quilts under Damien’s legs. He tried to pull them up, but his knees responded too slowly to be much help. Sionn muttered at him to stay still, sliding his hands under Damien’s ass to roll him up and then back down again. After covering Damie with heavy blankets, his fingers brushed Damien’s forehead, sweeping a damp piece of hair out of his eyes.

“Stay here, boyo,” Sionn ordered gruffly. “I’ll be going to get you something hot to drink. See if you can get upright. I don’t want to be trying to pour coffee down your throat.”

It took him a few tries, but Damien inched his way up until he could rest against the bed’s wooden headboard. He grabbed a towel Sionn left for him and scrubbed at his damp hair. Shadows flitted on the ceiling, elongated silhouettes of Sionn moving through the loft. Then a grinder roared on, the sound of it chewing up beans drifting over the room’s open walls.

“God, how the hell could I forget about
sex
?”

He’d meant only to close his eyes for a second, long enough to send the pounding in his head to the back where it belonged. It seemed only a moment; then Damien felt the bed shift and heard Sionn through a haze of comfortable gray.

“Here you go, Cowboy.” Sionn waited until Damie scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes before handing him a cup. “Watch your hands. It’s hot.”

Even with the warning, his fingertips felt like they were being burned off when he took the mug. Tucking his elbows in, Damien took a moment to inhale the scent of the creamy coffee. Taking a sip was a deadly risk, but his tongue thanked him for it, even as he was mourning the loss of his taste buds from the scald. The heat trickled down his throat and spread out through his chest, easing some of the ache along his scar.

It was enough of a relief he dared another drink, nearly searing his uvula in his haste to warm up inside.

“Hey, take it easy there,” Sionn cautioned. “You’re going to burn your throat out.”

He almost threw out an invitation for Sionn to slide other things down his throat, but Damien stopped his tongue from rolling off the come-on. The worry on Sionn’s face was sweeter than the coffee he’d been given, and Damien lowered the cup into his lap. He didn’t know what to do with the
sweet
. Other than Miki, there’d never been anyone who’d actually given a complete shit about what happened to him. Even Johnny and Dave, as close as they’d all been, didn’t match the depth of
feeling
he shared with Miki. Now Sionn seemed to be creeping in, sliding under the walls Damien hadn’t even realized he had.

And unlike Miki, the man sitting next to him did
not
feel like a brother.

“Drink that, take the aspirin on the nightstand, and get some sleep,” Sionn murmured. “We don’t have to be at my uncle’s house for hours yet.”

“I’m not sleepy.” Sure, he sounded like a three-year-old arguing over a nap, but Damien didn’t want Sionn to leave.

“That’s why you were snoring when I came in? Only reason I woke you is to get something warm in you.” Sionn crooked a dusky eyebrow at him.

“Oh, the things I could have said to that,” Damien grumbled back at him. “Come on. Keep me company. My head’s buzzing. There’s so much fucking stuff going on in my brain. I can’t even sort some of it out.”

“What do you remember?” Sionn padded over to the other side of the bed and carefully slid in over the blankets. “Because you sure as hell didn’t remember the guy shooting at you.”

“Yeah, can I get a pass on that for a bit?” He winced. “I’m sorry, okay? Nothing happened.”

“I’d hate for something to happen.” The man’s eyes turned stormy, their gray darkening. “Mostly because Browne wants you for questioning, you know. For the shooting. You bailed before he could talk to you.”

“What was I going to tell him?” Damien picked up the aspirin, tossed them onto his tongue, then sipped at the coffee again. It was still too hot to take large gulps, but the small bits of warmth were enough for him. “Hello, Inspector. No, I don’t have ID, and oh, by the way, I think I’m some rock god, but I’m scared that if you run my prints, I’ll find out that I’m actually some runaway mental patient from Montana? Yeah, I wasn’t ready for that.”

“You could have told
me
that, boyo,” Sionn admonished. “I’d have helped you. Hell, I’m helping you now.”

“Yeah, and look what that got you. Your pub got shot up.”

“Most excitement that place has had since we hosted Drag Queen Strip Bingo.” The man’s off-kilter grin made Damien snort. “Talk to me, Damie. What is going on in that crazy mind of yours?”

He leaned back, trying to sort out the sheer glut of images and emotions rushing at him. There was too much grit piling up on him, choking out some of the softer memories. Stretching out his legs, Damien put his coffee on the nightstand and scrubbed his cheeks to get some feeling back into his skin.

“I remember my parents. Sort of. Mostly how they were. How they felt.” He would start there, at the most painful place in his memories. “I remember them… hurting me. I can
see
them hurting me, but it’s fuzzy a bit. Like, they were so angry… about everything… even me.”

“Are they the ones who put those scars on you? On your legs and back?” Sionn’s accusation against his parents was soft, but the words stung deep. “Because those are some nasty bits of work, Damie boy.”

He’d wondered about the lines across his thighs, too slender and old to be from the accident. Through the headache and pain, he now knew where they’d come from. How did he explain to Sionn about the years-long terror he’d grown up in? Or how he’d feared his father calling him over, even when the man’s voice was treacle and honey. Those times were the worst. With his father’s words often cloaked in false kindness, he’d never been sure if there would be praise or blood.