Whiskey and Wry (Sinners Series) (26 page)

Damien felt his dick gush. Then the heat of his come wrapped around him, creeping into the tight crevices and hollows of Sionn’s core. His lover’s grip grew nearly painfully tight, and Sionn’s silvery eyes were closed, his lip captured between his teeth. He let loose a grunt and came again, a final slithering part of liquid that caught the trail of hair weaving down to Damien’s crotch.

Heaving from lack of oxygen, Damien collapsed forward, careful not to land too hard on Sionn’s outstretched body. But the other man barely whispered a complaint, other than moaning a soft, regretful sigh as Damien slid free. An anguished mewl soon followed as Sionn stretched his legs, sluggishly working out a cramp in his thighs with a lazy pass of his hand.

“I’m fucked loose,” Damien muttered. His cock was floppy, exhausted from the ride, and he briefly considered getting up to retrieve a towel from their bathroom, but he didn’t trust his legs. He had enough energy to grab a shirt lying on the edge of the bed and turned onto his side.

It took him a few seconds of catching his breath and working the blood back into his limbs, but he was able to swipe most of the mess he’d made from Sionn’s body, then folded the shirt in half to clean off his belly. Looking down, Damie saw he’d only succeeded in smearing the wet over his skin, and tossed the shirt aside in disgust.

“I can get a washcloth,” he offered, sliding himself up along Sionn’s side. He draped an arm over his lover’s waist and listened for a moment to Sionn’s heavy breathing. “Or I could just lie here and die. I don’t know if I can even breathe.”

“I’ll die later,” Sionn gasped. “I don’t have the strength to do it now.”

“How about if we sleep on it?” Fatigue drew Damien down despite his best efforts to keep Sionn company. His body had begun to hurt, aching in places he’d not strained in years, but the pain felt good. It reminded him of being inside of Sionn and filling the man to the brim.

“Sounds good.” The murmured reply was broken, as if Sionn’s tongue was too clumsy to form proper words.

Burying his face in Sionn’s shoulder, Damien licked at a drop of sweat poised on the man’s collarbone. Exhaling tortured his strained lungs, but Damien knew breathing probably would be a good idea, especially since he’d planned on being beneath Sionn at some point soon. A flicker of something bright lingered in the back of his mind, and he leaned his cheek on Sionn’s chest.

“Hey, Irish?”

“Yeah, Damie boy?”

“I love you, you know.” He thought he’d caught himself before he began crying, but Damien felt the damp sting his eyes, then a trickle of moisture fall from his cheek to Sionn’s sweaty chest. “Fucking hell.”

“I love you too,
a ghrá
.” Sionn bent his head and kissed away the tears trembling on Damien’s lashes. “Probably more than you know. Much more than you’ll ever know.”

T
HE
warehouse was still, too still for Sionn’s liking. Padding downstairs, he nearly stepped on Dude sleeping in the middle of the lower landing. Cursing the terrier, he sidestepped the still snoring dog and continued down to the first floor, curious about the permeating silence.

The living room and kitchen were empty, and the other couple’s bedroom door was wide open, a king-sized bed dominating the space. A small lamp shone brightly near the door, and Sionn headed into the kitchen and plucked a note from under a magnet on the fridge. Kane’s block-form writing nearly gouged black lines through the paper, and Sionn read it aloud as he rifled for leftovers.

“Steak and veggies are in the ice box. Beer should be cold. Went to a movie. Don’t have hot penguin sex on the couch. We’ve got to sit there.” Sionn snorted at his cousin’s written orders. “Oh, boyo, I’m sure the couch has already seen your naked ass on it a few times. And Miki’s too.”

The meat was rare enough he felt comfortable warming it up without losing too much of its tenderness. A few minutes in the microwave took the chill off the veggies, and Sionn piled the food up on a single large platter, thinking he and Damien could share. Dressed only in a pair of sweats, he was debating how he could carry two bottles of ice cold beer upstairs without tucking them into his armpits when his cell phone sang out from the living room.

Grumbling, he padded over to the table where he’d tossed it with his keys. Kane’s number flashed up on the screen, and he grinned, wondering if his cousin was checking to make sure they’d eaten. He unlocked the screen and tucked the phone against his shoulder as he returned to the kitchen to figure out his beer dilemma.

“Whatcha be needing, cousin mine? Checking up on your couch?” he teased, sliding a thin piece of steak between his lips.

“I need you to get Damie cleaned up and down here. Now.” Kane’s voice was a tight growl through the phone, giving Sionn little room to question him. “We’re at UCSF. Just head to the ER. Dad’ll bring you in.”

“What happened?” Sionn’s belly went cold with fear. “What the fuck’s going on, K?”

“Just hurry.” An overhead announcement blurred Kane’s words, but Sionn heard them clearly enough to turn the cold fear to a deathly ice floe. “I need you to get Damie here. Miki’s been stabbed.”

Chapter 15

D, what the hell is this chord?

It’s an Em chord. You know that one.

Really? Cause it looks more like you wrote Murphy.

Fuck you. I didn’t.

Did you write Missus Sionn Murphy all over my notebook too? Draw little hearts maybe?

Oh fucking hell. Screw you, Sinjun. Shit. Give me that.

Nuh-uh, I’m going to go through and see if you drew me a unicorn too.

—
Living Room, Recording 61

F
ORTY
bucks and an autograph scored Damien a pack of Djarum Blacks from a kohl-eyed Goth boy visiting his grandmother. Driven out by the noise and smell of the hospital, Damien was barely outside of the fifty-yard perimeter when he lit up, sucking in a large mouthful of the fragrant smoke. When he heard the soft tread of footsteps coming up behind him, he turned, expecting Sionn.

Nothing could have shocked him more than seeing Kane’s father, Donal, approaching him with two steaming cups of coffee.

“Ye heard the doctor, didn’t you, boy? He’s fine. Just some stitches and a foul mood. Although they might keep him overnight. That knee of his looks blown out, but it’ll be fine. Just swollen some.”

The man loomed over him. When he sat down on a bench, Damien felt a little bit better. At least the shift in their height difference meant he could look Donal in the eyes instead of his chest. Damien took one of the cups and sniffed at the coffee, catching a whiff of cream and sugar in it.

“Don’t tell my bride about the brew.” Donal winked at him. “She’ll have my hide for lacing that up with fatty milk. She seems to think my heart can’t take the posh of it.”

Damien knew he was being a coward. The shivering pangs along his spine were enough of a shame. Seeing the shifting glances between the Morgans when he tossed his stomach into a nearby garbage can only drove that point home. He couldn’t imagine what they were saying about him hitting the glass doors to run for air.

The medical center looked and sounded nothing like Skywood. The bustle of nurses and orderlies were a stream of interested and focused professionals, not glorified babysitters looking to score a few hundred bucks for smuggling in a cheeseburger. Doctors hurried around them, some drifting off to stalk clusters of people gathered around each other in the waiting room, bringing with them either sorrow or relief.

One such white-coated harbinger swooped down on the stern-faced clan of Irish giants and fey with news of their precious feral rescue, waving a flag of good omens to protect himself from their intense wrath. Kane broke from the pack, the fire in his eyes turning their blue a hard steel, and the doctor’s clipboard did little to ward off the tall, angry cop barreling down on him.

It was the calming hand of the man sitting next to him that stayed Kane in his tracks, and his soft murmurs for his son to follow the doctor to the back to sit with Miki as they scanned for damage to his knee. Damien felt the walls close in on him and broke, heading for the open air and someplace he could break down without anyone seeing.

Donal Morgan proved to be a complication to his scheduled breakdown, especially since Damien hadn’t planned on any witnesses.

Eyeing the massive amount of sinew and muscle Donal seemed to be made of, Damien immediately dismissed any chance of taking the man out. The fact that he was a captain on the police force probably meant he had a gun on him someplace, and the last thing he wanted was a bullet hole in him, since he’d been avoiding that very scenario over the past few months.

He had no intention of spilling his guts to the man. If anything, Damien felt shoved out when he should have been the one at Miki’s side. For the first time since he’d hugged his friend tight to his broken body, he
resented
having to share Sinjun with Kane.

Even if he was too much of a coward to stand in the stink of his insanity to hold Miki’s hand.

“Fuck.” The word didn’t seem hard enough, not caustic enough to put his disgust behind. Taking another drag, he tilted his head back and tried again. “Fucking son of a bitch.”

If only he knew who he was swearing at, Kane or himself.

Donal said nothing, watching him with those Irish wolf eyes, and waited, patient and stoic. Sipping his own coffee, he shifted and stared out into the nearly empty parking lot, a light misting rain sparkling over the convoy of SUV tanks the Morgans drove to the hospital.

Damien longed to close his hand and punch the man in the face, knocking his smug, wise expression clean off. If only he didn’t need his hand to play the guitar. And, he thought as he eyed the man, Donal wasn’t able to take him apart with his pinkies.

“He talks about ye, our Miki does,” Donal said to the rain, loud enough for Damien to hear him, but the man’s gaze never wavered from the encroaching torrent.

His refusal to spill his thoughts broke, seemingly as solid as his resolve not to feed Miki’s fucking dog from his plate. “I’m the reason he’s lying there in a fucking machine with catgut holding him together.”

“Really?” The older man coolly shrugged and sipped at his coffee with a loud slurp. “I thought ye were the very reason he was with us at all.”

There would be no retreat now, not with the challenge lying subtly in Donal’s words. Inwardly cursing his weakness, Damien hid behind the rim of his cup, keeping his voice steady. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

“What do ye think would have happened to your Sinjun if ye hadna’ found him that night?” The wolfish gaze drifted back to Damien’s face, pinning him in place. “Where do ye think he’d be now, Damie boy?”

“He’d have been….” Damien came up short, horrified at the places his mind took him. “Miki’s strong. He’d have kicked life in the balls.”

“Aye, maybe. But maybe not,” Donal murmured, turning the cup around in his broad hands. “I think our Miki’s strong because ye had a lot to do with his becoming the man he is. The two of ye, bound together in a way none of us understand, but it’s a glorious thing to behold. Where do ye think the world would be without ya’two? How silent this world would be without ye.”

“What? So
God
put us together?” He wanted to tear the man’s reasoning apart, shredding his words to show Donal the fallacy of his beliefs. “Where the fuck was God when that truck tore through us? Where the fuck was fate when some asshole… probably the same fucking asshole who killed my mother and shot at me… sliced Miki open?”

“I don’t have answers for ye there, Damie boy.” The man leaned back, resting his shoulders against the hospital wall. “But does that change the past? Because I’m telling ye, that boy in there… the one that loves my son… the one we’ve all come to love… is who he is because of ye.”

“Miki—”

“Hear me out.” Donal held up his hand, stopping Damien before he could go on. “I knew ye weren’t listening to Kane when he was talking about what happened. Were ye? Listening, I mean?”

“Um….” Damien thought back to what had been said when Sionn spotted the Morgans. His brain misfired, focusing only on how he’d held onto Sionn’s hand and the buzz of Irish accents murmuring around him. “Not a fucking thing. Just… that he was being stitched up. That he was okay.”

Donal sighed, the sound of an exasperated father, and Damien instinctively flinched when the man raised his hand to pat the bench next to him. A flicker of troubled emotion ran over the older man’s handsome face, and he patted at the wood again, silent and watchful.

“Yer Sinjun is a fighter. No mistake about that,” Donal began when Damien settled down beside him. “But see, Damie boy, while Miki has always been a fighter, yer the one who gave him something… no, someone to fight for.”