Whiskey and Wry (Sinners Series) (32 page)

He’d known as soon as he breached Damien’s tight ass he wouldn’t last long. Damien’s sharp teeth found a bulge of muscle on his shoulder and latched on, digging until Sionn felt his skin give, cut raw by Damien’s bite. The sharpness of the pain drove him on, his cock catching on the man’s constricting rim before sliding along the oiled channel beyond.

There was no warning. No trembling of Damien’s muscles around Sionn’s thrusting shaft. One moment his lover was moaning and pleading for more, the next, a splatter of hot seed erupted between them, coating their bellies with Damien’s salty release. Sionn quickened his strokes, finding the spongy crest of Damien’s center rumpled under his shaft, and he angled in, punching into the spot over and over as he milked the final drops of Damien’s release from his spurting dick.

His entire body tingled, the skin along his back and arms prickling with the power building up in his balls. The sac between his legs roiled, curling up and tucking into the hot space under his cock, his thighs pressing his hollow in. Damien’s teeth were gone, and he welcomed the come-tinged air hitting his lungs. It was a scent he’d grown to love, a milky spice of his own sweat and Damien’s spill playing through a rain-heavy fog.

Sionn’s orgasm struck, leaving his body in a rush of salt and desire. Burying his face in the curve of Damien’s neck, he filled his lover to the brim, his shoulders jerking uncontrollably with each jolt of his cock. Veiled by Damien’s black hair, Sionn floated on the rippling aftermath of their sex, Damien’s ass still clenched tightly around him, and they both sighed, their mouths touching long enough for their breath to mingle.

“Christ, you’re going to kill me, Damie love,” Sionn murmured, trying to catch his breath. He tried to roll off of his lover’s belly, but Damien held him still despite Sionn’s softening cock slipping free of the other man’s body. “We’re going to be a fecking mess if I—”

“Stay.” It was a single word, but flushed with deep affection. “I love you lying on me. Hell, I just love you, so please… don’t go, Sionn. Just…
stay
.”

“It would be a pleasure to stay,
a rún
,” he whispered, kissing Damien gently. He heard what Damien was saying, the blossoming tangle between them peeking out from Damien’s plea. Caught between the spaces of his words, Damien spoke of a future between them, his stitched-together heart pounding hard enough for Sionn to feel it against his ribs. “A simple bloody pleasure.”

Chapter 18

There’s a door in the back

At the back of this bar

Death waits there

Even leaves it ajar

Don’t wander there, boy

Don’t dance too close, son

Else the Devil’ll come take you

’Fore the night’s even done

—
Devil’s Waiting

“H
OLY
fucking shit.” Damien sat up quickly, nearly kicking his guitar off the couch. His mind was racing, pulling up edible tidbits from the burned soup of his memories and shocking him with unexpected information. “I just fucking remembered Beaker’s not a chick. Holy crap! This fucking blows my mind. Again. Fucking hell. Miki dude… did you know Beaker’s a guy?”

The singer looked up from the music sheets Damien had dropped in his lap, his nose wrinkled in disgust at Damie’s feet shoving his knee. “Not only do I
not
give a fuck, I don’t even know who the hell Beaker is.”

“Fuck you. You’re broken. Why do I even talk to you?” he sniped back, kicking his friend again as he twisted around to sit sideways on the couch. Waving at his lover, Damien caught Sionn coming out of the kitchen, Kane tight on his heels with a cup of coffee. “Sionn… babe… did you know Beaker’s a dude?”

“Who the hell’s Beaker?” Sionn frowned, moving aside to let his cousin by. “You didn’t know he was a boy? Switching over or summat?”

“Fuck you too.” Damien sighed, lightly banging his forehead against a cushion. He was alone in his stew, searching for someone who’d share his delight. “Kane…?”

“Wait, Beaker’s a dude?” Kane stopped in midsip, his mug poised below his lips. “You sure? I thought she and Dr. Honeydew… wow. Well shit, that changes things.”

“Nah, it’s all Bert and Ernie again.” Damien grinned at the cop, suddenly quite overly fond of Miki’s lover. “Stealthy Muppet homoerotic overtones.”

“You are a sick fuck, D,” Miki scratched notes on the song he was working on. “You’re talking about puppets getting it on. Sionn not giving you enough?”

“This from the person who wanted to see two armadillos fuck?” The kick this time came from Miki, his rigid toes smacking Damien’s knee. “Dude, you made us stand in the damned cold and watch those two at the zoo. Then we find out they’re both
girls
.”

“Fuck you. I was curious.” He rattled a piece of sheet music under Damien’s nose. “Can we get back to this?”

“Actually, I’m going to have to be grabbing Damie from you,” Sionn apologized softly. “He’s got a doctor’s appointment this morning.”

“And Edie’s getting here in a couple of days.” Kane bent over to kiss Miki’s neck. “We’ve got to get the other guest room set up now that we’ve got these two squatters in the main room. So, you two, no running around naked on the second floor while she’s here.”

“Like she’s not seen everything I’ve got already.” Damien snorted.

“I don’t even want to know how that happens.” Sionn fished his keys out of his pocket. “Come on, boyo. Let’s get your head checked out, and maybe he’ll clear you to drive. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“What would be nice is if I could get my life back,” he complained loudly, but he climbed off the couch, tagging Miki on the side of his friend’s head with a snap of his fingers. “Get my money back. My own place… keep Miki’s boyfriend in my basement.”

“Bitch,” Miki grumbled at him, waving Damien away. “Go get your head checked. Maybe if they look hard enough, they can find your brain.”

A familiar anxiety kept Damien on edge through the car ride, and by the time they pulled into the hospital’s underground parking, he was about to go out of his mind. Slippery tangents swarmed about his head, buzzing and stinging like a nest of angry wasps suddenly woken up by a stupid bear. Rubbing at his forehead, Damien nearly fell out of the Jeep as he got out, and Sionn hurried around to pull him up.

“Damie, look at me. Are you doing okay?” Sionn wavered in Damien’s vision, then snapped back into focus. Two of Sionn’s fingers were thrust up under Damien’s nose, and he reeled back in surprise. “How many do you see?”

“One,” he sneered, slapping Sionn’s hand away. “One asshole. Dude, I’m fine. Just too much… crap coming up. Doc said it would happen, remember? I just got dizzy. Let’s go in so I can get the hell out of here. I’m kind of over hospitals right now.”

It was torture to walk through the brightly lit halls of the medical center. Flashbacks of heavy-handed orderlies and a phantom whiff of fire lingered in his mind. Someone dropped a metal pan on the floor, and the clatter sounded too much like a burst of gunfire going off in the cold darkness of a Montana winter night. Panic set in, and Damien clutched at Sionn’s arm, forbidding himself from diving behind a nearby potted plant for cover.

“We’ll take it slow,
a rún
.” Sionn soothed Damien’s nerves with a soft stroke of fingers along Damie’s nape. “When you get inside, you tell the doc you’re having some trouble—”

“Oh hell no,” he cut his lover off quickly. “Fucker will have me in a loony bin.”

“No, he won’t.” The man chuckled softly and tugged Damien down the hall, forcing him to take longer steps. “He’s here to help you. He can’t do that if you don’t tell him what’s going on.”

In the end, the damned Irishman was right. The doctor spent half an hour reassuring Damien he wasn’t going crazy. A soft-faced balding man, he would have faded into the beige background if not for the loud paisley bow tie he’d knotted at his throat. The bright colors were hard for Damien to shake off, and when he blinked, echoes of the pink, purple, and yellow swirls remained behind. A few flashes of light into his eyes and more questions, then Damien was outside, thankfully sucking in the garage’s exhaust-perfumed air.

“Here, more for my how-to-care-for-your-guitarist manual.” Sionn tossed Damie a folder thick with papers once they’d gotten into the Jeep.

“I should look through this and see if there’s anything about not giving it sex after midnight.” Damien breathed a sigh of relief when Sionn started up the car and backed out of their parking space.

“Planning on burning it if you find it?”

“Hell yes,” he muttered, reading through the doctor’s assessment. “I do my best work after midnight.”

As they eased out into traffic, Sionn’s phone beeped, and he handed it over to Damien. “Check if that’s Kane. He might be wanting me to grab something to take back to the house.”

It wasn’t. Instead the text spat through an unfamiliar phone number, then a message from a technician asking Sionn to meet up at his loft apartment. Damien felt the blood drain from his face and a stone form somewhere beneath his sternum.

“Eh, what’s the matter?” Sionn glanced at him, obviously concerned. “What happened? Miki—?”

“No no, Miki’s fine.” He took a deep breath, trying to use one of the calming techniques the doctor taught him. It was for shit, but he was going to try. “One of the cop techs needs to meet you. At your place. Something about checking if something’s evidence? I don’t know. I don’t speak cop.”

“I’ll drop you off—”

“Dude, that’s like an hour through traffic, and then you’ve got to fight your way back to Chinatown during lunch.” Damien swallowed the chunk of stress swelling in his throat. “I can handle this. I’ll just stay in the car or something. Not like I’ve got to go up.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind dropping you off and coming back. Just text him back and tell him I’ll head over in a bit.”

Sionn was right to look worried. Damien didn’t
want
to go back into the loft. He didn’t want to imagine the woman he’d hoped would protect him as a child spread out over the place he’d made love in. The idea of her dissected body on Sionn’s sofa where they’d kissed and napped was repulsive. It turned to horrifying if he dared even think about the bedroom.

“No, it’s okay,” he said, texting back furiously, his nimble fingers flying over the screen, getting a nearly immediate reply. “I’ve got to deal with some of this shit, you know? I can’t keep running away from crap. I’ll be fine. He said he’ll meet up with you inside.”

“Shouldn’t be long,” Sionn promised. “I’d already gotten the all-clear to go back. Maybe he just wants to ask something and hand over the spare keys I gave them. After that, we can head up to Hang Ah for lunch. How about that?”

“And the guys back home?” Damien chuckled at Sionn’s evil grin.

“Fuck them. If they wanted dim sum, they should have come with us instead of pretending they’re not fucking like bunnies on the couch.”

“Oh, dude, not the couch.” If the mental image of his mother was bad, the thought of Miki splayed out in an erotic pose on the sofa was enough to overload his brain. “We sit there, man. I don’t want to be sitting in their spunk. We all agreed. One rule. No sex anywhere we sit or make food.”

If anything, Sionn’s laugh was more evil than his sardonic smile. “And once more, what makes you think you haven’t already?”

M
IDMORNING
Chinatown on a Tuesday was a nightmare Dante himself could never have imagined. The storms rolling over the city were huddled on the horizon, plotting their next takeover and leaving the waterlogged sunshine its delusion that it could dry the streets out before they hit again.

More deadly than a plague of locusts, swarms of tourists ambled through the tight streets, their attention less on the traffic and more on the city surrounding them. Sionn cursed himself for turning up Grant Avenue. Trapped in a slog of bodies and vehicles moving slower than molasses on a cold day, he was tempted to get out of the car, hand Damien the keys, and walk the seven blocks to his building.

The curious scents and sounds of the neighborhood reached them before the dragon gate actually came into view. A mingle of anise, black tea, and cardamom wafted through the Jeep’s open windows, tickling Sionn’s nose. Somewhere hidden in the crust of cement and bricks, jasmine bloomed, sweetening the harsher smells rolling down through the gate. By the time they reached the base of the hill, Sionn’s stomach was growling furiously, angrily reminding him they’d not had anything to eat, and the mouthwatering aromas coming from the neighborhood’s restaurants were a maddening torture.

“Swear to God, if you take longer than five minutes, I’m going to go hunt down someone and chew off their leg,” Damien threatened softly. “When did it get to be almost noon?”

“Right after it turned eleven thirty,” Sionn muttered. “And if you do grab someone, save some for me. All I’ve had is coffee.”

“I’ll look for someone plump. We can gorge,” Damien promised, darkly eyeing the crowd for a ripe specimen. “Something that’ll go good with
har gow
, though. It’ll be like a surf and turf thing.”