Twelve
Dante knew the moment Rook surfaced from his dreams. There was no mistaking it. As Los Angeles screamed along its merry little way, shut out by thick curtains across the hotel’s soundproofed windows, Rook’s skin began to hum beneath Dante’s hand.
It was as if he’d stuck his fingers into a fast-moving current, a stream of energy catching on the ridges of his fingers and palm. There was no change in the man’s breathing, not a shivering flicker of lashes over his cut-glass cheekbones, but something intangible fired on inside of Rook’s being, and Dante wondered if his hand would cook beneath the buzz slithering through Rook’s nerves.
He took a chance and kissed the nape of Rook’s neck, taking a moment to catch his teeth on the fine hairs there before pulling slightly away, waiting for Rook to respond.
There was nothing big at first, nothing overt, but there was a skipping pulse under Dante’s wrist where he’d laid his arm over Rook’s uninjured shoulder and over his chest, the quick stamp of a heartbeat caught up in its own excitement.
“I can feel you thinking, Rook,” Dante whispered, nibbling on Rook’s earlobe until he got a hissing response. “Don’t pretend you’re sleeping. What do you think is going to happen if you don’t wake up?”
“Like you’d have the good manners to sneak out and pretend nothing happened between us.”
Typical Rook. Shove away. Deflect, then stab Dante with a hint of something soft and longing beneath the bravado. He didn’t rise to the bait. Instead Dante found the spot on Rook’s ear he’d discovered last night and delicately blew on it.
“Stop that. It tickles, and I hurt when I laugh.” Rook moved slowly under him, too carefully for Dante’s liking. “God, I fucking hurt everywhere. Wasn’t like this a couple of hours ago when I got up to piss and brush my teeth. Shit, it was only a damned Ford speck.”
“That speck was enough to bruise you something fierce. It’s time for another round of pills.” He was about to pull back when Rook dug his fingers into Dante’s thigh. “What? No?”
“No.” Rook shook his head, twisting slightly in Dante’s embrace until his shoulders rested on the arm Dante slung underneath him. “I don’t like what they do to me. Make me all fuzzy. I’ve got to watch my wits when I’m around you, Montoya.” He hitched his breath once, then murmured, “Dante.”
“I’d rather have you fuzzy than in pain. How about some ibuprofen?” Rook’s subtle nod spilled his chestnut hair over Dante’s arm, and he tugged at a lock as he slipped off the bed. “Wait here.”
He was mildly amused to find Rook still there, in bed, waiting for him.
With the sun in full possession of the sky, the ambient light creeping out from under the room’s curtains was more than enough to illuminate the space. Their clothes were everywhere, and neither one of them had given a second thought to the couch lying on its back in the middle of the room. Sofa cushions were scattered across the carpet, and Dante was nearly certain it was his underwear dangling from one of the sconces hanging above the headboard. It was a scene best used to illustrate a rock star’s enfant terrible behavior.
Or the aftermath of two men finally giving in to something larger than either one of them wanted to admit.
Like the room, Rook looked worse for wear but still too damned expensive for Dante’s budget. His faint injuries from the car were now full-blown bruises, and the gunshot wound lay bare and naked in the faint light. The stitched-up flap looked raw, too pink for Dante’s liking, and he tenderly touched the skin around the area, testing it for heat.
“They shot me full of shit twice last night. Antibiotics or something. Shit, they could have given me bubonic plague for all I know. Who checks that shit for them? Kind of dangerous if you think about it. One guy with a needle wandering the halls, looking for someone to fuck up.”
Rook gulped down the pills, following them with a mouthful of water. Dante took the water glass from him, and Rook fell back into the tangled sheets, his arms spread out about him.
“Are you heading out to fight crime with Camden the Ginger Wonder, or do I have to share the bed again?”
It was the closest thing Dante was ever going to get out of Rook in the way of asking him to come back to bed, but Dante took it.
“Day off today, but I’ll be running some things down. Like your friend, the Pigeon.” He climbed onto the bed, tucking his hand under Rook’s hip, lifting him easily aside so he could slide in next to him. “And I’ve already talked to Hank and my uncle Manny. I left things with him… half-done, but he said it turned out all right. Move over.”
They were still naked, and from the tender way Rook moved his legs to let Dante under him, he knew the other condom was going to remain on the nightstand where he’d left it. It didn’t matter. He was more interested in hearing the man… breathe and talk. For now at least. But Rook seemed unsettled, shifting as Dante pulled the covers up over them.
“Come closer,” Dante ordered softly, and for a moment he thought Rook would resist. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
That moment came quickly enough when Rook’s jaw set. Then more resistance trailed after it in Rook’s soft grumble. “You know, you and me—we’re a really fucking bad idea. I should just go—”
“Yeah, as bad decisions go, you’re definitely one of the worst—and best—I’ve made.” Dante propped himself up onto an elbow so he could see Rook’s face. “We both knew it was going to get to this. You’re lying to yourself if you say it wasn’t.”
“No, I only lie to other people.” His laugh was touched with a tincture of bitterness, but Rook gave Dante a rueful smile. “If it hadn’t been for Dani showing up dead on my floor, we never would have ended up here.”
“From what little I know about you, I can safely say you’re trouble enough that I’d have ended up on your doorstep no matter what, Stevens,” he teased. “Now, come here. You know you want to.”
He could see it in the man’s oddly beautiful eyes and the set of his full mouth, but then as slowly as he’d eased into the bed, Rook slid up against Dante’s body, leaning into the crook of his outflung arm.
Pulling the covers up, Dante waited until the tenseness left Rook’s body before moving his arm down to cradle Rook back against his chest. Nearly a minute passed before Rook’s shoulders loosened, and Dante felt, rather than heard, the soft sigh when Rook finally let go.
It was odd lying next to a naked man, their cocks soft and vulnerable, silken velvet between their thighs. Rook’s skin was warm, healthy, and firm to Dante’s touch, and he explored the planes of his lover’s stomach, tracing out the muscles he found there. There were tender spots, unseen because of the duvet covering them, but all Dante had to do was close his eyes to find the memory of Rook’s body burned into his mind. He knew where to avoid, mostly the lower edge of Rook’s left side and then under his right shoulder blade. His arm was tender from the shot, but from what Dante could tell, Rook soldiered on past that pain.
The slice across his cheek seemed barely worth mentioning, especially after Dante’d kissed it after they’d collapsed, and Rook mocked him for being soft.
Lying next to Rook Stevens was akin to trying to take a nap on a bed of nails. A lot of practice, a seemingly futile exercise, but once accomplished, a sliver of nirvana from its mastery.
Not that he considered himself a master in Rook Stevens. Not by a long shot. Hell, the only reason Dante knew Rook’d gotten pleasure the night before was because he’d been there when the man surrendered his control, splattering them both with the sticky gush of his release.
He waited a heartbeat, then another before speaking again. “After all the times I’ve seen you run away, I was surprised to see you stay, cuervo.”
“Yeah, don’t get too used to it, Montoya. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” Rook glanced over his shoulder. “Really? Nothing? Jesus, you have got to watch the damned movie.”
“Dante.”
Rook took a second, then murmured, “Dante. You’re woefully ignorant of pop culture.”
“Yeah, I don’t get to watch a lot of television and movies. Most of my time’s spent on my house or trying to find people who kill other people.” He kept stroking at Rook’s skin, reveling in the soft flush of pink he brought to Rook’s cheeks. “I’m glad you stayed.”
“God, you are such a chick.”
“Pretty sure with what I did to you last night, I’m not.” He slid his hand down and brushed at the nest of curls above Rook’s dick. “And a true man is one who can talk to his lover. Anyone can be all macho and hide behind a wall of silence. You want a real man? Find one who’ll say the scary things and try to work them out. A man faces fear. He doesn’t swallow it and then choke on his pride when it goes down the wrong way.”
“What fortune cookie did you pull that out of?” Rook snorted. “Really, life’s not a Disney movie. There’s no wacky sidekick—despite what you think about Charlene—and there sure as hell isn’t any fairy godmother.”
“My uncle Manny told me that. In a lot of ways he’s kind of my fairy godfather.” Dante tweaked Rook’s nipple lightly, mimicking what he’d done with his teeth a few hours before. “He’d like you. He likes lost causes and broken boys. God knows he surrounded himself with enough of them.”
“I’m not broken.” The assertion was quiet but strong, a thread of hot steel cloaked behind the velvet purr of Rook’s voice. “Don’t mistake me not giving a shit about other people as being broken. There’s nothing wrong with me because I’m different from you.”
“You run, Rook. Every time it looks like someone’s getting close to you, you rabbit.” Dante tightened his hold on the man, and as if on cue, Rook tensed up to push away. He held Rook tighter, refusing to let go, keeping his breath shallow when Rook remained on edge but in his arms. “Don’t you get sick of running? Don’t you get tired of always having to look over your shoulder? What’s so hard about just… staying?”
“Because everyone wants something, Montoya.” Rook’s breath was a hot, slithering wind over Dante’s bare arm. “No one does anything without a reason—”
“Even your grandfather? Man seems to be chasing after you like his head’s on fire, trying to keep up.”
“Fuck, especially my grandfather.” He shifted on the bed, finding a comfortable spot, but Rook’s muscled ass ground into Dante’s crotch, sliding his dick into Rook’s cleft. “See? Right there. Even you.”
“Your ass practically gave my dick a cheek job.” Dante sank his teeth into Rook’s shoulder, letting go when he heard a small yelp of surprise. “Just because you make me hard, doesn’t mean I’m going to roll you over and fuck you. Not now. Tell me why you run from your grandfather. And yeah, he’s a mean old man, but he’s your mean old man. From what I can tell, he cares about you. Maybe even loves you.”
“He sees me as a way to fuck over my cousins. They’re idiots. I’ll give him that. Well, not Alex, but he’s gone and said fuck you to the old man in his own way. Owns a comic book shop. Apparently that’s worse than what I do, but go figure.” Rook grumbled at Dante’s exploratory fingers over his ribs. “You want me to talk to you, or do you want to fuck, because this whole touchy-feely only can happen verbally or physically. I can’t do both.”
“So no chewing gum and walking at the same time?” Dante teased.
“Hard to talk when my dick is hard enough to cut a diamond.” He hissed softly. “Shit, I’m still on the hook for that diamond Dani had on her.”
“Did she find it in your place? And be honest. Did you have it there, and was she walking out with it?”
“I haven’t seen that thing in fucking years, Dante. There’s no way in hell my prints are on it. I never touched the damned thing with my bare hands when I had it to begin with. And that’s not a confession.” Rook struggled to turn around, and Dante loosened his hold so Rook could face him. “Statute on that job is almost up if I’m counting from when you guys walked away from the case. It’s one of the last damned things hanging over me, and I’ve worked too fucking hard to get free. I’m not going to let Dani or whoever else is fucking with me screw it up.”
“I’m not going to take it as one,” Dante assured. “But if I’m going to catch who’s killing your… past associates, then I’m going to have to know how you’re connected to them. Good distraction, though. Moving on to the diamond instead of your grandfather. I’ve got to give you that.”
Rook at least had the decency to fake a little bit of shame in his expression. “Yeah, well… it wasn’t on purpose. I… fuck, Mon—Dante, this is too damned hard.”
“Then do something easier on you. Tell me how a kid who grew up on the carnival circuit ended up selling dolls on Hollywood Boulevard.” Dante prodded him lightly. “Tell me something, Rook Stevens. It can be about you grandfather or, hell, why you gave Charlene a job. Just between you and me. It goes no further than this room.”
“Dude, I think I’d rather go to jail,” Rook ground out, turning around so his back was to Dante’s chest again. “Seriously. And for your information, they’re called action figures. Not dolls.”
What Montoya—Dante—wanted was worse than standing on the edge of a high-rise with only a thin steel braid stopping him from becoming a splatter on the street below. He didn’t share. Sex was something to have and be done with, like eating a pot of ramen over the sink so he didn’t have to do dishes.
And much like gulping down hot noodles, the idea of talking about things to a cop—even one whose dick had been inside of him—gave Rook heartburn.
The problem with Dante Montoya was that he was good. Not the tiptoe through the forest, sing to forest animals kind of good, but a more brutally real, honest-to-God, throw himself into the line of fire for someone he didn’t know kind. Rook didn’t have it in him to even understand that kind of good, yet there he was, cuddled up against a white knight as if they were starring in a Hallmark commercial for Valentine’s Day.
“Think less. Talk more, Stevens.” Dante nudged Rook’s shoulder with his chin.
“Why is it I have to call you Dante and you can still call me Stevens?”
“Because I have a gun.”
“Nice.”
Dante snorted. “Anything. This is a trust thing. If we’re going to be—”
“Tangled,” Rook interrupted. “If we’re going to call this fucking mess anything, it’s going to be tangled. We’ll ride this out for as long as it takes us. Then we walk it off, right?”
Dante was silent behind him, and Rook swallowed the prickly anxiety rolling up his throat. The cop finally sighed and hitched Rook even closer, molding his body against Rook’s back until there was barely enough space between them for air to move.
“There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about you, cuervo. I get that your mother wasn’t—”
“Around? Sober?” he suggested quickly and tried to remember the last time he’d actually spoken to Beanie. “So many words to choose from.”
“I was going to say maternal.” Dante’s hands were moving again, a soothing caress over his belly. “I don’t want to put words in your mouth.”
“Dude, there are so many words to describe Beanie—Beatrice. Stupid’s one. That’s the one I come up with the most, you know?” He thought back on the day when he’d first seen the mansion his mother called home. “She went off to join the goddamned circus because she didn’t want to finish up high school. How screwed up is that? But that’s Beanie. She’d get this brilliant idea about making jam—which she doesn’t know how to make—come up with this soupy, fruity crap but won’t have anything to put it in. Typical Beanie.”
Dante stopped his stroking, and Rook wrinkled his nose, hating that he missed the touch.
“I take it you aren’t close, then?”
“You have to see someone more than a few times a year to get close to them, right?” Rook asked. “What kind of stupid bitch walks away from being rich just because she can’t keep her legs together or a thought in her head? That’s my mother for you. Don’t know what surprises me more. That she had me or that I’m the only one she’s had.”
He’d finally gotten to Montoya, because Dante’s breath stopped, and his chest jerked beneath Rook’s shoulder blades. Mothers were important to Montoya—or at least his mother. He added that bit of information next to the uncle Dante spoke of earlier.
“She didn’t have you to think about then. When she left home,” Dante replied. “You walk away from things easily enough. Maybe that’s where you get it from?”
A small cut with a knife, not deep enough to do serious damage, but Dante’s smooth response was sharp enough to prick Rook’s temper. He shoved the irritation aside, hating that his walls crumbled so easily when Dante touched them.
Maybe he was beyond soft. Spending the past few years as legitimately as he could was wearing down his defenses. Gone were the days when he could callously walk by something or someone, not caring if they were bleeding out or crying at his feet. The world was a hard place, and he’d learned long ago that suckling at its stone teat would only leave his mouth raw.
Then why did Dante’s touch unsettle him so much? And why did he hate himself for not reaching out to Archibald to tell him where he was?
“God, I fucking hate you. This crap you’re—” Rook winced as Dante’s nails flicked over his chest. “There’s nothing to tell you. I grew up, did some jobs, then got sick of it. So I opened up a shop. There you go.”
“I’m assuming you got the money for your place off of those jobs you did,” Dante surmised. “And before you bitch, we agreed nothing said here would be used against you. Or I agreed. Besides, the case we had against you was thrown out. Both of them.”
“Yeah, your partner really fucked that up.” He grimaced. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“No, it’s true. Vince screwed up.” Dante leaned away, pulling Rook down onto his back. “I’m going to be honest, cuervo, I wanted to nail you and the guys you ran with so badly I could taste it. Vince knew he was living on borrowed time, I guess. Maybe he thought he had nothing to lose, but he did.”
“He should have taken care of you at least.” His hair was in his face, and Rook pushed it aside, only to have it slither back. Dante gently brushed it away, another one of his secretive, wise smiles plastered on his rugged face. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who’s all family this and friends that. Fucker should have had your back.”
He’d been out of the state when Dante’s former partner said he discovered a stash of stolen items in Rook’s trailer at the carnival’s winter spot. The fallout had been ugly, played out on a stage where Rook couldn’t see the players, but he could hear the whispering and the shouting, rumors reaching him through a loose network of people. There’d been news of the older cop’s shameful dismissal and how the younger detective almost lost his balls over it.
At the time he’d thought about paybacks, karmas, and bitches, but seeing Dante ache ruffled a darkness Rook didn’t know he had inside.
The sorrow in Dante’s face hurt. His eyes bled pain, and Rook needed to get away from the raw outpour of betrayal and confusion rolling off Dante’s body.
“Yeah, he should have. But I understand why he did it. Don’t agree with it, but that’s what it is.” Dante leaned over, touching his nose to Rook’s. “What about you? Who did you depend on, then betrayed you? Because no one is born as cynical and bitter as you are. Who was your Vince?”
“No one’s ever had my back, Montoya. No one. And I don’t expect that to change. Ever,” Rook shot back, shoving Dante away with a hard push. “Right now I’m going to get some more sleep. Then I’m talking to Pigeon about you so I can say I’m done with this.”
“We’re not done with this, Rook, and I don’t know if we’ll ever be done with this,” Dante said softly as he rolled over onto his back. “You were right the first time. You and I? We’re tangled. So whether you like it or not, I’ll be here. Because God knows, someone needs to take care of you. Especially since you’re doing such a shitty job of taking care of yourself.”