Six

FROM THE moment Rey spotted August Scott emerging from the smoke billowing out of his family’s burning home, he’d known the blond was dangerous. Framed by a crackling inferno, he’d been a too-young fallen angel, wings scorched from the heat of his sins and filled with the promise of a wickedness so dark a seventeen-year-old Rey couldn’t begin to imagine its depths.

And that’d been when Gus was only fourteen.

As an adult, he was devastating.

He’d never been beautiful, not like Ivo, but there was something about the quirk of Gus’s mouth and the masculine good looks of his face that drew attention. Rey’d seen more than one person be sucked in by Gus’s silvery wolfish eyes, his crystal gray-blue gaze shining with a piratical gleam, and the charismatic scoundrel stamped on his strong features was a lure not many could resist. Gus’s seductive magnetism was as much a part of him as his careless blond mane or the tightly packed muscles on his broad-shouldered swimmer’s build, his long legs moving with a powerful grace when he sauntered across a room.

It hurt a bit to see how guarded Gus was. His body language screamed distrust and wariness, his quick-to-smile mouth pulled into a tight line. Nobody could dance around a straight question like Gus, but he couldn’t tell a lie to save himself, not when his moods flowed over his face as quickly as San Francisco’s skies filled and emptied of clouds on any given day, but he always simmered with an erotic allure, a sinful iniquitous attraction begging to be plumbed.

Rey resisted. God knew Rey tried like hell not to fall into Gus’s honeyed smile or wonder how his tanned throat would look with a constellation of bruised nips along its length, but there was no stopping him from falling into the fire Gus seemed to have brought with him from that fateful night.

In the end, Rey’d been the one to burn them both, and he’d probably never see Gus smile for him ever again.

“You’ve lost weight.” Not knowing what the proper protocol was when running into an ex-lover in the middle of his family’s kitchen, Rey grabbed at the first thing he’d noticed. “You look… good, though.”

Gus was leaner, an old pair of faded jeans Rey tugged off of him more than a few times in the past now hung a bit lower, riding his hip bones and iliac furrows. There was a sparseness to his face, his cheekbones and jaw giving his features harder lines than Rey remembered. The ranginess looked good on him, throwing off a subliminal feral vibe practically begging or daring someone to tame him.

The grunt he got back was less than pleased.

He’d interrupted Gus. That much was clear, the empty mug on the counter waiting for the coffee machine to finish filling its carafe. Gus was dressed, typical jeans and loose-fitting 415 Ink T-shirt, but his feet were bare, enough clues to know he’d be heading down to the shop at some point but wasn’t ready to bolt out of the door. There was a sketchpad on the table, a variety of graphite pencils scattered near a kneaded eraser, its lopsided curves marbled with faint dark lines.

A curly-haired toddler peered out of a photo on the table, its button nose and ocean-blue eyes enormous from the forced perspective in the shot. It looked like Gus had been about halfway through capturing the image before moving on to a blank page, tearing the unfinished drawing out of the sketch book and tucking it under a large plastic shaker the brothers left filled with dried chili peppers and garlic salt.

“Who’s the….” The child’s eyes were familiar, and when Rey glanced up at Gus, the resemblance hit him, and suddenly the sleep-clouded words Mason had rumbled at him in their apartment’s kitchen made sense. “Shit. That’s right. Mace told me you had a kid.”

“Of course he did.” Gus scrubbed at his face, a gesture Rey’d seen him do a thousand times before. “Jesus. What’d he do? Call you as soon as I went to bed so you guys could laugh over how much I’ve fucked up?”

“No, he told me when he came in this morning because he was going to skip our run. We split rent in Chinatown. Easier since we’re at the same station now.” He debated taking a closer look at the stack of photos nearly hidden beneath the smudged portrait, flicking a glance at his ex to gauge Gus’s mood, but for once, he couldn’t read the man’s expression. “I didn’t get a lot of details. Hell, I wasn’t even awake all the way. He came in before I had any coffee in me, mumbled a few things, then headed to bed. I didn’t put together what he said until I saw the picture. He? She?”

“He.” Gus mulled over something, then finally said, “His name’s Chris. He’s almost three.”

Three seemed… tight. Really tight and Rey tried to stop his mind from rolling the dates back, counting off the months and days since he’d been with Gus. Tight became improbable and then shifted to nearly impossible as the final numbers clicked down.

They’d been together then. Smack dab in the weeks Rey began to doubt Gus’s ability to be in a serious relationship. One too many blown-off dinners led to a brittle silence broken only when Rey finally grabbed the metaphorical bull by the horns and told Gus they were done.

He hadn’t expected Gus to stay. Not when he had a track record of running when things got rough, and sure enough, a few weeks later, Gus was in the wind again, rambling around the Southwest looking for fresh skin to dapple and probably new asses to fuck. He’d boomeranged in and out of the shop, hooking guest gigs in places Rey hadn’t even realized existed, but Gus always came home.

This time he’d come home with a kid. A three-year-old kid.

The reality of him being with someone else—a woman, even—knocked the wind from Rey’s sails, and he had to lean against the table, blindly looking for some kind of support as he stared down at the result of Gus’s infidelity.

“We were…. Jesus, Gus.” Rey bit back the anger surging through him. He had no right to it. They’d probably only been faithful in his own mind. At the time, the thought of Gus straying from his bed… from either of their beds… never even crossed his mind, but staring up at him was proof Gus hadn’t been in it to stay. They’d used condoms, but there’d been a time or two when he’d stupidly thrown himself into the moment. Pressing his hand against his stomach, Rey felt the sick rise up at the thought of what he could be carrying with him. “Fucking hell. We were—”

“Doing the math?” Gus pricked at Rey’s bubbling anger, practically daring it to spill over. Pushing off of the counter, he was a few steps away from being in Rey’s face, but the dog’s stretched-out body kept them at their distance. “You’re safe. We’re… safe, asshole. Chris was premature by nearly a month. I didn’t fuck around on you. Good to know you still got faith in me. Warms my fucking heart.”

“What the hell am I supposed to think?” He tapped at the photo, and Earl, sensing a brewing storm, scrambled to his feet to get out of the way. “Three years ago we were—”

“We were what?” Gus’s chin went up, challenging Rey. They were eye to eye, but Rey dominated the space, his heavier body a firm wall Gus wouldn’t be able to breach. Trapped between the counter and Rey, Gus stood firm, stepping into Rey’s space. “Together? Maybe in my head but in yours? The only time you were with me was when you were fucking me.”

His rage flared, churning and hot, but folded into the molten threads of heated steel was the rich, velvet want Rey felt for the man he couldn’t keep. It was hard to remember why he’d needed distance from Gus, especially when standing close enough to smell the lemon soap he liked to use and the clean tang of his line-dried cotton shirt. But it’d been necessary, especially when Gus broke the last promise Rey’d been waiting for him to keep. It’d been something stupid, nothing monumental, but it’d shown Rey where he stood with the man he’d almost given his heart to.

After that he’d spent the last few years giving his best friend’s little brother a wide berth, avoiding coming into intimate contact with Gus, convincing himself it’d been a flash-of-fire kind of affair, not the forever he’d not allowed himself to wish for.

It humbled and enraged him to discover the distance he’d painstakingly built up—the wall he’d crafted to keep Gus out—tumbled down with the mere brush of Gus’s body heat against his own flushed skin.

His hands itched. Literally itched to bury his fingers into Gus’s sun-streaked blond hair. He’d loved to wrap his hands into the soft silken mane and tug Gus’s head back, reveling in the hiss of arousal he could draw out. They’d been volatile, nearly dangerously so, and they’d come together in a passionate surge of primal urges and erotic pleasurable pains, pushing at their boundaries until Rey thought he would come apart when Gus lost control.

There was no mistaking his body’s reaction or the tantalizing memory of Gus’s long torso beneath him, clenching around his cock, and the salty-sweetness on his parched tongue when he licked up Gus’s spine before plunging deeper into his golden body. His dick knew Gus was nearby, aching and swelling with the memory of his heat, of his mouth and ass.

“You want to know when I got her pregnant? The same fucking night you told me to grab my stuff and get the hell out of your life because—what was it you said?—I wasn’t going to stick around anyway? Remember that?” Gus’s finger jabbed into his chest, bruising Rey down to his heart. “So I went out to some party, got fucking drunk off my ass, and Jules was there.

“And maybe we shouldn’t have hooked up, but right then I needed someone to touch me, for someone to tell me it was going to be okay—that I wasn’t fucking trash—and she did. She was there, Rey. She was there when I needed it and where you should have been. Should have been you telling me I was worth something. That I was worth keeping. Worth loving.” Gus grabbed at the plastic bags in Rey’s hands and yanked them free of his suddenly numb fingers. “So do me a favor, find the damned door you came in through and leave me the fuck alone. It’s what you’re good at, remember?”

GUS’S HANDS were done shaking by the time he and Earl shoved their way past a clot of tourists on the sidewalk and pushed past 415 Ink’s front door. The coppery rattle of the shop’s bell the door’s corner hit was a prelude to the sweetness of buzzing machines, low-murmuring chatter, and the occasional hiss of someone’s tender spot being run over by vibrating needles.

If the house in Ashbury was home, then the shop was his battlefield and playground. With the dog at his heels, Gus strolled onto the floor, his broken-in cowboy boots rapping a hard beat on the shop’s poured cement. There was a new face, a guy around Ivo’s age or maybe older, but the apprentice Bear took on—a former investment banker caught in an early midlife crisis—was still hanging around. His stall was spotless and, from the looks of things, stocked up with the basics, so he had to give the Noob credit—the guy was definitely earning his keep.

The walls had some different artwork up. Missy was missing, or at least someplace Gus couldn’t see her, but she’d swapped out some of her New School for a couple of Realism pieces she’d done, and from what the recent hire had up around his area, he leaned toward Neo-Traditional and Watercolor with a few Illustrative pieces thrown in for good measure.

Ambling past Ivo’s workspace to get a better look at the new inker’s pieces, Gus nudged his brother’s ass with a prod of his boot toe, toppling Ivo over from his crouch in front of his work cabinet. Laughing at his brother’s cursing, Gus drew up close to the inker’s wall, studying his sketches and finished pieces while the shop’s latest hire was in the back and, from the sounds of the laughter coming from the break area, having a good time with Noob’s inability to make a good cup of coffee.

Earl abandoned him for the pile of plump cushions in the waiting area, and as stupid as it sounded, Gus missed the heavy dog’s lean against his leg when he stopped. The warmth had been welcome, necessary actually, anything to chip away the glacial hardness in his guts.

As hot as his anger boiled at the sight of Rey, watching his ex walk off left him cold and dead inside. The numbness he’d carried with him on the road seeped through the cracks in his brain, stealing away any worth he’d scraped together. By the time he’d gotten the crabs steamed and into the fridge, the thought of any kid calling him Daddy brought puke up from his tortured stomach, and after a short but spirited battle with Bear’s mutt to get Earl’s harness on, Gus debated crawling upstairs, burrowing under the covers, and calling the day off. Instead he’d found his shoes and pushed himself out the door, still wincing at the off-pink SUV waiting for him at the side of the house, but he’d done it.

“Finally decided to show up for work?” Ivo bumped shoulders with him, whacking Gus harder than he needed to.

“Don’t have any appointments today. Came in to get situated and chauffeur the dog,” he replied, his attention more on the new guy’s drawings than his brother. “Pretty decent line work. Composition’s a bit sloppy but okay. Better at the Neo-Traditional stuff than Illustrative, but that shit’s hard to grab at if you don’t have the eye. How’s he at Realism?”

“So-so,” Ivo grunted. “Draws what’s there. Not what he sees so there’s some spatial fuckery, but now that you’re here, you can fix that.”

“I’m not here to teach kids how to draw,” Gus snorted, glancing at his brother, then frowning when he had to crane his head up. Looking at Ivo’s feet, he grumbled, “Why do you have to wear those at work?”

“Because they’re cool. Black fuck-me shoes with bloody undersides. Like I’ve walked through my victims’ remains.” Ivo placed his hand on Gus’s shoulder and lifted his foot to show off the stiletto’s red sole. “They go great with jeans. ’Sides, these are the ones Bear got me for Christmas.”

“Bear told you to not wear that kind of shit at work.” Gus waited for Ivo to stop using him for support, then slapped his brother on the rear. “Floor gets wet and you’re going to go ass up like you did in those other really cool shoes.”

“Yeah, he already yelled at my head.” His brother shrugged. “And by the way, cannot wait to get your kid all kinds of shit we couldn’t have when we were kids. I’m thinking a drum kit and five pounds of Crunch Berries to start off with, and then work him towards a pair of Jimmy Choos.”

“He’s three.” Gus glared, daring Ivo to let loose the shit-eating grin lurking at the edges of his mouth. “Can’t you at least wait until he’s five before you start making him weird?”

“Never too early for the weird,” Ivo shot back. “Speaking of weird, Gus, this is Rob. I’d call him the newbie but—”

“Hey! Not the weirdest one here. That title’s yours, Ivo.” The new guy was shorter than Gus remembered, but then he’d only taken a quick glance at the kid before. He stuck his hand out, and Gus gave it a quick shake. “Good to meet you. I’ve heard a hell of a lot about you.”

He was stocky, built more for power than stamina, his tank top and cargo shorts showing off his thickly muscled thighs and arms. Judging by the blend of Asian-European in Rob’s features, the black roots of his tufted-up blue hair was probably his natural color, but his bright amber eyes were contacts or someone back in his family tree did the nasty with a tiger. His skin was a light gold, a hue Gus loved to ink, a nearly perfect parchment background to make teals, greens, and purples pop. The inker’s right arm carried a full sleeve, the interconnecting pieces stitched together with scrollwork, but his left arm was bare except for a small red heart on his shoulder.

“Good to meet you. I’ve heard… nothing about you, but that’s on me. I’m crap when I’m on the road,” he confessed. The lack of ink on the artist’s hairless left arm was odd, and Ivo caught Gus eyeing the blank skin, shrugging at him from behind Rob’s back. “And apparently I’m supposed to be teaching you how to do some shit.”

Rob’s laugh was soft, more apologetic than Gus would have been able to scrape up if someone told him he needed to work on something. “That’s what Bear—”

“Barrett,” Ivo said in time with Gus, then continued when Gus laughed. “You don’t get to call him Bear. He’s either Barrett or Mister Jackson—”

“If you’re nasty,” Gus finished as Bear came out of the storeroom carrying an armful of paper towels. “Speak of the devil…”

“And he shall appear,” Ivo finished.

“God, I sure as hell don’t miss any of that,” their older brother grumbled. Edging past Gus, Bear thrust the towels at Ivo. “Put these out. Noob bought the smaller rolls last time, so they’re not lasting as long. And when you’re done with that, I want you to start going over portraiture with him—”

“Me? Gus is standing right here. Dude’s—” Ivo wrapped his arms around the load, then rolled his lips in when Bear cocked his head.

Arguing with Bear never went well, and true to form, their elder brother cut in, “Might as well take Rob with you too. He was talking about needing to work on his forms.”

Waiting until Ivo slunk off, grumbling and dragging an intrigued Rob with him, Gus slung himself into Ivo’s spare chair, hooking his legs over the arms, and stared up at Bear. “Before you ask, yeah, I cooked the crabs, and they’re in the fridge.”

“Good.” Too short of a response for Gus’s liking but probably all he was going to get out of the burly man unless he pushed.

“Did Rey call you or did you call him first to give him an excuse to come over to the house?” It was less of a push and more of a shove into the dirty mud puddle Gus’d been swimming in since he’d seen Rey’s reflection in the cabinet’s glass. “Because if you called him, then I’m going to tell you, that’s one of the shittiest things you’ve done to me. And dude, you’ve done some really fucking shitty things to me.”

“Some good things too,” Bear reminded him, pulling one of the oddly painted wooden chairs around from the front. Straddling its seat, he rested his arms on the back rest and regarded Gus with a steady, assessing stare Gus knew all too well.

“Do your raging Buddha thing to someone else,” he said, waving Bear’s frown off. “I’ve actually got shit to do. A Russian-style phoenix. You have any idea how much research—”

“A lawyer called for you. From Family Court.” The velvet-soft voice was a warning. There’d been too many times Bear wrapped horrific news in his silken, honey rumble, and no matter how gently he tried to ease into what followed, Gus’s world always caught on fire. “Well, called to see if you worked here. Then asked how long I’ve known you.”

“Did you mention I pissed in your mouth when you tried to change my diaper?” He sat up, swinging his legs down. “What the fuck is going on? Did the guy leave a number? Am I supposed to call him back, or was it just fishing?”

“He didn’t say anything but asked questions about you. Told him we were related, and then….” Bear sighed heavily. “Then he began asking about your mom… and Puck. Suggested he talk to you about that if he had any questions, but it sounded like he was… digging. Trying to see how you were dealing with that. If you were still dealing with it. You know how those guys ask around what they want to know, dragging you to where they want you?”

He knew exactly what Bear meant. There’d been something he said or did after he’d gotten out of the hospital when he’d been stewed in painkillers and grief, but it’d taken years before the state would allow Ivo to be with them. No matter how much he’d pleaded with the social workers, they’d kept him from his youngest brother and Bear. He’d been shuffled from one detached therapist to the next, sometimes landing in group sessions with other kids lost in their own minds. A chilling thought hit him, and the anxiety he’d scratched at unfurled, slapping at him.

“Can they really get a hold of anything from my juvie records?” Whining, Earl shoved his head under his hand, and Gus scratched at the dog’s ear, rubbing at the soft divot along his neck. “They can’t use anything like… I mean fucking hell, it wasn’t like I was the one who pulled that shit. It was Melanie. Most of the hard-core shit from before was from her making me carry for her. The pot stuff when I was sixteen was nothing.”

“I don’t know,” Bear confessed. “But we can find out. I’ve got a call in to Luke. He can run interference—”

“I don’t want anyone to run fucking interference.” He forced himself to calm his tone when Earl trembled under his fingers. “Sorry, boy. Look, Bear, I’m doing everything they’ve asked from me. I’m here in the city, I’ve spat and bled into cups, and now they’re poking at Puck? I’ve had enough crap hit me today. I don’t need this right now. Not after….”

“Rey?” Bear’s eyebrow went up.

“Yeah, Rey.”

“No, I meant… he’s here.” His older brother jerked his chin toward the shop’s front.

The bell jangled, the old door’s hinges squeaking loud enough to be heard from the back, and Gus turned to see his ex crossing the threshold, an unreadable, staunch monolith of a man Gus would have once walked through fire for… and nearly had before Mace’d gone in. Spotting Gus, Rey stopped at the end of the reception desk and shoved his hands into his jeans’ pockets.

“We’ve got to talk,” Rey snapped. “Now. Before this… just now, Gus.”

“Well, little brother, looks like your day just got a little bit shittier,” Bear said, slapping Gus on his shoulder, nearly knocking him to the floor. Standing up, Bear filled the space for a moment, bristling upright. “Thanks for the crabs, Rey. Oh, just so you know, my fist is going to fit really snug into your face if you tear Gus apart, so don’t forget to tell me how much I owe you before I make you swallow your own teeth.”