Chapter Two
Nick
Nick never knew a drunk guy could be alluring. Alluring wasn’t the right word, but he’d had definitely felt a connection. It wasn’t Andrew’s politeness or his easy-going attitude that pulled Nick in. There had been a resignation in him. Nick saw it in the way he moved. When Andrew had crashed into him, then clung to him as he wretched his guts out onto the pavement, Nick’s gaze went straight through the calm exterior and saw the pain in his eyes.
Nick watched him in the rear-view as he drove toward the station. Andrew stared out the window, and he looked so fucking lost that it made Nick ache for him. A lot of people might look at him and see another drunk guy with a mildly vacant expression. Nick saw a guy with too much on his mind and no one to talk to about it.
Nick wanted the guy to talk to him, to open up and share his pain. Maybe Nick could find a way to help him. It’s why he became a cop, he liked helping people. He liked being useful and protecting people. Sometimes people had other problems that lead them to the situations he found them in. “How many did you have tonight, Andrew?”
Andrew seemed to ponder that for a moment before responding. “Eight? Ten? I don’t recall. I sat, and I drank. Stupid though. Didn’t help.”
“It never does, my friend.”
Andrew lolled his drunken head away from the window. Nick glanced back at the road, but he could feel Andrew’s gaze on him. “Friend?”
“Yeah. We can be friends if you want, Andrew. You seem like a nice guy.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not today, buddy. Today you’re going to what we call the drunk tank. I want you to sober up a little before I take you home.”
“Why?”
“I want to make sure you’re okay. You’re pretty drunk right now.”
Andrew sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
They were getting closer to the station. Around the other cops, Andrew might clam up and Nick wanted to understand why he was out past closing time, three sheets to the wind, dodging light poles and slamming into trash cans. “What brought you out drinking tonight, Andrew?”
Nick watched him in the rear-view for a second. Andrew stared out the window. His response was so quiet Nick almost didn’t hear it. “I don’t think I know what love is. I thought I did. But I don’t think I do.”
With those words Andrew plunged a knife into Nick’s chest and carved out a chunk of his heart. His mind immediately wandered to his own blue-haired enigma. Rory. Jack of all trades, Master of no one. He and Rory had played on and off for a couple of years. They often hung out when they weren’t in a scene. Nick wanted more. He wanted everything Rory had to give. His friendship, his love, his dominance, his whole heart. Nick wanted into his life, his whole life and not just the corner Rory allowed him.
Rory explained it to Nick. Rory was a Dom, Nick was a switch. Nick would never be happy with Rory. One day he’d feel like he’d settled and then he’d grow to resent Rory. The obvious pain that particular conversation carved into Rory’s face made Nick drop the subject for good. He’d never asked for more again.
One day a pretty little sub, one with fewer than almost forty years would come along, and Rory would have the relationship he deserved. Someone he could have completely because Rory was right. Nick would always need the give and the take. The freedom to let go and the power to take control. If Nick loved Rory shouldn’t he be able to give Rory all of himself? Maybe he didn’t know what love was either.
Nick managed to get Andrew into the drunk tank without incident. At least he’d picked one of the quieter nights to get wasted. The only other person in the holding cell was one of the regulars and he tended to keep to himself.
Nick looked at Andrew as he lowered himself onto the bench. “I’m off shift in six hours. If you’ve sobered up enough by then I’ll give you a lift home.”
Andrew nodded in silent acknowledgement and closed his eyes. Nick let his gaze linger on Andrew’s face for a moment. He looked troubled. His forehead remained creased as Nick watched the rest of his body relax and give into the alcohol induced sleep. He pried his gaze away and headed back to his car. He barely engaged with his fellow officers, he nodded at their greetings instead of stopping to say hi and shoot the shit. He needed to be back on the street where he could be alone to think.
The city stayed quiet until the early hours of the morning. As the sky lightened by degrees, joggers slipped out of their houses and into the mostly deserted streets. Nick drove and, watched the streets fill with people as uncertainty churned around in his insides. The encounter with Andrew shifted something inside Nick. He saw too much of himself in the younger man. He’d recognized too much of his pain mirrored in Andrew’s sad, blue-grey eyes. Nick didn’t like the fact Andrew had used booze to escape his demons. Not only did drowning your sorrows never work, but Nick had watched it destroy more than one life.
While Nick clocked out and swapped his uniform for street clothes, he had another officer turn Andrew loose. Nick met him at the front of the police station. Andrew sat on the concrete stairs. He stared down at his phone with a miserable expression on his face. A mixture of anger and sadness.
“Hey, Andrew. You up for a ride home. I can drop you.”
Andrew shrugged a shoulder. “Normally I’d call Everett, but…” Andrew let his sentence trail off. He leaned heavily against the brick wall.
Nick eyed the man, who looked a few shades too pale. “Do you want to go home and sleep it off, or would you rather have breakfast? There’s a great place not far from here that sells a hangover special.”
Andrew considered it for a long moment, then eventually shrugged a shoulder. “Sure.”
Nick extended a hand down to Andrew, who gripped it and Nick helped him to his feet. He put a hand on Andrew’s lower back, only because he appeared to be slightly unsteady, and led him to his SUV.
Andrew didn’t seem to want to talk much on the way to the restaurant, and Nick didn’t press him. He figured Andrew might be more talkative once he poured some caffeine into him. He followed Nick into the diner, a cookie cutter eatery you could find in almost any city. Vinyl bench seats near the windows. Tables for two in the center, a long counter with a few stools. Nick grabbed a booth and motioned for Andrew to take the other side where the sun wouldn’t shine in his eyes.
A waitress came around and Nick took the liberty of ordering two glasses of water and two coffees. “I’ll have the scrambled eggs and sausages, whole wheat toast.” Nick watched as Andrew ordered the same thing, but with extra bacon.
By the time Andrew downed his water and drank half his coffee, the food arrived, and he dug in like a starving man. Nick tried not to stare, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Andrew. Watching him eat was an exercise in torture. From the way his lips closed and slid over the tines of the fork, to the way his jaw moved when he chewed. The bob of his throat when he swallowed. Then Andrew bit into a chunk of bacon and moaned. Nick shifted in his seat, his cock uncomfortable in the confines of his pants, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by adjusting his package.
Instead, he cleared his throat and shoved some scrambled eggs onto his fork. “Care to tell me about it?”
Andrew shrugged a shoulder and lifted his gaze to meet Nick’s. “Not really.”
Nick smiled. “You were dodging light poles and you slammed into a garbage can.”
Andrew paled. “It wasn’t my finest moment.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t. Things can only get better from there, right?” Nick winked, and Andrew’s cheeks flushed a little. He looked down at his toast as if it were suddenly extremely interesting. Nick smirked a little, then smoothed his expression. “Care to talk about it? You seemed to have a lot to say last night. Something about love. So come on, who broke your heart?”
Nick watched Andrew finish his toast. He didn’t press him to answer. He either would, or he wouldn’t. Nick hoped he would. He wanted to help Andrew and it would be so much easier to do that if he told him what was going on.
“I broke my own heart, I suppose. I fell for someone I couldn’t have, and he fell for someone else.”
He. Nick wanted to smile at that but forced his expression to remain neutral. He’d hoped that Andrew would be interested in men, but he never liked to assume. The confession seemed to embarrass Andrew, whose face turned a sweet shade of pink.
“I—ah. Shit.”
“It’s okay, Andrew. I’m not here to judge you.”
“Shit. I’ve never come out to anyone before. Well, no, that’s not true, Xavier and Everett, they know, sort of.” Andrew shoved his nearly empty plate to the side. “Thanks for breakfast, Nick.”
Nick stacked his plate on top of Andrew’s and leaned forward, his arms resting on the table top. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Andrew, but you look like you could use a friend. I’d like to be that friend.”
Andrew shrugged a shoulder. “Might be nice to have a friend who isn’t head over heels in love with my little brother.”
Nick whistled. “Shit. The best friend and the little brother. That sucks.”
Andrew tried to wave it off. “I wasn’t Everett’s type, anyway.”
Nick scrunched his face. “Is he blind? You’re gorgeous. You’ve got that whole, hot linebacker next door thing going on.”
Andrew blushed and shook his head. “That’s half the problem. I’m built like a football player and he has a thing for the water boy.”
Something struck Nick then, something Andrew had said. He scrunched his eyebrows together and rolled the name around in his head. “Everett? Skinny dude, platinum blond, cooks in the nude?”
Andrew’s eyes widened. “You know him?”
Nick wanted to scoff. Of course, he knew Everett. He’d done his best to avoid any and all interaction with him. Not because he was a bad guy, quite the opposite in fact. Everett was a nice guy, one of those genuinely good people, and he looked up to Rory which had become a source of jealousy and insecurity for Nick.
Everett was everything Rory should want. Cute. Sweet. Submissive. He wasn’t a switch like Nick. He could give Rory everything, and Nick thought that one day they might fall into a Dom/sub relationship and Nick would be left out in the cold. “I know him. In a way. A guy I’m seeing does too. You might know him. Skinny guy, about forty years old, blue hair.”
“Rory. Yeah, I know him.” Andrew cracked a smile, it was the first one Nick had seen on his face. “I used to avoid him like the plague. I was so fucking jealous of how comfortable they are with each other.”
Nick tipped his head back and laughed until tears collected in his eyes. He sucked in a deep breath and wiped them away, then reached across the table and clapped Andrew on the shoulder.
Andrew cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll have to help me out here, man.”
Nick took a deep breath and grinned at Andrew. The inkling of a connection he’d sensed to Andrew had deepened. He found Andrew appealing. “We probably could’ve met a long time ago if we weren’t busy avoiding each other’s best friends. Everett is a nice guy, but I always worried that one day Rory would notice him and that would be the end of my arrangement with Rory.”
“Arrangement?”
“Rory and I see each other sometimes.”
“You’re not together?”
Nick shook his head. “Not exclusively. It’s complicated.” Despite not being with anyone else since long before he’d asked Rory to be exclusive, they had an open relationship. He still sometimes had a scene with a submissive in a private room at the club, but there was no sex, he couldn’t do it. Nick wanted to try to explain his relationship with Rory, but to do so, he needed to know how much Andrew knew. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “How much do you know about Rory and Everett? You know… their private hobbies.”
Andrew’s face turned pink and his eyes darted down. “Not much. But I know Everett has some sort of in home kink room,” He shrugged.
Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Andrew didn’t seem disgusted by what little knowledge he possessed, so Nick pressed on. “Rory is a Dom. He trains other Doms and works with submissives.”
Andrew wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. “Everett is definitely not a Dom.” He paused. “And suddenly the leather bracelets make way more sense.” He didn’t look particularly happy about that revelation.
Nick nodded. “Yeah. See, Rory is a Dom, and a damned good one. Everett is this perfect little submissive, and I’m a switch.”
Andrew raised his gaze to Nick’s. “What’s that?”
“Someone who needs both.”
“And you don’t want to be exclusive with Rory because you swing both ways?”
Nick sighed. “If he asked me to be exclusive, I’d do it in a second.” Nick ran his fingers through his hair. “Rory won’t give in. He’s the one who doesn’t want to be exclusive. He thinks I’d be settling.”
“Is he right?”
Nick tried not to ask himself that question. He loved Rory. He loved being on his knees, his back, strung up, tied up, flogged, everything Rory gave him he loved taking. He loved watching movies with him, with Rory curled into his side, or his head on Nick’s lap. And sometimes Nick liked taking a sub to a private room at the club and being the one to take charge.
He loved the feel of taking control of someone, not because he could, but because they wanted to give him control. He loved the rush of dominance he got, standing over a kneeling sub, knowing the person trusted him enough to bring them pleasure, pain, and peace. He needed it as much as he needed to kneel and let go. He gave himself to Rory knowing Rory would always cherish Nick and look after him. He needed both and Rory would never kneel.
Nick exhaled. “Probably.” He answered finally. Andrew surprised him by reaching across the table and putting a hand on his.
“I don’t know you very well, but so far, you’ve been nice to me. Don’t settle, Nick.” Andrew swallowed. “And as much as part of me hates to admit it, Rory is a great guy for caring enough about you to not let you take less than what you deserve.”
Nick nodded. Rory was great, it’s why Nick loved him, but Rory was also right, he wasn’t enough.
Andrew covered his mouth and tried to stifle a yawn but wasn’t successful.
“Come on.” Nick said as he stood up and fished some cash out of his wallet. He tossed the money onto the table, enough for the food and a generous tip. “Let’s get you home.”
“This was nice of you.” Andrew said once they’d climbed into Nick’s vehicle. “I’ve never been driven home by the police before. I’ve led a sheltered life.” Andrew smiled softly as if he wished he hadn’t.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a good boy.” Nick coughed to cover up the fact that he’d said that way huskier than he’d intended. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like something you’d hear in a playroom, but it did, and judging from the flush of pink in Andrew’s cheeks, he’d picked up on it.
Nick dropped Andrew off outside his building. “Did you need a ride to get your vehicle later?”
Andrew shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t drive there.”
Nick wanted to tell him he was a good boy again. He wondered if Andrew’s cheeks would turn pink. He refrained. Instead, he followed his gut and the feeling inside it that told him he needed to know more about Andrew. “We should hang out. Give me your phone, I’ll give you my number.”
A few minutes later Nick drove away with Andrew’s number in his phone and the vision of his face burned into his memory.