A BEAUTIFUL DISASTER

Willa Okati

www.loose-id.com

A Beautiful Disaster
Copyright © March 2013 by Willa Okati
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eISBN 9781623002688
Editor: Crystal Esau
Cover Artist: Ginny Glass

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Prologue

Sean would only ever have one chance to leave Leo. Tonight. If he missed his

moment, he’d never find another.

He’d watched the clock since coming to the club. Leo wasn’t among the group

tonight. He’d sent a text claiming a business meeting kept him working late.

Business meeting. Right. More like he’s fucking his paralegal. He knows I know too.
He thinks I give a damn about his cheating. I don’t.
And he thinks I won’t do anything about it. That I won’t ever try to get away from him.
He’s wrong about that too.
He’d taken a risk coming out with a group of Leo’s friends, though he’d done it

before. Leo trusted them to look but not touch. Even so, Sean hadn’t asked Leo’s
permission.

If Sean were going home to the man, he’d be punished for that.
But he wasn’t.
He’d be free soon. Please, God. Please.
Sean checked his watch. The second hand seemed to crawl as it ticked past the

minutes. His chest ached, burned. He couldn’t draw in enough air, and it all smelled of
liquor and the ghosts of cigarette smoke. His wrist protested when he reached for the
glass he’d filled and refilled with water, claiming his abstemiousness was on Leo’s orders.
His sleeve covered the dark purple smudge that marred the pale skin beneath. He’d
worn the watch over the mark just in case, a chunky, heavy thing he’d always hated,
with a face big enough to span the distance between the points of his wrist bones.

Two fifteen. Time to go.
None of Leo’s friends could be allowed to suspect—except one. The one who’d

believed Sean about all the things Leo did to him, and promised to help. Peter.

Sean listed to the side, dropping his head on Peter’s shoulder. Peter hadn’t stuck to

water. He’d downed vodka instead, glass after glass. Sean stole one sip for courage and
spilled the rest in purposeful accident.

“Peter,” he whispered, turning his face to hide the movement of his lips. “We need

to move.”

“Stop that,” Peter hissed. It’d probably looked as if Sean were trying to kiss him. He

was tense enough to snap in half.

Please, please, let no one notice

. Twisting threatened to pull open one of the belt marks

on his back. “Now,” Sean said, nudging him. “Peter. Now.”

If everything had gone according to plan, a police car should have pulled up to Leo’s

apartment by now. Sean had called in an anonymous tip about drugs changing hands on
the premises, which was nonsense, but that didn’t matter. They’d still come to check it
out and keep Leo tied up. See how he likes it for a change. That left Sean with just enough

time for Peter to help him slip away unquestioned. He’d get out of town on his own.

If everything went right.
If. If. If.
Peter hadn’t moved. Sean twisted the edge of Peter’s sweater and tugged. They had

to go. Don’t lose it on me now. Don’t.

Please.
Peter flicked his thumbnail against the fallen glass. “I think someone’s had too much

to drink, don’t you? Silly boy.”

Someone took the glass and set it upright. “I thought he wasn’t drinking.”
“So did I. Apparently he’s been sneaky about it. Ugh. He reeks.”
Eye rolls and chuckles greeted that announcement. “Take him home and put him to

bed,” someone suggested. The leer in their tone painted Sean with a slick of oil.

“Sweetie, I would if I could, but we all know how our dear Leo does not take to

others handling his pet.”

Sean’s fist clenched. His nails bit into his palm. He barely felt the sting.
“I will, however, risk putting him in a taxi and giving the driver his address. If you’ll

excuse us?” Peter scooted out of the booth filled with people whose names Sean didn’t
know and didn’t want to learn. They were all Leo’s friends, in one way or another. He
didn’t have any of his own. Not anymore.

They didn’t matter now.
Sean let Peter carry him out of sight, through the side door. Peter dropped him

before he could let go, but he’d had practice in catching his balance. Though Sean
stumbled, he righted himself with two steps.

The night was cold, nibbling at them with sharp teeth. “I can’t believe I just did

that,” Peter said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He’d have been better
off taking his handkerchief to his forehead to daub away the sweat. “Leo is going to kill
me. No matter what I do, I still—”

“Not if you don’t tell him you knew. He doesn’t have any reason to suspect you.”
“Besides your draping yourself over me like he’d let me borrow you?” Peter’s chin

wobbled. Sean wouldn’t let himself despair, not yet, but to be putting his faith in a man
like this made his stomach churn.

“You’ll be fine. He won’t bother you. I was drunk. Remember? Supposedly drunk.

Everyone in there will tell him the same thing. You helped me outside. That’s the last
you’ll have seen of me. No one knows where I’m headed. Not even you.” Sean checked
his wallet. Still there. He counted his money. Leo didn’t allow him much. He’d drawn
everything he could out of the account they shared. Groceries had been the excuse. He
always gave a reason. It’d get him a few towns over tonight. Far enough to figure out his
next move.

Peter’s lips were pale, a greenish tint to his skin. Sean took him by the forearms and

shook him as hard as he could. He was stronger than Peter, though he’d never dared

show it before now. “Don’t lose your head now, Peter. Stay focused just a little longer.
Please

.”

Peter wasn’t listening. “He won’t believe me. You know he won’t.”
“Shut up, God, or someone is going to hear you.” Sean dragged them out into the

middle of the side street. No one would risk the narrow passage between buildings at
this time of night. He shook Peter harder. “Listen to me. All you have to do is keep quiet.
When Leo asks, you don’t know anything. Just for a few days.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Peter covered his mouth. “I am so sorry.”
No. God, no

. Sean stepped back, skirting the center line. “What did you do?”

“I, ah… I…” Peter stood up straight. He tugged his sleeves down. Still sweating. Too

much white showing around his irises. “You can work this out, Sean.”

Bile rose, burning harsh and bitter in the back of Sean’s throat. He didn’t have to ask.

He knew. “You told him.”

“He found out. I’m so sorry. But it’s for the best. Leo takes care of you. What else do

you need?”

“What do I need?” Sean wrenched at the band of the awful watch. His pressure on

the bruises gave him strength, and Peter stared at his arm as he bared it and held it in a
pool of light cast from the lone streetlamp. Peter couldn’t look away from the circlet of
blue, purple, and black smudges, and Sean was glad. “I need someone who doesn’t do
this to me.”

Peter looked as if he were on the verge of emptying his stomach. “I didn’t know.”
“You did. It was just easier to pretend you didn’t.” Sean let the watch fall and

speared his fingers through his hair. Fuck. Okay. Peter had told him. Leo knew. But Sean
had called the police. They should have caught Leo in the apartment and kept him there.

Unless Leo had left before they’d arrived. Maybe long before.
“But that’s not it at all. Leo told me he just wanted to talk to you,” Peter said,

ignorant of the tumult in Sean’s head. He stared at the bruises as Sean’s arm moved.
“And I thought I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t—”

“Fuck you.” Sean made up his mind. He’d risk the main road. He could get a taxi

from there. He crouched to scoop up the watch and thrust it at Peter. The thick leather
strap slapped the open V where Peter had undone three buttons of his shirt. “To
remember me by. Go to hell.”

“Wait!”
Sean didn’t. He wrenched himself about, face forward, to the main road.
He saw the headlights flick on. High beams.
Afterward, he remembered putting his arms up, as if they could protect him from

Leo’s car coming at him.

He…

Chapter One

“Lift your arm.”
Riordan knew this part of the exercise better than his name and address. “You’re

going to put me through the whole gamut today?”

“I don’t have anything better to do right now.” Jae’s lips quirked in a slanted smile.

“Do you?”

“You’re a hard man to work with, Jae.”
“And I get results. Extend your arm and lift it. I want to see a straight line from

shoulder to fingertips.”

Okay. He practiced this at home. Should be no problem.
“Slow,” Jae warned.
“Sorry.” Riordan always forgot and took the first movements too quickly. Slower,

more careful. Better. Muscles stretched as he extended his arm, elbow joint and fingertips
stretching to straighten together. He winced.

“Easy.” Jae pressed his thumb over the epicenter of the sting. “Still sore?”
“Not as much. Not like it used to be.” Good thing too. A tattoo artist needed strong

arms and sure hands. Jae’s testing disguised as homegrown physical therapy helped
reassure them both Riordan was still capable of the work he did.

“You see? Well worth the trouble.” Jae tapped the point of Riordan’s elbow. “Still

crooked. Straighter.”

Inhale. Exhale

. Riordan concentrated, frowning with the effort, until—there. Straight

as could be.

“Hold it for a count of five.” Jae guided him, hand just beneath in case he slipped,

and ticked off the seconds. “Bend your elbow and draw it back as far as you can. Good.
Out again and down. Take the rubber ball in your pocket, squeeze for a count of twenty-
five, and you’re done.”

The ball in question had come from a penny arcade. He fished it out, flashing the

dark blue and flecks of gilt that remained of the garish stars once painted on. “Never
spent a better fifty cents. I told you I’d get this one.”

“Luck,” Jae replied. If you didn’t know him, you’d think him unmoved and

expressionless. If you did know him, you could see the hint of amusement in the
crinkling by the corners of his eyes. “Count.” He stepped back, steady on the sidewalk
without looking. Senses like a cat. “Any pain now?”

“Not to speak of.” Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. “Strong like an ox. See?”
Jae didn’t take Riordan’s word for gospel. He watched the rest of the reps before

nodding. A cool wind, unseasonably chilly for the time of year, swept up the city street
and grasped at their clothing as it whipped past. “Every now and then, I still wonder.”

Twenty. Twenty-one

. “Hmm?”

“You’re lucky to be alive, you know.” Jae spoke quietly, with conviction. He

shrugged deeper into his coat and turned into the wind to let it blow his hair out of his
face; turned back with his lashes spiked damp as a casualty of blinking into the unfurling
stream of air. “When I heard that gunshot from the drive-by and saw you go down, I
thought that was the end.”

“You weren’t the only one.” Riordan released the rubber ball. He flexed his fingers

one by one. “Glad we were both wrong. I’m almost as good as new.”

“You’d better be.” Jae leaned against the sturdy lamppost on the sidewalk outside

their shop and caught the ball Riordan tossed to him. “More specifically, you’re good for
today? A full morning shift at the hospital, plus an afternoon-to-evening shift back here.”
Jae nodded at the tattoo studio they co-owned, a small brick storefront crowded in with a
group of other small businesses.

The sight still made Riordan proud. He and Jae had opened the shop together and

worked around each other’s schedules until they both had nursing degrees. So they could
do the work they wanted, reconstructive art that helped people reclaim their bodies.

Riordan hadn’t ever thought the day would come when he’d want reconstructive art

for himself. But that was life for you. All you had to do was be in the wrong place at the
wrong time, without even knowing it, and pow. The gangbanger who’d shot him didn’t
know Riordan from Adam or Eve. He’d just been in the way.

And now here he was.
Riordan tested a biceps curl. He rubbed his chest, over the rounded scar, and

grinned. No one knew how he’d survived the GSW—medically speaking, he shouldn’t
have—but Riordan had lived, and he planned to take every last advantage of his second
chance. “Bring it on.”

“Good man. Rest for a few.” Jae stretched up to peer at the bus rumbling toward

them. He and Riordan always met near the J stop outside their studio now that they
didn’t live together, though they preferred to wait a few yards away from the bus shelter
for at least a little privacy in their conversation and to avoid secondhand smoke.

“That’s not ours, is it?”
“No.” Jae clicked his tongue. “Wrong line.”
Riordan rubbed his hands together. “You think they make it confusing on purpose?”
“In a college town? Probably.”
The bus rumbled to a stop in a cloud of diesel fumes, grinding brakes, and the hiss of

sealed doors folding open. A short queue of men and women huddling together inside
the flimsy shelter, a glass box with aluminum benches, formed a ragged line snaking to
the pneumatic doors.

At the rear of the crowd, one man moved more slowly than the others. Stood apart

from them. Not very tall. Maybe five feet nine, or ten at a stretch. He wore a thick,
charcoal-gray sweater with a heavy rolled collar. His jeans were crisp as if they’d been
ironed. Did people iron jeans? Running shoes, a name brand and a style a couple of years
old, stiff with white shoe polish and new laces. Nice job, but he couldn’t hide the scuffs

and scars at the toe, nor the wearing down of the instep where he dragged his foot with
each step. A heavy knapsack over the right shoulder counterbalanced his skew to the left,
but not enough. He’d combed his hair, longish and dark as espresso, forward over his
face and cheeks in a way that reminded Riordan of feathers.

He made a good effort there too but couldn’t hide all his scars, especially in the wind

whipping the city streets. Some were silvered and some still faintly pink, fading to white.
The man glanced sideways, once, and hunched his shoulders. Don’t look at me, he ordered
without saying a word. Leave me alone.

Jae had noticed him too, both his body language and his scars, and Jae was as good a

student of damaged human nature as Riordan. “What do you think? Hit and run?”

“That’d be my take on it.” Someone else who was lucky to be alive, though he didn’t

seem happy about surviving. Thoughtful, Riordan tapped his chest, where the bullet had
punched through less than half an inch from his heart, and over his ruined tattoo in need
of repair. “But I don’t think that’s the whole story.”

SEAN TURNED AWAY from the blond man and his curious stare, but he could still

feel it prickling needle sharp on his back. He rolled his shoulders. No one ever noticed
before when he was hurt. Now they never stopped staring. He’d tried growing a beard.
Hadn’t helped. Raised keloid scars striped him from forehead to chin on his left side,
across his cheekbone. When he shut his mouth tight, the plate holding his lower jaw
together clicked.

If they’d just stop

looking at me…

He’d thought he could find anonymity here, hundreds of miles from “home.” A

university town with a sprawling campus, a behemoth of a medical college, and clinics
where students could practice for cheap.

His hand slipped as he tried to hitch his knapsack higher. Sean always forgot,

somehow, the trouble in the first step from curb to bus, that moment when he suspended
his weight between bad leg and good and choked on gas fumes. His knuckles went white
around the guide rail. His backpack, weighed down with everything he’d need if he had
to run again, nearly tugged him off balance.

He’d never be anything but clumsy again.
Let them look, then

. Sean blocked out the staring behind him, or tried to, and forced

himself to move forward. For once, no one had claimed the broader sideways seating at
the front, facing the shelter he’d just come from. Sean sat heavily, biting back a wince,
and planted his knapsack on the empty space beside him.

The tall blond and his friend lingered near a street lamppost, talking back and forth.

Sean couldn’t hear them over the idling of the engine and the low hum of chatter,
rustling, shifting, and frustrated sighing of the other passengers. You got what you paid
for, and the bus was free. They could deal. He could.

The little details he’d missed before jumped out at him, even through tinted glass.

The blond should have had a coat but wore only a pair of scrubs. Was he a doctor, a

nurse, a student? His sleeves weren’t long enough and his neckline wasn’t high enough
to cover the whorls and bold lines of tattoos peeking out over his collarbones and down
his wrists. When the wind lifted crisp, overlong curls away from his nape and held them
aloft, Sean saw more tattoos there, stretching up the back of his head. Sean didn’t see any
jewelry on the man, but anyone so decorated must have had piercings once upon a time.
Labrets through his eyebrows, a stud through his tongue, and a ring through one side of
his nose. Multiple studs and hoops would have bristled in his ears.

As Sean watched, the man laughed and thumped his friend—just as lavishly

tattooed, and in the same distinctive style—on his back.

Sean flinched.
God.
He’d never get over the fear, would he? Once, he’d tried to while away an afternoon

at a movie. A buddy flick. Cops and robbers. It should have been so simple, but Sean
hadn’t thought. The first violence he’d seen on-screen had tied his guts into twisting
knots. He’d barely made it out of his seat before he’d fallen to his knees and emptied his
stomach on the gummy, tacky floor.

After that, he stuck to museums and galleries, walking for hours if need be to keep

his muscles from seizing and his mind buzzing with static white noise instead of thought.
Human contact was dangerous. He’d learned that lesson by heart.

Why not go home instead, every chance he could? Why not tuck himself away in the

safety of his tiny studio apartment? Because he couldn’t bear the sterile solitude of a
room with a single bed and nothing else, where all he could do was think, that’s why. It
was all he could afford on disability payments. If he’d had any kind of usable skill, he’d
have gotten a job, maybe, and found something better, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t
handle the stares and being told no over and over again. Not yet. So he had a box to call
home, which wasn’t home at all.

But that wasn’t the whole truth. Not really. Sean tightened his hand into a fist and

gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to admit this…

And yet Sean had to, if he was going to be honest with himself. He understood

loneliness now in a way he hadn’t before. Hell. Sean recognized the contradictory nature
of the problem; he did. Though he shrank away from contact, he still missed touch in a
way he hadn’t thought he ever would or even could. The warmth of a friend’s hand. A
gentle nudge. A kiss. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—count physical therapy. He couldn’t abide
a pitying touch, and he’d loathed the emotional absence that came after he’d rejected
sympathy.

It’d been so long. Sometimes Sean would forget how long and have to stop and

count to drown out the burning need that never died to ashes, and—

He shouldn’t be alive. That was the thing. Leo hadn’t been able to build up much

speed from a dead stop coming down the narrow street, but his car was made to go from
zero to sixty, and he’d hit Sean with enough force to…

He should have been killed. No one knew how he’d survived.

Sean didn’t remember anything after the moment of impact, when Leo’s car crashed

into him. Sometimes he wondered what it would have sounded like inside his head as his
body crumpled and twisted. If broken ribs snapped like chicken bones, going crack, crack,
crack

as he fell to earth, and they were only the start. He counted the damage off on

damaged fingers. A fractured pelvis. Crushed femur. Tibia. Fibula. Metacarpals. Clavicle.
Worst on his left side, where the car hit. Still damaged on the right, where he’d landed.

And his scars—gashes and gouges and scrapes that painted him in stippled

red/white/pink/silver along the length of his side. More from the surgeries to patch him
together.

Sean knew he shouldn’t be alive.
The tattooed man and his friend, also dressed in scrubs, lounged and loitered. They’d

want the next bus, the one to the hospital. Not his. They only wanted to stare at him.
Catalog what was wrong and what could and couldn’t be fixed.

Sean laid his hand over his heart and willed it to slow down.
Come on. Let’s go already.
The blond turned his head, as carelessly as if checking the crosswalk lights, and

settled his gaze on the bus. On Sean. He couldn’t see inside. Could he? Sean’s nails
scraped through the weave of the sweater, against his skin. He couldn’t flinch. All he
could manage was sitting still as a stone, staring back because he would not blink first if
this was the way the blond wanted to play it.

Outside, the blond blinked his hooded, sleepy-seeming eyes and inclined his head in

a neutral nod. No. Not quite neutral. Curious. Watching him. Penetrating the dirty gray
glass and the disarray of his hair and the weight of his sweater, and—

Sean squeezed his eyes shut.
The bus rocked and groaned. A sharp whiff of cigarette smoke made Sean’s nose itch,

hinting at a sneeze to come. Doors hissed closed behind the driver settling himself.

They’d be gone in a second. He wouldn’t see the blond again in a city this size.
Good thing.
Three seconds left.
The blond raised his hand as if to say hello or good-bye, and Sean couldn’t tell which.
Two.
Sean turned away, staring forward across the bus.
One.
The bus jolted loudly into traffic.
Gone. Good. Good.

Chapter Two

“Here. You look like you could use this.” Jae’s voice jostled Riordan out of his

thoughts, and the rich, bitter scent of coffee from the large paper cup he put at Riordan’s
elbow did the rest of the trick.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Riordan cracked the lid on the coffee and breathed in

the steam. Best stuff in the world, right there. Still too hot to drink, but he couldn’t help
himself. He blew once across the surface, tried a sip, and shut his eyes. “You’re my
favorite. Did I ever tell you that?”

“I seem to recall hearing as much once or twice.” Jae hooked a rolling stool with his

foot and pulled it in to take a seat at Riordan’s workstation. Riordan watched, amused, as
Jae automatically started tidying the scatter of pencils and scraps of paper Riordan
tended to accumulate when he lost himself in the work. He realized what he was doing
halfway through slotting the pencils back into their caddy and bounced one off Riordan’s
nose.

Riordan grinned. “You’re getting better.”
“And you,” Jae replied companionably. He picked up the papers to flip through

them instead. He paused on one, a depiction of cherry branches with blossoms and a
phantom shadow of a cat slinking through them. “Nice. I like this one.”

“That’s for Lainey,” Riordan said. “She’s nearly healed up enough after the

mastectomy to get this done.”

Jae hmmed and held the drawing to the light.
“You need glasses, old man. I keep telling you.”
“I’m too pretty to spoil it with glasses.” Jae kicked him gently. “You’ve been here for

hours. It’s past six.”

“Is it?” Riordan checked the clock. “I wanted to finish this.”
He massaged his thigh under the table. His muscles always knotted up around this

time of day, especially if he’d spent a few hours hunkered down drawing. Jae teased him
about how he sat as if bracing for takeoff, leaning into the starting position with his
weight on his toes. That wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t also put the brunt of his torso’s
weight on his left arm. His actual physical therapist would chew him a new one the next
time he surrendered himself to the man’s quote-unquote tender mercies.

So be it. Riordan shrugged and drank deeper of the cooling coffee. Strong but sweet,

with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

One of Jae’s superpowers was knowing when someone needed a break. The man

rested his elbow on the drawing table and his chin in his hand. The paper cup Riordan
held blocked out everything but Jae’s tousled dark hair and bare forearm when looking at
the man from this angle. Memories pricked at Riordan. Once upon a time, a long ago
time, Jae used to take that pose every morning when he woke up, and he almost always
woke up before Riordan. If Riordan woke first, he’d taken to pretending himself still
asleep until Jae roused, just for a look at that face and fond, tolerant smile.

They’d had a good run of things, but it hadn’t been meant to be permanent. They’d

both known that from the second they started. And they’d stayed friends—still partners,
if in business only—afterward, which was better than most managed.

Jae still got him. Could still read him like calligraphy at first glance. “Rough morning

shift?” he asked, not so much for confirmation as to offer a gambit for Riordan to take, or
not, as he chose.

An image of Marguerite flickered in Riordan’s mind’s eye. Down to ninety pounds

now, on her second round of treatment, with doctors making insistent noises about
hospice care. She had the balls to look them in the eye and swear she wasn’t about to give
up yet, pointing to the tattoo Riordan had done for her as proof she’d survived before.
And when they’d gone, she’d cried with her head against his chest until he was soaked
with tears and snot.

Fighting for your life wasn’t ever pretty, and it wasn’t always noble. Fighting didn’t

guarantee a win. She and he both knew it.

Yet she fought on, and she had a chance no matter what anyone said.
“Rough enough,” Riordan said. He shifted to display the pager at his waist. They

were becoming passé, but some hospitals still used them instead of streamlining
everything on smartphones. He gave his contact information to his clients as well as his
patients. Which was all a lot of beating around the bush to stop himself from being so
keenly aware of how wearing a pager was the worst. A ticking time clock with an
indeterminate countdown. No matter how prepared he might be, he still flinched when
the thing buzzed. He didn’t think he’d get a call about Marguerite tonight, but he
couldn’t be sure.

Jae nodded. He’d been down the same road a few times himself. He didn’t waste

their time with platitudes, but he thumped Riordan’s shoulder, grasped it, and left the
warmth of his hand there. “Tell me something good.”

Riordan sipped coffee, thinking. His chest ached. He suspected changes in the

seasons wouldn’t treat him kindly, the new scars as good as a barometer warning him of
an oncoming storm. Maybe even snow.

“The man on the bus,” he said, drawing the simple words out, soft and smooth, like a

whisper of caramel across his lips.

Jae raised an eyebrow. “He really did catch you, didn’t he?”
“Amen to that.”
“All right.” Jae settled back. “Tell me how he’s good.”
“I would, but I don’t know yet.” Riordan drummed an absent rhythm on the side of

his cup, remembering. Blue eyes, a pale winter-sky blue, striking under the heavy fall of
almost-black hair, looking sideways through the strands as they blew across his pointed
face in the rush of late-season wind and bus exhaust.

The eyes were what he remembered most. More than the limp. That was physical.

The eyes held the kind of pain that hit with the power of a punch to the chest. He hadn’t
so much as exchanged a word with the man, but once seen, he couldn’t be forgotten.

“He’s in here.” Riordan tapped the side of his head. “I can’t get him out, and I don’t
think I want to.”

Jae nudged one drawing carefully beneath another. “I see that.” Riordan barely

remembered drifting off into doodling, but at some point he’d drawn the man with a
crown of thorns.

“Transparent, huh?”
“Little bit.” Jae lifted Riordan’s cup in wry salute and stole a sip. “Odds are you

won’t meet again. It’s a big town.”

“True.” Too bad. There’d been something about him. Something different, an edge

Riordan couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Enough. Take the night off. Go get some fresh air and walk.” The corner of Jae’s

mouth lifted. “Or something else, if you’d rather.”

Yes, please

. Riordan perked up. He hadn’t realized how long it’d been since he’d

gotten a leg over until he stopped to count up the weeks. No wonder he was tense. He
pushed his hair back and dug a rubber-band tie out of the caddy. “You’re sure?”

“As quiet as it is in here tonight, I think I can hold down the fort.” Jae nudged his

ankle. “Go on. I know that look. You need to finish wearing yourself out so you can rest.”

When he was right, he was right. Riordan stretched as he stood, brushing the ceiling

with his fingertips. Sounded perfect to him. It’d been one of “those” days. Time for one
of “those” nights. Get out, get a beer, get laid.

Maybe that’d clear his head.
And if not, that wasn’t such a bad thing. If a man didn’t have something to dream

about, to work for, then he didn’t have anything at all.

Odds were odds, sure, but he wasn’t a fortuneteller, and not knowing was the fun

part. Anything could happen, if he let it or made it.

He’d roll the dice and take his chances.

* * * *

Across from the gallery where Sean spent most of his days, there perched a bar. Or

rather, across and down, set into a half basement with high windows spilling evening
lamplight onto the street. Seven steps down.

Sean wasn’t in the habit of buying drinks. He hadn’t wanted alcohol in months.

Years? Maybe years. Even now he could still taste that stolen sip of vodka lingering on his
breath when the paramedics reached him and almost believed Leo’s story instead of his.
Those were the bad nights, the ones in which he tossed and turned in tangled sheets.

But he liked the look of this bar, and its name, picked out in chipped gold paint over

the door. BLIND TIGER. A Laundromat crowded it in on one side, and a secondhand
bookstore on the other. Shop after shop from left to right.

One street to cross, but no side streets or even alleys near the Blind Tiger. Sean

hesitated on the steps of the gallery, wondering, What if? What if?

The bar’s door opened to let a small knot of three men up the stairs and out to the

sidewalk. They were his age. Maybe younger. Hard to tell across two lanes of traffic.
Young enough. Disheveled. Cheeks red from drinking enough to warm them, ties
loosened and jackets carried over their rolled-up sleeves. Two of them bumped into each
other, while the third stood to the side and teased them. They weren’t listening. Too busy
kissing.

The world melted away from them. The ones who kissed. Sean could see it. Nothing

else existed for them.

And Sean wanted.
Not them. They could have each other. But there were other men coming out every

now and again. Mostly in pairs.

Sean gripped the strap of his knapsack. He could go down among them. If he

wanted. At least he could try.

Seven steps down, broken in the middle by a landing and a turn to the right. He

could do it. He could.

* * * *

The bartender had more than her fair share of customers, and it took her the better

part of fifteen minutes to reach Sean on the tall stool he’d picked. Its back was wedged
into a corner at the far end of the long expanse of her domain. Old wood polished so that
the scars stood out in sharp, dark relief against its lighter color.

Sean traced the crooked lines and kept his head down. If he looked around, he could

see men and women. Mostly men. Quiet but carefree. Happy to be there. Glad to be with
one another, or on the prowl and taking their chances. Not the noisiest dive Sean had
known, but the bartender still had to raise her voice to be heard. “What’ll you have?” she
called, working on her last order, gliding a tequila bottle from one glass to the next over a
rubber grid.

Damn it

. He hadn’t thought that far ahead, and he froze.

A man, yet another stranger, slipped onto the bar stool beside Sean. He slid an empty

highball glass at the bartender, who caught it without looking. “Set me up again.
Bourbon neat.” His regard struck Sean like light cast off a broken mirror. “Try what I’m
having.”

Sean bowed his head to let his hair fall over his face. He sneaked a glance at the man.

Tall. Lean. Cropped brown hair. A wry smirk. Open collar, three buttons down.
Handsome enough.

No one special.
The bartender filled his order without a second one for Sean. He raised the glass to

her. Sean’s gaze followed the glass, and the glass went to the man’s mouth. He looked
askance at Sean’s scars. Only briefly. The hair must have covered most of them. Static
hung heavy in the air. Sean couldn’t see properly through his fringe.

“You are pretty, aren’t you?”

“I’m really not.”
The man chuckled. “Eye of the beholder, little man.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Touchy, aren’t you? My turn.” He lifted Sean’s chin, his fingers cool and smelling

sharply of bourbon. “I haven’t seen you in here before. What’s your name, gorgeous
boy?”

Sean’s stomach flipped. “Move your hand. Now.”
And he did. Laughing. “All right, calm down. Easy come, easy go. Ask Mare here if

you want. I’m harmless.”

The bartender shrugged with one shoulder.
“Mostly harmless,” he amended. “Mare? Whatever he wants. This one’s on me all the

same, pretty boy. You look like you could use it.” He patted Sean on the shoulder. The
right one.

And he left. Just that easy. Gone.
Mare cast about for other customers and faced him when there were none. “He’s

good for it. Do you know what you want?”

No

. “Just a beer. Whatever’s on tap.”

A cardboard square of a coaster, a tall glass of dark Irish beer with a thick head of

foam. Sean ran his forefinger around the rim of the beer stein, translucent with frost.
“Tequila chaser too.”

Sean didn’t touch the liquor. Not yet. Or the beer. Leo had liked stout, the darker the

better. He wished he’d ordered something lighter. Maybe a pale ale. Out of arm’s reach,
the founder of his feast prowled to a pool table and picked up a cue. Sean held himself
still.

No need. He couldn’t read lips, but he could guess at the teasing and playfulness.

They let him break queue, whoever he was. One man in a dark green polo, rumpled from
a long day’s work, took him by the nape and stole a kiss in trade. Only a light one, and
quick. They were friends, then.

Sean remembered when he used to do that, a long, long time ago. How he’d taken

touch for granted, too busy enjoying the dance. The game. Those two would leave
together, probably. Neither had thought of it before, but it was a good idea for them
now. And they’d be fine.

He lifted the shot glass to his lips and flicked his tongue into the tequila to taste.

Sharp, bitter, stinging.

The man with the tattoos lurked behind Sean’s eyes. Sean could see him every time

he shut them, and he could feel an itch between his shoulder blades that made him want
to roll them to shake off the discomfort.

A mirror hung behind the bar. Oh. Well, they did, in bars. Sean had forgotten. He

could see himself through the gaps between bottles of liquor. His hair clung to his cheeks
in fine wisps and drifted over his eyes like fallen angel’s wings. His scars weren’t hidden

at all.

If he could stop thinking about the scars, that would help. If he could stop thinking,

stop caring what others thought of them, he might be able to breathe again. But he
couldn’t

stop.

Sean needed—he wanted—
God, he missed sex. He’d never been easy, but he wasn’t a tough sell. Maybe he

should have been.

Some of the men had taken off their shirts. Not many. Some. They kept it warm

down here, too warm. Sean’s sweater itched. Sweat made his skin rub raw against the
boiled wool.

He’d lived. He was surviving his life. But that wasn’t enough. Not anymore.
Would anyone take him for what he was, if they knew? If they didn’t?
Stop it.
Sean lifted his shot glass to drink properly, but he didn’t get quite so far as taking a

sip before, over the rim, he saw the door open, and a man stepped through. A blond man
with tattoos curling up his neck and down his wrists.

A man who looked back and saw him.

WELL, LOOK AT you

. Riordan really hadn’t expected he’d see the man from this

morning again. He’d come to the Blind Tiger because that was where you went when
you were in the mood for something new or something comfortable. At last count the
city boasted almost three dozen bars, pubs, and holes-in-the-wall, or it had that year he
and Jae planned out a holiday crawl through as many of them as possible before they fell
down.

They’d made it as far as the Blind Tiger and stopped while the stopping was good.
The dark man had been here long enough to get served. He recognized Riordan, or

Riordan thought he had. His small mouth with the scar denting one corner opened a half
inch in surprise and stopped Riordan in his tracks.

He hadn’t done the guy justice when drawn from memory. He looked younger than

Riordan remembered. Scared.

Riordan lifted his hand in a wave. The dark man’s mouth snapped shut, and he

looked away. Scared, yeah. Vulnerable. He’d never been at the Blind Tiger before, or at
least he’d never visited back in the days when Riordan used to hang around. He looked
so uneasy Riordan had to wonder if maybe it was his first time.

First times should be special. You were allowed to be scared or edgy or even hostile

the first time doing anything. It was an unwritten rule in a big book kept somewhere. No
one ever saw the book, but pretty much everyone in the Blind Tiger knew most of the
bylaws by heart. Live, let live, and seize the moment when it came, because no one knew
what’d happen next.

The dark man curled in a comma shape, crouched over his shot and beer, shoulders

tilted and rounded. Go away.

Riordan didn’t think he would. Second chances weren’t that common or easily come

by. He started for the far end of the bar—

“Rio,” Gale called from the pool table, close enough by the door for Riordan to hear

without straining his ears, surprising Riordan into a ninety-degree pivot.

“Who let you out to play?” He took the cue from Gale and pretended to tap him on

the shoulder. “I thought you had a keeper these days.”

“That I did, and now I don’t.” Gale tilted his head at a redheaded kid Riordan hadn’t

seen before. “On the bright side, the night’s looking up. Want to play?”

He meant more than a game of pool, and they both knew it. Riordan elbowed him

indulgently. “Pass. I never got the hang of threesomes. Too many arms and legs. I’d end
up fucking myself if I wasn’t careful.”

Perfect timing. Gale choked on his sip of bourbon and, laughing, slapped the back of

Riordan’s head. “Asshole.”

“The finest kind.” Riordan spun the cue in a vertical spiral and passed it back. “Don’t

do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“So, free license for whatever I want?”
The redhead didn’t look displeased. Riordan winked at him. “Watch out. He bites.”
“You’re not staying?” Gale already had his shot lined up.
Riordan checked the corner of the bar. The dark man still sat there. His drinks looked

as if he’d barely sipped at either. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Huh.” Gale followed his line of sight. “Pretty but touchy. Talk about biting. Do you

know him?”

“Not yet, and I’m not surprised you tried your luck.”
“I am what I am.” Gale took the shot. “You’re looking better, by the way.” He

wanted to stare at Riordan’s chest but didn’t, which was more than most people who
knew managed. “Good luck.”

“I’ll take it where I can get it.”
“Don’t we all?” Gale called after him. Riordan snorted, amused, and tossed him a

backward wave.

The crowds didn’t part easily for Riordan. He’d been gone for far too long from a

place he used to know well, and some wanted to talk, some wanted to stare, and some
whispered behind their hands or in one another’s ears as he passed them by. Riordan let
it all slide off his back. Either they knew and they were cool, or they didn’t and they
would or wouldn’t be. As long as he didn’t lose track of the man in black, it worked for
him.

“Rio.” Mare leaned over the bar for a kiss on the cheek. He knew better than to try

anything like tousling her hair, or he’d draw back a bloody stump. “Everything good?”

Riordan was close enough to the slight dark man to get a sense of his aura and to see

him sneaking—in the mirror when he thought Riordan wasn’t looking—glimpses and

glances here and there, like an edgy cat creeping close to the demarcation of shadow
between his hiding place and the rest of the world. One wrong word, and he’d bolt for
sure.

Mare showed Riordan her wrist. “What do you think?” She’d had a watch tattooed

on, the long and short hands set to five minutes past last call. “Yeah, it’s as subtle as a
brick to the face. Whatever. Got it done when I was in Miami. What do you think? Decent
work?”

He took Mare’s hand and turned it to and fro. “More than.” Her artist had used light

and shadow to give the watch an almost three-dimensional look, and when she turned
her wrist, it cast the illusion of moving time. “Give me the artist’s name later, would
you?”

The man in black hunched his shoulders tighter, almost at his ears now. Riordan

nodded once at the guy and raised an eyebrow at Mare. She met and matched him and
held up both hands, palms out. “You want your usual?”

“Thanks.” Riordan could sense the tension gathering. Never mind a wrong word. If

he didn’t take care, this one might break and run, hurrying out and away, and Riordan
couldn’t let that happen again.

Riordan tapped his glass against the dark man’s. The dark man flinched, an

exaggerated startle response. The corners of Riordan’s mouth crimped in an empathetic
frown. Whoever this was, he didn’t need scars to tell his story. Life hadn’t treated him
well, and this one needed handling with care.

That was the interesting part. People who came to the Blind Tiger knew what they

wanted. Riordan didn’t think this man did.

Riordan had the man’s attention, though. That was something at least. He liked

having that intense blue focus fixed on him, shining through the sweep of black hair.
“I’m Riordan,” he said, leaving his glass kissing rims with its mate. “I’d ask if we’ve met
before, but I already know the answer.” He held out his hand and waited to see if the
man would take it, and if he’d hear the stranger’s name.

The dark man’s hand was dry and rough with scar tissue. “Sean,” he said, barely

moving his lips. Still, it was a start, and Riordan had done more with less. “I’m Sean.”

RIORDAN. THE NAME fit him. Different. Not outlandish. He wasn’t wearing his

scrubs tonight, but a casual shirt and soft-washed jeans instead. His hand was long and
firm. A few calluses. Only a few. Strong fingers. They were so gentle on his that Sean
clenched his tighter, wanting to slap the blond.

Sean took his hand back and wrapped it around his almost untouched beer. The

bitterly yeasty smell made him want to sneeze, but instead he closed his eyes and drank.
The hops and barley were too strong for him by far, thick and sticky on his tongue.

He could feel Riordan watching.
He looks at me as if he likes what he sees. That’s not— I don’t

—Sean drank again and

wiped his mouth with his fingertips. “You don’t look like a nurse when you’re out of

uniform.”

Riordan let out a small, surprised laugh.
Sean tensed. “What’s so funny?”
“I didn’t expect a baritone.”
Sean touched his throat. “Oh.” He’d forgotten. No one commented on his voice. “I

can’t sing.”

“Neither can I.” Riordan eased onto the empty bar stool beside him. “I am a nurse,

actually. A good one.”

“With those tattoos?” Sean drank. He flexed his empty hand. “I’ve seen enough

hospital staff to—I’ve met a lot of nurses. They weren’t tattooed.”

“Maybe not where you could see the ink. I’ve met plenty of nurses with body art,

and I am a nurse. I work every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and weekends if they
need me. Other times too.” He shifted to show Sean a pager clipped to his belt. “See?”
He had a lean waist and strong thighs. He moved with a sort of confidence, as if certain
his body wouldn’t ever betray him. He probably hadn’t known a sick day in his life. “I
have two jobs. One as a nurse and one as an artist. They go together better than you’d
think.”

The itch between his shoulder blades would drive Sean mad. A drop of sweat rolled

from below his nape to the small of his waist and down. He’d almost finished his glass.
When had that happened?

“Hey.” Riordan’s hand settled on his. “Are you all right?”
Sean’s hand spasmed and flexed.
Riordan didn’t let go. He left his hand right where it was. Testing.
He wants me.
Sean’s ears rang in the echo of the thought. Him. He wants me.
“Sean.” He was about to let go. He was warm, so warm, so close. The bar stools

weren’t spaced far apart. The lines of his arm, his torso, his thigh, all were inches from
aligning with Sean’s.

He touched Sean’s back. Lightly. Over the deepest of the scars from Leo’s belt. Leo

loved using the belt because he’d known Sean would cover himself from head to toe, and
the marks wouldn’t show.

Can’t let him see. If he sees, he’ll know, and if he knows, he’ll—
“Okay.” Riordan held his hands up, palms out. No threat there. “It’s okay. I’m sorry.

I forget some people don’t like being touched.”

Don’t like being

—Sean choked off a bark of laughter and swallowed the rest of his

beer. The dregs went down almost too thick to swallow. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

“Are you sure about that?” Riordan laid his hand on the bar, palm up, forming a cup.

His nails were cut close and kept trimmed neatly. His hair curled at the ends where it
brushed the tops of his shoulders. If he didn’t have a dusting of dark blond stubble, Sean

could have described him as pretty too.

Or not. Pretty wasn’t a strong enough word. Riordan was beautiful up close, not just

at a distance. His eyes were variegated hazel, mostly green until seen from inches away,
and then they had starbursts of amber and brown surrounding the dilating pupils. His
lips were just lips, not too firm or too full or too thin, but the marks at their sides showed
he smiled more often than he didn’t. He couldn’t be older than Sean but had crow’s-feet
starting at the corners of those eyes.

Sean couldn’t form words, but he made himself nod.
“Then what should I do?” Riordan asked after three beats, or more, of silence. He

spoke carefully. Too much so. Treating Sean as if he were made of spun glass and he’d
shatter if he were hit—

Sean’s grip tightened on his empty glass.
“Don’t be gentle,” he said. He sounded to himself as if he’d already cracked. Sharp

edges and twisting points. “I know what I came here for. I know what you came here for.
You can have it. Me. If you’re not gentle. If you are, I’ll walk away, I swear to God.”

He turned his head and tipped it back to drain the shot glass. His heart pounded in

his ears. Why? He didn’t know why. Only that if Riordan was kind, kinder than this,
Sean really would lose it and he’d never be able to try again, and—

Riordan watched him. He was one of those guys who took his time when Sean didn’t

want time. At least he didn’t try to pet or pat him. He might pity Sean, but as long as he
kept it on the inside that would be okay.

He swallowed his shot, motion fluid, and covered the top with a ten-dollar bill.

“Okay,” he said. Sean couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Good. He didn’t want to. “Not
here.” He slipped off the bar stool and didn’t offer Sean a hand down. Only waited for
him to climb on his own. “I don’t live far. Will you come?”

Chapter Three

There was no way this’d end well. Probably. Unless it did.
Riordan knew better. All the way from the Blind Tiger to his apartment, he knew

better. Sean kept pace with him even though his legs were shorter, his chin up in a
stubborn, pale jut, jaw clenched, and hands buried in his pockets. With the wind behind
them, Riordan could hardly see his face for the length of dark hair blowing across it, and
he walked on Riordan’s left, away from the street, hidden from view.

Right. Riordan knew damaged when he saw it. Sean could put on a stone face all he

wanted, but anyone would be able to tell with one look how broken he was. A beautiful
disaster. Maybe wary enough to be dangerous.

And Riordan was taking him home?
Too much, too soon

, Jae would say, and his friend gave good advice, even when

Riordan couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to him.

Look at him now, like he’s ready to take off

. Though no less appealing to the eye, he

reminded Riordan of a feral alley cat. Something wild that’d take your hand off if you
tried to pet it, but it’d noticed you, so you had to try. The way Riordan figured, if he
didn’t take the utmost care with Sean, Sean would spook and run for sure.

Focused on that possibility, Riordan didn’t think about other potential outcomes as

he flicked on a lamp and closed his apartment door behind them. The pitted brass knob
was barely out of his grasp when Sean pounced.

Riordan’s back hit the door, shoulder blades slamming flush to the security steel, cold

even through his coat. Sean stood on his tiptoes and caught Riordan by the nape to drag
him down, to savage his mouth with something less than a kiss, if not fully as much as a
bite.

No. Not like this

. Riordan pushed at him. It took more effort than he would have

thought he’d need to wrestle Sean down, and Sean didn’t make it easy. In more ways
than one. He went after Riordan playing dirty, dirty like a sneak thief, dirty like Riordan
had slipped him a twenty and marched him into a back alley. Like he didn’t know
Riordan’s name and didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to do a damned thing but fuck
and go, and it would be fucking. He rolled his hips against Riordan’s, not tall enough to
match him groin to groin, but the solid shaft trapped behind his sturdy zipper rutted
hard against the inside of Riordan’s thigh.

Sean knew how to kiss like a whore, deep and dirty and wet. And rough, with more

teeth than tongue. He dug at Riordan through his clothing, jerking the zip of his coat
down and pushing the hem of his shirt up.

“Slow down,” Riordan said, stealing a breath of cool air.
Sean’s lips were red as cherries and hard as marble when he broke away. “I said

don’t be gentle. I told you I’d leave if you were. Don’t treat me like I’m made out of
glass.”

“I wasn’t.”
“Liar.” Sean’s nails dug into Riordan’s nape. His left hand. The roughness of scar

tissue scraped beneath Riordan’s ear. Riordan hissed and twitched away. Reflex and
nothing more, but he shouldn’t have done that either. Sean went still, very still. He bit
Riordan’s lip, almost breaking the skin, and jerked his hair to bring him farther down.
Fighting him, not fucking him. He knew what he was doing with cock and lips, but the
rest—no.

“Sean, stop.” Riordan brought his arm up to stop him pulling.
Sean made a small, desperate noise, the sound of an animal caught in a trap. His arm

came up to block Riordan’s and to grab his wrist with enough force to grind bone against
bone. Strands of dark bronze-blond curls, Riordan’s, had come loose and twined
themselves through Sean’s fingers.

“I said stop.” Riordan caught Sean’s wrist in turn, and Sean might be strong, but not

as strong as Riordan. Not even now. Careful not to hurt him, Riordan turned the fulcrum
of the balance against Sean and made him fall still. “Stop.”

Sean twisted against him, his teeth bared.
Riordan’s heart sank. You are so much more broken than I thought you were, aren’t you? If

he could, he would have touched his fingertips to Sean’s cheek, gently, carefully, as he’d
wanted to since he laid eyes on the man, but that wouldn’t be enough to prove he didn’t
mean any harm. Especially to a man who only saw harm coming. Who’d come here
courting harm.

Riordan increased the point of balance, three degrees farther than he’d have liked to

go, but he had no choice. Sean froze, muscles like iron, staring unblinking at him through
wide blue eyes.

“I said stop, and I meant stop.” Riordan held him there. He didn’t have to. Sean

wouldn’t move. Sean seemed more feral than ever in his stillness, like a starving alley cat
who’d been backed into a corner. That cat would refuse to cower before a bastard kid
with a baseball bat, but knew, or thought he knew, what was coming for him. A skinny
cat who’d spent his life out in the cold, with all he knew of humans the tip of a boot or a
bottle aimed at his head. He wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between someone
who meant him harm and someone like Riordan.

“Are you done?” he asked, more to see if Sean was with him or if he’d slipped into a

fugue state. With Sean so on edge, Riordan didn’t expect a verbal answer. Good thing
too. All he got was silence and a small shift in Sean’s stance, Sean’s blue eyes less hostile,
more wary.

Whatever had happened to him, it had to have been more than a simple hit and run.
I’d like to get my hands on whoever did this to you

. Sean might have scarred over and

healed up at surface level, but look at it another way, and there wasn’t a bit of him not
riddled with lacerations still raw and bleeding, was there?

Sean broke Riordan’s heart. Riordan should have known; he’d drawn Sean with a

crown of thorns, after all.

Jae would have advised him right, but too late for that. All Riordan had left was

following his gut.

There was one thing he could think of to try, and who knew if it’d work or if it

wouldn’t.

He touched his knuckles to the table for luck, kept his stare fixed on Sean, reached

over, and turned out the light.

THE DARKNESS STARTLED Sean into stillness. Not the same as before. He hadn’t

known he’d tear at Riordan like an animal. He’d wanted to take Riordan apart. His
stomach twisted, dark and bitter as bile.

Streetlights only illuminated enough of Riordan’s apartment to cast a difference

between mass and empty space. Not enough to properly see by. Sean had to trust his
sense of touch to remember it was Riordan holding him steady. “Are you with me?”
Riordan asked.

Sean’s face burned with shame. Riordan spoke to him like he was a wild animal—and

why not? Wasn’t that been what he’d become? He licked his lips, tasting Riordan, and
didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His eyes were too hot, stinging.

Riordan didn’t let go. It didn’t hurt anymore. Had he eased the pressure, or was Sean

just not feeling it now? He couldn’t tell.

Too many questions. No answers.
But without one, Riordan would stand there all night. Sean knew he would. He

exhaled, something that might have been the start of a word mixed in the breath,
something of assent.

“Okay,” Riordan said, quieter in the dark. “I’m letting go of you now. Back up three

steps. You’ll bump into a table. Stop there.”

Sean didn’t understand. He shook his head, lips forming a question.
Riordan pushed away from the door, giving Sean no choice but to move, but he kept

his word and let go of Sean. Three steps, and Riordan stopped.

Silence blanketed the room, draped itself over them as thick as cobwebs. He could

see Riordan more clearly now, a silhouette of silver and gold limned by the streetlights.

Riordan held still for a count of ten, long enough for Sean to adjust to the shape of

his shadow. For him not to be threatening. “If I come to you, will you stay there and let
me?”

Sean drew his lip between his teeth. He wanted to cross his arms to protect himself,

but Riordan didn’t give him the room. He could feel Riordan studying him, taking his
measure.

Riordan touched Sean in the center of his chest, above his breastbone, firm but not

cruel. “I’m trusting you to stay. Nod if you understand. Okay?”

Nod. Sean could do that. He jerked his head up and down once.
Riordan braced himself on the edges of the table he’d backed Sean into and,

telegraphing each move, went to his knees.

No. No. “Get up.” Sean’s fingers caught when he reached. What— Oh, God. Hair.

Four, maybe five strands from Riordan, which twined like tapestry threads around his
fingers. They slipped free and fell, a flash of color in the pale light, then gone. “Get up.”

Riordan didn’t hear him, or ignored him.
“My night vision isn’t great,” he said, his tone so different that Sean flinched. He

sounded like they were back in the bar, surrounded by the ghosts of old smoke and the
sharp newness of whiskey, cologne, leather, and chalk for the pool cues. His hands came
to rest on Sean’s thighs, over the sturdy denim made to last, not to look good.

“What are you doing?” Sean sounded rough to himself, voice dragged through a

hedge backward.

Riordan ignored that too. “It’s true. Most people can’t see anything in the dark unless

they know their way around. I’m too used to strong light while I work at the studio and
the hospital.”

Sean wanted Riordan’s hands moved enough to try to move them himself. No luck.

Riordan wouldn’t be budged. How strong was Riordan? He could do some damage to
Sean if he wanted—but Riordan wasn’t that kind of man. He—

All Riordan did was kneel there. His body heat, and the tangle Sean had made of his

hair, both within touching distance. Sean hadn’t gone soft. Riordan touching him,
willingly, didn’t help. Or it did.

Sean wanted that warmth on him. Surrounding him. Everything worked fine, and he

wasn’t scarred there.

Slowly, slowly, and clumsily, Sean touched his fingertips to the top of Riordan’s

head. “What are you doing?”

Riordan didn’t knead or grab. He left his hands where he’d placed them and let the

sensation of touch soak through denim, skin, and into bone. “You don’t want me to be
gentle,” he said. “I won’t be gentle. But I’m not going to flagellate you by proxy, and I
didn’t bring you here to maul or be mauled.” He tapped his fingers in a slow rolling beat.
“These are how I earn my bread.”

“I used to be an artist,” Sean blurted. “I can’t draw now.” He bit his lip savagely.
“I’m not asking you to.” Riordan tapped his thigh harder, silencing him. “I didn’t say

I wouldn’t take care of you.”

Breath rushed out of Sean. He would have lost his balance, knees too loose to hold

him, without the table. “How?” he asked, and he didn’t sound rough now. He sounded
like a boy alone in the dark.

“You don’t know me. I don’t know you. I’m guessing you don’t trust anyone.” He

didn’t say, but Sean heard, between the lines, with good reason. Shame made him too hot,
even though the room was cold enough to draw goose bumps to the small strip of bared
skin at either wrist and at the collar of his sweater. “I can’t see you. All I can do is feel
you.”

“I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Riordan stroked his thumbs in half-moon arcs over the inseams of Sean’s

jeans, so close and not close enough at all. “But if you want this, then you trust me. That’s
the deal. Take it or leave it.”

Sean had to risk it. He touched Riordan’s head, pushing back the hair he’d torn at.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Let me take care of you. Only that. And I won’t be gentle, but I’m not going to leave

you looking like you’ve gone through a grinding mill. Understand?” His touch hardened,
as if his hands were steel and glass, not sinew and bone. “Answer me, Sean. Do you
understand?”

Sean swallowed. “Yes.” He did. “I do.”
“Good.” Riordan bent his head and rubbed his cheek over Sean’s thigh, up above the

knee. He let Sean keep his hands anchored in the wealth of his heavy curls. “Stay there.
Don’t jump. Don’t grab. Let me do this. After that, you can do what you want.”

The sound of a zipper rattled loud in the darkness, and the air was freezing over hot

flesh as Riordan undid him.

OKAY, THAT’S GOOD. Good, Sean

. He’d stopped fighting and stopped freezing.

Riordan didn’t think Sean knew he’d started shaking instead, a fine, almost
imperceptible tremor running through muscle and bone, or that he’d taken too hard a
hold on the hair again.

If it helped, he could hurt Riordan just a little. Sometimes you had to hurt to heal.

Tattooing could be painful, but the result was worth the sting. Riordan doubted he could
explain it in a way Sean would understand, but he could show Sean by setting an
example. Let it happen, and see if it helped.

He undid the button at the top of Sean’s jeans, and then the zipper. A twist of paper

fell out of Sean’s hip pocket. Riordan let it fall forgotten to the floor, more interested in
other things. Sean’s cock strained against dark cotton briefs, bulging through the open V.
Riordan wondered how long it’d been. Since before he’d been hurt, for sure, and at a
guess he’d been healing for a year, maybe longer.

Sean needed this, even if not in the way he thought he wanted it.
Riordan bent his head, ignored the twinge of pain in his scalp, and pressed his open

mouth to the thick length still concealed behind cotton. Sean smelled clean, like plain
soap and bargain laundry detergent, but beneath that Sean tasted like an ordinary man,
musky and dark and salty. Without using his hands, Riordan mouthed his way to the top
and sucked, rough and hard, not being gentle.

Sean drew in a sharp, shocked breath, but he didn’t run.
Riordan took the band of the briefs between his teeth and tugged. Not to pull them

down. Just to get his attention. “It’s up to you,” he said. “I can take care of this, or you
can.”

He felt Sean’s hesitation—his indecision—and then the stiffening of a truly stubborn

will. It’s dark, he thought at Sean. I can’t see what you don’t want me to see. Go ahead. Trust
me that much.

Sean’s rough hands, clumsy now, knuckled Riordan’s face as he eased the cotton

down, and the jeans. Not far. Only enough to free himself. Riordan really couldn’t see
well in the dark. All he could make out was a gleam of light against winter-white skin at
Sean’s hips, and the darker, heavy weight of his cock. Beauty by moonlight. Sean had one
of the prettiest cocks—no, honestly, no lie. The length curved up and ever so slightly to
the left when unrestricted, crafted by nature to hit the good spots.

Though Riordan doubted Sean had ever topped in his life.
Sean let go of the cotton and the denim. His hands fell to his sides, as if he didn’t

know what to do with them, and then he braced himself, waiting.

Shh, shh, wary cat. I meant what I said

. Riordan didn’t use his hands. He left them lying

passively on his knees and bent forward again, finding his way by scent and body heat
and then with his mouth. He lipped the thick plum head onto the flat of his tongue and
drew Sean in an inch at a time, gliding on the slickness of saliva.

He did touch Sean then, one hand firm at Sean’s knee, drawing his mouth off long

enough to say, “Stay.”

He could barely see Sean pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. The other hand

took hold of the table, hanging on, and by God, he nodded and firmed his stance.

Riordan could read between the lines too.
He took Sean’s cock as deep as he could, lips tight and cheeks hollowed, and sucked.

Tongue hard at the knot of nerves beneath, the spot that drove him crazy. Sean too, he
reckoned. Riordan sealed his lips around the head and lapped away fat drops of thick
fluid. Down slow, slow, slow, tongue smooth, letting Sean bump the back of his throat.

Sean choked off a rough curse. For the first time, he pushed his hips, thrusting

deeper. Riordan drew back to give him the room. He could feel Sean hardening still
further in his mouth; more, Riordan could hear Sean’s breathing now, rising higher and
sharper, chopped off like splintered kindling. Sean bent his head backward in an arch,
baring his neck. Biting the back of his hand.

Spreading his legs, a wider stance, asking without asking.
Riordan’s cock, to which he’d barely paid any attention, throbbed and pulsed,

demanding to be seen to. He’d wanted to wait for Sean to finish. This wasn’t about him.

But when he had no choice but to stop, draw off, and palm himself through his jeans

to push back the pounding need to come, Sean hissed deeply of the air. Riordan flicked a
glance up to see Sean staring down.

Apparently his night vision was better than Riordan’s.
So should he…?
Riordan took his chances. He licked Sean’s cockhead, only teasing it with the tip of

his tongue, pointed and flat and pointed again, and undid his fly with far more

roughness than finesse.

Sean’s lips parted on a soft exhalation. Riordan couldn’t tell blue iris from black

pupil, but he could imagine them gone almost wholly black, dilated wide. He liked the
mental image.

“Don’t be gentle,”

he’d said. Riordan wasn’t. He pushed his jeans down as far as Sean

had, no farther, and thrust his hand inside, wrapping his palm around and pulling. No
lube, and he could feel the difference, but he liked the edge. He used his thumbnail to
draw a sharp line up and around. A good hurt. Ungentle.

Sean’s cock bumped his cheek, wet with spit and precum. Riordan caught the length

and sucked, finding something close to a counterbeat with both tongue and hand. His
breath became ragged, and his hand grew slippery.

“I thought you’d fuck me.” Sean’s voice struck like a crack of lightning in the

darkness.

Riordan shut his eyes and sank down, deeper and deeper, swallowing around the

weight of the cock in his mouth and throat.

Sean’s fingernails scrabbled at the table. “Why didn’t you? Fuck me. You could have.

I’d have let you— God, oh.”

Good

. Sean was almost there. His balls drew up tight, full and firm when Riordan

nudged the point of his chin against them. He heard a scrape and a grunt of pain and
guessed Sean had torn one of his nails on the table’s unforgiving surface.

Nope. Not having that. Riordan caught Sean’s wrist, carefully, and thrust the man’s

hand clumsily at his head. Pull on that, but don’t hurt yourself.

Sean dragged at Riordan’s scalp, causing him sharp stings of pain. Tentative thrusts

turned hard. He pushed deeper than Riordan had thought he could take, but he hung on,
and Sean didn’t stop. Also good. We both need it this way. Riordan backed up just a bit, only
enough to give Sean room to push, and moved his fist faster, rougher.

Had the room been quiet before? Not now. Sean’s harsh, rough breath, as deep as his

voice, vibrated the air and made it hum.

Sean’s hips jerked as he tried to hold himself still. It didn’t work.
Riordan caught Sean by the forearm when he would have jerked out of Riordan’s

mouth. Maybe it was the shock, or maybe the roughness, or just timing that triggered his
orgasm. A spill of cum flooded Riordan’s tongue, heavy and bitter. The sounds Sean
made—Riordan would have thought Sean had been wounded, that he was in pain, if he
hadn’t known better.

Riordan swallowed what he could and let Sean finish against his cheek and in his

hair. He’d wanted to stave off his climax just a bit longer, but his body didn’t give him a
choice. He had to let go and come, spunk spilling over his knuckles, landing in fat drops
on the floor.

He lifted his head to let Sean watch him lick his lips.
There. Now he was done.

Riordan’s knees cracked when he rocked back to crouch on his heels, but that was as

far as he moved. “Are you okay?” he asked, trying for a clear look at Sean’s face, at eye
contact.

No luck. Sean turned aside, hair falling over his forehead and across his cheeks.

Damp with sweat, it didn’t hide him as well as it had before. Riordan didn’t tell him so.
He’d know.

On a normal night, with an ordinary man, this would be Riordan’s favorite part.

Second favorite. Usually. When he and his partner were finished, cleaning up, maybe
bantering back and forth, even if the man he’d brought home with him didn’t plan to
stay the night.

Riordan had known better than to expect either teasing or cuddling in the afterglow.

But he hadn’t counted on wanting that quite so much, or being able to tell, in the
awkward silence, how much Sean also wished things were different. It’d break anyone’s
heart, not just Riordan’s.

Riordan took pity on the man. He’d be gentle with Sean in this way, this once. “I’m

going to go clean up,” he said, nodding back toward the tiny bathroom. Sean wouldn’t
know it was there, but he could guess. “I’ll bring you a cloth.”

He didn’t hurry. He knew what would happen and wasn’t surprised when, no

sooner than he’d stepped into his bathroom, he heard the front door shut behind Sean as
the man finally bolted.

Riordan looked at himself in the mirror. A tiny trickle of blood stopped halfway to

one eyebrow, and he’d have to cut one twist of hair tangled beyond salvaging. Sean had
left bruises starting to show at the curve of his neck, faint ghost-blue fingerprints.

Jae wouldn’t let him hear the end of this, and rightly so. He’d have to get used to it.

Riordan too.

Because they weren’t done yet, he and Sean. Even if Sean had left without a word,

Riordan knew that.

No. They’d only just begun.

Chapter Four

Sean didn’t go home that night.
Silence, isolation, they should have been what he wanted. He didn’t. His gut recoiled

at the thought of walls and a roof making a box, a closed-off cubby like a coffin—Stop.
Don’t.

He didn’t go far either. Five blocks’ worth of wandering brought him to an all-night

café he halfway remembered passing before, seen through the windows of a city bus. The
lights inside were cool and blue-white, unforgiving, clean.

A cashier-waitress by the register barely cast a sleepy eye at Sean when he pushed

through the door. “Can I help you?”

Sean’s chest ached, as if he’d been for an hour’s run in the snow, arctic cold scorched

white in his throat, burning in his lungs. He bent his head to let his hair fall over his face.
“Coffee?”

She gestured at the tables and the SEAT YOURSELF sign. Even at this hour, the café

was at least one-third filled. Probably mostly students. Harried-looking men and women,
or rather boys and girls, each with a stack of textbooks or a laptop, sometimes both, or
—oh—a knapsack as misshapen from overstuffing as Sean’s.

She thinks I’m one of them.
“Black,” he told her. “No cream or sugar. Do you have a restroom?”
She betrayed no hint of curiosity. “All the way back, to the left. I’ll bring your cup

when you’re seated. Anything to eat?”

Sean wasn’t hungry, not even a bit, but knew he should at least try to eat. “Danish?”
She shrugged the shrug of the tired and uninterested, if not ill meaning, and set to

work. Sean made his escape into the restroom. The aisle path to the back was clear, at
least, nothing to trip or stumble on.

Single occupancy. Sean locked the door behind him and wound a fistful of starchy

dun paper towels around his hand, thrusting them under the sink’s tap until they were a
dark, sopping mass.

He hissed at the rough scrape of cheap paper. Not that he needed much cleanup.

Riordan had taken care of most of the mess. Had he swallowed? Yes. No. Sean wasn’t
sure.

He braced his weight against the cold ceramic of the sink and refused to look up at

his reflection. He knew he wouldn’t like the man he saw there.

I don’t know why I did that. Why did I do that?
A few dark bronze hairs clung to the cuff of Sean’s sleeve. He batted them away, or

tried to. The curls refused to be budged, as stubborn as their former owner. Did I hurt
him?

Look at me. I’m shaking

. Like a child, like a feral cat pinned in a corner, like a willow in

a harsh headwind.

I hurt him. I know I did.
Sean vomited bile into the sink, rinsed his mouth with cold water, and opened the

door with a clatter. Its hinges squeaked.

* * * *

A table by the windows. That’d do. His back to the wall, a clear view of the night to

his left, face to the door.

The coffee had been left too long on its burner, thick and bitter, with a sheen of

overbrewed oils slicking its surface. Sean punched a hole in one of the tiny creamer pods
she’d brought regardless of his request and let the pool of white dot, then spread, sinking
down, turning blackness into beige.

The café’s mugs were blue, a dark midnight blue.
Sean wrapped his hands around the mug. Too hot, but that was all right. Maybe too

hot would be hot enough to warm him.

A single stray bronze hair still clung to his sleeve.
Around him, solitary students pulled at their own hair, ginger and brown and

blonde. Their eyes were bloodshot and the males’ cheeks dark with stubble.

Yet if he looked past the human weariness and the late-night exhaustion—if—then

Sean saw something different. Something more.

Two girls, sitting together, traded stacks of notes and wry laughs. A lean streak of

stubborn with a stethoscope dangling from one pocket of his jacket cracked a joke with
the waitress when she brought him a refill. One small guy, even shorter than Sean,
slipped earbuds in and clicked his MP3 player on. That one hummed a few notes every
few minutes and tapped his toe to the beat.

The Danish tasted stale but sweet. Buttery. The cream cheese was soft and yielding

between Sean’s teeth. He took small bites. They stayed down, held in place by milky
coffee.

“Everything okay?”
Sean flinched. No, it’s all right. Just the waitress checking on everyone. “Fine,” he

said, holding his cup with both hands.

“You want decaf?” She sounded dubious.
He almost—almost—laughed, but held the mug out to her for a refill instead. “No.

Thanks.”

Verisimilitude. He needed to blend in more effectively. As much as he could,

anyway. He had a notebook in his bag, and a pen. No, not a pen. A pencil. If he’d still
been able to, he might have wanted to sketch Riordan from memory. He unwound the
hair from his wrist and laid it on a blank page of the notebook. When he didn’t pin the
hair down, it snapped into a tight twist of a shape, reminding him of DNA and double
helixes.

He’d told Riordan the truth. He had been an artist once, so long ago he could barely

remember. Before Leo critiqued him and told him he’d never amount to much, but that it
didn’t matter as long as he was pretty.

Now he’d never know, would he? Sean could barely sign his name without the

muscles seizing.

Calm down.
Sean drank deeply and slowly, one swallow at a time, until he tasted nothing more

than a faint hint of cream and bitter dark roast. If he didn’t move too much, the
oversensitized, raw nerves between his legs kept quiet.

Sean had told Riordan not to be gentle, and Riordan hadn’t been. Only in not being

gentle, he’d been kind enough to break a stone’s heart. Not only that, but he’d given Sean
an out on purpose, turning his back, and Sean had taken it.

Why? Sean couldn’t make sense of it. Riordan didn’t even know him. Why would

Riordan waste the time and effort of being kind to him?

It won’t happen again

, Sean told himself, crumbling the Danish into pieces, then

fragments, then paste. It can’t.

The waitress paused in one of her rounds to drop a ticket on his table. “After the

second, refills are fifty cents a cup. Are you done with your plate?”

Sean licked his lips to taste the sweetness of the Danish’s cream cheese. “Not yet.”
“Last call is dawn,” she said. A kind warning, kindly meant. “Our morning rush is

ridic, for real.”

Dawn. That worked. It wouldn’t be the first night Sean hadn’t slept, and wouldn’t be

the last. If he stayed until dawn, he could take a bus to his favorite gallery and wind
down there. It’d be okay.

Riordan’s touch had been so gentle, even when he’d tried to be firm.
Sean cursed himself under his breath. Calm down. It wasn’t as if he’d see Riordan

again.

Unless this bus took him past the tattoo studio where Riordan worked. It might. It

would, actually. Riordan’s place was directly on the main strip.

But that was okay too. He could pass right by.
Sean tapped the side of the sturdy mug. Or…he could get off at that stop, if he chose.

He could walk close enough to peek through the doors and get another glimpse of
Riordan. No one would see him. No one needed to know.

Or he could close his eyes—like this—and think of black coffee, warm in his stomach.

Nothing else. Not a man pressed affectionately against him. Not a sprinkling of bronze.
Not hope. If he could manage that, he’d be fine.

He couldn’t. It didn’t work.
Sean pressed his knuckles to his forehead. God help him if he knew what he should

do. All he knew was what he wanted to do, despite all the reasons why it’d be a bad idea,
and that was to see Riordan again. Soon.

Chapter Five

Mornings were for cleaning up.
Sure, the janitor they hired came in around six and took care of the basics, but any

tattoo artist who didn’t do his own prep work wasn’t someone Riordan would trust with
a needle. Most studios Riordan knew of and had apprenticed at didn’t open before noon
or one, but neither he nor Jae were scheduled for shifts at the hospital, and they’d be here
anyway, so why not unlock their doors at eight? If customers came looking, they’d be
ready.

Jae glanced up at Riordan as Riordan came through the door, and whistled.
Riordan tossed Jae his keys. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re right.”
Jae caught the ring easily and tucked it jingling out of sight behind the front desk.

“I’m thinking you had some seriously rough sex last night.”

“See? Right.” Riordan shucked his coat. “How long have you been here? Anything

left that needs doing?”

“There’s always something that needs doing. I haven’t checked to see if all the

stations are full up on supplies.”

“On it.” Riordan snapped on a pair of latex gloves and set to. In silence.
A very knowing silence.
He checked the station drawers for safety razors still in their packages, fresh cling

film around the nozzles of squirt bottles filled with fresh water, ink caps, and sterilized
needles, and made it through most of the list before giving in. He snapped one of the
gloves at Jae. “Go on. Ask me what I was thinking, if I’m crazy, all that jazz.”

“Just looking out for you. As friends do.”
Which was true, after all, and fair enough.
“Because you look like you’ve been run through a hedge backward,” Jae added. He

gave Riordan a more thorough once-over. “And you didn’t do your PT this morning.
You’re stiff.”

“I got enough of a workout last night. I think I’ll be good for a while.”
Jae’s eyebrow laddered upward. “I thought you might find some R and R, not win

the Pick Six.”

Riordan offered his own whistle.
Jae digested in silence. “Any chance the person you took home was the man from the

—”

“Yep.” Riordan crossed the studio in search of a fresh supply of gauze pads.
“I thought as much.” Jae tilted his head to the left, toward the plate glass front of the

studio. “That’s him outside now, isn’t it?”

Riordan kept a straight face. “I haven’t looked, so I can’t tell you.”
“Ah. So that’s how it is.” Jae turned in profile to the door, keeping a metaphorical

eye on Riordan and one on Sean.

Sean must have thought he was being sneaky. Most people probably wouldn’t

notice. He had skills at hiding, but once he’d been seen, Sean couldn’t ever fade into a
crowd. His coloration, cerulean and cream and ebony, was too striking, too out of the
ordinary to blend in.

Sense memory made Riordan’s fingertips tingle. The scars on Sean’s cheek weren’t as

bad as Riordan thought Sean believed them to be. Rough to the touch, still pink, but not
disfiguring. Or maybe Riordan just had a different take on where the line fell between
“not bad” and “too much.” He wouldn’t argue that one.

Jae took a spray bottle of cleanser and an industrial paper towel to one of the chairs.

“Are you going out to speak to him?”

“God, no. If he knew he’d been made, he’d run like hell.” Riordan rubbed the back of

his neck. “Handle with care. You know the type.”

“Not quite as personally as you seem to.” Jae sneezed against the strong, sharp

chemical smell of the cleanser, swore, and started all over again. “Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing.” Riordan pressed his lips into an overly thin line. “Not me.”
“Smart-ass.” Jae flicked a glance at the door. “He’s reading the hours of operation.”
“You’re trying to make me turn around and look.”
“Guilty.” Jae tapped the bottle thoughtfully against his palm. “He’s something to

look at.”

Riordan checked Jae for any deeper shades of meaning. Hard to say. “A good

something or a bad something?”

Jae neatened a setup that didn’t need neatening. “I think…he’s something that’d

require a lot of work.”

“Nothing good comes for free.”
“Nothing bad either.”
Riordan watched Jae studying Sean. Temptation overcame him, and he turned to

look too. As far as Riordan could tell, Sean had no idea he was being watched. He
hovered outside, pale with the cold except for dark gray circles under his eyes, still
wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

“So how bad is he?” Jae asked with the concern he’d show for a new patient, plus a

little extra for Riordan.

“Ehh…” Riordan remembered Sean’s flinching back and his outstretched claws.

Either Sean didn’t know how to respond to touch, or he’d forgotten. His body saw
anything coming as an attack, and so he reacted with either offense or defense, not
acceptance. Sean wouldn’t be able to help himself.

Which made Riordan want all the more to help him.
Jae waited.
Riordan pushed the drawer back in and rubbed his jaw. “Bad enough,” he said.

“Someone did a number on him.”

“Mmm.” Jae inclined his head once.
The growl and rumble of a diesel engine and a hiss of pneumatic doors breaking the

seal of their rubberized strip gave Riordan a good visual of the outside world without
needing to look. He waited for the engine to rattle away before asking, “Is he gone
now?”

“Gone like a ghost.” Jae made a thoughtful noise. “He wanted to come in. He almost

reached for the door handle.”

Riordan raised his eyebrows. That was more than he’d expected. Probably more than

Sean had either.

“He’s something, all right. Almost feral,” Jae said at the end of a long, not too

uncomfortable pause. “Is he worth it?”

Riordan gave the question its due consideration. Feral? Yes. It might be an odd word

choice, but yeah, that worked. Sean was feral, fragile, and fierce. He had a hard, hard
surface, but the thing about most rigid shells was they had a tendency to crack. Riordan
wanted to know who prowled beneath that shell of ice and fire, beating at the barrier,
wanting out, out, out. If there weren’t such a person trapped behind the scars of a life
gone wrong, Sean wouldn’t have gone home with him the night before.

In the end, all he said to Jae was a simple “Yes.”
“Okay.” Jae leaned against the wall. “Then tell me something good.”
It wasn’t a no-holds-barred blessing, but it came close enough for Riordan to see

without a telescope. “He wants help. He just doesn’t know how to ask for it, or that he
wants it.”

“Seems like playing with fire.”
“I know.” Riordan checked the pager at his belt, just in case. Nothing. He sat on the

edge of the front desk and tapped his foot on the floor. Rubbed his chest, over the scar.
“Normal seems overrated these days.”

Jae snorted. “You would put it that way.” He hesitated barely a second, long enough

for anyone who knew Jae to intuit serious uncertainty behind his micropause. “How bad
are the scars?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t let me see any of them.”
Silence. Riordan let Jae draw his own conclusions. He had a healthy imagination.
Riordan knew what’d come next. He let it happen, because it needed to.
“Then he didn’t see yours,” Jae said. “He doesn’t know.”
Riordan flattened his palm over the GSW scarring on his chest. He’d lived. He had

the oddest feeling Sean only thought he’d survived.

He ought to know what the difference between the two really was.
“I doubt he’d have noticed unless I’d sketched him a map with arrows and an X. I

think I was the first one he’d been with since…” Riordan drew a semicircle in the air. “It
wasn’t the time or the place.”

“Then make one,” Jae said. “Otherwise it’s not going to go well for you when he

finds out. He’ll think you’re ashamed of yours and, by extension, you’re revolted by his.”

“I’m not.”
“Someone as edgy as him won’t stop to think about the difference. If you think you

might care about him, best to clear the air sooner rather than later.” Jae shook his head. “I
know you haven’t taken anyone to bed since you were shot. Is that why you want him?”

“No.”
Jae narrowed his eyes at Riordan. “Are you sure? Because I have to wonder. If not

that, then why him? Out of all the lost souls you see every day, why this one?”

Riordan wondered the same thing, and in the end it came down to one answer.

“Because it couldn’t be anyone else. Because he is who he is, and he matters.”

Jae understood. He might not like it, but he got it. Friends were good for that. He

picked up a drawing pad and let it fall back to the sketch table. “I’m reserving judgment
for now. Just so you know.”

Riordan grinned. “But you’re still on my side?”
“Of course I am.” Jae shot him a warning look. “That’s why I’m reserving judgment.”

* * * *

“Hey. Could you lend a hand?”
Sean flinched. Almost no one ever approached him in the gallery he liked visiting

best. People stared at his scars and skirted wide around him. Glares usually sent them
running if nothing else worked. Every so often, there’d come someone who wouldn’t be
turned away.

“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to startle you.” A gallery attendant—young, probably a

college kid looking to pick up a few bucks and credit toward his degree—wrestled with a
shop ladder that squeaked in its newness, the home repair warehouse price tag still
stickered on one rung. He wiped his forehead on his shoulder and lifted his chin at Sean,
grinning as if inviting him to share a joke at no one’s expense but his own. “This is gonna
kill my back, and you’re in here so much we might as well hire you.”

Sean said nothing. Hire him? Why wasn’t he staring? Didn’t he notice? Why wasn’t

he backing away?

The kid twisted at the waist. “See, I’ve got to hang all these,” he said, waving at a

stack of canvases of all sizes. “Climbing up and down? Total bitch. They’re pretty light. If
you could hand them up, that’d be sweet.”

“You’re not joking,” Sean said, slowly as if pushing the words through molasses.
The kid’s name tag read Tory. He shrugged. “Why would I be joking? Look, if you

don’t want to, no sweat. I’d get my ass kicked for asking anyway.”

“No.” The word came out too sharply, like a hard rap of knuckles to wood. Sean

thought if he used his right arm, strong enough to carry the knapsack, he could help.

He could. If he chose.
It was the same need that drove him to the Blind Tiger the night before. That drove

him to walk home with Riordan. That pushed him into the café. “I’ll help,” Sean said, his
voice thick as with slurry. “Do you want them one at a time?”

Surreal. An ordinary conversation, almost banal, and he had to chip the words out

like shards of marble from a frozen block. But he wasn’t doing so badly, was he?

Tory even grinned at him. His blond hair flopped forward in a fringe longer than

Sean’s. “Righteous. I owe you one. I’ll comp you a credit at the gift shop.”

Sean wanted to ask—almost did ask—Don’t you see me? How can you not see? Why

haven’t you shot me full of questions?

Questions like stinging arrows that sank shaft-deep

and hummed from the force of impact.

He kept his mouth shut and lifted the first canvas the way he’d been taught, careful

not to get fingerprints on the surface, and waited for Tory to scamper up the ladder as
nimbly as a monkey in a playground. It was, for him. Play.

“Thanks. Medium-sized ones next, cool?” Tory stretched on tiptoes, and Sean noticed

what he hadn’t before. Despite the weather, Tory wore loose khaki shorts and sandals.
That wasn’t what caught Sean’s eye. The tattoo did, a broad swath of colors and black
lines that took a moment to resolve into a giant koi twining around Tory’s leg from the
fins brushing the top of his foot to whisker-like feelers disappearing around his knee.

Tory must have felt Sean staring. He twisted at the knee, showing off the detail.

“Nice, huh?”

“Nice,” Sean replied absently, taking in the detail. Deceptively simple, the koi looked

more intricate than it proved to be, a sleight of hand made with saturated ink and
illusory shading.

Sean had seen that sort of work before. Recently. Winding up Riordan’s forearms.

He’d caught a glimpse of the same on Riordan’s stomach. If Riordan hadn’t done the art
himself, that other man Sean had seen at the bus stop—Riordan’s friend—no, coworker,
he had to be a coworker—God, he couldn’t think—would be the one responsible.

Sean shoved his hands in his pockets to curb the urge to touch. “Looks like it hurt.”
Tory rolled his eyes. “Not as much as it did when my parents saw it. I thought they’d

skin me alive.”

Sean…didn’t flinch. “They weren’t happy?”
Tory shrugged. “Less happy I’d been dumb enough to think wearing shorts and

riding bitch on my girl’s chopper was a good idea.”

Which might as well have been Hindustani to Sean. “Come again?” When Tory

moved, the koi almost seemed to swim on his skin. Fascinating. It could have been off-
putting, but wasn’t.

“Look. See, here?” Tory turned the inside of his calf for Sean to get a better look.
Sean’s nails dug into his pockets, into the skin beneath. “You were burned,” he said,

knowing his lips were white as his knuckles.

“Dumb accident. No safety gear, and I smashed my leg against a hot engine. Damn.”

Tory feigned a series of over-the-top shudders. He probably meant to make Sean laugh.

Sean only wondered if he’d overbalance and fall off the ladder. “Ugly-ass scar. The koi’s
an improvement, yeah?”

More than. The koi was gorgeous, and he knew it. Sean couldn’t look too closely at it

now that he’d seen the scar beneath. “I didn’t know you could tattoo over scars.”

“I can’t. This guy downtown did. Ree-oh something; I forget. He and this guy he

works with, Jae or Jason, that’s what they do. Fix up scars and shit. You wouldn’t notice
the burn unless I pointed it out, right?”

“That’s what they do.”
That was what Riordan had seen in Sean.
That was what’d drawn him. Not Sean himself.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“I wouldn’t have noticed,” Sean said, as Tory clearly wanted him to, though his lips

were numb. He thrust the second canvas up at Tory. “Here. This one next.”

“Right on,” Tory said, satisfied and already forgetting the conversation.
Not Sean. It wasn’t emptiness his stomach tied itself in knots around this time. He

knew that now.

It was ice.

* * * *

“Taking off?”
Riordan shuffled through the tattoo studio’s schedule, pages riffling against his

fingertips. “Might as well. There aren’t any appointments lined up here for the evening,
and tomorrow’s going to be a tough one at the hospital.”

“Any word on Marguerite?” Jae leaned over their reception counter and took the

book from Riordan.

“Nothing.” Riordan sighed. “I’m trying to think of it as no news being good news. Or

at least not bad news. But it’s only a matter of time.”

“Damn.” Jae almost never swore. When he did, he made the words count. “How

much time?”

“Not enough. It never is.”
“I’m sorry.” Jae made the sign of the cross, not irreverently. He was a believer.

“Don’t give up hope.”

“The hell I would.”
“That’s my boy.”
“At least Lainey’s still hanging in there,” Riordan said. “I thought I’d take copies of

the drawings I’m working on for her home and finish up the final, final touches. She’s
eager to get going.”

Jae gave Riordan an oblique yet amused look. “But that’s not really why you’re

leaving early, is it?”

Should’ve known better than to think he could get anything past Jae. Riordan

chuckled and crossed his arms, leaning one hip against the desk. “Am I that obvious?”

“Transparent as glass.” Jae mirrored his pose. “You’re going looking for the one from

last night.”

“Sean.” Flashes of blue, black, and cream flashed across Riordan’s mind’s eye. His

hand drifted up to rub at his chest. “I might not have if he hadn’t tried to show up this
morning. He’s that scared, and he came looking for me.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Jae said.
“No, but I doubt he wanted a tattoo and chose this place at random.”
Jae conceded the point with a sweep of his hand. “He might be hard to find. No

address known if you took him back to yours last night. Any idea where he spends his
time during the day? If he has a job, or therapy?”

Riordan grinned. “Actually, I think I know where to start looking. These fell out of

his pocket last night.” He’d carried the dull azure ticket stubs in his hip pocket all day
long, twisted into a tight point, as Sean had left them on his floor. He doubted Sean knew
he’d left them behind, dropped somewhere between attack and being calmed. “Mienfort
Galleries. From the dates I can see, he’s there every day. Odds are he won’t break his
routine now. Besides, he came to visit me. The least I can do is return the favor.”

Jae regarded him thoughtfully, calmly. “You’re set on this, aren’t you?”
Riordan rubbed his chin, feeling the scrape and scratch of stubble. “I don’t think I

have a choice about whether I am or I’m not.”

“He got to you that much.” Jae clicked his tongue. “Then I’m coming with you. No,

don’t give me that look. You take everything and everyone to heart. All the lost boys and
strays and alley cats.”

“There’s a problem with that now?”
“All I’m saying is if you play with fire, you get burned. You know him better than I

do. Maybe. He looked like a man you’d have a hard time getting to know no matter
what.”

Riordan exhaled in a puff. Had to give him that one. “True.”
“So indulge me. If you’re tangling with something too sharp-toothed for you, I want

to know. And I did tell you I was reserving judgment.”

“In case you have to pick up the pieces when it’s over?”
“I didn’t say that. If he’s as drawn to you as you are to him, then I want to get a

better sense of him. That’s all.”

“And watch my back for me?”
Jae shrugged, unapologetic.
Riordan eyed him. He hadn’t planned on a third wheel, but Jae meant well, and he’d

like to know, after all, what Jae made of Sean. “Mienfort’s not far. We can close the shop
for a few and walk.”

“The benefits of being your own boss are limitless.” Jae took his coat off the rack and

dug a set of keys out of his pocket. He grinned back at Riordan with one of his rare
flashes of broad humor. “Just don’t think any amount of sex gets you off the hook with
your PT.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good. I’m ready if you are.” Jae tossed the keys to Riordan in echo and mirror of the

morning trade-off and grinned when Riordan caught them neatly. “Not bad. Not bad at
all.”

“I know.” Riordan bounced the keys, more pleased than he would have thought he’d

be. A good omen. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Six

Sean didn’t often visit the gift shop in the tiny gallery museum. He couldn’t afford

the ticket prices on the high-quality art supplies they sold or make use of anything he
bought, so why torture himself? But today, with a gift credit in hand…

Once he’d come inside, he couldn’t make himself leave. He’d missed this almost as

much as touch, as sex. Quality camel-hair paintbrushes, separated by size in tall
apothecary jars. Lush pastels. Richly saturated oils. On a lower shelf, stacks of blank
sketchbooks and bound journals with covers made of velvet, corduroy, and leather, with
empty, creamy white pages. Some lined, some unlined.

Sean stroked a fingertip over the ridged surface of a rich black corduroy cover. It’d

draw lint like honey drew flies. Two days’ worth of scuffs would start it fraying. The
paper wouldn’t hold paint. Too glossy. It’d do for pastels or cheap colored pencils.
Maybe.

He tucked the book in the crook of his arm and let the pages fall open in the middle.

So much blank space. So much that could be filled in.

His ears pricked at the clanking of the bells over the front door. Just another

customer, he told himself. No one to worry about.

Or…no. Sean couldn’t get a good look at the newcomers, concealed as he was behind

a shelf toward the back of the store, but he’d know that head of curls anywhere. And that
voice, whiskey warm. And the sharper scent of ink mixed with rubbing alcohol.

Riordan, and his friend. Jae or Jason, according to Tory.
They might have come in looking for art supplies. That’d be the logical explanation.
Sean knew damned well they hadn’t.
He took three steps backward, and three more. Sliding behind a display of easels

taller than him. Hidden. But he could peek through the gaps between the woodwork if
he chose to.

Sean watched the pair of them. They looked different tonight than this morning.

Less put together, more loose ends and frayed edges, but they joked, Jae cracking a grin
at something Riordan said that Sean couldn’t make out. Frayed but not worn down. Tired
but still interested. They could have gone home, but they’d come here.

Looking for me

. Sean swallowed down a mouthful of metallic taste. He could feel

Riordan’s hair tangled around his fingers, and Riordan’s mouth around his cock. His
groin ached with the sense memory, a dull heat kindling in his stomach.

Sean ignored it, or tried to. Riordan’s presence caught him. Snagged his focus like a

broken fingernail catching on silk.

I don’t want to be your project. If you’re here hoping for that…

JAE’S ELBOW TOUCHED Riordan’s ribs. “Over to the left, near the back corner.”
Riordan nudged Jae in return. “I saw him. I saw him see me.”

“And you’re still bent on this?”
Riordan didn’t look back. Odds were Sean knew he’d been made, but he hadn’t

bolted—yet—and Riordan didn’t want to tip the balance the wrong way just because he
couldn’t play it cool. “Bent like a broken horseshoe nail.”

Jae shook his head. “Then I’m headed over to look at the watercolors. As long as

we’re here.”

“And staying within earshot?”
“I’m invested in your well-being.” Jae socked his arm lightly. “Are you going to stop

me?”

“No.” Riordan chanced a peek to be sure Sean hadn’t run. In fact, he was creeping

closer one step at a time. Good, he encouraged without speaking. Keep on coming. Keep
trying

. “But he doesn’t know you. Don’t get too close unless I give the sign. I won’t let

him hurt me, but I won’t hurt him. Not if I can help it.”

Jae studied him more intently than usual, but Riordan could take it. Whatever he saw

there must have passed muster. “See that you don’t,” he said, nodding toward the far
back and left of the store. No expression discernible on his face, but actions spoke louder
than words. Two for two in Riordan’s favor.

He looked for Sean. Let’s see if I can make it three for three.

TRAPPED

. SEAN CREPT backward, though he couldn’t go much farther without

trapping himself in a corner, for all the good it did. Riordan would find him easily if he
wanted. He bent over stacks of colored pencils in scattered boxes some clumsy elbow had
overturned, strewing them in disarray over their shelf. He lined the boxes up edge to
edge as precisely as he could, which wasn’t very, but he liked to see colors matching
colors. They weren’t anything fancy. One dollar and ninety-nine cents for a package.

Sean’s fingers itched, wanting to have at them and that corduroy notebook. The

display wasn’t far. Close enough to reach.

He stretched his arm to pick the topmost book off the pile—
Riordan got there first, offering the journal to him. “They’re sturdier than you’d

think. They look like they’d fall apart in the first stiff breeze, but they’re not bad. Hi.”

Sean’s mouth dried cotton-starchy. He didn’t take the book from Riordan or return

his hello. “You know that from experience?”

“I like nice things sometimes.” Riordan riffled through the pages, seeming

unbothered Sean hadn’t taken the gift from his hand. “You left in a hurry last night. I
thought I’d stop by and see if you were all right. That okay?”

Sean’s thoughts stuttered, skipping from track to track like a needle stuck on a

record. Was that okay? He asked?

He asked.
“I don’t want to be your project,” he blurted, the words tumbling from his lips

unbidden. “I’m not a toy you can break down and patch up.”

Riordan’s head snapped up. “What?”
“I know what you do for a living,” Sean went on, not able to stop himself now. “You

—”

“I’m a nurse, and I’m a tattoo artist,” Riordan said. He slotted the book back into its

place on the shelf. He’d left a smudge of verdigris ink on the cover, a thumbprint saying
Riordan was here

. “I told you last night.”

Sean held his ground. He had outs to the left and the right; Riordan blocking the

aisle in front of him didn’t mean he couldn’t move if he wanted to. “You didn’t tell me
how they go together. If all you want to do is fix me, I don’t—”

He stopped short, the flow dried up without warning him first.
“What do you want?”
Riordan exhaled slowly. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned on the shelf,

strong enough to hold him up. “I don’t want you as a project. Look, let me start again.
Like I said, you left in a hurry.”

“You knew I would.” Sean backed up two steps.
Riordan tracked his progress. And followed him. Six degrees of separation kept him

out of arm’s reach, but no more and no less, still. “Right. I wanted to see if you were
okay. Not because you’re a project. To me or to Jae, the guy I came in with. We just run a
shop together. Clear?”

Sean wasn’t. He licked his lips. “Then why?”
“To see you again.” Riordan raised one shoulder. “Is that impossible to believe?”
“Close,” Sean said. He’d reached the far wall, his shoulders pressed hard against the

shelves. “Why me?” His hand flexed. “Last night. I hurt you.”

“True.” Riordan took one step closer. Sean could slide to the side if he chose.
He didn’t. God help him, he didn’t.
“You didn’t mean to,” Riordan said, edging into the second step. The third. Watching

Sean as if trying to convince a cornered dog not to bite, and that wasn’t so far from the
truth. The last person he’d touched was Peter, and even if Riordan was as unlike him as
chalk and cheese, he…

Four steps. Five.
“I hurt you,” Sean repeated, harder. Why didn’t Riordan care more? Why wasn’t he

angry? “I know I did. I can see where I pulled your hair too hard. And your wrist, you’re
holding it stiffly. Why—” He tried again. “You didn’t hit back. Why?”

Riordan saw too much, he thought. Way too much. And he didn’t say a word about

any of it. He didn’t ask “Who hurt you?” or “Why?” or “When?” He only kept coming.
Five steps. One left.

“You’ve got a lot of mad in there,” he said, frank and open. “I’m tough enough to

take it, and if I’d minded, I would have said.”

Sean snatched a peek past him, at his friend Jae standing closer than before,

pretending to eyeball blank canvases. “Would he mind?”

“Probably.” The grin he hadn’t been able to say no to the night before touched

Riordan’s lips. “But he’s not the one with the final word. I am. And I’m here because I
want to be here. Say no, and I’ll take off, no problem.”

Last step.
Sean held his breath. Riordan almost touched him, chest to chest. His body heat

radiated between the bare inches between them, and Sean was so cold. He’d been so cold
for so long.

“Say no, and I’ll be out of your hair,” Riordan said quietly, just for them. “Or say yes.

It’s up to you.”

Sean…didn’t run. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Riordan said. He seemed encouraged, though Sean didn’t know why. “I

want to kiss you again. Will you let me?”

“I DON’T— IS it that you don’t care that I’m broken?” Sean asked, sounding like a

child lost in the dark.

He made Riordan’s heart hurt. “You’re not broken. Not in the way you mean.”
“But—”
“I don’t see you as broken the way you see yourself.”
Sean looked almost frustrated enough to cry. “I don’t understand.”
“But I do.” The skin beneath Sean’s chin was still smooth as cream. “Even if you

don’t get it yet, I know what I mean.”

“That makes one of us,” Sean muttered, surprising a full laugh from Riordan. Which,

in turn, startled Sean into almost smiling. And wasn’t that something to see? A real,
quicksilver smile, there and gone again before Riordan could press it into his memory.
Didn’t matter. He’d still won the favor.

Riordan thought he might push his luck a little further since she seemed to be on his

side today. He lifted his hand, careful, careful, making sure Sean saw him coming. Sean
tracked his moves with the wariness of one who’d learned the hard way to take care.

If Riordan ever got a chance at five minutes in a dark alley with the bastard who’d

done this to Sean… Not likely, he knew, but a man had to dream.

But Sean didn’t move or dodge or flinch. That was encouraging, right?
Sean even held still when Riordan brushed his fingertips against the fringe of Sean’s

hair, as soft as it looked, soft as watered silk, ebony with blue lights where the shop
lamps caught and angled away. He pushed the locks as lightly as he could back from
Sean’s face, behind his ears and off Sean’s forehead.

Sean’s scars were bad when seen in strong, unforgiving shop light. The left side was

the worst. Riordan knew the marks left by surgery and the difference between patching
up and beautifying. Sean might have had a skin graft beneath the cheekbone with a dent
over where it’d been broken, a quirk of healing leaving a mark almost like a dimple.

Mottled red and pink swept in blooms over the cream paleness, if not the grafted

patch. He could see the stitched split in Sean’s lip he’d only felt clearly with the tip of his
tongue before.

“You’re not going to ask,” Sean said. He didn’t break eye contact. Once he put his

mind to something, he wouldn’t back down, would he? “Why aren’t you going to ask?
Everyone does.”

“I’m not everyone.”
A scoff came in answer to that.
“You were the one pointing out I’m different a few minutes ago,” Riordan said.
“You are.” A frown drew Sean’s bared face into crooked lines. “I don’t understand

you.”

“Must mean I’m doing something right. So you’re scarred. Show me one person who

isn’t.” Riordan pressed Sean’s hand over his heart, beating strong and steady beneath his
touch. “I am.”

Sean’s fingers flexed abruptly—an aborted fist. He stared at his hand, not at

Riordan’s face. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe not.

But he’d forgotten his face was bare.
Riordan could see the effort it took him to speak. Could feel the fine trembling in his

fingers. “You shouldn’t want me,” Sean said.

“But I do. Not as a project. I promise.”
He wasn’t sure Sean had heard him. “You shouldn’t care about me.”
“But I do. Can’t help it. Sorry.”
Sean cut a glance at him as sharp as glass. “You’re not sorry at all.”
Caught. Riordan shook his head. “Not really, no. Do you want to do something about

that?”

“I DON’T KNOW. I should. Shouldn’t I?” Sean’s cheeks were warm. He hadn’t

flirted since…he couldn’t remember when. “I’m out of practice. Don’t say you are too.
I’m not going to believe that.”

“But you’ll believe the rest?” Riordan brushed his thumb over Sean’s cheek, tracing

the line of the bone beneath. The one that’d cracked and ached in the cold and left a
dented scar bisecting the angle. The pad of Riordan’s thumb lingered in the dent. “Come
home with me again tonight.”

“I still don’t want you to be gentle.”
Riordan touched Sean’s lips. “Yeah, I know you don’t. Will you come anyway?”
Sean shut his eyes, He couldn’t look at Riordan and do this, and he wanted to. So

much. He needed this. Just a taste. He slipped the tip of his tongue in a flick against the
pad of Riordan’s finger.

He opened his eyes to see Riordan’s lips parted, dark pupils widening to leave a thin

ring of hazel around them.

“Maybe,” Sean said.
Riordan stopped Sean from reaching for his hand; he hadn’t even known he’d

started to reach. “Are you going to sprain my wrist again?”

Sean licked his lips and tasted salt. A trace of Riordan. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“As long as I know what’s coming. I will stop you if you try to hurt me.” Riordan

ruffled Sean’s fringe back. “Or hurt yourself.”

“Forewarned,” Sean said. “I won’t. I’ll try not to.”
Riordan studied him, then grinned, as if that was it, settled, what more could he ask

for?

Maybe not much, Sean thought. Maybe there wasn’t much more anyone could ask

for. Maybe this was what it meant to be lucky. To move on.

He could do it right this time. That wasn’t impossible. Was it? Riordan made him

want to believe it wasn’t lost to him forever. If he tried…

Riordan’s lips parted when Sean leaned into them, his hand twisted in the open

placket of Riordan’s knit jersey. He tasted stronger, mouth to mouth, like mint and the
echoes of strong black tea. “I think I remember where you live,” he said. He had to let go
of Riordan one finger at a time. “I know the neighborhood. I’ll be there. If I can. I can’t
promise anything.”

Because what if he broke, again? What if he needed to run? He couldn’t give his

word.

“I’ll leave the light on for you,” Riordan said. He brushed Sean’s hair forward for

him, tipped his chin up, and touched their mouths briefly. “Eight o’clock.”

“You’re a lot surer of me than I am of myself.”
“Not really. If you think I know what I’m doing, think again. Difference is, I’m doing

it.” He raised one shoulder. “You see how it’s not the same thing?”

Sean thought he did. He didn’t kiss Riordan, though he knew Riordan wanted him

to. He settled back on his heels and crossed his arms, looking up to study the man. “Is
that easy for you?”

“Not at all.”
Sean couldn’t hold back the quirk of a half smile. “Then maybe I’ll be there.”
Riordan lifted Sean’s hand to his lips. “And maybe I’ll be waiting for you. Or maybe

there’s no maybe about it at all.”

Chapter Seven

Jae waited for Riordan on the sidewalk outside Mienfort Galleries. Night had crept

out while Riordan lingered inside, the sky as glimpsed above the old brick buildings a
dark blue edging into velvet black.

“So that was Sean,” Riordan said, glad he’d worn a coat after all. Temperatures

would dip low tonight. “At his finest.”

Jae shook his head and said nothing.
Riordan had figured he’d react more or less like so. “Guess you didn’t change your

mind about whether or not he’s too much for me, huh?” He elbowed Jae lightly to make
sure Jae knew he was teasing, and that regardless of anything, he hadn’t changed his
mind.

Jae nudged back: message received. “Walk to the bus stop? I’ll catch the line back to the

shop. I’m guessing you’re—”

“Going home, yeah.”
Jae cut a sharp look at him but didn’t ask what he planned to do at home.
Riordan wished he had. He fell into step beside Jae, walking at his steady pace that

ate up the city blocks in smooth strides. “Let’s hear it.”

“You’re sure you want to know?”
“Might as well. If I’m working an uphill battle, I’d like to know what I’m up

against.”

Jae hummed thoughtfully. “What do I think of Sean? Blue ruin.”
Wind blew Riordan’s hair over his face. “Repeat?”
Jae chuckled. “I’m not sure if this is right or just Wiki nonsense. As far as I know,

they used to call gin ‘blue ruin.’ Back in the days when you could starve or spend a stolen
penny on a bottle that’d make you forget you were freezing to death somewhere in a
Whitechapel side street.”

“Cheerful.”
“Not really.” Jae dug in his pocket for the blue rubber ball and passed it to Riordan.

“What’s it got to do with Sean? Not much. Only that’s what I thought of when I tried to
describe him to myself. Blue ruin, and hard work digging him out of the alleys. This is the
last time I’ll ask if you’re sure you’re up for it.”

Riordan looked inward at the image of Sean holding the black corduroy book in his

broken hands. Blank pages waiting for color. Jumpy, risky, edgy, and begging silently
even if he didn’t know it: please, please, please. “I’m sure. Wish me luck?”

Jae pressed his lips together in brief thoughtfulness. “Not so much. Luck is a chancy

thing.” He walked backward, facing Riordan with an odd and unreadable expression.
“Wishing you strength. You’ll need it.”

Riordan squeezed the rubber ball. “Are you still in my corner?”

“You don’t have to ask that.” Jae nudged Riordan forward, into the windbreak of the

bus stop shelter. “And before you ask, I’m in his corner too. All I’m hoping is you end up
meeting in the middle, not tearing each other apart.” He raised his shoulders. “It’s up to
you now.”

Riordan didn’t think he was wrong there.
Which left him wondering one thing: where to begin.

* * * *

Quit while you’re still ahead. What do you think’s going to happen, not-so-pretty pretty boy?
Sean hesitated at the bottom of the stairs that’d lead him up to Riordan’s apartment.

He’d seen this building before, through the dim gray glass of a bus window, and liked
the look of the place. Big, blocky, square, a former mill long since converted into studios
and apartments. It’d been lucky. Most mills and factories sat bleakly abandoned on lots
overgrown with weeds forcing their way through concrete and iron bars on the
windows, so rusted they could be wrenched free to break through the aged bubbled glass
behind them.

This old mill hummed with life behind every door. Music, soft or loud, voices rising

and falling in conversation, lights shining beneath doors.

On the second floor, someone making love. Two someones. Sean stopped to listen,

stunned where he stood. He hadn’t listened closely enough to discern gender. No. That
was a lie. Two men. One deep-voiced, one lighter and with more teasing to his tone.

Riordan lived on the third floor. The stairs broke for a landing and a hard turn

midway between flights. One more up, and he could see Riordan’s door at the near end
of the hall. He recognized the dented brass of the knob.

He pities you

. Sean knew the voice. Leo’s. Always Leo’s, always echoing in his mind.

And of course he sees you as a project. His job is painting over blemishes. You can’t separate a
man from his work. Go home.

The newel creaked. Sean let go, his fingers feeling cramped and tight. He could see

light beneath Riordan’s door too. A negative shadow cast on the tiled floor.

He’d once hit a rabbit with his car, when he still drove. He remembered reaching for

it without thinking it might bite or kick at him. Recalled the impossible hummingbird
speed of its heart and how he hadn’t known rabbits made noise.

He’d done the right thing. The hard thing. Put it out of its pain.
Sean looked at his hands.
He looked at Riordan’s door.
He put one foot on the stairs and lifted himself, one step at a time, and then another,

and another, carrying on until there were no more.

Riordan didn’t answer Sean’s first knock, nor did he come right away at the second.

Sean waited. He could hear music inside. A duet of classical guitar, he thought, with a
woman’s high, sweet voice twining through the chords. Then the sound of bare feet on a

bare floor, not dawdling, not hurrying.

The door swung open, the empty space barely empty for a moment before being

filled with Riordan in all the kinetic energy of his presence. His hair curled against his
shoulders, the tips still crisp and wet, as if he’d showered not an hour ago. He wore short
sleeves, his tattoos on display. Cherry branches, cranes, and things Sean couldn’t be sure
of without staring. His lips were soft, easy in a grin. “Come in.”

Next to him, Sean imagined he must look like a shriveled dark shadow. He knotted

the strap of his knapsack tighter around his wrist. “You’re blocking the way.”

“All you had to do was say ‘move,’” Riordan returned. The heat of his gaze ran the

length of Sean’s body like sheet lightning and capsaicin. He held his hand out to Sean,
asking him silently if he would or would not accept the help offered to him.

Sean blocked his ears to the past and took Riordan’s hand.
Riordan kissed him, as quick and light as the brush of a feather. A small kiss, but

Sean’s lips still tingled when Riordan stood back. The tips of his ears were pink and his
grin boyish. “Sorry. I’d meant to save that for later, but…”

He didn’t say you’re too pretty to resist or I couldn’t wait to eat you up.
Sean could like this man, if he let himself. He could.
Riordan wrapped a strand of Sean’s hair around his first two fingers, tugged—a hint

of humor dancing in his eyes—and let go, as casual as that. He stepped back, beckoning
and gesturing with the same twist of his wrist and curl of his fingers. “Come on in.”

He didn’t check to see if Sean followed him. He didn’t flinch or glance back at the

sound of the door shutting to see which side Sean chose.

Sean hadn’t gotten much of a look at the place first time around. Too busy with

grappling against Riordan, and then the lights went out. He sneaked a peek now, curious
despite, or because of, himself.

An ordinary bachelor’s pad at first glance. At second glance, far more than that. The

simple furnishings, scuffed and scarred, were clean, the only clutter the detritus of an
artist hard at work—crumpled balls of paper, a scattered fan of pencils, a stack of body
modification magazines with pages dog-eared and folded down. An open sketch pad
with a watercolor design of cherry blossoms left to dry.

If Riordan noticed his staring, he made no mention. “Good timing,” he said instead,

offhanded and casual. He led the way to the kitchen, taking up a plastic bag crammed
almost to its limits with flimsy cardboard boxes emitting puffs of ginger, soy, and garlic.
“Bet you just missed the delivery man. You like Chinese, right? I don’t know anyone who
doesn’t. I got a little of everything.”

Sean had eaten the genuine article once, in Chinatown, with a boyfriend who taught

him how to ask for what wasn’t on the menus meant for the general public. Dim sum
from bamboo baskets, flaming with horseradish or sticky with sweet red bean paste.

Leo almost never ate. He’d liked Sean thin too.
Riordan rustled the bag. “Hungry?”

God, yes

. Sean ducked under Riordan’s arm to steal the thin wax paper bag of deep-

fried egg rolls. They burned his hands, still hot, and he burned his tongue too when he
snapped off the crispy end in one bite. He breathed in through his nose and chewed as
fast as he could, swallowing down the ember and coal of the bite, and licked his lips.
“Starving,” he said. Steam escaped the end he’d bitten off. He took a second bite, slower,
still watching Riordan. “You don’t know how hungry.”

Riordan watched Sean with his eyes hooded and his lips pressed together in a

strange quirk. “I think I have some idea,” he said. “Have all you want. That’s why I
bought plenty. No one has to do without. All you have to do is ask.”

SEAN LOOKED DIFFERENT tonight. Riordan wasn’t sure he could put his finger on

how, exactly, and tracking change was his job. The thought teased a grin out of him,
hidden when he turned his back on Sean to lead him to the kitchen.

Was it that he looked softer? Younger? Maybe. He’d showered, leaving his hair soft

as swan’s down, falling like feathers over his forehead and across his cheeks, and he’d
dressed himself in a sweater of a blue lighter than navy but darker than a summer sky.
Whatever it was, it fit him better than anything Riordan had seen him in to date, and he
hadn’t worn a coat.

He still had that knapsack stuffed to the point of splitting its seams over one

shoulder, but Riordan could do small steps as long as Sean kept creeping closer. Or even
if he turned back. If he did, Riordan would follow.

He shouldn’t have stolen that kiss, but just seeing Sean at his door, seeing Sean had

come of his own will, come back, Riordan couldn’t have resisted any more than he could
have let a needle slide sideways in the middle of a design.

And when Sean snapped off a bite of roll with his sharp white teeth, a curling twist

of want wound sinuously through Riordan’s gut.

He kept it light; took some work, but he kept it light, stealing one of the egg rolls for

himself and nipping a smaller taste, scorching with pepper, off the end. “Glad you
brought your appetite.” Riordan put himself between Sean and the short stack of plates
and dishes he’d meant to use, trying to hide their presence. If Sean wanted to eat with his
hands, Riordan wouldn’t stop him.

Sean’s cheeks reddened as he finished his egg roll—they were small, barely three

bites’ worth in each—and wiped his fingers on a napkin from the bag. “I was hungry.”

“It’s okay.”
“We’re not animals,” he said, the baritone still surprising coming from his slim chest.

“Dish up.” He lifted his chin. “I’ll help.”

Riordan could almost hear Jae’s whisper in his ear and feel Jae’s elbow in his ribs. He

stood back and let Sean have his way. “Go ahead. Fix me a plate too, same as whatever
you pick. I like almost everything.” He reached overhead to the cabinet full of glasses and
tugged the fridge open with his other arm, watching Sean watch him. He had a good
brand of beer he’d bought in a local Asian market, but… No, not tonight. Water would do.

Sean walked lightly. By the time Riordan turned to offer him a glass, he’d drifted

away from both food and drink, out into the living area barely bigger than a bread box,
cluttered with piles of work Riordan couldn’t help bringing home.

Riordan considered the food, then shrugged. He followed Sean, glass in hand. “If

you’re thirsty after all that pepper…” he said, offering Sean a sip.

Sean shook his head. He sat as lightly as he walked on the edge of Riordan’s old well-

beloved sofa, squishy as a great aunt’s hug but infinitely more welcoming, and took up
the pad with the watercolors splashed across it. “Is this for your work?”

“Mm-hmm. I’m just fiddling with some copies, trying to finesse the design. I left my

originals at the shop.” Riordan kept a safe distance, just within arm’s reach, and lounged
on the far arm of the couch. “It’s a design for a client named Lainey.”

Sean flicked a curious glance up. “I thought nurses weren’t allowed to talk about

their patients.”

Riordan chuckled. “I said client, not patient. Well, she was a patient. She’s better

now, and trust me, she doesn’t mind. She shows off the work I did on her hip as a tester
to anyone who’ll stand still long enough to look.”

Come on, kitten. Come closer. I won’t hurt you, I promise.
Sean traced the design with the tip of his finger. Cherry blossoms and branches,

fragile and strong at the same time. “Why?” He shook his head, impatient with himself.
“What’s she want it for?”

Riordan understood the first time but let it pass. “She had a mastectomy a few

months back. Double.” He gestured at both sides of his chest.

A frown drew Sean’s eyebrows nearer but not close to touching. Like the rest of him,

except his voice, they were delicate. “Don’t most women get replacements?”

“Some. Not all.” Riordan cleared his throat. Okay, so he hadn’t expected Sean to sink

his teeth right into the meat and marrow, but considering his performance with the egg
roll and the way Sean had drunk his beer at the Blind Tiger, Riordan probably should
have.

Sean laid the sketch pad down with a leafy slap. “And some want this instead. Why?

It doesn’t hide the scars. Not really.”

“You’d be surprised.” Riordan kept his tone light, though it took some doing. Sean

sounded accusing, but that was only because he’d forgotten how to just ask. “It’s more or
less about the design you pick. Something finicky with a lot of tiny lines, no. Something
bigger, brighter or bolder, broad strokes of color, those do work. It’s like the difference
between trying to paint over a scuff on a wall with a pen or with a brush.”

He couldn’t tell what Sean thought of that. Best to let him think it over, Riordan

decided, watching as Sean headed back to the kitchen. Plates clanked and plastic rustled.

Riordan gave him a beat, two beats, three, and followed. Sean had taken out three or

four of the small red-and-white boxes, but not opened them. He stood with his fists
braced on the countertop, the line of his neck and shoulders tight enough to balance a
spirit level.

Riordan wasn’t dumb enough to ask if Sean was okay. He left it as subtext in his

tone, asking just, “Sean?”

Sean looked at his hand. The left one. Turning it to and fro against the light glowing

warm over Riordan’s rarely used stove.

Riordan saw what Sean saw then. What Sean wanted him to see. Yes, Sean was

scarred. Riordan had seen that the first time he looked. Anyone would. And in a way, the
scars were as bad as Sean thought. He’d never look normal again, whatever normal was
supposed to mean. But they didn’t make him a monster. Riordan could still see the bones
of him, the shape that made him beautiful, and even if he limped and leaned, he was as
graceful as a man could be under the circumstances, with the muscle memory of who he
had been to help carry it off.

“I’m not a project,” he said.
“You’re not. Neither is she. Not in the way I think you mean.” Riordan sensed the

ground solidifying under his feet. He didn’t understand, but he went with it. “Why do
people do this? Why do they want what I can give them? That’s what you want to know,
isn’t it?”

Sean’s stiff nod was his only answer, and Riordan saw how much even that cost him.
“It’s different for everyone.” Go closer to him, his subconscious ordered. Riordan

rolled the dice and chanced his luck. Sean didn’t flinch. He looked up at Riordan through
the fringe of ebony over ivory, his gaze steady. Hard to hold your ground against that
kind of accusing stare.

Riordan managed fine.
Sean might have smiled. A fraction of a smile; he’d have doubted its existence if not

for the change the expression left behind.

“I was a tattoo artist before I was a nurse,” Riordan said, leaning casually against the

counter. “Although I can’t separate the two now. If it’s in you, it’s in you. Right?”

Sean nodded, as small as his maybe-smile. He clenched his hand. Riordan watched

the movement. He’d seen the way Sean studied his picture. Sean knew art. Riordan could
tell how he missed the smoothness of a blank page and the flow of ink, the smell of paint.

He kept a close eye on Sean as he spoke. “One of my first clients put it to me in a way

I’ve never forgotten. She said, ‘It’s not about hiding. It’s about taking back.’”

A thin line formed vertically over the bridge of Sean’s nose. “I don’t understand that

either.”

Yes, you do, Riordan thought but didn’t say. Come on, kitten. “Cancer made her body

hostile to her,” he said, remembering her stubborn chin and her work-worn hands, the
kind of woman who’d never have dreamed of a tattoo if her life hadn’t been turned
upside down. “Surgeons fixed that, but they took her breasts and left her with scars.
She’d live, but she didn’t feel like herself. More like the world rolled over her a few times
and left her…marked.”

Sean’s hands tightened into hard, knuckled fists.

Riordan pretended he hadn’t seen, but he didn’t look away. “She wanted a dragon.

We couldn’t do the one she asked for, this elaborate fire-breathing thing. It didn’t fit her
body or her marks. But we still gave her a dragon. One she liked better. It twined around
her, and its head rested right here.” He tapped his breastbone. “She called it her
guardian.”

Silence from Sean.
“I wouldn’t change what I do,” Riordan said. “Not even for you. And I’m not going

to be less than honest about it. You asked; I answered.”

Silence.
The food was going cold. Riordan could smell the tang of vinegar and cooking oil

congealing. Fat beads of water ran down the sides of the second glass he’d forgotten.

And silence, still.
Riordan wanted to touch him. More than anything. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to

stop, and Sean had to start this dance, or there’d be no dance at all. “Sean,” he said as
quietly as he could. “Sean?”

SEAN KNEW HIS scars. He could draw a map of them with his eyes closed—if he’d

still been able to draw. “I can’t hold a pencil steady enough to make a straight line,” he
said. His voice sounded as if it came from far away, somewhere cold and empty and
hollow and echoing. “My handwriting’s crooked.”

Riordan shifted. Sean could feel the carefulness in him, and he didn’t want to. God,

he was tired of taking care and treading softly, but he wouldn’t hurt Riordan again. He
couldn’t and live with himself afterward. He couldn’t.

“You need to know what happened to me.”
Riordan aborted a sharp movement; he hid it well, but not well enough to conceal it

from Sean. “Do you want to tell me, or do you think I want to know? Because you can
keep the secret the rest of your life and it won’t make me angry. It’s your story to tell.”

“That’s why.” Sean tried to open one of the takeout boxes and misjudged the effort

needed. Cardboard tore, and sesame chicken spilled over his hands, sopping the cuff of
his sleeve in sugary sauce. He stopped still in frustration and barked out, “Don’t.”

“Sean—”
“You need to know because you have to understand why you shouldn’t be with me,”

Sean said, slow at first, picking up speed as he went. “Okay? I was ordinary, I was
normal, I was pretty, and I thought Leo was too old, but he had the looks and he had the
cash, and I thought that made me a whore, but back then I didn’t care.” He drew in a raw
breath and pounded the counter with one fist, dangerously close to the dish drainer
loaded with cutlery. “And he had a temper. He called me his pet. I didn’t think anything
of it until it was too late.”

“Sean, careful.” Riordan lifted his arm away from the sink. “There are knives in

there. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“When I tried to leave him, he ran me down with his car.” Sean couldn’t look at him

again. He made himself turn his head and do it anyway, flinging the glare at Riordan as a
marksman would fling one of those knives and send it thudding into a tree. Sharp, meant
to hurt. “You can’t fix what he did to me. No one can. No one should. I earned the marks.
There’s no taking them back. Not unless you wiped my mind clean too, and you can’t get
in there.”

He stopped, the sound of his breath louder than Riordan’s. Riordan’s eyes were a

shade too wide, white showing around the irises before he blinked, and his lips pale, set.
A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“You can’t put me back together again. I wish you could, so much, but it isn’t

possible. Do you understand now?”

Sean watched Riordan, tense, waiting for the command to go. Riordan had to see

sense now. Please, God, let him. Sean couldn’t have made it out for the life of him. He
shouldn’t have come, but he had. He shouldn’t have hoped, but he’d dared. He shouldn’t
have trusted, but he’d been weak.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
And now Riordan knew why.
“Leo’s in prison now,” Sean said. “Not for what he did to me, because that isn’t how

the world works. He had a great lawyer. Nothing but the best for Leo. He claimed
visibility was poor on the side street where he hit me, and he didn’t see me in time. He
swore he didn’t even know it was me until the ambulances came. I had vodka on my
breath. Just a sip, and my blood alcohol level checked out as sober, but they still decided
it was my judgment that’d been impaired.”

“God. Sean.”
Sean wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop talking now. “And I lived. It wasn’t even

manslaughter. People cluck and fuss, you know, but talk is cheap. They don’t know what
to do with someone like me, or don’t want to know. It’s easier to pretend I don’t exist.
Maybe they just don’t give a damn if an old queen uses his boy-toy bitch as a punching
bag. If he hadn’t been screwing with his taxes, and if that hadn’t come out, he’d be free
now. As it is, he’s in minimum security. Criminal Club Med. That’s the world I live in,
Riordan.”

“It’s not the best world it could be,” Riordan said. He moved, and Sean tensed—but

he’d only meant to pick the pieces of sesame out of his sink, into the container, top closed
and tidied away, as if the accident never happened. Why? It couldn’t be eaten now. Only
thing it was good for was filling a trash bin.

He turned the tap and ran his hands beneath a stream of crystalline water, sticky

syrup hard to get off, trailing in rivulets.

Get it over with

, Sean wanted to shout at him. Just let it be done.

Riordan elbowed the tap off and patted his hands on his hips. He left damp prints

behind. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he said, moving into Sean’s space, closer, faster,
telegraphing every move but not stopping. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not—”
“Wrong,” Riordan said, his lips next to Sean’s. “And I’m going to show you. And I

promise you, I won’t be gentle.”

Chapter Eight

Riordan kept his hand at the back of Sean’s head, skullcap snug in his palm. Sean

copied him. His fingertips brushed the shell of Riordan’s ear. Riordan’s curls slid through
Sean’s fingers, catching on rough scar tissue in time with the shivers he knew Sean
couldn’t help. The courage it took him…

Sean wet his lips, quick slips of pink tongue drawn across pale flesh too fast to do any

good. “What if I wanted you to be gentle? If I wished hard enough that I could let that
happen, then would you?”

The question went through Riordan’s head in a flash of light and color but no

comprehensible meaning. Sean’s hand felt odd, the bones not exactly aligned as they
should be. His left hand. He didn’t fight the capture. “What’re you saying?”

Sharp white teeth pressed sharper against those lips. Sean shook his head. “I don’t

know what I mean.” He raised himself on tiptoe—awkwardly, as he did everything—
shoulders and hips at an angle slanting left, and touched his mouth to Riordan’s.

Lightly at first. Barely noticeable. Then harder, Sean nipping at Riordan’s upper lip.

His right hand worked in hesitant strokes across Riordan’s back.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sean said against Riordan’s mouth. He turned his

head to get a better angle, his tongue sleeking through Riordan’s lips and stroking his
hard palate.

Sean would overbalance soon. Riordan steadied him, a hand at the small of his back.

It was all he could do to hold back the tide. “I don’t know if this is what you need, Sean.”

“You think I know? If anyone does, you do.” Sean punctuated the declaration with a

tug at Riordan’s hair and a knuckle to the small of his back. “What do I need?”

Sean tasted of the sesame ginger he’d licked off the back of his hand, salty and sweet

and spicy at the same time. “I don’t know everything.”

He pulled harder at Riordan’s hair, drawing him down to meet his eyes. More than.

To almost tangle their lashes together. “I’m not an idiot. No one knows everything.” His
knuckles dug deeper; Riordan would have bruises the next day. “But you know me.”

Riordan took Sean’s face, cupped in the palms of his hands, and let the world spin

away from them into the shadows, leaving nothing but the kiss behind.

Sean’s mouth, soft and hard, wet and firm. Sean’s lips, full and cold. Sean’s tongue,

quicksilver fast. He could chase, but when Riordan came after him, he froze—Riordan
didn’t miss it, couldn’t—and fell back, submissive. He made a desperate noise and
tightened his hold, hanging on so hard Riordan imagined he heard his ribs creak.

“Stop.” He turned from side to side, not hard, only enough to suggest to Sean he ease

up. “You’re sure about this?”

Sean’s pupils were dilated a deep, drowning black. “No,” he said. The eyes made

him look as if he’d been drugged or had drunk a full bottle of bloodred wine, down to
the dregs, but his lips were firm if wet and swollen from kissing, and when he let go, his

hands were tight in lopsided fists. “But if you’re sure, maybe I could be sure too. I could
try.”

Riordan thought he understood. A crown of thorns and a tangle of barbed wire

protected Sean on the outside, but inside, Riordan could just catch a glimpse of a faltering
but still-beating heart, pale pink and distorted with blockage that needed working free.
Sean couldn’t help fighting himself.

He was looking to Riordan to help him find his way.
Riordan kissed him one more time, just in case he changed his mind. Sean’s body

molded against his as if a sculptor were carving them out of the same stone, like this,
Sean’s chest straining for air, Sean’s cock flush hard against Riordan’s thigh. Riordan’s
knee nudged between both his legs, Riordan’s arms around Sean, Riordan holding him
up.

He had to stop, to breathe, air coming in ragged snatches. His mind wrestled through

treacle, tumblers thumping, tapping out the slowest plan in a code of raps and knocks.
“Not here, standing up.”

“Where?” Sean asked, not moving.
Bed, Riordan thought, then discarded the idea fast. Who knew what kinds of

associations beds had for Sean? Probably nothing good. “Couch,” he said, slowly clearing
his airway. “You know where it is. Go sit. Give me a minute so I can walk without
embarrassing myself.”

Sean bit a kiss beneath Riordan’s ear. “I know what you’re doing,” he said, quiet

even though he didn’t need to be. “You’re giving me an out.”

Riordan stretched his hand wide on Sean’s back. “If you need one, it’s there. That’s

all I’m saying.”

Sean didn’t answer him. Not directly. He stepped back and away, regarding Riordan

inscrutably through narrowed blue eyes with a fan of ebony lashes shadowing his cheeks.
Obsidian and ivory. He nodded once. “Close your eyes.”

Riordan obeyed but asked, “Why?”
“Count to ten.” Sean sounded farther away now, leaving Riordan struck all over

again by how silently he could move when he wanted, and how he crashed and clattered
like a thunderstorm when he didn’t want. “Then come and find me. Please.”

Riordan waited. He could close his eyes, but there was a thing Sean needed to see.

Don’t put it off any longer.

He wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean he wanted a fight instead of—no, not a fuck; this

wasn’t that. Closer to what he did with needles and ink. Covering old marks.

Reclaiming. Even though he wasn’t mine to start with.
Claiming.
Riordan listened, his head slightly cocked to the side. Couldn’t make out the

direction of Sean’s footfalls. The small dark man walked as lightly as a cat.

Riordan waited, shoulders tight, for the sound of his apartment door shutting Sean

out and him in.

Nothing.
He counted to ten and opened his eyes.
Sean wasn’t on the couch. Nor in the kitchen, nor in the four-foot square his landlord

called a hallway.

He waited for Riordan to find him in the bedroom, shrouded by dark and limned

with moonlight from the uncurtained window and the lamplight he’d retreated from.
Shadowed but visible when Riordan didn’t block the way. He lifted his chin when he
saw Riordan hesitate, his pointed chin hard with pride and his back drawn up as straight
at possible. As proud as a prince, stripped naked even though he hadn’t shed a stitch of
his clothing. Riordan could see how terrified he was. Anyone with sense would have
seen how Sean’s nerves were strung tight as garrote wire. But the sheer courage, when he
sat on the bed, stole Riordan’s breath as swift and sure as a thief in the night.

Broken and waiting to be fixed. Even if he didn’t think of it like that yet.
And Riordan might just snap him in a few more places if he didn’t make good on his

promise to himself.

Sean toed off his boots, frowning with the effort it took. He tested the bed for

creaking springs and pushed backward, carrying his body up the middle and lying on his
back.

His hand went between his legs to press against his cock. Riordan bit his tongue. He

couldn’t have looked away if the apartment burst into flame behind his back. Watching
that, the fight between pride, fear, courage, and wanting, held him still as a waxwork.

Sean’s hands were clumsy when he drew down his zipper and slid his hand inside.

He flashed an arrow of blue at Riordan. “Help me,” he said.

And Riordan was undone. Almost.
“Stop,” he said, biting his lip hard, almost too hard.
Sean froze. Riordan had spoken too loudly, the word sharp as the rap of a ruler

across knuckles.

“Not like that,” Riordan said. Now or never. Okay. “I want to show you something

first. Sit up. Look.”

Sean worked his elbows beneath himself to prop his weight on them. Guarded now,

his expression was, but still willing.

Riordan crossed his fingers, hoped, and pulled his T-shirt over his head, baring his

chest.

He heard Sean’s sharp indrawn hiss before he’d cleared the fabric from his eyes and

could see him properly again, but pretended he hadn’t. He cast the shirt into a corner,
then stood with his arms at his sides and waited.

Sean worked his way from leaning on his back to something close to hands and

knees, then sitting again, then standing. He lifted his chin at Riordan. “Stand in the light.
By the window.”

“I didn’t hide it on purpose,” Riordan said, rubbing below the scar no one could

mistake for anything but exactly what it was. He couldn’t tell what Sean was thinking. “I
didn’t have a chance before now. I don’t talk about it. Much.”

Sean wasn’t listening. Riordan could tell that much, at least. That is, he thought Sean

heard, but listening and hearing: two different things. Riordan let Sean push him to the
window and nudge him to stand in the best the pale blue light had to offer.

Sean pushed Riordan’s hand out of the way and braced himself on the windowsill.

Looking, not touching. Riordan looked down at the scar, and at the intricate work
twisted and bent out of shape. “Happened about a year ago,” he said. “I was in the
wrong place at the wrong time. No reason except being there.”

“You haven’t fixed them yet,” Sean said. If Riordan couldn’t tell anything from his

expression, he could tell less from his voice, baritone still rich and deep but flat as a heart
monitor with no signal coming through.

“Not yet.” Riordan reached to cover the mark out of habit and knocked wrists with

Sean. “Not because I didn’t want to. Because it wasn’t time yet. It will be soon.”

“How can you fix this?” Sean asked. His hand was cold against Riordan’s. “It’s

broken. It’ll never look like it used to no matter what you do, and it’s too complicated to
cover with something new. It’ll look like patchwork.”

“Maybe,” Riordan said. He wished he knew what was going through that head of

Sean’s. “But it’ll be mine, and I’m the only one who has to care. Do you understand what
I’m saying?”

Sean said nothing. Did nothing. Barely breathing, a man carved of obsidian and ice.
Riordan couldn’t not reach for him. He hadn’t been able to stop himself since they’d

met. “Changed your mind?”

Sean looked up at Riordan through his lashes. He laid his hand on Riordan’s heart,

over the scar. “Yes,” he said. That, and nothing more.

Then his lips were on Riordan’s, and his arms, so surprisingly strong, drew him

down to the bed.

DON’T THINK ABOUT it now. Don’t

. Sean carried Riordan down to the bed with

him, over him, stronger than Sean had thought he could be, stronger than he’d known
himself to be in years. He didn’t waste time wondering why. Tomorrow. Think about it
tomorrow.

Riordan jerked against him. Surprised? Sean too. Not in the same way. Sean bit the

side of Riordan’s neck and drew his tongue over dented impressions not breaking the
skin. He held Riordan by the hair, by the waist, and worked to part his legs wide enough
for Riordan to lie between them. From there, he could hook his right thigh up, his right
knee across the back of Riordan’s, and hold him tighter still. It was easy.

He let go of Riordan’s hair and pushed his right hand between them, down the front

of Riordan’s jeans, and took hold of the hard flesh there. Riordan bucked, thrusting into

the rough circle of palm and fingers, slippery wetness trailing over Sean’s thumb. Glad
he lay on his back with Riordan atop him and he didn’t have to try to balance or fear
falling, Sean was able to lift his left hand and touch the scar on Riordan’s chest.

They’d hurt Riordan’s heart. Whoever they were, they’d dared to hurt his heart.

Damn them to hell. That wasn’t allowed. Not in any good world. Not in the world
Riordan lived in.

Sean tipped his head back to give Riordan room to move, down and closer, tighter

and harder, and found his lips by Riordan’s ear. He scored his nails down Riordan’s side,
caught Riordan’s earlobe between his teeth, and held him there to breathe in his ear,
“Fuck me. Please.”

He could feel the restraint Riordan needed to draw on to hold still when Riordan

said, “Don’t ask me unless you mean it.”

“Do you think I’d ask for anything I didn’t want?”
“Right now? Maybe.” Riordan looked down to study Sean’s face as if he could read

everything there was to say about both of them printed there or etched as fine as
copperplate writing with a needle.

Sean let him look. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t ungentle. He let Riordan see what he

wanted Riordan to see, and what he wanted to show, and left nothing behind.

Riordan crushed Sean with his weight, and Sean’s mouth with his. His embrace

pressed them so tightly together they had to struggle to get their clothes off, down, out of
the way. Not all of them, and not too far. Only giving them both enough room to move.

And yet not enough room at all. Sean couldn’t stop himself hissing and freezing

when Riordan slipped a hand beneath his shirt, and that wasn’t fair, that wasn’t right at
all, but Riordan didn’t let that stop him. He pushed at Sean, meaning to be gentle, but
rough with need. Rolling him to his stomach and leaving his shirt alone for the sake of
tugging his jeans down. New, stiff and thick, the denim resisted, copper rivets hot, cold,
hot, and forgotten altogether when Riordan’s lips touched the bare skin at the small of
Sean’s back, above the cleft of his ass. When Riordan’s hair bristled and tickled skin no
one had seen in a long time.

He didn’t try to move Sean’s shirt up. That left him only one direction to go, and he

took it, down, down, down. Spreading Sean open, nose bumping, tongue delving deep.
Wet flickers on tight skin, working their way in.

Sean moaned and tried to spread his legs wider. He knotted sheets in his fists and

swore, a cry ringing off the walls, when his hip wouldn’t hold him.

Riordan caught him, shored him up, and didn’t stop. Sean’s cock lay stiff and heavy

against his stomach, unattended, but he didn’t give a damn, not the least bit of a damn.
Riordan’s cock nudged him when he crouched closer, going deeper, wetter.

Sean reached under the pillows. A man like Riordan would have hoped but not

assumed, and he’d have been ready just in case.

There

. Sean found what he’d looked for almost without searching, small bottle and

foil square tumbling into his hands on the downward plane caused by the weight of their

bodies. Good. He pushed at Riordan to make the man give him room to move and
wriggled over ungracefully to lie on his stomach.

Riordan stilled. “Sean?”
But even as he asked, he let go of Sean’s right side and stretched to take the supplies

Sean had found from him. And even as he reached, he hesitated.

Sean twisted, though it hurt, to flash a sharp stare over his shoulder. “Don’t ask.

Please. Take.”

Riordan pressed his forehead hard to Sean’s back, skin hot and hair tickling through

the wrinkles and folds of his shirt. He didn’t feel the belt marks there, or if he did, he
didn’t speak of them. He fumbled the bottle, and it rolled down to his knee and lodged
there, between him and Sean.

Sean forced himself to focus. To block out anything—everything—besides Riordan.

He drew his knees beneath him, waiting for Riordan’s next move.

A crackle of tearing aluminum. A click of a cap opening. Slick crinkling of latex over

skin, of a lube-wet hand over latex. A shock of cold warmed by Riordan’s fingers, too
rough, just right, thrusting inside him.

Riordan’s hands on his hips, his cock there, ready, and Riordan stopping one last

time.

And Sean wanted…more.
Sean let the air drain from him, holding his empty lungs still though they burned for

want of air, and nodded once, a rough jerk; he looked over his shoulder again, a silent
plea.

It hurt. Sean had known it would, after he’d gone so long untouched, and he didn’t

fight. His nails dug into his palms. He didn’t know he’d begun to breathe again, harsh
and shallow and rapid, until Riordan stopped halfway in and kneaded the tight muscles
in his back, rough shushes and words that weren’t real words falling broken from his lips.

A man like Riordan, and whoever had held the gun, they’d dared to damage his

heart.

Sean let go and let Riordan in.
Riordan’s weight shifted them both; Riordan held them upright and steady. “Didn’t

think you’d let me do this,” Sean heard him saying, raw as the edge of a newly chopped
hawthorn. He filled Sean, and Sean heard Riordan grinding his teeth.

He reached between his legs to take hold of his cock. He had to, had to, had to.
Riordan slapped Sean’s hand away and replaced it with his own. “Don’t you fucking

dare.” He took firm hold and worked Sean as if he’d known how for years, or as if he
just…already, somehow, knew Sean.

Sean butted his head against the bed and screwed his eyes tight shut, blood-pressure

starbursts exploding white against the darkness of his lids. He moved back, into Riordan,
and wished he could have shed the jeans, the sweater, everything that stood between skin
and skin.

Didn’t matter. Not now. Next time. If there was a next time. Then, maybe.
Riordan muttered to himself, a long litany of things that didn’t make sense, and Sean

didn’t bother listening. He paid attention to Riordan’s body instead. Hard flanks, strong
calves, bare feet tucked tight to the mattress. Balls slapping against his ass, cock filling
him. He’d been so empty before this, and he hadn’t remembered what it was like to be
stretched, spitted, spread open.

Riordan drew his thumbnail down Sean’s cock. A bark of laughter and a hiss of

encouragement and a hand to catch his cum and smear it on his stomach, painting him
thickly wet.

Sean bore his weight on his right side and covered Riordan’s dripping fingers,

pressing both their hands to his stomach, and pushed hard when Riordan shuddered still.

He bit his lips shut when Riordan pulled out too fast, too soon, but he could forgive

that.

He could forgive, too, Riordan rolling him to his back and kissing him deep, hard, as

if he never planned to stop, not ever…

Chapter Nine

Riordan didn’t remember falling asleep. He only knew he’d dozed off when a soft

click

woke him.

The door, he thought, lying on his stomach with his face hidden in the pillow. So

that’s that. He’s gone again.

At least Sean hadn’t slammed the door on his way out.
Riordan sat, dragging his hair away from his face. He grimaced at the tangled mess.

Ten-to-one odds he’d want to cut the lot when he got a look at himself in a mirror.

He brushed at a sore red spot on his knee. It’d been a while since he’d gone after his

own like that, on his knees. He should have expected it’d leave a mark. Well, why not?
He liked having something besides a memory to remember the night by.

What the hell had gotten into Sean? Or gotten out of him, more like. Riordan blew

out a breath and let his hand fall from prodding the red pressure mark. He rubbed his
chest over the rough scar tissue and the broken design.

A small noise surprised Riordan out of his fugue. Riordan’s brows drew together. He

slipped out of bed and tugged on his jeans with a wince at the rasp of a zipper over bare
skin, glad of his bare feet if nothing else. Was Sean still there? Nah. Can’t be.

But he was. The click Riordan had heard was Sean turning on the lamp. Might have

been longer ago than Riordan had thought; time had funny ways of passing faster or
slower when a man drifted in the foggy place between sleeping and waking.

However long it’d taken, Sean hadn’t left. He’d washed himself and tidied his

clothing. His hair fell forward to hide his face as he perched on the edge of Riordan’s old
couch, and—

Riordan halted, a full stop in the open-frame door between corridor and living space.

He didn’t think Sean had noticed him yet. He wasn’t sure Sean would have noticed an
explosion if someone touched off a blasting cap on a pound of C4 next door.

Riordan’s watercolors, pots ranged far out of order, were open on the table, a half-

empty cup of water beside them and a paintbrush in Sean’s hand. His right hand. Sean
had stretched his left hand, the one with the worst scars and the misshapen bones, out
before him and drawn lines of brown and green paint over the ruined skin.

Sean glanced sideways and up—I know you’re there—and said nothing, going back to

the work. He steadied the paintbrush and drew a line of sienna in an awkward diagonal
across his wrist.

Cherry blossoms, copied from the drawing he’d made for Lainey. Cherry branches

and blossoms as shaky and ill formed as if by a child, but boldly drawn, with Sean
dipping his brush into the sienna again to go back for more.

Watching him, Riordan thought, I used to know what a survivor was. I’m not sure I

did, before now.

He padded forward, bearing his weight as he normally would. Sean had left room

for him on the side of the couch. On purpose or not, Riordan didn’t know. He took it
anyway, pressing hip to hip with Sean.

Sean side-eyed him, the brush stilling, its handle jutting out toward him.
Riordan wondered…
The best and the worst I can do is try

. He took the brush from Sean, who willingly let it

go, and drew a neater, thinner line where the shape of Sean’s hand told him a line should
rest.

It didn’t look right, somehow.
Sean frowned at the mark with him. Neater, sure, but not nicer.
He understood before Riordan did and nudged Riordan’s hand with his, fingers

working to grasp the brush with him.

The line they painted together wasn’t perfect. But it looked right.
Riordan let the brush fall away, dripping paint on the table. He shrugged that off; the

old thing had seen worse. “Sean?” he asked, touching the pads of his fingers to Sean’s
jaw. “Sean, look at me.”

Sean didn’t. Contrary as ever.
But his kiss was different. Soft. Almost shy. Mouth closed, touch light, and silence

after. The kind of silence where anything could happen, and—

A sudden buzzing startled them both, Riordan back and Sean away. Sean bent his

hand, smearing the lines of wet paint together in a hopeless smudge of earth hues.

“No, it’s okay. My pager. It always makes me flinch.” Riordan reached for it before

he thought, My pager. Oh fuck. Marguerite.

But…no. That wasn’t Marguerite’s number. A brief accompanying text identified the

caller as Lainey’s sister, with an emergency code following.

Lainey? But that shouldn’t… That didn’t make sense to Riordan. Lainey was

supposed to be all right.

Sean watched him as tightly as a bait dog watched a fighter. He didn’t move. Not

even when Riordan thought he wanted to, when Riordan read the coded message and his
heart sank like a wishing penny down a well with no bottom, down deep into the earth.
“Something’s wrong,” he said.

“What happened?”
“A client—a patient—of mine is on her way to the hospital. That’s all I know.”

Riordan tried to stay calm for Sean’s sake if nothing else. “I have to go. Where’d I leave
my—”

Sean disappeared. He moved awkwardly when he hurried, but he could rush when

he wanted. Into the bedroom and out again, Riordan’s shoes in one hand, a clean sweater
over his shoulder. “It’s too cold out for short sleeves. Unless you need your scrubs,” he
said. “I’ll go back if you do.”

Riordan’s head spun, or would have if it hadn’t already tilted on its axis and whirled

away in free fall. Scrubs. Scrubs would be better, but he kept a set at the hospital, and he

could change there if he needed to; what he couldn’t do was waste time—

“I have to go,” he said again, hating that all he could manage now of all times was

repetition, when Sean was…was…

Riordan gave up. He took the sweater and the shoes, wrestling and stumping into

both, and caught a key ring off the table where he’d last seen the chain and keys hiding
under a rough draft. He stripped off one key and pressed it into Sean’s hand without
giving him a chance to stop and question, What, why, should I? “You can stay the night. If
you want. Or longer. This is for the door. Lock it when you…” He stopped himself.

Sean’s hand closed around the key, and he gave Riordan the strangest look of all.
Riordan couldn’t stay to explain. He bent from the waist, a sharp angle, and caught

Sean’s mouth with his, haphazard and oblique. His stubble scraped against Sean’s.

This thing wasn’t settled between them. Nowhere near it. “I—”
Sean came away from the kiss still with the peculiar look on his face, something

Riordan couldn’t read at all. “Go,” he said. His knuckles whitened and relaxed, and
again, around the key. He opened his hand to show Riordan where it rested on his palm.
“No one said it was a problem.”

Riordan pushed the hair away from Sean’s face. “Leave it like that,” he said. “Just

until I’m gone.” He cast about for his wallet, found it in his pocket, and—

He had no choice. He had to go.
But he took one last look back, at Sean in his home. He watched Sean as he left,

hoping Sean knew: I’m not running away from you.

He thought maybe Sean did know. Just maybe.
All he could do, though, was hope and—
Go.

Chapter Ten

The pull cord on the bus was cold this early in the morning, chilly from a night’s

storage in an unheated garage, a thin rope of ice that burned Sean’s fingers. He ignored
the stinging. Others disembarked at the tattoo studio stop with him. Only two. They
clumped off the bus, impatient with Sean as he made his slow way ahead of them. Both
of them took off like sluggish dervishes for the chain coffee shop three down and one
across. Even in the cold, the café’s windows were steamed and crowded with the blurred
outlines of a mob surging in a caffeine bacchanal.

Sean wouldn’t have minded a cup, but he’d wait.
Compared to the café, Riordan’s studio looked empty. Almost abandoned. Lights

were on, and the sign on the door had been flipped to OPEN, but as far as Sean could tell
no one was home.

No, that was wrong. He saw one person inside. Sean flexed his hands, wishing he’d

remembered gloves, and watched Riordan’s friend Jae move as calmly as a slow current
through what must be his morning routine. No Riordan in sight. Sean could have picked
him out of a crowd. Any crowd. Anywhere.

Where did you go?

The question made the back of Sean’s neck crinkle with tension and

uncertainty. What happened, Riordan?

If the pull cord on the bus had been chilly, the handle on the studio’s door was frigid.

Heavy too. Stiff. Needed some oil. Sean pulled as hard as he could and managed enough
of a gap to slip through, heavy coat and all, footfalls landing with a softer pad once
inside.

Jae glanced up at Sean, registering neither surprise nor lack of surprise, pleasure or

displeasure. He could have defined either “indifference” or “imperturbability.”
Annoying that Sean couldn’t tell which.

He would have liked a welcome from Riordan the first time he came inside, but you

couldn’t always get what you wanted, and you made do with the rest. He nodded to Jae,
who inclined his head ever so slightly in return and carried on with a handful of clean
paper towels and a spray bottle full of some antiseptic with a sharp chemical odor.

Sean didn’t know what he’d expected of a tattoo studio. Something less like a

doctor’s office, he supposed. Maybe a dentist’s chair patched with duct tape and a
hulking machine like a drill. Big-breasted, airbrushed pinups on the walls.

His fancies couldn’t have been further from reality. The floor was polished to a

glossy shine, tiles made to look like wood parquet. A reception desk, in common use
from the look of it and lack of a particular owner’s stamp, boasting phone, pens, and a
three-inch three-ring binder jammed to bursting with pages of notes and schedules.
Dividers somewhat similar to Japanese screens blocked most of the view back to where
work got done. Private. Discreet. Beautiful. He hadn’t been able to make out a quarter as
much detail the morning before, standing outside looking in.

I wish I’d come in then.

“Riordan’s not here,” Jae said, startling Sean into turning almost too sharply from his

study of one of the screens. They weren’t what he’d thought, not factory produced but
hand painted on stretched canvas. The gallery would sell screens like these at a premium
if they had half a chance.

Sean nodded in wary acknowledgment of Jae’s presence, then looked back at the

display rack of standard designs mounted on the near wall. These, at least, were what
he’d figured on. Poster-sized papers crammed with hearts, skulls, flowers, kanji, and
cartoons. “These aren’t originals,” he said, and though he tried to keep his voice down, it
still echoed in the room.

“You sound sure of yourself,” Jae said in return. He stowed the cleaning supplies and

squirted sanitizing gel in his hands, rubbing them briskly together. “How do you know?”

“I’ve seen Riordan’s work.” Sean pushed the panels of the rack like a stack of

dominoes, sliding them all to the left. “This isn’t his style. Where is he?”

Something in Jae’s eyes flickered. Sean recognized the layer of reserve and didn’t

take offense. He appreciated the effort. A man like Riordan would have friends protective
of him. As he should.

“Riordan? I already told you he’s not here,” Jae said, gesturing at the otherwise

empty storefront. He stopped moving and eyed Sean more closely. “That baritone is the
last thing anyone would expect out of you.”

Sean almost smiled. Almost. “Riordan said the same thing.”
Jae returned the same almost-smile, though he still hadn’t made up his mind about

Sean yet. Sean could tell.

“You look like an anime boy,” Jae said. Trying to goad Sean. Not out of meanness.

More in the interest of seeing how he’d react. “You’re all eyes and legs. Anything I can
do for you?”

Sean raised one shoulder. The anime comment didn’t bother him. He didn’t know

why. Only that it didn’t, and he wanted to hold that feeling as close as a warm blanket on
a cold night.

“I came for Riordan,” he said, drifting closer to a framed article about reconstructive

tattooing. “Will he be back soon?”

“No telling. You’re tenacious, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Sean idled slowly closer to the reception desk. Jae put

himself between Sean and the appointment book. So they took privacy seriously too. He
glanced down at a wastepaper bin, oddly crammed for so early in the morning. Sheaves
of sketch paper with cherry blossoms and broken branches.

Oh.
“You’re sure he’s not here?” he tested Jae by asking.
“You came to check up on him?” Jae asked, letting his doubt show. He stepped

between Sean and the bin. As if Sean would start rummaging. He had more sense.

He did, didn’t he? He’d forgotten how that felt.

“Yes,” he said, choosing one word over dozens and privately enjoying Jae’s surprise.

“Something upset him last night. I don’t know what. He didn’t say. I wanted to see if he
needed me. Anything. If I could help.”

He couldn’t read a single line of the thoughts passing quicksilver over Jae’s face. Jae

crossed his arms and watched Sean watch him. “There’s nothing you can do to help,” he
said at last.

Jae probably sent would-be troublemakers running with that stance, but Sean had

run for too long, and he was tired of moving. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’d like to find
out for myself. When will he be back?”

Jae narrowed his eyes, not cruelly. Sean had an odd feeling of judgment passed,

though he had no idea what the verdict might be. “There isn’t anything you can do.
There isn’t anything anyone can do.”

Sean didn’t agree. At a second look at Jae, he suspected Jae wanted to know if he

would

disagree. He inclined his head once, deliberately, not breaking eye contact. “Tell

him I came to see him.”

It wasn’t a question, and so it was fair enough Jae didn’t offer an answer.
Sean flicked a glance at the wastepaper bin and bit the inside of his lip. “Tell him I’ll

be back, then. Tonight. Before you close.” He didn’t wait to hear what Jae would say in
reply, if he said anything at all, but let himself back out into the cold.

Sean thought he knew what was wrong. What had happened.
He thought he might know how to help instead of hurt for once, but he needed to be

sure. He needed more information, the right materials to work with, and privacy too.

Risky, but Riordan was worth the risk. Even if he hadn’t been, Sean couldn’t have

helped himself. Riordan had worked his way beneath Sean’s skin as surely as his inks and
needles.

Inks and needles. Designs and

… Sean breathed in a gulp of fume-laced city air, asphalt

and diesel and wet wool and snow on its way, and exhaled in a rush of surety.

He knew where to go from here. Or at least where to start, and sometimes—not

always, but sometimes—they were the same thing.

JAE TAPPED THE edge of the dividing barrier between storefront and staff only. “I

know you’re still back here.”

“Yeah. You’re a bad, bad man, Jae.” Riordan kicked an empty box of tissues in his

friend’s direction. The box clattered, harmless, to Jae, who ignored it as he’d been meant
to.

Jae leaned against the side of the barrier, profile to Riordan, not looking directly at

him. “You could have come out at any time, you know.”

“He doesn’t need to see me this messed up.”
Jae quirked one eyebrow to ask wordlessly, Are you sure about that?
Riordan rubbed his face. “Why Lainey? She was better. Almost well.”

But it was Lainey after all. She’d had a stroke. No one saw it coming.
“If I knew the answer to that…” Jae let his thought trail off. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
Jae let a brief silence pass between them. “I didn’t expect to see your Sean here in the

shop for days yet.”

Riordan thanked Jae with a wordless tilt of the head for trying to change the subject.

It wouldn’t work, but at least he could move back and forth between topics when one got
too much to bear for the moment. “Me, I’d thought weeks. Is there any water in the
cooler?”

“Find out for yourself. You’re closer.”
Riordan pushed off the task chair he’d crashed in first thing after leaving the

hospital, after finding somewhere he could go to pieces and let the devil take the rest.
Last intake had been a few sour sips of weak yet stewed machine coffee saturated with
saccharine.

He liked Jae’s refusal to wait on him. That wasn’t what Jae was for. He’d help, but

only to a degree. After that, Jae was the one who stayed on his back about PT and quietly,
efficiently, called him on his bullshit and kept him straight. Not that he didn’t
sympathize. Or empathize; there was a difference.

Jae had known Lainey too.
“I went to visit Marguerite while I was at the hospital with Lainey’s family,” Riordan

said as he crouched in front of the small cooler unit and pulled out a bottle of water. The
seal cracked as loudly as a whip when he twisted. Tasted better than winter apples, plain
water, soothing the parched desert in his throat. “She and Lainey didn’t know each
other. I just wanted to see her and…”

Life couldn’t be predicted, was the thing. He shouldn’t have lived after being shot.

Sean shouldn’t have survived being run down by a car.

Marguerite was coming around. She might make it after all.
And Lainey, who was supposed to be out of the woods, had fallen among them, and

she wouldn’t rise again.

Riordan’s mind shied away from the thought. “I should’ve come out, before, to

explain to Sean why I was the one to take off running last night.”

“Mmm,” Jae vocalized, noncommittal. “Might not have done either of you any

good.”

“Never know until you try.” Riordan rubbed his face. “How’d he look?”
The glance Jae shot him was wry and amused.
“You know what I mean. I left him in a hurry last night when the pager went off,

and—”

“He didn’t look like he was thinking about himself,” Jae said, interrupting. He

nodded when Riordan fell abruptly silent. “All he cared about was whether you were all
right. He circled the place like a dog locked in a strange room, and then he zeroed in.”

“Shit.” Riordan speared five fingers through his hair. “Who knows what he’s

thinking now.” He cocked a brow at Jae. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you all but dared
him to come back.”

“Did I?”
Riordan discovered he could still laugh. How about that. “You did, one hundred

percent.”

“For the good of both of you,” Jae said. “You weren’t ready to face him. Or anyone.

Later, you will be. Eventually you’ll match up at the same time.”

“Even a stopped watch is right twice a day?”
“Something like that.” Jae watched him drain the bottle of water and toss it into a

bin. “We’ve got a full day lined up. Lots of last minute appointments. In-house only, but
we have enough to stay busy for a solid twelve hours. Are you steady enough for the
job?”

No. And yes

. Life went on, work went on, and you took what pleasure you could find

along the way; you looked for the good things and worked your ass off to keep them,
even if the diamonds in the rough needed a thousand and one nights’ worth of polishing.

“Almost.” Riordan wiped off the bottle’s condensation that gathered in his palms,

pressed his hand over the scar that broke and bisected his chest-piece tattoo, and looked
up. Work was what he needed. Work to distract him from thinking about Lainey, about
Marguerite, about Sean. “Jae? Tell me something good.”

Jae chuckled, hoist on the petard of his own catchphrase. But he must have been

waiting for that. He had an answer ready to fly, and he cast it over his shoulder as bait
and lure to call Riordan back out into the bright, bad world. “Sean wasn’t carrying his
runaway knapsack today. He came in on his own. Just him. Looking for you. If that’s not
good, what is?”

* * * *

Seven o’clock came and went, dark night fallen outside, and Riordan still couldn’t

stop himself checking the time with each click of a quarter hour passing.

Mare stretched on the table. She lay on her stomach, arms crossed beneath her head

for a pillow to rest against. She snapped her fingers to get his attention. “Somewhere else
you’d rather be?”

Riordan could feel the point in Jae’s long look at him. Rueful, he kicked back from the

worktable. “Almost done. Let me clean this up and take a look.” A squirt from the sterile
water bottle and a swipe of a paper towel cleared away smears of excess ink and blood,
both close to the same red. Filling in the shading and highlights on a full back piece took
time, and Mare hadn’t spared the details.

Neither had he, and even if he couldn’t leave the clock alone, it was good to sink

himself into something that ate up the minutes rushing past. He dabbed at the design, a
dragon in a sinuous coil across her narrow back, its mouth open either in a smile or to
breathe fire, its talons spread wide to strike or to play. Definitely fitting for her, and her

skin was a smooth, sun-browned canvas, easy to work on.

Jae leaned over Riordan’s shoulder and whistled. “Nice.”
Jae didn’t give out compliments for free, and Mare knew it. She wriggled, craning to

look back. “Can I see?”

Riordan found the oversize hand mirror exactly where it was supposed to be. Jae

must have done that for him. He knew he hadn’t been thinking earlier. “Here.” He
pressed the plastic end into Mare’s hand. “You might have to knot yourself into a pretzel
to get a decent look, but have at it. Or if you want, you can get up and go check yourself
in the full-length mirror.” He cracked his knuckles. “No harm in needing a break.”

Mare contorted herself in bizarre cubist angles, scoffing at him. “Breaks are for

pussies, and this is fucking awesome. Worth the tips.” She handed the mirror to Jae
rather than brain herself or Riordan trying to push it his way. “Almost a month’s worth,
before you ask, because you Blind Tiger boys can be stingy as hell.” She wriggled again,
contentedly this time, like the dragon drawn on her flesh might when settling down for a
nap on his mountain of gold.

Riordan grinned despite himself. “I’ll remember that next time you pull a pint for

me.”

“Damn right.” Mare settled. “Let’s get it done. Is that rain I hear outside?”
Jae answered for Riordan, otherwise busy filling caps with red and saffron ink.

“Kicked up a storm about half an hour ago.” He pointed the mirror’s handle at the radio
Riordan kept at his station. “They’re saying it’ll go all night. Power’s out in a few places.
Not that you’d have heard with the machine going.”

“Meh.” Mare waved lazily. “As long as I get home before the power goes out here,

I’m good.”

“And I’m rethinking that tip,” Riordan said, touching the fresh needle and ink to her

flesh. “Hold still. You’ll be done in time. Jae, you think we should close up after Mare’s
finished?” He didn’t want to if Sean hadn’t come back by then, God no, but neither did
he want Jae to have to walk home in the dark or in risky weather. It was a devil’s choice.

“Could do. I don’t have anyone else on the books. If it’s what you want, though…”

Jae trailed off, one eyebrow raised. “Only I figured you might think differently. You
wouldn’t have heard the door over the noise of the machine, but I think there’s someone
waiting for you.”

Riordan remembered to lift the needle off Mare’s skin in time before he sat up

straight and swept the room.

Sean stood near the door, and had for some time as far as Riordan could tell. He’d

come in soaked to the bone, a waterproof jacket still shining wet and his hair drying in
stripes across his cheeks and forehead, black as sin when saturated with the rain, and his
eyes bluer than indigo against chilled, pale cheeks. He inclined his head when he caught
Riordan looking.

Riordan held up one hand and opened/closed it three times. Fifteen minutes?
Sean bowed his head again and came up looking Riordan in the eye. He could wait,

that gesture said, and he would wait, and let anyone who wanted to try stop him.

Riordan wouldn’t. Nor, he thought, would Jae, walking away with a suspiciously

amused hitch to his gait.

“I’m not gossiping about him,” he told Mare before she could ask. “Lie still.”
“Fine, fine. But if it works out, you tell me about it later, deal?”
Riordan stole a second look at Sean. Jae was right. Sean didn’t have that overstuffed

menace of a getaway knapsack with him, weighing him down on one side. He stood
crookedly, still, white-lipped with both pain and pride, but unencumbered.

Be damned

. Sean stared at Riordan staring back and took a familiar black book out

from beneath his sweater. Riordan thought he saw paint smeared on Sean’s hands, and
on the ridged dark corduroy book he held.

Whatever was going to happen…well, it wouldn’t be what he’d anticipated, for sure.
Fifteen minutes, Riordan told himself firmly, and made himself look away. If Sean

meant to stay, he’d be there when Riordan finished. He drew a broad swath of color
through the blank space on Mare’s back, and his hands were steady. His needle didn’t
skid.

Chapter Eleven

Rain pounded down by the time Mare exited the shop, swearing and dashing for her

car. Sean hung back and waited for Riordan to beckon him. Riordan didn’t rush calling
Sean to him, cleaning his station first and eyeing Sean sideways with almost visible
question marks rising over his head.

Sean wasn’t sure if he liked taking Riordan off guard. Or that it might be so

surprising he’d come of his own accord.

I don’t, he thought. That’s not who I want to be. All I have to give, it isn’t much, but if it

belongs to anyone, it could be him. It should be him. I. Me. I should be his. I am his.

No more waiting. Not for either of them. Sean moved forward, toward him, and

didn’t stop. He blocked out anyone who might have stared at him and his awkward,
dragging limp and set his sights on Riordan. Riordan, who stopped still and watched him
come the way he’d watched him go three times now. He didn’t seem to know what to
say. Sean recognized the signs of someone trying to line up puzzle pieces flying at him
too fast. Riordan looked tired. Worn out, body and soul.

“You did wait,” Riordan said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
Sean missed the weight of his knapsack and how it’d kept him grounded. Only it’d

been less of an anchor, he thought. More of a cinder block tied to his feet, dragging him
under. All he had instead was the corduroy book. He held it out to Riordan. “I wanted
you to see this.”

Riordan didn’t take it at first. “What are you up to?”
“Look and see.” Sean pushed the book at him. “Look and see.”
He held his breath. Either Riordan would get it or he wouldn’t.

RIORDAN CHANCED A glance at Jae, who pretended not to pay attention but with

a slight shrug conveyed his equal confusion.

He looked back to Sean, waiting for him. Riordan could tell Sean fought for every

second’s worth of standing still and being scrutinized.

If Sean could be that brave, Riordan could too.
Riordan opened the book. Damage done to the spine by unsteady hands caused the

pages to fall open naturally to the one Sean had chosen to work on, almost dead center of
the blank book. He’d used pastels. Rich, saturated oil pastels in thick swaths of color.

Sean waited, silent, hands deep in his pockets, watching Riordan take in the art he’d

created.

All Riordan could see at first was the wealth of colors. Blue. Blue as deep as the heart

of a sapphire. Black, a velvety midnight as sooty as coal. The creamy vellum of the book’s
pages. Lines wavered and broke where they should have joined, and the edges were
crooked where they should be rounded. Altogether they created more of a suggestion of
a thing than the thing itself.

Riordan still recognized what Sean had drawn. Foxgloves. A branch bursting with

foxglove blossoms.

“I wasn’t sure if they’re purple or blue when they grow wild. I didn’t want to stop to

look it up,” Sean said, voice deeper than before, reverberating in his chest. Riordan
wouldn’t ever get tired of the prowling jaguar he heard lurking in those low notes. “All I
know is these foxgloves wanted to be blue.”

Riordan tried to offer a crooked grin. “You don’t need to explain. I draw too.

Remember?”

“You’re better than I was before Leo.” Sean worried his lip briefly between his teeth.

“I know it’s bad.”

“It’s not.”
Riordan caught a glimpse, just a hint, of Sean’s smile. It made him realize what Sean

must have looked like once upon a time, before the harshness of life sank its claws in
deep enough to rend and tear. He’d have been beautiful. He still was, even with the
scars.

Foxgloves

. For the heart. Comprehension dawned with a burst of white sparks, stars

falling in a midnight velvet sky. Foxgloves to heal the heart.

Sean nodded. Riordan could see him drawing his courage together. Brave, not

backing down, and not done pulling the rug out from beneath Riordan’s feet. “It’s a
tattoo design. Not as good as yours, but I’m not a cherry-blossom kind of man either.” He
held his head high. “And I want you to put it on me. Under my skin. Tonight.”

Riordan looked up with a sharp snap that made his neck ache. “You’re not joking.”
Sean shook his head and stood firm. “I’m really not.”
“Why?”
Sean held eye contact and didn’t blink once. “Because you’re not trying to fix me.

Maybe that means you’re the only one who can get it right.”

Riordan didn’t know what to say. Leftover smudges of Lainey’s cherry blossoms still

clung to the curve of Sean’s wrist, as did smudges of blue and black he’d placed on
himself.

“Help me.” Sean stared at Riordan, the deep blue of his eyes almost hypnotic, as if he

were commanding Riordan to understand what he wasn’t saying. “Please. Just you.
Please.”

Riordan hadn’t known until then what it would take to make him break down. Now

he did. When he parted his lips to say yes, nothing came out but—

SEAN FLINCHED BACK. Riordan had…crumpled, almost…and leaned on the

counter, turning away from him. Riordan’s shoulders jerked, not quite shaking, but not
far off either. His hands were large enough to hide the whole of his face, lips as well as
eyes, but Sean…

Sean knew despair and grief when he saw them. He stood back, unease jumping up

all too quickly. Was it him? Had he done this wrong?

Jae cleared his throat. Sean glanced at him, knowing his eyes were too wide, too

much white around the irises.

“Give Rio a minute. He’s had a hard day,” Jae answered, as if Sean had spoken out

loud. “There’s a stairwell behind the stations. Take him downstairs. Let him put himself
together again.” A hint of something still foreign to Sean, though growing more familiar,
touched Jae’s face. “Take care of him first, and he’ll take care of you.”

“I plan to.”
Jae regarded Sean for a long moment, then nodded, turning back to his drawing.

“Then that’s all I could ask for,” he said. “It’s all anyone could ask for.”

It felt oddly like a benediction. Maybe it was.
Sean nudged Riordan, hand at the small of his back. “Come on,” he said, pushing

him to get him started. “I’ve got you.”

He almost stopped at that, but it was true. He did have Riordan. He’d always had

Riordan, even when he hadn’t known the man existed. He’d been out here, faithful,
waiting for Sean to come to him. At a bus stop, behind glass, in a darkened room, and in
a diner under blue-white light. Always Riordan, always waiting for him to come along.

Because Riordan needed him too.
“Walk with me,” he said, rubbing Riordan’s back, nudging him one step at a time. If

he could help someone…then maybe he wasn’t as broken as he’d thought. “Don’t talk
about what upset you. Not yet. Just come on. With me. Come.”

Chapter Twelve

Riordan swiped the backs of his hands across his closed eyes. Chalk that up as

number one on the list of things he hadn’t wanted to happen with Sean. Then again,
Sean bringing a drawing of his own design ranked at the top of the list of things Riordan
hadn’t thought could happen, so maybe that made them even.

Glad he can’t read my mind

. Right now, that’d top the list of beautiful disasters, one-

two-three. Listen to me. I’m counting, just like him. Maybe it’s infectious. Or maybe I’ve just
seen it helps. All the same, I’m glad there’s no such thing as telepaths.

Sean glanced over his shoulder, making Riordan wonder if he’d been right or wrong

on that one.

He gave himself a mental shake. Snap out of it. “C’mon,” he said, nudging Sean

gently to one side on the broad steps. “You won’t know where anything is down here,
and it can be tricky.”

“Looking for what you can’t find usually works,” Sean said. Riordan couldn’t tell

from his tone if he meant that as sarcasm, a joke, or a statement of fact. Nor did Sean let
him get a proper look at his face. He crab-stepped back into the lead, though, so that was
clue enough.

Riordan kept an eye on him all the same. He and Jae had put almost as much work

into the basement as they had the storefront, though there was more brute labor involved
down there. Dividing the open space into two halves with a wall and door fitted between
load-bearing pillars. Front half: storage and supplies. Back half: crash space, for the nights
when they snapped out of a working fugue to find it past midnight, after the buses had
stopped running, or needed to catch a nap between mornings at the hospital and
afternoons on the floor, or just a place to fall to pieces in quiet privacy. He’d doubted Jae
when Jae promised, grimly, they’d need all the above, but he’d learned better since.

Sean prowled forward, his pace stumbling but steady down the center of the room,

in the aisle between the double row of extra ink, rolls of paper, latex gloves, and sterile
gauges. Guess it wasn’t so hard to navigate after all. He tested the knob on the closed
door—Riordan wanted to warn him, Careful, it sticks, but Sean made a small tch sound,
gave the knob the extra wrench the stubborn mechanism needed, and found the light
with its dimmer switch first time around.

“I’m fine,” Riordan said, hanging two steps behind. “I don’t need—”
“Shut up,” Sean said, not unkindly but not kindly either. Riordan tracked his line of

sight, recognizing the pattern: mapping out the room with its sparse furnishings of
couch, chair, table, sink, and cooler. How to get in, how to get out, where to hide if he
had to.

And he saw when Sean clicked his tongue again and visibly, almost literally,

shrugged it all off with a roll of his shoulders. He looked back, nodding once, and tilted
his head toward the battered but clean old couch Riordan loved nearly as much as the
one he had at home. He made for the sink, leaving Riordan to do as he liked, and wet a

handful of paper towels under the tap.

Riordan found a place on the couch, tight in the corner instead of sprawling across

the center cushion as he normally would. “I’m fine,” he said, his throat still rough and
sore. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

“What if I want to?” Sean squeezed a stream of excess water out of the towels and

turned. Riordan thought he’d pass those over and back away to a safe distance, but it was
his night for being proved wrong. Sean crouched in front of Riordan, almost at his feet,
shooting him a fierce glare when Riordan started to protest.

“Do I have a choice?”
“I’m not really in the habit of giving people choices,” Sean said, careful in shifting his

balance until he could reach up to dab one of the cold, wet towels over Riordan’s
cheekbone. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

Riordan covered Sean’s hand and compressed it lightly. He didn’t know what else to

say. Neither did Sean, but he could leave it there. They could.

Riordan closed his eyes and let Sean work. The cold of the towels leached away the

salt stiffness of his lashes. Sean wasn’t graceful—he’d never be graceful—but he was
determined, and he could be surprisingly gentle when he wanted to be.

Sean patted the towel down Riordan’s jaw, around his neck, and in the dent between

his collarbones. There, he stopped. Not as if he were finished, but as if he wanted
something he didn’t exactly know how to ask.

Then he did. By not asking. He pushed up the edge of Riordan’s sweater. The heavy

knit rucked up beneath Riordan’s chin, uncomfortably tight. Riordan tilted his head back
and kept his eyes closed, knowing what Sean wanted. If Sean needed it enough to take it,
Sean could have it.

Riordan had expected a light touch, the drag of rough fingertips across his scar.

Instead—warm, wet, firm—a kiss, Sean’s lips plush and soft over the old marks.

Sean said nothing. Riordan couldn’t either.
Riordan could, and did, reach to find Sean’s hair, still so soft, sifting strands and locks

through his fingers. Sean didn’t flinch away, not even when Riordan let the sweater
drop. He rested his head on Riordan’s knee, breathed out heavily, and gave, somehow,
like a rubber band losing the strength to snap, slouching to rest after epochs of stretching
tight.

Riordan didn’t want to let go of Sean. Not now. Not ever, he thought, surprised and

not surprised at the same time. Sean had gotten under his skin. He’d seen that coming
from the start, and now here they were. On the verge of something life changing.
Something that hurt, but something wonderful too.

They just needed the courage to keep going until they got there.
How much courage had it taken Sean to come with his art? Riordan couldn’t

measure it on any scale he knew. Wasn’t it funny that if they were going to reach the
point of no return, it’d be Sean who gave them the final push.

The lights dimmed and flickered. The eye of the storm must have reached them.

Some trees had likely fallen. “I hope you like it down here,” Riordan said, still stroking
Sean’s hair. “We might end up stuck for the night.”

Sean moved the point of his chin in a diagonal across Riordan, almost as if marking

territory. He hitched himself closer to Riordan and traced a few nonsense lines on
Riordan’s hip. “I know scars too. You should have died.”

“I didn’t.” Riordan wound strands of Sean’s hair around his fingers and let the locks

slip free to feather where they might. “Came close at the time.”

“Like me.” Sean took hold of Riordan’s ankle either to brace himself or just because

he wanted to; no telling with Sean. No telling. Just hoping. “I saw the wrecked drawings.
The ones you had out last night. I can guess what happened if you don’t want to say.
Something happened to someone you cared about. Who?”

“Lainey. She was in remission. But she died,” Riordan said. “It shouldn’t have

happened. She should have lived.”

“And neither of us should have,” Sean said. He bowed his head. Riordan opened his

eyes in time to see Sean press a kiss to the inside of his thigh. His cock jerked, half-stiff, a
twitch Sean couldn’t miss. Sean hesitated.

Then kissed him again, higher, closer. His palm closed over the rising hardness

behind Riordan’s zipper and rested there, the heel of his palm working in a slow
massage. “We’re here now,” he said, not looking up at Riordan. “We were the ones they
call lucky. I used to think people who said that had no clue. Maybe they don’t. But maybe
they do.” He moved his hand harder, tightening the cup of his palm. “What are we, if we
aren’t lucky?”

Riordan pulled one lock of hair tight around his forefinger and didn’t let go. “Alive.”
The right answer, or at least the one Sean wanted. He didn’t shift out of the way and

didn’t stop Riordan from bending at the awful, impossible angle to kiss him. His lips
were soft and tasted of salt, of pretzels, and of the memory of black coffee. His tongue
was velvet, stroking smooth and slow with Riordan’s, twining about and easing back,
then pressing forward, and again.

He’d run his breath ragged when he finished, but Riordan knew the look in his eyes.

“I left my book upstairs,” Sean said.

“It’ll be safe. Jae will put it at my station.”
“Good.” Sean stepped back, too far away even if hardly very far at all, and balanced

on the balls of his feet. He watched Riordan narrowly, thoughtfully, until he came to
some decision Riordan couldn’t track. Then, Sean ducked back in faster than Riordan
would have thought he could. He did telegraph his intentions—no choice, with limited
range of motion—but God, would Riordan not stop him from tugging his wintry blue
sweater over his head. He wore no undershirt to protect himself against the scratch of the
wool, but…oh…

Sean stood under his own power and let Riordan look.
Riordan had seen worse in hospitals and clients off the street. Believe it or not, Sean

wasn’t the most scarred a man could be and still live, but he came close. He was marked
and patched as if he’d been put together from spare scraps. His scars were only just old
enough not to be raised, and new enough to still show dark pink color in the sharp lines
made by surgeons and the ragged, trailing gashes from broken bones piercing through
and the scrape of the pavement. Across his hip, trailing down into the jeans hanging off
the sharp points of his hip bones, they were ropy and deep, cutting into muscle almost
down to the bone.

Sean stood still and let Riordan see him.
He slid his fingers into Riordan’s hair, Riordan’s curls quicker to wind around his

fingers, the crooked and the straight, and guided his head. Gentle when he wants to be.
Riordan wanted to close his eyes and let Sean do what he wanted. Anything he wanted.

Sean’s mouth quirked in a flash of humor. Not the smile that Riordan had liked

before.

Riordan thought he could grow to like this one too. He shifted, trying to ease the

straining pressure of a full hard-on that wanted out. At least he wasn’t the only one.
Riordan could see, really well at this angle, Sean’s cock fully aroused, bulging toward
him.

“Good,” Sean said. “So you’ll do it. You’ll tattoo me. With my design.” He drew a

line down his left side, over the worst scars. “Change what you have to, to make it work.
I don’t care.”

Riordan wished he had some of that cold water to moisten his mouth. He glanced up

at Sean’s face and brushed his fingertips over the ridges of scar tissue. There were old
burn marks under the trauma of the car crash.

Sean watched him back, almost—almost—impassive, but once Riordan had figured

out how to see past that past, he couldn’t be fooled again. The courage it took Sean
surprised him at every turn, every time.

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” he told Sean, tracing the imaginary lines he could

make, “and it’ll hurt like hell. Are you sure?”

Sean stepped back, but only to offer Riordan his hand to help him up, if he wanted.

“I’m choosing to be sure. Is that good enough?”

Chapter Thirteen

“What do you think?” Riordan asked before kissing Sean.
Sean still had to fight a little not to fight back, but the difference between Riordan’s

body and Leo’s was tangible at every breath, at every touch. Sean let himself drown in
the disparity. Riordan’s hand at his side, overlaying the scars. Riordan shifted sideways
and pushed a leg between Sean’s, pressing hardness to hardness.

Sean lifted himself, giving himself up to the kiss, as rough as he’d been the first time

but with nothing like the same intent. Then, he’d wanted to slash and bite, wanted
Riordan as far away as he craved having the man near. No conflict of interests this time.

He slipped his hand between their bodies and palmed Riordan’s cock, the angle

awkward and not nearly enough—though enough to make Riordan hiss and jerk. He
pushed Sean away. “Stop. God, stop.”

Startled, Sean froze.
Riordan bumped foreheads with him. “You weren’t hurting me. But I don’t want

that to be all there is.”

“You think I do?” Sean shook his head. “But turnabout is fair play.” He twisted just

so, taking Riordan by the wrist, gently, and molding Riordan’s hand to his groin.

“Not helping,” Riordan said, but around laughter, and when he looked up, he was

delighted. And something else too.

Sean could become addicted to that look and the spark of excitement that went hand

in hand with it. “What’s going on in your head?”

Riordan tweaked a lock of Sean’s hair. “Options A to Z. I don’t know where to start

except everywhere.”

Ah

. Sean licked his lips. “That’s all?”

“That’s enough.” Riordan brushed his lips across Sean’s. “Any ideas?”
“A few.” Sean wished he could kneel. He’d like to suck Riordan. Go down on his

knees and take the jeans off him with his teeth. He settled for jerking at his belt instead,
unthreading loop and tongue from buckle. “Help me get these off, and you’ll see.”

That, he found, Riordan could and was more than willing to do. With his help, Sean

slid the denim down his narrow hips and the length of his legs, finding his skin still
carrying the last hints of late-autumn sun and the small, everyday scars of someone who
lived actively. Riordan pulled his sweater off and threw it aside.

Riordan’s throat moved when he swallowed. “The way you’re staring at me,” he

said, low in his throat, “I’d think you wanted to eat me alive.”

“I do,” Sean answered.
“Good,” Riordan said. Not afraid, not joking. “Do it.”
“Try and stop me.” Sean brushed his fingertips over Riordan’s scars. “Sometime,

when we’re in a bed again, I’m going to bring you off with just my mouth. No hands,
even. I’ll hold them behind my back. Lie between your legs and suck you until you’re

dry.”

Riordan’s cock jerked against Sean. “Dare you.”
“I’ll do it, someday.” Sean took him in hand, cradling the thick shaft, wiping a drop

of slick away from the slit and bringing that thumb to his mouth to lick it clean. “How
long can you last?”

“Not long enough,” Riordan said. He chased the taste of himself out of Sean’s mouth,

his tongue sleek and quick, but that didn’t matter. Sean could go back for more. He’d
have the chance.

He might have tried again if Riordan hadn’t gotten there first, drawing his hand

down Sean and cupping Sean’s balls. Unbearable, that touch, too much, but the right side
of too much. Maybe he was a masochist, but he couldn’t breathe, and he didn’t want to.

“Come here, you,” Riordan said, kissing Sean deep and wet. “The couch. You on your

back.”

“God, yes.”
Sean let Riordan maneuver him, pulling him down on the cool sofa, wide and long

enough for Riordan to brace himself above. And oh, that was even better, chest against
chest, hips against hips, finding a perfect slick track for his cock in the V of Riordan’s hip.
He wasn’t ashamed; he didn’t have room for shame over the difference between their
bodies. Not when Riordan filled his world and blocked out all else, even the light.
Riordan, muttering broken syllables, half love and half lust. “Want you… You feel so
good… Need this, more of this…” He cupped Sean’s hips and kneaded them. “I’m taking
you up on that offer another time.”

“But now?”
“This,” Riordan said, sliding his cock against Sean’s.
Sean shook his head. “More than this.” He took Riordan in hand and guided him. “It

won’t hurt me. Come on. Want you. Want you in me again.”

So much warm, firm skin waited for the touch of his mouth; Sean couldn’t help

tracing a path with his tongue. Down an inch, two inches of Riordan’s neck, setting his
teeth lightly over the pulse beating like a racehorse there. Riordan didn’t just let it
happen. He encouraged Sean, hands moving even as his mouth did.

“I want to. So much. I want to. But I keep supplies under my pillow. Not at my job.

Unless you came prepared?” Riordan teased.

Sean laughed, surprised at the sound of it, and at himself. But not minding it. Not

when delight changed Riordan’s face, making it so much better than exhaustion or
despair. And there was pleasure to be taken in himself too. He’d thought. He’d planned.
He’d hoped, and worked to see that hope through to reality.

He moved against Riordan so that Riordan could hear the crinkling sound of small

foil packets, a condom and a sachet of lube. “Check the right front pocket of my jeans.”

Riordan nearly unsprung the sofa in his hurry to do just that.

* * * *

Slicked, opened, guided into place, Sean closed his eyes and arched his head back

when Riordan pressed inside him. He canted his hips, wanting all of Riordan at once.
Riordan met him halfway there, his sharp breath melting into a groan.

Deep, so deep.
Riordan was tall enough to bend and kiss Sean, tongue thrusting in time with his

cock—hot, hard, slightly curved, stroking inside him. Riordan’s hand on his cock, slick
with lube. He wasn’t and would never be a cruel man. If Sean needed him—and he did—
he’d give all he could. He’d give himself to Sean like this, like the crack of thunder, an
explosion of tension and kinetic force, stroking him hard, fast, everywhere, not stopping.

Sean licked the sweat away from the hollow of Riordan’s throat. They weren’t

kissing anymore, not coordinated enough for that, but their mouths, their mouths were
everywhere.

Riordan swelled harder still inside him, stumbling, no rhythm, long and still, short

and fast—

“Yes,” Sean said, scrabbling and scratching for a hold on him. “Almost there—”
Riordan shuddered, shaking as if caught in the grip of a seizure. Coming inside me.
Sean reared up, breathless. He found Riordan’s mouth by blind chance and luck. He

sucked the air from the man, enough to push himself on, moving Riordan’s hand on his
cock and making himself come. He striped the both of them with cream and splayed his
hands through the mess, making handprints, fingers wide, rubbing it into Riordan’s skin.

Riordan had only just stopped shuddering, but he shoved forward, deeper, straining

for more. Laughing, good laughter, wild and crazy and breathless—

And done. Worn, drained, a shadow of himself—or the absence of shadow—Sean let

Riordan fall on his chest. Riordan might crush him, but Riordan wouldn’t hurt him. Not
now. Not ever.

* * * *

Sean came back to his senses—when, he wasn’t sure—to feel hands on his back,

clever and kind and, yes, gentle.

“Good?” Sean asked, lips touching the soft spot beneath Riordan’s ear.
“Good? God.” Riordan laughed, ragged around the edges, worn out, but…happy.

Sean’s heart thumped faster. He’d done it. Given Riordan all he could.

He might be happy too. No, that wasn’t in question. Happy. It’d been too long. Sean

promised himself he wouldn’t forget what that felt like again.

Riordan brushed hair out of Sean’s eyes. Even Riordan’s eyelashes were damp from

the effort of lovemaking, but his grin was broad and languid and pleased, relaxed, well
taken care of. “You’re not like anyone else,” he said. “Ever.”

Sean took that for the compliment it was. “Good.”
“And you?” Riordan asked, a slight and unwanted hint of uncertainty creeping in.

“Also good?”

Sean reached for him in answer. Riordan came willingly and let Sean go carefully

with this one kiss. The touch of Riordan’s lips was light, almost ticklish. Sean touched the
tip of his tongue to Riordan’s, trying to say with actions and not words: No. But I’m better.

“It’s a start,” Riordan said. He slipped out, leaving Sean empty and regretting the

loss, but from the sound of his groan, so did Riordan. It didn’t matter as much in the next
moment when Riordan pulled Sean tight and twisted them together, rolling to lie on his
back with Sean on his chest.

Sean kissed Riordan in a slow pattern, and then in the same spot over and over,

above the heart almost pierced by a bullet, and the broken lines of his tattoo. He
wondered how Riordan would take the damage and remake the design into something
new, something better. Jae would have to do the actual work, but Sean thought if he
asked, Riordan wouldn’t mind letting him watch the repairs being made.

The night wasn’t over yet, but Sean thought they could rest a moment. Catch their

breath, wash themselves with cold, clean water from the sink, and then move on. Become
new. Become better.

Become himself again, with Riordan’s needles and ink to reshape him.

Chapter Fourteen

Riordan led Sean upstairs, careful of wobbling knees. Sean looked different from

before. He’d always held himself tight and close, shuttered off, ready to bolt at any
moment. Not that he was exactly as open as Riordan or even Jae, but he’d changed. He
didn’t keep his arms locked at his sides, ready to fist and swing. He wasn’t weighed
down by that god-awful knapsack. He had some pink to the ivory cream of his skin, his
blue eyes warmer rather than icy.

Foxgloves suited him.
Silence waited for them at the top of the stairs, as well as a storefront darkened save

for one lamp over one workstation. The storm had passed, and the power was steady
again. Riordan’s station had been prepped and waited for them, fully set up with a
complete cadre of supplies and fresh paper over the vinyl bench.

Almost fresh. Jae’s neat scrawl decorated one corner of the sheet with black felt-tip.
Something Good.
Riordan laughed out loud.
Sean cocked his head. “What’s funny?”
He’d have meant that as an accusation or a warning not so long ago. Now? Just a

question.

“Jae’s been busy,” Riordan said, stepping aside to let Sean past for a look.
Sean snorted softly and shook his head, the warmth of his color fading not at all. “He

thinks he’s smart, doesn’t he?”

“Usually.” Riordan tipped Sean’s chin up. “Was he wrong?”
A light of humor touched Sean’s eyes. “No.” He looked at the table and a bit more

narrowly at Riordan. “Why are you asking?”

Riordan looked back at him, not knowing how to put it into words. Only sure he was

a lucky, lucky man.

“Just wondering what I did right,” Riordan said.
He could see Sean didn’t understand, but that Sean had an idea of what he meant.

Progress enough for him, especially now they had time. And they did. Neither of them
was going anywhere, not if they could help it, and who could ask for more, really?

A happy man, Riordan decided. Lucky and happy both.
“I’ll explain later.” Riordan kissed him lightly. Anything more and he’d have been

tempted to go after a second round, and the tattoo was—for now—more important. “If
you’re sure, then here. We’ll use this table.” He helped Sean up. “I’ll do the design from
memory. More organic that way.”

Sean needed assistance, but he remembered, now, how to take it. How to let himself

ask. He stretched on his back, the light unforgiving in its betrayal of his scars, but no
shame. He’d passed that point long ago.

Riordan kissed him once more, light but lingering.
Sean stroked his chest with two fingers, just below the bullet scar. “Go on,” he said,

following the caress with a tug to Riordan’s curls. “Show me what it’s all about.”

That, Riordan could do. And always would, from this day and the next, for the rest of

their lives. If he had anything to say about it, and he thought—no, he knew—that he did.

HAVING THE WORK done didn’t hurt. Not the way Sean had thought a tattoo

might, and not “like hell.” He’d been through hell. He knew the difference.

“Lie still,” Riordan told him, not that he had to. Sean knew how to hold himself

steady and make himself small, unthreatening, lax. Not out of fear. Out of trust. The
difference between the two amazed Sean as he rested on the table covered with sterile
paper, the vinyl padding beneath warming with his body heat.

This was a different Riordan. Maybe it was watching him that took the pain away,

and not in a ballads-and-violins way. There weren’t any soaring violins or velvet curtains
drawing back or masks coming off. This was the Riordan who had a gift and knew it, and
had taught himself to use that gift for all the good it was worth.

He’d wondered what the needle would feel like, firing a thousand times a minute,

punch-punch-punch

below the surface of his skin. Like being shot, he’d guessed, sprayed

with shotgun pellets, or like holding a sparkler too close to the fiery snapping end. Or
being stung a hundred times, a hundred thousand times, by a cloud of angry bees.

None of his guesses were right. Once, he’d heated the tip of a safety pin white-hot to

lance an abscess. This was sort of the same kind of punch and flare and burn, only steady,
buzzing on and on along his flesh—and then not like that at all. A steady hurt, one that
he could count on. Hard to take, because the path of the needle changed him, but it
should

be so. Change never came easy. It shouldn’t.

It hurt. It didn’t hurt him. There was a difference.
Riordan knew how to work with scars. Sean thought that was the answer to why it

wasn’t what he’d expected, after all. The simplest one.

Or simpler still, a thought Sean could only grasp the wispy, ragged blue end of so far,

but which he clung to with nails and white knuckles—Riordan knew how to work with
him

, because Riordan cared.

That was all the reason and answer Sean wanted.
Sean let his eyes drift halfway closed and tested the length of his tether between

body and the adrenaline, a different kind of rush. Not at all like flying, nor like running,
more like floating in a quiet pool. Endorphins holding him aloft, as if to say, You see? It’s
not okay, but it will be. And until then, I’ve got you.

He watched Riordan from beneath the fan of his lashes, content—how strange, but

he wasn’t going to let that go either—to lie still and let the man do the work with steady
hands. He wondered how Riordan had lived, when he wasn’t supposed to have survived.

Sean didn’t ask either question out loud just then. He could do that later. He had

time. More time than he knew what to do with, floating in the calm blue pool of brain
chemistry and dreaming.

Riordan put the machine aside and squirted cool water over Sean’s side, following

that with a soft sterile cloth. “You’re done.” He grinned, a little crooked but a great deal
more broadly when Sean blinked at him. “No, really. You don’t even know how long
we’ve been here, do you?”

Sean raised his right hand to tuck his hair behind his ear. Deliberately. “Felt like

minutes.”

“More like hours. Come on. Sit up slowly. Trust me—”
“I do,” Sean said, interrupting him.
Color touched Riordan’s cheeks, pleasing Sean more than he’d thought it might in

the quarter second before he’d indulged in speaking the words, enough to make him
want to encourage it to happen again. “Still. You don’t want a head rush.”

Sean knew better, and knew Riordan knew. He obeyed just the same. And even if he

did fall, Riordan would catch him.

Riordan settled him in a careful seat on the edge of the table and looked up from his

work stool, the height differential reversed now. “Two choices,” he said, holding up two
fingers. “I can give you a hand mirror so you can see for yourself, or there’s a full-length
mirror back behind the divider.”

Sean knew why he offered the choice. He didn’t need to. But Sean didn’t mind—

how odd—being given that decision to make. “Full-length,” he said. “Give me a hand.”

He let Riordan guide him to the mirror, listening with one ear to him talking in a

stream as steady as the pattering rain outside. “It isn’t exactly the way you drew the
design, like I said before. I worked around the scars, and I…” Riordan hesitated. “I added
something. Just a few lines, like a cave drawing. If you don’t like it, I can cover it with
another foxglove bell and shade it in. Actually, I didn’t mean to. It almost happened on
its own, and I liked it, so I let it be. Here.”

Curious, Sean tried to hurry, though there were only a few steps between

workstation and mirror.

Once there, Riordan stopped Sean before he could get a good look. “You’re sure?”
Sean’s side cramped and burned with the stretch, but he counted that a small price

for making himself tall enough to stand on tiptoe and silence Riordan with a kiss. A kiss,
he almost chuckled to see, that left him looking poleaxed. And silent.

And in the silence, he turned to see.
Foxgloves flowered over the scars, a regal dark blue touched with lighter azure and

velvet black pistils borne on lush green vines. He looked like he’d stepped out of a fairy
tale. Beauty and the Beast, both in one body.

And beneath the blossoms, almost hidden but peeking out between two twists of

green, were the sketched lines of a silver-gray wildcat with striped sides. Its head was
turned in profile, showing one blue eye with no pupil. It held its head high and proud.

Sean touched the cat’s head with the tip of his finger.
“Careful.” Riordan laid a hand on his wrist, not to restrain, but to caution.
Sean looked at the cat and imagined the fox looking back at him. Enough being careful,

he imagined the cat saying to him. Enough walking soft. I was here all along, and I’m done
hiding. Let me out.

Sean feathered a touch along the tip of the cat’s head, promising himself he’d get

that finished first, next—but not just yet. He turned his back to the mirror instead, slid his
arms around Riordan’s neck, and kissed him until Riordan kissed him back as deeply, as
hungrily as before, sinking deep inside him.

He whispered in Riordan’s ear, in the stillness of the shop, under the sound of the

rain. “I’m keeping it,” he said, meaning you. “You didn’t hurt me. Not once. Now take
me home, Riordan. Even if we have to walk, I’m coming home with you.”

“Tonight?” Riordan asked.
Sean didn’t answer in words. Riordan already knew the answer, or he would soon

enough. Tonight, and all nights, as far as he could see.

He had living to be getting on with, and no one possibly better on the earth to do it

with.

Epilogue

Sean woke with the daylight tickling through his eyelids, teasing him from the place

between dreams and the real world. He stirred in a nest of blankets. Soft blankets,
nothing like the thin, scratchy monstrosity he’d bought from Army Surplus. Knitted
cotton, dark blues and greens. A thick pillow wrestled sideways beneath his head.

A warm body lay next to him, still fast asleep if the faint snores were anything to go

by.

Riordan snored. A smile, still unfamiliar but coming easier today, crossed Sean’s lips.

He wondered if Riordan knew, and what Riordan might think if teased for it.

Sean thought he’d like to see that. He reached for Riordan to nudge him awake but

stopped before he completed the motion. Less from a startling soreness and more from
the arresting flashes of strange navy and green covering his arm.

He held the arm up, turning at the elbow to look at the foxgloves decorating him.

The tattoo design did and didn’t cover all the damage. Sean still knew where his scars
were, and if anyone were told where to look they’d see the marks too.

But they’d see the foxgloves first.
He stroked his lower abdomen, beneath the last of his once-broken, now healed ribs,

over the gray cat with its blue eye—a blind tiger—he knew he’d find there. Still hiding,
just a little, until Riordan coaxed him fully out with his needles and inks.

Riordan, who stirred and mumbled in his sleep, head flat on the mattress and

hugging his pillow tight to him. Sean had to stifle a laugh and almost didn’t manage for
the surprise of it.

Or, he thought, risking a brush through the tips of Riordan’s curls, maybe not such a

surprise after all.

They’d had a good night. Riordan’s pager hadn’t gone off. The other patient he

worried about—Riordan had talked about her later, Marguerite—still hung in there. She
had a chance, and she’d fight for it.

Sean thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d like to meet Marguerite himself.
He slipped naked and silent out of bed. Riordan’s bed. His too now, if he wanted it to

be, and Sean decided he might just. No: he did. He would. Riordan didn’t have to offer
for Sean to accept what he knew would be given. He lifted a robe off a hook on the back
of Riordan’s bedroom door, that smile slanting his lips again at the thought of Riordan
stumbling out of bed and fumbling, half-blind, for the robe, wondering before he put the
pieces together. He’d bet Riordan wasn’t good in the mornings.

Lucky for him, Sean was, or thought he could be.
There was so much in his head and in his heart he didn’t understand yet, but that

might be all right. Riordan wasn’t a quitter. He wouldn’t let Sean quit either. That was
what it’d all been about. There’d be no stopping now, past the light at the end of the
tunnel, emerging into clear day.

Sean padded barefoot to Riordan’s small kitchen and found the coffeemaker, but

didn’t set it into motion just yet. He undid the latches on the window sash above the sink
and slid the panel up, letting in the cleanness of morning air and the still-fresh scent of a
late-spring morning after a night’s hard rain. Pure, strong, almost dizzying.

Sean breathed in deeply and held the draft in his lungs as long as he could. He let the

unbelted robe slide off his shoulders to crumple at his feet.

Behind him, he heard Riordan stirring. He’d make his way inside soon, searching for

coffee and for Sean.

Sean took up a packet of dark roast and let the rich scent saturate his nose. He filled

his other senses with the world as it unfolded in colors rich and vibrant outside the
window. With his lover, inside, when Riordan’s sleep-clumsy, blanket-warm body
wrapped itself around Sean, arms at his waist, his chin on Sean’s shoulder, his lips
touching a morning kiss at the near side of Sean’s temple.

The weather was changing, Sean thought before he turned to Riordan, into Riordan,

to let Riordan make of him what he would, new and better. Warmer weather would
come soon. Sunlight, gentle winds, and green things wakening from their winter sleep,
coming back to life.

Sean looked at the foxgloves chasing themselves over his arm and smiled again. He

didn’t have to wait for spring if he didn’t want to. He could choose—no, he already had
chosen—to live again, and he was done with hiding.

He kissed Riordan, drowning in his touch and his taste, and thought perhaps he

might wear short sleeves that day.

~ * ~

Afterword

For more information about domestic abuse, please check out the following:
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

http://www.ncadv.org/

Gay Men's Domestic Violence Project

http://gmdvp.org/about-us/

Resources for Victims of Domestic Violence (via The Advocate)

http://www.theadvocates-aplacetogo.org/Additional-Resources.php

Loose Id Titles by Willa Okati

A Beautiful Disaster

A-Muse-Ing

And Call Me in the Morning

Because It’s True

Between You and Me

By Your Side

Enough to Let You Go

Georgina’s Dragon

Helpmeet

I Heart That City: Razzle Dazzle

Lovers, Dreamers, and Me

Make a Right

Open Cover before Striking

Temptations, Inc.

Wild Hunt

* * * *

THE BROTHERHOOD Series

Amour Magique

Bite Me

The Dragon's Tongue

Good Luck Piece

The Out-of-Towner

Tezcatli's Game

Single White Fang

Under Hill and Over the Bar

Tunnel of Love

Salt of the…Earth?

Nothing Like Experience

Believe It or Not

Incubus Call

Once Upon a Liam

* * * *

The TOMCAT JONES Stories

Tomcat Jones

Buddy Holiday

Karma Chameleon

Willa Okati

A multi-published author of GLBT fiction since 2004, my work is the love of my life. I

can’t imagine anything better than writing sensual love stories with a dash of quirky
humor. Stories about tough men, sweet men, Yaoi lovers, cowboys, boys next door,
friends who become lovers, polyamory—and so much, much more.

I exist primarily on caffeine and pixels, take “camera shy” to a whole new level, and

persist in trying to learn the pennywhistle despite being woefully tone-deaf. During the
summer, I’m a wild woman with henna. I’m also currently attempting to teach myself
the Hawai’ian language and devouring every book I can about Alaska.

I am, in a word, quixotic—but passionate in everything I do.
Find out more at

http://willaokati.com

.

Table of Contents

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Afterword
Loose Id Titles by Willa Okati
Willa Okati