He stroked himself. He couldn’t remember the feel of Bailey’s lips. He couldn’t remember her scent or the sound of her laughter. Green eyes stared into his, the rough feel of stubble against his neck as he called him
cher
in the accent he didn’t have all the time. That liquid voice did things to him, things that made him gasp. He begged for more. He gave him more, strong fingers slid along his cock pulling him into the dream again. He wanted the heat—the pleasure. It spiraled inside him, sending him past the point of no return. He arched into the dizzying desire, helping it along, crying out when ecstasy turned to pain and the water ran cold again. He could taste the name he cried out. It tasted like shame.
At noon he sat behind his desk. The day was cloudy, showers came and went as a front moved in from the gulf. He stared out the windows feeling as gray and grim as the clouds looked. Guilt slithered under his skin, guilt and shame and regret. He didn’t know what he regretted, the kiss that opened up the floodgate of inappropriate need or giving into the inappropriate need. God, he’d never fantasized about a man before. Bailey sat across from him wearing a short dress and a pair of canvas shoes. He couldn’t meet her eye as she ran down the weekly expenses. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t really listening anyway. “It was a great edition, Dar. It’s what we need.”
“Yeah, I know.” He didn’t like the concern in her voice. It was almost as if she cared, almost as if everything between them was the same as it had been before the move. Before she slept with Chester.
“Then why are you so morose today? You did a great job. We have air conditioning again. Yesterday was fabulous. We never get a day off in the middle of the week.”
“It’s the weather. Either too hot or too rainy. I didn’t sleep well last night. I don’t know, Bai, I’m just tired.” But he wasn’t tired. He felt as if he’d drunk six cups of coffee in a ten minute time period. He was buzzing with useless energy. “I’m thinking about going home for a while.”
“Oh, yeah? A vacation would be nice, but right now isn’t really a good time. We need to hire a couple more writers, and—Darcy, are you listening to me at all?”
“Sure, Bailey, I hear everything you’re saying. I agree we need to hire more people, an assistant editor would be great. I could use the help. Yes, I think a week at home will be just the thing.”
“Would you consider Chester for the assistant editor job? You know how much he looks up to you.” Darcy tuned out at the name. Listening instead to the outer office, which was unusually quiet. There should be phones buzzing, machines making noise, people talking, instead there was the minute sounds of something not quite right. A collective hush, an indrawn breath, a twitter of nervous laughter.
“I’ll get back to you on that.” Curious, he went to the door to see what was going on, Bailey on his heels.
He was there in the main office looking much the same as he had the first time they met in the bar, the biker bad boy look that made Darcy swallow hard. He’d forgotten Bailey was behind him, he heard her fast intake of breath as if it had come from him.
“Oh, my,” she said but Darcy was already across the room, his gaze locked with Caleb’s.
Caleb whipped his hand through his hair, the silver bracelets dancing on his arm as he did. But Darcy could see exhaustion in the slope of his shoulders, and his eyes. He came to a halt beside him, shaking his hand as if nothing had happened between them. “I didn’t expect you today.”
“I didn’t expect me at all.” He cocked a lazy half grin, aimed at Darcy.
“How is your mother?” He said it to be polite. He didn’t expect the flashing of emotion in the man’s eyes to be so painful.
“They say she’s resting comfortably. I say she’s heavily sedated and suffering inside.”
“I’m so sorry, you don’t have to do this now. You should go be with her.”
“If I don’t find something to keep me occupied, I’ll just end up in jail.” Darcy seriously wanted to believe he was joking, but the set of his jaw told him Caleb was dead serious. “Besides, I made a promise. I don’t go back on my promises—at least the ones I can control.”
“All right then, if you’re sure, I’ll introduce you around. We’ll get you an office and just pretend like nothing happened.” He hadn’t meant to say those words. Caleb just lifted an eyebrow, amusement finally entering his eyes.
“Whatever gets you through the day, Ducky.” His smile became a sneer and then as if a veil had lifted he fell into character. The same character from two days before, with all the charm and charisma of a street performer.
Darcy turned to face his crew, only to find a rapt audience hovering uncomfortably close by. Most of the women wore identical expressions of interest, Bailey no exception. The scowl on Chester’s face was priceless. “Everyone, this is Caleb Mitchell. The renowned artist and photographer. He’s going to be working with us to set up a new art department and, with any luck, help us take this thing we call a magazine to the next level.”
“Caleb—well I’ll just let them introduce themselves,” Darcy said, leaving him to make his way into the crowd, his hand out, his smile so wide no one would know his mother lay dying in a hospital across town.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was gorgeous, Dar?” Bailey was at his side, her voice low as she waited her turn to meet the new rock star on staff. “I would have gone with you yesterday.”
“How am I supposed to tell you something like that, Bailey? He’s just a guy. If you were interested in anything except your boy toy over there you would have been professional enough to go even if he were a decrepit geezer.” The idea of going home came on full force, he wanted out of here so badly he could taste it. “If you’ll excuse me I have some work to do in my office.”
Without waiting for her to respond or worse, call him on his momentary lapse of decorum, Darcy simply walked away. Slipping into his office, he closed the door and sank into the chair behind his desk. Turning his back on the office, he went back to staring out the window at the gloomy rain that settled over the city. He pretended the slithering sensation under his skin was just a symptom of homesickness and not something else entirely.
“Hey, can I come in?” The voice wrapped around him like a warm wet blanket, nearly suffocating him.
“Yeah, sure, Caleb, my door is always open. Even when it’s shut.” Oh yeah that sounded brilliant. Caleb smiled a genuine smile, which put Darcy at ease. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve been thinking about what my role here should be. And after yesterday, I feel taking on your entire art department is probably not something I can handle right now.” He closed the door behind him, coming to sit in one of the armless easy chairs in front of Darcy’s desk. He propped a booted foot on his knee, the strings from the worn out hem of his jeans hanging down the back of the leather.
“How can you stand those boots in this heat? You look so hot.” Darcy didn’t know why his mouth had a mind of its own around Caleb. He didn’t understand the gleam in the artist’s eyes either.
“I bet you didn’t know you blush a pretty rosy red, did you? I like that about you Darcy. And the way you say what you think. And how much you look like a naughty librarian. There’s that blush again.” Caleb said, his voice low and seductive. He raked Darcy with his eyes.
“I’m not interested, Caleb. I can’t say that any other way. I just don’t lean that way.” Then why couldn’t he look the man in the eye? Why were those incredible green eyes in his dreams, Caleb’s name on his lips when he came this morning, he asked himself. There was no answer. “Okay so, back to the topic. What sort of role do you see yourself in around here?”
Pure fire roared through Caleb’s eyes as Darcy watched. His smile turned dangerous, the combination was nearly enough to have Darcy on his knees. Caleb seemed to know what he was thinking, and that scared him. Somehow, he knew about the dream, about—
“I think you need someone to organize and train your existing staff. Which I can do, I can turn a bunch of amateur photographers into professionals and any idiot with a good photo enhancement program can do what I did yesterday, there’s no real talent to that. I can teach everyone here how to manipulate the media at their disposal and you won’t need an actual art department.” The heat never left his eyes, but the words weren’t what Darcy was expecting. Business instead of seduction.
“You’re not going to be here long are you?” He heard the message between the words.
“Don’t sound so disappointed, I might take that as a sign you want more than just a working relationship from me,” Caleb said in the same tone, but if anything the heat in his eyes intensified. “But to answer your question, no, the doctors say it’s just a matter of days. So yes, when my mother is gone, I plan to be somewhere else.”
“Where will you go?” His heart revving into overdrive startled him. It wasn’t his business where the man went.
“Back to work. I’ve been asked to go to Afghanistan to cover the war in the new decade. One of my publishers wants me to do a retrospective of the Korean War. He’s working on getting me permission to go into North Korea. There’s so much out there to do. My life was never here, it’s always been out there somewhere.”
“You would put yourself in danger just for the sake of a few pictures?” Somehow, Darcy knew the photos of the war in Iraq weren’t taken from a safe distance. The gritty realism of an exploding ordinance and the soldiers lying injured seemed like something out of a bad dream, yet Caleb had taken those photos. He’d been there when the bomb had ripped through a military transport as if it were a tin can.
“I eat danger for breakfast—what movie did that come from? I can’t remember. Hell, Darcy, it’s what I do. I’m a fucking thrill junkie. I get off on adrenaline racing through my body. I live fast and hard. I will die fast and hard.”
“Sounds like a suicide mission to me.”
“That’s because you play safe too close to the vest. You probably came from a middle class family, a couple of siblings, parents, braces, music lessons, college, marry your sweetheart, settle down and raise a bunch of kids inside a white picket fence. Safe, boring, predictable. Hell, you even dress like an old man. You have a nice body under your casual Friday office uniform but no one knows it because you are too safe.”
“Listen, Caleb, I appreciate the attempt to psychoanalyze me but really, what my life is or isn’t is none of your business.” Darcy leaned forward in his chair, heat radiating up his neck as he stared the man down.
Caleb just smiled a smug smile, dripping with satisfaction. “I was wondering if you had a temper stashed somewhere under this mild mannered Clark Kent façade. I guess you do. Anyway, I have a list of equipment I require. I’ll pick most of it up and bill you for it; I do suggest you invest in a large touch screen computer. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just something to make page design easier. And I want to meet with your field reporters in the morning to go over some photography basics before they go off on assignments.”
“Anything else, Mr Mitchell?” He hated how Caleb could bully him so easily and then, as if nothing ever happened, change the subject on him.
“Yeah, I’m not sorry for yesterday, just so you know. And now that I’ve had a taste of you, all I can think about is tasting you again.” The bold statement sent Darcy spinning. Caleb’s smug smirk told him he knew. “Okay, then, I guess that’s about it. I’m going to get with your girl Bailey. She’s a beauty, by the way. I can see why you keep her around. Smart and tall. I like that in a woman.”
“I didn’t think you liked women.” Darcy aimed low.
“Best time I ever had was with a couple of Asian beauties while I was in Japan, those little school girl dresses they wear over there are just this shy of illegal. And there was the time I went skiing with a few lovelies from the Swedish women’s Olympic team. Just me and ten blondes, I could have died a happy man right then.” He grinned, pushing his hair back with a flick of his wrist. Darcy decided he knew what kind of reaction that move stirred in people and did it on purpose. “Let’s just say I am very in touch with my sexuality and leave it at that.”
Darcy didn’t know what to say. He just watched in uncomfortable silence as Caleb left his office, and for the first time since he met him, he wondered if having him on his staff wasn’t the biggest mistake he would ever make.
The girl, Bailey, really was a stunner; so was her boyfriend. Caleb could see why Darcy didn’t trust the little prick. He was a brownnoser to the nth degree. One thing about Darcy Caleb found fascinating was his understated talent for seeing through people, yet he was clueless how to process what he saw. Chester was going to be a problem for him in the future, but how, Caleb wasn’t going to hazard a guess.
Chester looked him up and down the moment he walked into the office, his hazel eyes greedy and calculating. Bailey on the other hand only had eyes for Darcy. Caleb could tell they’d been arguing by the tension between them. And then all he could see was Darcy, it was almost as if they were the only two people in the room. Caleb did not like that at all.
He didn’t like being attracted to the man. His Clark Kent good looks sent him for a loop every time he saw him. His polite manner and the innate curiosity about him made Caleb weak. That he had no idea how attractive he really was killed him. No, this thing with Darcy scared him. The attraction was too strong, too powerful, hell he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been attracted to a man. Kissing him had been too large of a temptation and a mistake.
As the afternoon wore on, Caleb came to regret sparring with Darcy in his office. He’d only wanted to spend a moment alone with him, but just like the day before he pushed him too far. Darcy didn’t emerge from his cave of solitude, Bailey came and went, but she never looked pleased when she left him.
Caleb did like to watch her walk though. Her long legs would feel nice wrapped around his hips, but she just wasn’t what he had a taste for, not this time. And frankly, Chester’s possessive glares when he caught him looking bothered him just a little too much.
The group of kids, and yes they seemed like kids to him, were more than enthusiastic about having him on board. His basic tinkering with their work left an impression that astounded Caleb. For a bunch of techno-geeks, he expected at least one of them to have some working knowledge of photographic enhancing programs. All of them seemed to be more like Darcy, interested in the power of the written word so much so that they couldn’t see what a little color could do to enhance their words.