The Losing Game (26 page)

“With trust issues.”

“Yes.” Lucas nipped the soft flesh of Dante’s earlobe. “We’ll have to work on those.”

The blood rushed to Dante’s cock. His face burned. Lucas studied his expression intently, unforgivingly.

“You’re blushing.”

“You can’t see that.”

Lucas’s lips brushed Dante’s cheeks, his lower lip. He nipped at the fleshy skin. “I can feel it.” His breath was shivery hot as he dragged his tongue over the shell of Dante’s ear. “And taste it.”

Dante whimpered as his cock moved against his underwear.

“Open your eyes, love.”

The tremble in Lucas’s muscles, his heavy breaths, his dilated pupils—he was equally aroused, and he had something in mind. He was gearing up, venturing forward, one kiss, one breath at a time.

Dante waited, in electric anticipation, as Lucas moved carefully, mindful of the torn muscles around his pinned collarbone, to straddle Dante across his waist. His rigid cock strained across the front of his jeans. His hair stuck in damp strands across his forehead.

The press of his thighs and hips on Dante’s lap was barely enough to tease, to tantalize. Dante rolled up his hips, and with his eyes half-closed, Lucas pushed back.

Dante gasped.

After he’d confessed to killing Flynn, he didn’t dare hope that Lucas would—
could
—still want him. He couldn’t imagine Lucas looking at him without disdain. Yet here Lucas was, his eyes pleading. It was beautiful. Lucas was beautiful.

Dante yearned to make his blood rise to his skin and sing. But Lucas was trying so hard against the aftermath of his injuries to take the lead. Dante had to let him. Lucas needed for Dante to relinquish control. It was going to be torturous for a man used to doing everything his way. But perhaps, a torturous pleasure.

Lucas drawled, “I’ve been thinking about you the whole week and all the filthy things I want to do with you.”

Dante said, his voice low and hoarse, “Do anything you want.”

Though fully clothed, Lucas looked bared and wrecked. Dante ached to kiss him all over. His every cell was begging to take, one slow second at a time. It seemed like Lucas knew—from the way he cocked his head to one side, from the way his good hand splayed across Dante’s chest.

He bent down, took Dante’s jaw in his hand, and kissed him. Very softly, very chastely. Dante’s cock throbbed heavily between his legs. His nipples had tightened to hard nubs. Neither the slight movement of his thighs or the brush of his chest against his jumper provided relief. He felt as if his skin had turned to touch paper, that he’d unburden his load in an instant if Lucas touched him.

“If I had both arms, I’d undress you. I’d tie you to these fantastic bedposts and I’d fuck you into the mattress.” Lucas’s eyes lifted. “Things being what they are, I’m going to need your help.”

“Tell me what to do.”

Lucas clambered off Dante and steadied himself by holding onto the foot post of the bed. He grinned as if he’d been handed the keys to a sweet shop and didn’t know which confection to pick first.

“Get undressed. Slowly. And no touching yourself.”

Dante laughed. It came from deep inside and reverberated through his chest. “As you wish.”

“Don’t say it like that. Otherwise….”

“Otherwise, what?”

“
Get undressed
.”

The chagrin was fake but no less sexy. Maybe Lucas hadn’t had much practice at this, but he was doing well. Wickedness danced at the corners of his mouth, pulling it upward into a lascivious smile.

Dante peeled his jumper over his head and let it drop to the floor. Lucas licked his lips, leaving a glistening trail of moisture on his mouth.

In the low lamplight, the purple shadows under Lucas’s eyes and the fading bruise on his cheek looked darker, more etched with pain. A week in the hospital had left him gaunt and paler than usual. Still, his inner strength shone from the unwavering light in his eyes, which didn’t leave Dante, not for a second, as he undid his trousers and let them pool at his feet.

Dante’s cock didn’t flag. He smelled the musky scent of his own arousal, and from the way Lucas’s nostrils flared and his eyes widened, he did too.

“Help me get undressed.”

Dante took off Lucas’s jeans first. He lingered at his feet and pressed his face to the wiry muscle in Lucas’s thigh, breathed in his scent, like his own, musky and sharp, but somehow different.

“I thought….”
Ugly thoughts. Terrible thoughts.

“Shh. Don’t think. Come on. I need you to help me. It’ll be better when I get my arm back, but for now you’ll have to be patient.”

Dante lifted Lucas’s arm from the sling, ensuring the medi-pack stayed taped in place. The nerve damage in Lucas’s shoulder had delayed full mobility in his arm—the plate and screws repairing his collarbone, along with the hormone treatment, should have afforded Lucas almost complete recovery within a week. But the feeling had mostly returned, and the rest, the doctors assured him, would return in time.

Dante revealed the plane of Lucas’s stomach, the lines of his ribs and dusky pink nipples, drawn tight. As Dante moved Lucas’s left arm back into the sling, his fingers halting momentarily on the dressing that covered the deep scar over his collarbone, Lucas’s lips parted. His gaze didn’t leave Dante’s face.

“Get on the bed, on your back, and put your arms over your head.”

Dante lay down and gripped the lowest crossbar at the head of the iron-framed bed, adjusting his shoulders and legs until comfortable. Lucas climbed onto the bed and knelt at his left side, raking his eyes over the length of Dante’s body. His face was as relaxed as when he was asleep, yet alive and alert. His cock was thick and solid, his eyelids heavy with lust.

When Lucas pressed for a kiss, Dante opened for him. Small noises of pleasure erupted from Lucas’s throat as he tentatively plundered Dante’s mouth, taking his tongue and breath as his own. But Lucas vibrated with a more desperate need. His jaw must have been too sore to kiss more vigorously.

When Lucas pulled back for air, Dante chased his mouth. Lucas chuckled, teasing, and grazed Dante’s nipple with his lips. Dante almost bucked off the bed. With complete abandon, he hissed and gasped as Lucas increased the caress, with a soft suck, a lick, and then a nip.

To Dante’s side, Lucas’s cock stood hard and proud. He paused when he noticed Dante looking, tilted his hips forward, and gave his erection a lazy stroke. “See what you do to me?”

Dante’s stomach was already wet with precome, and another bead of fluid dribbled from his cock and spread into the ebony trail of hair leading from his navel to his groin.

Lucas knelt between Dante’s thighs. He surveyed Dante’s naked body as Dante surveyed his: the way his hip bones jutted in line with his ribs and in between, how his stomach heaved. Dante could almost taste the heavy scent of Lucas’s arousal in the air.

“I’m going to touch you now, with my hand. I want you to come as quickly as you can. Okay?”

For this time at least, Lucas had no care for self-control. He wanted Dante to let go. To lose it.

“I’ll do my best.” Dante tried to laugh, but all that came out was a tight huff of air and a vibration in his shoulders.

Lucas placed his hand on Dante’s cock and closed his fingers around its girth. He stroked languidly, murmuring his approval as Dante rolled into the motion, countering in perfect time.

The pressure began to build in his balls immediately.
Too damned soon, like a damned teenager.

“I’m close.”

Already.

“Good. It’s good to know I turn you on.”

Lucas slipped down the bed. He knelt, dropped to his elbow, and took a long lick over Dante’s balls. With the tip of his tongue, Lucas tracked length of Dante’s cock. Dante groaned, Lucas hummed, and that noise alone further spiked his own arousal.

With his hand on Dante’s thigh, Lucas took the tip of Dante’s cock in his mouth. He sucked it slowly until Dante begged, “Faster, harder,” stupidly forgetting that it would hurt Lucas too much. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Lucas stopped. He crawled up Dante’s body and lay over him, his skin burning like white fire. “Don’t be. Look at you.”

“I prefer to look at you.” Dante canted his hips, brushing his cock against Lucas’s erection.

“Then look at me.”

Dante looked, until he couldn’t. He closed his hand over Lucas’s shoulder, at once remembering he was meant to be holding the bed frame. He was no good at this. He wanted to love Lucas, to hold him and bury himself inside him. He knew he shouldn’t ask. Lucas deserved this. Dante owed him this much respect at the very least.

“What is it?” Lucas asked. “What do you want?”

“Whatever you want.”

“We could go around in circles. I want you to tell me.” Lucas’s eyes narrowed, then lit. “Tell me what you want. In detail.”

“I want to be inside you. I want you on your back so that I can see your face when you come.”

Lucas almost looked relieved.

Dante took his time opening Lucas with his fingers. The earlier panic that had laced his arousal diminished, though his erection did not. While Dante pushed his knuckles past the tension and worked tight muscles loose, Lucas lifted one of his legs, hooking his ankle over Dante’s shoulder, murmuring his approval on every sultry exhale.

The breach was sweet and perfect. Dante took care not to put any weight on Lucas’s chest. He clasped his hips tight and drove into his heat, savoring the flush that mottled Lucas’s chest and the slow dribble of precome from Lucas’s cock.

In Dante’s attic room at the top of his house, synchronously, their bodies moved. Lucas’s lips parted, and he panted, “Make me come.” Dante steadied himself on his haunches and stroked Lucas’s cock.

A long groan accompanied the warm spill of Lucas’s orgasm. The clench of his muscles around Dante’s cock had him crashing through his own climax soon after. As Dante had taken care of Lucas, Lucas had taken care of Dante.

Their post-coital kisses were more shared breath than skin, more affection than passion.

Lucas’s semen had dried on his stomach by the time Dante found the strength and will to heave his weary body off the bed from beside Lucas. He went to the bathroom and brought back a flannel, moistened with warm water, cleaning Lucas first, then himself.

Under the covers, Dante drew Lucas to his chest and buried his nose against the nape of his neck, where his skin was warm and his hair silky-soft. Lucas ran his fingers over Dante’s forearm, stroking him gently, lovingly.

When their breathing slowed and Dante’s eyes began to feel heavy, Lucas said, “I stink.”

“I like the way you smell, but we can shower if you like.”

Lucas turned in Dante’s arms and placed his hand on Dante’s chest. “Maybe later. I’m pretty tired.”

“Then sleep. I might go downstairs. You can buzz me on the intercom if you need me, or you can come down. Make yourself at home.”

“I should go home. To my home. I’ve got things that need to be sorted out. Post. Laundry. Sour milk in the fridge.”

“I can take you tomorrow. But I’d like it if you’d come back with me. Stay here for a few days? Until you’re stronger.”

“All right.”

Lucas closed his eyes and rolled onto his back. Dante wasn’t sure whether he didn’t like to be touched when he slept or if his injury made it uncomfortable to be nuzzled close to another person. In truth, he didn’t know Lucas nearly as well as he’d thought he did.

He’d watched him for weeks, but time in each other’s company? There was only their first meeting, Avery’s funeral, a date, and a week of hospital visits.

Did he and Lucas share that indefinable, inexplicable connection that sometimes grew into what people called love? Dante wouldn’t allow himself to think too far ahead, but he couldn’t help hoping, as he listened to Lucas’s breathing even out and his face slacken. At the very least, he wanted to share more of his time in the world with him.

He kissed his temple. “Sweet dreams.”

Lucas’s eyes didn’t open, but his mouth curled up briefly. His foot found Dante’s calf under the covers. He rested it there and replied sluggishly, “You too.”

Dante didn’t often dream. At least, he didn’t remember his dreams once he awoke. He was content to know that he would sleep soundly, with Lucas at his side.

DANTE LAY
awake into the small hours. He hadn’t shared his bed for some time. He hadn’t shared his heart for longer. He tuned into the rhythm of Lucas’s breathing and let it soothe him. Lucas was here. Lucas was his. Lucas was safe.

For the sake of thoroughness, Dante had checked the cameras and the Internet. Shaw seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Denny Ross’s social-media profiles were radio silent. Bill Massey’s too. Richard Shaw’s friends weren’t posting anything linked to him nor were they posting anything about themselves. Unless the police found some evidence connecting them, Shaw and Lucas had nothing to fear. So why was Shaw in hiding? The man had a business to run.

Dante tamped down the feeling this was a prelude. The storm had been and gone. This was the calm. It had to be. But you could never be too careful. First thing Friday morning, Dante arranged to meet Thierry for lunch.

Later the same morning, Dante drove Lucas home. Lucas took Avery’s poster boards upstairs, to the empty second bedroom. What must have been Grace’s bedroom. He turned the boards so that the picture sides were facing the wall.

Dante at first thought he’d done that because it was too painful for Lucas to see the photographs, but a shaft of sunlight coming in through the window suggested he simply wanted to protect them from sun damage. It served as a poignant reminder that not everything that Lucas or Dante did hinged around their losses.

“I meant to ask you about Avery’s will,” Lucas said. “Did everything go okay?”

The reading had been the morning before, but with everything else that had happened, Dante had forgotten to mention it. “You mean did she leave me anything?”

“It’s none of my business. I….”

“You don’t need to feel guilty or that somehow you’ve cheated anyone out of their due.”