by Shannon West
“Yeah, you don’t look so good,” Logan answered honestly, then turned to Perry. “Okay, I wasn’t kidding about Luke—no more of your bullshit, smartass comments. Are we clear?”
Perry answered with an insolent shrug. “As long as you can keep him in line, I guess its fine with me.”
“Stop being an ass, Ron,” Wilson ordered weakly. “And, trust me; he’s keeping him in line.”
“If you can’t help seeing us, Jake, then at least keep that shit to yourself.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“Good, now that that’s been settled, tell me about Jackson. How do you know he needs help? Hell, how do you even know he’s still alive?” In the background noise, Logan could hear Luke calling Rio and getting ready to come back upstairs. The bionic hearing was annoying most of the time, but it damn sure came in handy when Luke wasn’t with him. Keeping him safe and out of the hands of the bastards who want to do “research” on him, AKA, cut him open, was Logan’s top priority.
Wilson tossed the washcloth in the direction of the bathroom. Most of the color was coming back to his cheeks, making him appear stronger and ready for battle. “Jackson interrupted my vision of you and Luke this morning—thank goodness.” Wilson swore bitterly. “But hell, he’s fucked up, Logan. Really bad. He’s gotten in with the wrong crowd, and his-his head is messed up.” He looked up at me and Perry. “It looks like he’s high on drugs or something. Like at times when I see him, his eyes are empty. Like there’s no one home. Do you think what Kowalski did to him somehow fucked up his mind?” Wilson’s cheeks turned pink. “Oh…and it looks like he’s in some kind of bar or club…maybe. He’s in a place with liquor, anyway. And violence. Sex. The whole menu.”
“Fuck,” Logan muttered. If Jackson wanted to drink, give lap dances, and fuck the football team for money, Logan didn’t care. The empty eyes terrified him, though. “Any idea where he is?”
“Yeah…Atlanta,” Wilson answered. “I got a flash of Fulton County in my head. That’s Atlanta. I used to live there for a while.”
“Then it looks like that’s where we’re headed,” Logan said. “Jackson was one of us and no matter what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself in to, we’re gonna do our damndest to get him out of it.”
Logan’s biggest fear, though he didn’t put it out there in the universe, was that whatever they’d dosed him and the rest of the team with, possibly mixed with the shit being manufactured at that compound, would end up…destroying Jackson—maybe starting with his mind. Was Jackson just the first and empty eyes were just around the corner for each of them? What the fuck did that mean anyway? “Get your gear together and we’ll meet at the truck in fifteen minutes. I’d like to have Jackson back with us as soon as we can manage it.”
Wilson popped up like a puppy seeing a chew toy instead of a man who’d just purged every ounce of everything out of his body. When Logan cocked his brow at him, he said, “It passes pretty quickly, thank goodness. I feel like I’m on the verge of dying for about twenty minutes after the vision, but then everything goes back to normal.”
He took a step toward the door and then paused. “Hey, before Luke gets back in here, there’s something I need to say.”
Oh, fuck…just when Logan was really starting to like Wilson.
“What did I say earlier, Wilson?” Logan growled in fury. “Luke’s mine and I don’t want to hear any shit about him. He stays.”
Wilson immediately started shaking his head. “No, it’s nothing like that,” he assured me. “I’m just seeing bits and pieces, and none of it really makes sense, you know? I’m trying my best to piece things together. The vision with Jackson this morning was one of the clearest I’ve had. The others? It’s just splashes of conversations or peeks into places where I know I don’t want to peek. I know this, though—Luke’s special in some way. He’s going to be like a-a catalyst to bring all this to a head. I don’t know the whys or wherefores, but I know that.”
When Perry opened his mouth to comment, Wilson silenced him with a glare. “No, Perry. You’re wrong about him being one of the Institute’s guys now. I may not know much, but I know that. It’s something else. Something never planned for him to be a part of this. And now that he is, he’s messing everything up.”
“What?” Logan asked. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s like something…or someone never wanted him involved. He’s too…he has a lot of strong feelings about things. He’s too…honest.” Perry snorted and he swiveled his head to look at him. “I told you to get the resentment toward him out of your head, Perry. He’s too loyal to Logan to ever mess with us.”
Chills raced up and down Logan’s spine. Fear like he had never known seeped into his blood and caused it to turn to ice. Logan would kill them all before he let them have Luke. Grabbing Wilson by the front of his shirt, Logan demanded, “What did you see? Do they intend to hurt him?”
Wilson calmly moved Logan’s hand away from his shirt. “Logan, I don’t know if I’m seeing the past, the present, or the future. Or just possibilities of what might happen. With Jackson, I felt like it was the present. With Luke, I feel like I’m seeing what the future could be. Sometimes I get visions from the past—things I shouldn’t know about—like Perry and his brother-in-law fighting with each other at the cabin. I shouldn’t know that stuff, but Perry confirmed it happened. I only told you what I did because I understand the need for us all to stick together. You were right: it’s going to take all of us working together to survive this.”
The hotel door opened, and Luke and Rio walked in. One look at Luke’s face and Logan knew he’d heard more than he would have liked for him to hear. It was a twenty-four-hour, seven days a week job to keep the stick out of his ass, and Logan knew him worrying would only make the job harder. “Hey, Navy,” he said. “Everything okay?”
Rio raced over and nudged Logan’s hand, demanding that he pet him the way Luke always did. Wanting to make Luke happy, Logan knelt down so he could give Rio’s floppy ears some extra attention. It wasn’t because Rio liked it. Not at all.
“I’m good,” he finally answered. “I guess there’s no time for a shower? I heard you say we were leaving for Atlanta.”
Perry rolled his eyes. “Let him shower, for fuck’s sake. He’s probably sticky. Atlanta’s only a couple hours away. Hell, let’s all shower. Wilson’s gonna smell like puke the entire trip if we don’t.”
Logan figured that was Perry’s way of being nice. It sucked as gestures went, but was probably a giant step for him. “We leave here in thirty minutes. Make it fast.”
An hour and a half later, they were pulling out of the hotel parking lot. Logan would have liked to blame one of his sidekicks for the delay, but he knew the culpability lay solely with him. Once Luke got undressed, Logan, in an effort to save water decided they should shower together. What could he say? He was an environmentalist. Things got delayed.
Logan caught him just taking off his shirt. He unzipped Luke’s jeans and pushed them down, as Luke’s hands fumbled with the buttons on Logan’s, finally getting them undone and hooking his fingers on the waist and pushing them down over his hips. Logan’s cock popped out, already hard. Fuck, it seemed to stay that way around Luke all the time. Logan took Luke’s dick in his hand and pulled him up close. Luke’s was thick and dark pink and nearly the same size as Logan’s.
Luke stepped away and over into the tub, giving him a flirty little smile as Logan hurried to join him. The water was steamy and felt good on Logan’s skin. Unable to wait any longer, Logan slid to his knees and took Luke in his mouth. He cupped his balls and let his fingers explore the space behind them, and then he took him as far into his throat as he could and enjoyed Luke’s moans.
It didn’t take him long to lose patience with just sucking Luke’s cock, though, and he got back to his feet and turned him around to face the shower wall, gently shoving his feet apart at the ankles. His ass was perfectly curved and fit Logan’s hands nicely. He rubbed
his finger over his hole, and Luke raised his ass in the air so he could reach it. Logan bent over to give Luke’s rosebud a good soaking with his tongue until he was whimpering and trying to pull away. Slipping a finger into him, he pushed in and then back out, deliberately rubbing his prostate as he did. His breathing got heavier and louder, so Logan slapped his dick across his ass a few times before he pushed it into him in one long thrust.
Luke twisted himself so he could look back at Logan while he fucked him, and he fucked him hard, loving the little sounds he made as he held his buttocks in his hands and drove into him. He dropped his head back on Logan’s shoulder and Logan looked down into his face. His skin was glowing with health and beauty and Logan had to kiss him, pulling out so he could turn him around. When he did, Luke wrapped his legs around Logan’s waist and lifted his lips for the kisses that rained down on him, their lips bouncing together and then apart as Logan pounded him. Maybe Logan should have given up on trying to kiss him, but he couldn’t. He wanted to feel his lips pressed against his, if only for a moment, again and again. Moments later, a huge spurt of cum splashed between them and Logan followed him right after that. They clung together for a while, both trying to catch their breath. Logan looked down at himself as Luke stepped over into the stream of the shower. He really needed to get the cum washed off him, but that would mean washing Luke off him and he wasn’t ready to let that go.
****
Since the trip wasn’t too long, Perry agreed to drive the entire time. He said he felt like he was best fit for the job since Luke and Logan had been fucking most of the day, and Jake was still a little shaky, even though he wouldn’t admit it. Logan couldn’t argue with those facts, so the rest of them dozed while Perry carefully shortened the distance between them and Atlanta. Jake sat in the middle, and Luke and Rio climbed into the back of the truck. Logan had offered to do it and got turned down, and then he offered his lap and got a look that came close to freezing the marrow in his bones, so he settled down for the two-hour trip and tried to take a nap.
The last thing they needed was to attract the attention of anyone, especially the police, so Luke told them he’d stay out of sight by getting into the sleeping bag and hunkering down. Since it was still cool and occasionally drizzling rain, he pulled Rio in with him. Perry stayed right on the speed limit so as not to attract undue attention as they made their way south.
Atlanta was a great city and Logan had visited it often in the past. It would be a nice place to live one day when they invented the flying car. The traffic was miserable. Worst he’d ever seen and he’d driven in a lot of places. Some of its interstate junctions hovered around the number one spot for having the worst traffic bottlenecks in the United States, and it was only about an hour in before they came up on one of them, the convergence of I-75 and I-285. The traffic was moving at approximately the same speed as warm lead, as flotillas of cars and trucks attempted to flow in from feeder lanes and others in the six lanes of traffic jockeyed impatiently for position.
Perry cussed and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, and Logan stared out the window and wondered if Luke was warm enough in the back of the truck. He craned his neck to see him, but Luke was lying still, maybe taking a nap. He was out of the wind and was currently covered up by a dog and a sub-zero temperature sleeping bag, but Logan found himself still fretting over him like a hen with a baby chick. Luke was becoming woven tightly into the fabric of Logan’s life, even in this short time, stitched into the seams of it, to the point where he hardly knew where he left off and Luke began. It didn’t make sense, this feeling that he’d always known him—had known him forever instead of just weeks. He sighed, disgusted with himself, and closed his eyes to try to sleep.
Even having to fight the truly awful Atlanta traffic, it felt like Logan had only just closed his eyes when Perry started waking them up.
“Wake up, Logan. Traffic is shittier the closer we get, and I don’t have a clue where I’m supposed to be going anyway. I’m gonna need some input, like an address or a name for the GPS. Eyes open, guys!”
It took Logan a couple of minutes to wake up enough to orient himself with where they were. Perry had pulled off at a gas station near Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta. Luke and Rio had already climbed out of the back, and Rio was relieving himself on the grass on the verge of the parking lot.
“We’re going to have to find another way to travel,” Logan complained. “This sucks.”
“Well, if trading the truck is out…?” Perry said and flinched a little at the look he got in return. “Like I said, since that’s out, we could get one of those covers for the back. Then when somebody sits back there, the cops won’t stop us.”
“Maybe.” Logan shrugged. “Damn things are ugly, though. Diego would have a fit.”
“That’s your friend you got the truck from? The one who died?”
“His family gave it to us, yeah. I’ll sit in the back for now,” Logan offered, pitching his voice a little louder as Luke walked up.
“No, it’s fine,” Luke said. “Just don’t go so fast. It’s not safe for Rio.”
For Rio. Logan bit his tongue and nodded, just to avoid another fight. “We stopped to figure out where we need to go. Wilson’s ‘vision’ wasn’t too explicit.”
“He saw a club, right? And they’re all over. Some are in midtown. I have a friend who is a co-owner at a popular bar on Glenwood Avenue, called Mary’s,” Luke said. “Maybe we start there. He might be able to point us in the right direction.”
Every one of their heads, including Logan’s, turned to look at Luke like he’d spoken some foreign language.
“Are you kidding me?” Logan asked.
“What? You think I didn’t have any friends?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought,” Logan replied and then smiled at Luke’s outraged frown. “But have you been to Mary’s? You know it’s a gay bar, right?”
Luke blinked slowly at him. “And you know I’m gay, right? If you recall, we met at a gay club one night. Why are you so shocked?”
Why was Logan so shocked? Not a clue. But he didn’t like the idea of Luke frequenting gay bars without him.
“I dunno,” he answered, showing how unintelligent his end of the conversation was quickly becoming.
“Do you have a better idea?” Luke asked.
“No. Let’s start on Glenwood Avenue then and see where it leads us.” Perry looked up the address, punched it into his phone and GPS did the rest. Thirty minutes later, they were in a parking garage and ready to walk the remainder of the way to Mary’s. As they drove, Logan had found himself getting more and more jealous as the questions in his mind piled up. Who was this so-called friend? Had he and Luke been lovers? Had this motherfucker’s hands been where only his belonged? By the time they got there, he was steaming.
Logan slammed the door, way harder than necessary. He watched, then huffed in disgust, when Rio raced over to take a piss on somebody’s tire…right there in the parking garage. “Damn it, Luke! Do something with your dog!”
“He’s taking a piss, Logan. I’ve seen you do the same thing,” Luke quipped. “Back your shit down. I know we’ve had to have discussed your lack of sex appeal when you’re acting like a total douche.” Then, the motherfucker turned around and gave Logan a grin and dropped his eyelid in a wink. “Jealousy does look pretty good on you, though.”
“What do I have to be jealous of? You’re crazy,” Logan barked.
“Oh, you’re jealous,” Perry, Mr. Shit-Stirrer, agreed. “It’s all over your face. Within every minute that passed after Luke said he had a friend working at a gay bar, your face got greener and uglier.”
Wilson shrugged as Logan snarled at Perry. “You did get mad. I can’t lie for you.”
“You’ve lied for me before.”
“I know, but I’m enjoying this way too much,” Wilson said.
Logan had lost the battle, maybe not the war, but this little skirmish was definitely a defeat, so he co
nceded and raised the white flag to end it. “Just put the leash on Rio and let’s go meet your damn ‘friend.’ Like I’ve got anything to worry about. If it’s one of your old Navy buddies, they’re all pussies, anyway. I’m good.”
Fifteen minutes later, Logan realized having to eat your own words didn’t taste very good. Luke’s old Navy buddy Draven was a far cry from being anything associated with the word he’d used to describe him. He stood at six feet five and had muscles as big as Logan’s. Every inch of his torso was a canvas of some of the most beautiful ink Logan had ever laid eyes on. Like Luke, Draven had blond hair, but his was a dirty blond while Luke’s was more platinum. The man’s eyes were an odd shade of pale blue. Logan wanted to hate the motherfucker on sight, just on principle, but he turned out to be one of the friendliest guys Logan had ever met. When Draven grabbed Luke into a hug, lifting him off the floor and twirling him around, Logan hadn’t picked up on the least bit of attraction between the two of them…which was a good thing because Draven just might have been able to kick Logan’s ass, though Logan would never admit it out loud.
As he directed them toward a table near the back of the club, maybe a VIP section on a busier night, the blond giant chatted with Luke about their Navy days together. As they all sat down, he said, “It’s great to meet some of Luke’s friends.” The ice blue eyes looked first at Luke and then back to the team. “He’s hard to get close to, so I’m glad to see he’s finally opened himself enough to let some more people in.” He held out his hand to Logan first. “I’m Draven. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Logan.” He looked the giant up and down one more time and added, “Luke’s boyfriend.”
He laughed. “Yeah, kinda figured that one out when you growled a little when I hugged him. It’s cool. Luke and I are friends and that’s all we’ve ever been. No need to piss on him to mark your territory.” He grinned then at Logan’s blush.