‘Uh … one of them yeah, Freya. She’s really cool. You’d like her.’ He didn’t know why he thought so, but he did. They had a similar quiet confidence about them.
‘You live with two people? A couple?’ He didn’t sound surprised, only interested, moving over to the bed and sitting on the edge since there was no chair.
‘Yeah, Dave’s my best friend, and Freya’s his girlfriend. We’ve been here a couple of years now, ever since I moved out of home.’
‘Ah, I remember that,’ Hale laughed. ‘Clay and Taylor had a bet running to see if you would move out before you burned the house to the ground.’
‘I would never!’ Ashley gaped, horrified that his brothers would even suggest him capable of it. He was a firefighter for crying out loud!
‘They had money on it … I’m pretty sure Mendel and I were the closest; we guessed you’d move out within six months and that the house would be fine, in case you were wondering.’ He was smirking, knowing full well Ashley had been contemplating that very thing. It was nice to know Hale hadn’t thought him incompetent, and really he didn’t think his brothers thought it either, they simply knew their parents were insane and that no one could stay sane living under their roof.
‘No pets?’
‘Huh? No,’ Ashley forced himself to stop thinking about his brothers and instead focus on the very attractive man sitting on his bed. Though, staring at the man, he had to wonder if that was the best idea. Being angry at his brothers was much safer, and they could crush his skull with their bare hands, mountain style.
‘I have a dog,’ Hale offered.
‘What sort?’ Hale didn’t seem like a dog person, but that was based on the fact before tonight Ashley had only ever seen Hale in a police uniform. He actually had no reason whatsoever to believe Hale wouldn’t have a pet outside his own experience of shift work. He simply didn’t have the time.
‘A Doberman.’ He sounded suspiciously dubious and Ashley arched a curious brow at him in query. ‘He uh … his name’s Anubis.’
‘Of course it is.’ Ashley was trying hard not to laugh, but an inelegant snort escaped.
‘He refuses to go for a run without his stuffed bunny. So you know, I get stuck running through the park with this big black dog with what looks like a dead rabbit hanging out of its mouth …’
Ashley laughed so hard his stomach was hurting and his eyes watered.
‘I get the cops called on me more than the public housing blocks in Redfern, for running my stupid dog!’
The laughter was out of control. Hale sounded so disgusted it was impossible not to howl.
‘The worst was when a little girl screamed at the park and started wailing and I looked over to check she was okay and tripped on Anubis’ lead and cut my arm open on the path. Anubis freaked out and tried to lick it better, and that was when your stupid brothers turned up, in full riot gear, to find me sprawled out under an oversized Doberman with blood all over its muzzle and my arm and a little girl screaming her head off, blood all over his bunny toy and it’s head ripped open a little so it’s stuffing was falling out …’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’
‘What the hell were they in riot gear for?’ He couldn’t stop laughing and barely managed to get the words out.
‘Apparently they’d finished a raid when the call came through and based on where the call was and their vague knowledge of my dog they assumed it was me and came running. No guns, just phones out to take pictures.’
That actually sounded exactly like them. It was kind of nice to learn he wasn’t the only one suffering at the hands of his siblings.
‘Don’t suppose those pictures are still floating around?’
‘Oh, Clay has a video,’ Hale chuckled, shaking his head. ‘He brings it up every time I bring up him tasering that gun runner out of the rafters.’
That was a great video; Taylor had shown it one Saturday when he came home for lunch. Clay had seemed so startled, as if he hadn’t considered for a moment that if he tasered a guy in the roof, he’d fall out of the rafters. The guy lived but he had a lot of broken bones and the footage really was hysterical.
‘Do you find it hard to have a dog when you’re on shift work?’ It was the primary reason Ashley had never considered having a pet; he didn’t have a lifestyle that could support it and he refused to get an animal that relied on the good will of his housemates to care for it.
‘When I get home in the middle of the night, sure, but at least no one’s dumb enough to try and attack you when you’re running at 2.00 am with a giant black dog with a dead rabbit hanging out of its mouth, right?’
Shaking his head, Ashley chuckled and moved over to sit beside him on the bed.
‘Done staring?’ Hale laughed at him and Ashley felt the blush creep up his cheeks.
‘It’s that … this isn’t exactly how I thought my night was going to go.’ Hale pulled back slightly and Ashley reached out immediately, wrapping a hand around Hale’s bicep to hold him in place.
‘Not in a bad way … this is way better than sitting on the couch, solo, drinking beers. It got better when Sietta asked me to go watch his show, but that was still weird because he wants to be friends but he’s super-hot and it’s so weird to be attracted to your brother’s boyfriend, right? And then Tay and Clay turned up, drunk, and I just knew that my night was going to shit because one too many always means Clay’s pants are coming off? But then you were there, and I’d been wondering if you were okay ever since I heard you got hurt at the hospital …’
Hale’s mouth was on his again and Ashley couldn’t help the heavy sigh of relief that something had finally shut him up. He wasn’t usually a rambler; usually he stood around gaping, wondering how he’d gotten into a situation, but every now and then his mouth ran away from him. Unfortunately, usually while he was trying to be attractive and apparently failing miserably.
He couldn’t help the moan that escaped when Hale pulled him forward, using the hold he had on his bicep to lay him down on the bed. Hale’s full weight pressed him into the mattress, his tongue sliding in to taste and allowing his to do the same.
In none of his dreams had Finn Hale tasted as good as he tasted in reality. It was like taking drugs, or how Ashley had imagined taking drugs felt. Something he hadn’t known he’d been missing but it was suddenly burning through every vein and artery. Kissing had never felt like that; had never been so intensely fantasised about and not found wanting.
When Hale pulled back and rested their foreheads together, taking a few deep breaths as if he were affected as badly, Ashley grew more confident, catching up to the fact this was happening and he could finally touch like he’d always wanted to. He was still gripping Hale’s bicep, much harder than he’d intended and he loosened his hold and ran his hands down Hale’s arms, letting them fall to his waist and rubbing his thumbs over the curve of hipbones barely visible under his shirt. There was hard muscle under his hands, no sign of fat anywhere on the man and he pushed the shirt out of the way, needing to touch and run his hands over each abdominal, marvelling at precisely how cut the man was.
He flipped them over, careful not to jar Hale’s injured leg, shoving his shirt out of the way and looking down at the body he’d been daydreaming about for years. It was so much better than he’d imagined. Finn Hale was not a bulky human. There wasn’t a wasted muscle on the man, he was all slender muscled plains, most of it long, lean legs.
‘This is some crazy … chicken and broccoli shit!’ He joked, and Hale was so startled he laughed, a full rich spill as he reached up and pulled Ashley in for more heated kisses.
His own shirt was pulled over his head and tossed aside. Rough, calloused hands stroked over his sensitive skin, grazing his nipple and making him gasp. He shifted so his groin would graze against Hale’s and gasped as pleasure pulsed through him, demanding more.
He reached down for the fly on Hale’s jeans when his phone started blurting in his back pocket. They broth froze.
‘Your butt’s vibrating,’ Hale offered helpfully. ‘It’s not exactly how I thought this would go …’ It was enough to make Ashley laugh as he fell sideways to lie beside him as he fished his phone out of his pocket and groaned at the name on his screen.
‘Sietta?’ He answered dubiously. This couldn’t be good.
‘Can you come get us?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he replied before he’d even thought about what he’d been asked, already pushing himself up and looking for wherever his shirt had ended up. Then he realised what he was doing and turned to stare at Hale, but he was searching for his shirt as well, on the move.
‘Uh … who’s us?’ That seemed important. Or it should have. Watching Hale put his shirt back on was distracting and left Ashley hot and spectacularly bothered.
‘Me and Jamie!’ He sounded puffed, as if he’d been running.
‘Jamie and I,’ he corrected.
‘Excuse me?’ Sietta sounded horrified, though whether it was because he’d made a grammatical error or Ashley was being picky about it now was hard to say.
‘You’re not with Taylor?’ Of course, Taylor had left Le Corridor before Ashley had, but Ashley had assumed he would double back later when Sietta’s gig finished.
‘No, Harris locked him up in the riot van with Clay to sober up and texted he’d confiscated their phones or I’d call him.’
‘Kinky weirdos.’ Ashley didn’t bother to button his shirt all the way because it was proving difficult to do one handed, searching instead for his shoes and shoving his feet into them. Hale was already reaching for his crutches and heading for the door. Ash checked his watch, but he’d only had two light beers and he’d stopped drinking well over an hour ago, so he was fine to drive. He grabbed his keys and hurried out the door, meeting Hale in the elevator.
‘Where are you?’
‘Uh … I’ll find out on Google maps and send you the address.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Well, we were leaving Le Corridor but these guys tried to rob us in the back alley …’
‘Excuse me?!’
‘What?’
‘You were robbed?’ He was never going to survive. He was a dead man walking. Taylor was going to murder him. He shouldn’t, because it was not Ashley’s fault and he was going to the rescue but that wouldn’t matter. Somehow this was going to all be Ashley’s fault.
‘No, I said these guys tried to rob us, that’s not the same thing at all!’ Sietta sounded frustrated and Ashley forced himself to calm down and listen.
‘You’re okay?’
‘I’m fine. So they tried, and we ran, but it’s really hard to run with a cello, you know? And they chased us but we got away, but it’s the middle of the night and …’
‘Send me the damned address,’ he ordered and hung up, shoving the phone at Hale as they climbed into his ute. ‘The idiots ran from some muggers,’ he explained.
‘I don’t think it’s idiotic to run when you’re being mugged? What’re they gonna do, shoot you? Who has a gun these days? Much more likely they’ve got a knife, and then it just comes down to who runs the fastest.’
‘Bikies?’
‘What?’ Hale looked stumped.
‘Bikies might have guns.’ That was in the news a lot these days. Ashley wondered where they got the guns, but apparently people knew how to make them at home in the back shed or something. Who had time for that kind of nonsense? Those people needed a damn job.
‘Why would bikies be mugging Salisbury at two in the morning behind a bar?’
‘I dunno. Maybe they didn’t like his book.’
Hale was laughing at him, and it helped him calm down. He was scared, plain and simple. For Sietta, but also for himself when Taylor found out what had happened, but then his brother shouldn’t get so drunk if he wanted someone to babysit his boyfriend. That was not on Ashley.
‘Sietta’s not an idiot,’ Hale pointed out. ‘He’s completely bat-shit crazy, but he’s not an idiot.’ It made Ashley grin, sharing a knowing look with Hale before the phone pinged and an address popped up on the screen. It wasn’t far away. Sietta had apparently had the sense to at least head the right way.
Hale gave directions while Ashley drove and they were there in minutes, pulling up at a park and watching as two figures emerged from the shadow of the trees and jumped in the back, shoving the cello between them, cradled between their jittering legs, grins wide and cheeks flushed, even in the cool.
‘Can’t believe you ran with the damned cello.’ Ashley checked they were okay in the rear view mirror before he pulled away from the curb.
‘Are you kidding? Do you know how much my baby is worth?’ Jamie grabbed at the case, as if Ashley might grab it and toss it out the window.
‘I dunno … a couple of hundred?’
‘Put another zero or two on that.’ Sietta nervously drummed his fingers on the cello case.
‘That’s nuts!’
‘That’s music,’ Sietta and Jamie extolled in unison.
Hale was suspiciously quiet in the front seat and when Ashley glanced over he realised he was playing with his phone.
‘You want me to drop you home?’
‘Hell no!’ Hale must have realised how odd that sounded, looking at the rear-view mirror to see Sietta’s reaction, but then apparently deciding he didn’t care, shrugging it off as he sent a text and grinned. ‘I’m getting Harris to take photos of B1 and B2 in their shackles.’
‘That’s not funny.’ Sietta sounded dark, but everyone else was laughing and Ashley drove them all to his apartment, not interested in driving anyone else home. That had seemed like a good idea until he pulled up and realised he didn’t have a place for everyone to sleep.
‘Don’t sweat it, we’ll take the couches,’ Sietta assured him without him having to say anything. Ashley locked up after everyone climbed out and followed them into the elevator, aware of Sietta looking at him strangely. Curious, even though he asked no questions. Ashley forced himself to ignore him, going into the apartment and fetching spare blankets from the linen closet, tossing them at Jamie and disappearing into his room after Hale.
Then he stood there, unsure what to do with himself, awkward now that he’d been caught not quite having a one night stand. If it was a one night stand. He had no idea what Hale’s thoughts were on the matter.
‘Do you have any Panadol and Nurofen?’ Hale pointed at his leg. He looked paler than earlier in the evening.
‘Yeah …’ Ashley rushed back out to the kitchen and grabbed two of each and a glass of water, aware of Sietta watching him but ignoring him as best he could. Taylor was going to find out about this, and that sucked. Sort of. Actually, he couldn’t decide if he even cared, he was still too shocked he had Finn Hale in his bedroom and he handed over the medicine with a smile.
‘Thanks. This is the best I can manage for pain relief, so …’ He shrugged and swallowed the pills, sighing as he finished off the glass of water.
‘Have you always been allergic to codeine?’
‘Yeah … broke my arm as a kid and the doctor gave me some … I had a lot of trouble breathing and the hives didn’t go down until sometime that night. I was in hospital for days. I tried to have it as an adult, thinking maybe I grew out of the allergy but nope. Turns me into a puking mess in minutes.’
‘Charming.’ Ashley frowned because he felt helpless in his desire to make the man feel better.
‘I can be,’ Hale joked, and without any prompting at all Hale kicked off his jeans, standing in only his underwear, tossing his shirt aside as well and going to the bed and climbing in.
‘You coming?’
Ashley nodded and his hands moved on autopilot, divesting himself of his jeans and shirt, tossing them in the corner with Hale’s clothes and moving to the other side of the bed. He sat awkwardly beside the man before giving in to his desires and sliding over to settle into the pillows and pull Hale in against his side. They weren’t having sex tonight, but Ashley wa
sn’t letting the man go.
Other than to reach over and put his phone on charge. Just in case.
6
Lifesavers: minty fresh
Lingering in the place between dreams and waking, Ashley was aware only of heat and bright light. As these sensations weren’t accompanied by pain, he knew on a subconscious level that he wasn’t in a fire. That didn’t mean he didn’t jerk as he came awake in a panic, his conscious mind finally breaking free of sleep and for a brief moment thinking he was going to die. But the bright light was only the sun coming through the heavy curtains where he hadn’t completely closed them at one corner, shooting across the room like a lens flare in a Star Trek film. The heat was the warm body he’d curled up against and the heavy doona pulled over them.
He stared at the soft brown hair in front of him, the strands long enough that they tickled his nose, and slowly remembered that Finn Hale was in his bed. Even weirder, Finn Hale was in his bed and Ashley had not made a single move to molest the man, despite that being the first thing he’d done in every single one of his fantasies. Clearly, his fantasy-self was a more interesting human, even if he could claim to be the better man. Over himself.
Had he slept? He seemed tired. Or his brain was taking longer than usual to wake up. Or he was in bed with Finn Hale, the side effect of which was the inability to think. He was going to go with that theory.
As his eyes adjusted to the ray of sunlight in the otherwise dark room he became aware of marks on Hale’s skin. He’d dreamt about that skin a lot; it was one of the things he always thought of when he was daydreaming. It was a soft caramel colour, a light tan that reminded Ashley of milkshakes and summers at the beach. All things that featured in his dreams, usually with Hale. But he’d never seen Hale shirtless before last night, and then it had been dark and he hadn’t seen Hale’s back. Now that he could his mouth went dry and his cock felt like it shrivelled and died in his jocks.
A scar ran from the middle of Hale’s left shoulder blade diagonally across his back to his lower ribs on the right side. It wasn’t a faint thing, or gentle. It looked like someone had tried to hack the man in half, and no one had been there to sew him neatly back together. A good inch wide, hollowed out and a dark red, the scar was hideous, but trundling along its banks in splattered watercolour were a series of rainbow rhinoceroses; yellow, red, green, blue, grey, pink wandering across Hale’s back and disappearing around his hip in a splatter of ink as if the artist had gotten distracted and walked away mid-work. The tattoo work was incredible, the creatures seemed to be alive in detail. The design was beautiful and turned the scar into a piece of art.
Rhino Ash (Saturday Barbies Book 2) Page 8