Tom jerked his mouth away from Frank’s to attack his throat, tongue sliding on skin still sweet from his shower. Tom’s teeth worried the stubbled skin of Frank’s jaw. Their harsh panting filled his ears, a breathy percussion to the need that drove him.
Tom used his hands to frame Frank’s hips over the loose waistband of his sweats. Pulling him closer, Tom ground their cocks together. Tom kissed Frank, trying to breathe through his nose as their mouths collided. The alluring scent that rose from Frank made Tom wild, crazy with lust in a way he’d never known.
Tom’s ringtone blared. The deep bass of the guitar matched the searing heat that pumped in his veins. Along with it came a buzz against his ass cheek. The tune began again. Frank pulled away far enough to rest his forehead against Tom’s, panting with his eyes closed.
“It’s your phone.” Frank’s hand caressed Tom’s waist, hesitating as if afraid of being rebuffed.
“What?” Tom shook his head, trying to make sense of what Frank was saying. The words righted themselves in his brain. His phone. Someone was calling him on his phone.
The ringtone sounded again, loud in the small laundry area of the apartment. Tom yanked his phone out of his pocket. The number looked familiar. Familiar like he’d just called it when he’d gotten out of the shower.
Tom groaned. “The pizza guy.”
“Go get it.” Frank stepped back from him, running a hand down his face and looking away.
Goddammit. Tom ached. He wanted to finish what they’d started, on a bed with the sheets pulled back and every inch of Frank’s perfect body on display. Tom stopped himself. Those thoughts weren’t helping.
Tom spun around and adjusted himself, giving his cock a painful squeeze for good measure. He pushed open the apartment door with more force than was necessary and walked down the stairs, every step uncomfortable.
When he reached the bottom, he found a standoff in the foyer. Mrs. Anderson hadn’t let the pizza guy inside. She stood sentry in the doorway like a gargoyle in a floral muumuu.
She never took her eyes off the kid in the logo-branded polo on the front stoop while she asked, “Did you order a delivery, Thomas?”
The pizza guy still had his phone up to his ear but thumbed it off when Tom came down the hallway. The kid’s long sweep of hair almost covered his bored expression. “Yes, I did, Mrs. Anderson.”
“Humph. Well good. I don’t want riffraff off the street waltzing in at all hours. Not with a broken porch light. It’s already getting dark.” She shuffled back to her apartment door, still eying the kid.
“No, Mrs. Anderson. I’ll get to that tomorrow. Good night.” Tom gave her his best innocent-young-man smile, the one he’d practiced for a week before auditioning for an off-Broadway revival of Charley’s Aunt.
She scowled at him as if she’d eaten a bug. “Humph.” With a whirl that would put a diva to shame, Mrs. Anderson withdrew into her lair, housecoat tails flying around her. She slammed the door in his face.
Tom turned back to the pizza delivery guy.
The kid rolled his eyes. “I’ve had the restaurant calling you for like five minutes, man. Your guard dog wouldn’t let me in.”
“Don’t talk about her like that. She’s just trying to protect our privacy.” Tom grabbed the credit card slip and signed it.
“Yeah, yeah.” The kid slid the pizza out of the insulated sleeve. “Good night or whatever.” He handed it to Tom, nearly tipping the box onto the floor. Tom dived under it as the kid retrieved the slip and trudged back out.
Tom held the pizza in two hands as he took the stairs two at a time. Once he and Frank had dinner, maybe Tom could talk him into finishing what they’d started…and being the lead in the play. Oh, please let him agree to be in the play.
Tom rapped a perfunctory knock and let himself into Frank’s apartment.
Frank turned, placing two plates on the small breakfast table between the living room and the kitchen.
“Look at you, all domestic. You do laundry; you know how to set a table. I might need lessons before I go back to New York.”
Frank huffed a half chuckle, but Tom knew his joking praise had pleased from the slight pinkness of Frank’s cheeks.
“You learned nothing, living on your own in the big city?”
“I learned there’s a deli down the street that has hot bagels every morning. I learned there’s a nice laundry four blocks east that takes my dirty clothes and returns them ironed, folded, and clean the next day. And I learned that you only need a napkin and paper plates for pizza.” Tom placed the pizza box in the center of the table and sat down in a chair.
“Those are different lessons from the crash course I got in adulthood.” Frank disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two bottles. “Still want water?”
“‘S fine. Have you been on your own a long time?” Tom propped open the pizza box and turned it so Frank could slide out a piece.
“Since I turned eighteen.” Frank didn’t look at him when he said it. Frank stared at his pizza and then shoved the end of it in his mouth.
“Eighteen?” Tom already knew Frank’s parents had kicked him out. Annie had said so. But at eighteen? Frank had been so young. He was what, only twenty-two now?
“Yeah. My parents felt like it was time for me to leave, so I did.” Frank sat back in his chair and watched Tom chewing on his own pizza. “My Galen’s manifested at sixteen, so they’d already dealt with my shifting for two years by that time.”
Frank dropped his pizza and scowled at it like it didn’t taste good anymore. “Besides, it was safer for the twins. Robbie and Joseph, my sister and brother.”
“Safer?” For whom? Tom held back the second question. He wasn’t interested in the congealing pizza either, the conversation tense and electric across the table.
Frank dropped his head into his hands. “Can we not have this conversation?” He looked up, and the bleakness in his eyes made Tom’s stomach plummet.
“Hey, sorry, man.”
Frank waved away Tom’s apology, but it didn’t make Tom feel any better. Frank tore off a piece of crust from his cold slice and popped it in his mouth.
“Would you rather talk about the play?” Tom offered a different topic. “Because I have a few extra notes on the arc for Beauty.”
“Sure.” Frank finished up his pizza and grabbed another slice.
“And for what it’s worth, I think what your parents did was wrong.” Tom wiped his hands on his napkin. Anyone who’d turn a teenager, a baby, out on the street wasn’t a real parent.
“Look, I’m fine.” Frank spat out the angry words. “My dad didn’t abandon me. He helped me get set up here with an apartment, and I found a job at the bookstore. I make enough to put food on my table, clothes on my back, and a roof over my head.”
“Okay, okay.” Tom held up his hands in a placating gesture. He’d touched a sore spot. That was apparent.
“Besides, after I snapped at Robbie—” Frank clammed up, his face draining of color.
Oh God. Did he bite his sister? Tom flashed back to that momentary wrench of fear he’d had the first time he’d seen Frank shift. A primal evolutionary flight response to a wild animal close enough to attack. But Frank wasn’t a wild animal. He couldn’t have…
“Did you hurt her?”
“No.” Disgust colored Frank’s features. “I could never. How could you ask that?”
The instant response relieved something in Tom. Frank hadn’t bitten his sibling. Frank’s curse only made him look like a wild animal. He wasn’t one. Tom had seen ample proof of that today when Frank had led him away from the poison ivy in the woods.
“Then why would your parents think it was safer for you to move out?” And that was the $60,000 question.
“I don’t know.” Frank turned wide, tired eyes on him. “I guess because the potential is there. I might have hurt one of them someday.”
Tom shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right.” When Frank tried to get up from the
table, Tom caught his hand, urging him to sit back down. “Think back to today. A dog—heck, a wolf—wouldn’t protect me from poison ivy. You’re not a dumb animal when you shift. You’re you. Frank, you might get angry with your brother and sister, but you’d never hurt them. You never did, did you?”
“No. I…” He started again. “I… Everyone treats me like an animal when I shift, so I…”
“Thought of yourself like one.” Tom finished the thought for Frank. God, this guy. He deserved all the best, and life kept handing him half measures.
Tom wanted to wrap Frank in his arms and just hold him until the hurt went away. But Frank deserved so much more than Tom could offer him. And fuck Tom for being too selfish not to let Frank go find it.
“Well, that stops today.” Tom squeezed Frank’s hand. “I’ve seen both sides now, the man and the wolf. I’ll teach you to use your ability to your advantage.”
Frank stared at their hands still clasped on the table. When he looked up, his wide, innocent eyes made Tom’s teeth ache. Sweet, sweet boy.
“How are you going to do that?”
Tom pasted on his brightest practiced smile, the one he used to get casting directors to give him a private call even if he didn’t get the part.
“I’m casting you in my play.”
Chapter Ten
Tom had tweaked the play in a few places and left notes in others, asking Frank to write more or cut lines to tighten up the dialogue and leave room for blocking and scene changes. So Frank had brought his laptop to work during his lunch break.
All afternoon, local patrons, a few strangers, students from the community college, and even two giggling high schoolers had come in, asking where the auditions were being held for the play. He’d pointed to the stairs, and they’d each traipsed up, the wooden steps protesting the overuse. The knot in his stomach grew heavier and heavier as the day wore on.
If he “forgot to audition,” would Tom find someone else, someone who could act, to play the beast? Frank stacked the last trade-in on the cart and nodded to their part-timer, Jessica, as he hauled it around to mysteries to shelve them.
“Hey, Frank?” Annie caught him on his tiptoes, shoving a book on the top shelf, the fourth paperback in a series that had a steaming cup of poisonous tea steeping on the cover. “Tom asked if you wouldn’t mind stepping upstairs for a moment.”
“Huh?” A sprinkling of dust fell onto Frank’s face when he pulled back. He blinked and then sneezed.
“Bless you.” Annie smirked.
Frank sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand to still the itch. “I thought he was holding auditions today.” That sounded innocent enough, right?
Annie wiggled her fingers at him on her way back out front. “I think that’s why he wants to see you.”
Frank washed the dust off his hands in the men’s room and tried to pat his hair down with some water. On reflex, he wiped his wet palms on his jeans. He rolled his eyes at his reflection before grabbing a paper towel. He paced to the door and then back to the mirror to check himself again. He pulled at the tails of his shirt. Faint wrinkles bunched across the front, but the design hid them. He should change. He should go home and change.
But he’d promised Tom he’d at least try.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Frank yanked open the bathroom door and marched up the stairs to the top floor. But when he got to the top, all his bravado faded, and he nearly dashed back down again.
Tom and John both sat behind a folding table as a young woman spoke Beauty’s lines from the play. She wasn’t great. Even Frank could see that. She didn’t look like she was out of high school yet. But even trying out for the part, she had more guts than Frank had.
When she’d finished, Tom and John shook her hand. Frank skirted around the folding chairs as she left.
“I’ve almost finished the revisions.”
Tom’s Broadway smile stretched across his face, and he motioned Frank forward as he sat back down. “Frank, come on in. I want to hear you read the lines since we’ve had everyone else in today.”
Frank almost backed up. The only reason he didn’t was because his traitorous legs refused to move. “I don’t feel comfortable doing this.”
Tom rose from his chair again. His steps echoed as he strode across the plank floor to Frank. “Please.” Tom handed him two pages, but Frank didn’t take them. Frank knew every word of the script by heart. He’d written it. Poured every fairy-tale ending from his childhood into it.
Tom ruffled the papers at him again. “It’s just me and John.”
Frank stepped in front of the table and took the script. He recognized the selection. It was the bedroom scene. This was the adult version of Beauty and the Beast. And this was the scene where the beast both confessed his lust and his love for Beauty. Did Tom know Frank had been thinking about him when he’d written it?
“I don’t—” Frank stared at Tom, wishing, hoping by sheer mental thought alone that Tom would reconsider and let him off the hook.
“Just read it.” Tom backed away, leaving Frank alone.
“Okay.” Frank took a deep breath, trying to calm himself and his stomach. He could do this. He’d be terrible, but at least it would disabuse Tom of his crazy idea.
“Beauty, why must you tempt me so?” The words came out flat, in a monotone. And he said them too fast. Like he was rattling off an order at the Cardinal Drive-in.
To Frank’s surprise, Tom answered him with Beauty’s line. “I assure you, sir. I do nothing of the sort.” In contrast to Frank’s robotic voice, Tom’s vehement response sounded like someone in the midst of an argument. Tom motioned to Frank to speak again.
“You do. You stand there at the window, your skin dewy with the night air, your lips rosy and full, your hair glowing in the light of the moon, and I can think of naught, but you will not be mine. I am a Beast, but I can yearn for beauty. I can yearn for you and forget my hideousness for a time.”
Frank knew his delivery came out a little better. He knew those lines. In his soul. About how fairy tales weren’t real life.
Tom frowned and looked at John. “What do you think?”
John crossed his arms and made a face but nodded. “I think you’re right.”
For an instant Frank held his breath. They wouldn’t —
Tom nodded. “Great. We’ll work on it, but I think this is the right decision.” He smiled at Frank, his million-watt smile. “You’ve got the part.”
Frank’s mouth went dry. He cleared his throat of the terror that threatened to choke him. When his voice emerged again, it was just a squeak.
“Are you sure you don’t want to cast someone with talent?” Frank clenched the script, feeling it grow damp with cold sweat.
“No way.” Tom came around to clap him on the shoulder. “You’re our secret weapon.”
Chapter Eleven
Tom wanted to drop his face into his hands and just sob.
He ached from Mrs. Anderson’s newest project, which involved him using the weed trimmer for five hours straight yesterday morning on the bramble patch she called the backyard. She’d insisted he go after the brush that camouflaged the storm drain.
He’d escaped this morning to Annie and John’s house to score some homemade scrambled eggs and pancakes. She’d enlisted him as an ad hoc babysitter when Marcie ran a temperature and had to stay home from elementary school. John was on a job site near the interstate, and Annie had an appointment with the bank to refinance their homeowner’s loan after the cost of the bookstore renovations put them in danger of foreclosure on the store.
So he’d spent the day entertaining a fractious Marcie and running after her when she felt better. Once Annie returned, he’d dashed out to get the performance area ready for the read-through. The actors had trickled in while he set up the last of the folding chairs. Tom had passed out the scripts, and they’d begun the introductions.
The table read had gone well with one glaring exception—Fran
k. Although he’d written the lines for all the actors, he stuttered, stammered, and tripped over every line he had to say. He’d missed cues, spoke in a monotone and barely above a whisper.
Tom didn’t miss the wondering looks the other cast members sent him after Frank dropped his script and spent a full minute reordering it to find his place again.
“Thanks everyone. On the twenty-fifth, we’ll go over the vision I have for the play and then the first few scenes. We’ll continue for the next four weeks. Everyone get a copy of the schedule from John?” Tom noted the nods from each member of the small cast. “Good. I left you two days off each week. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be rehearsing on your own. This is a small production of a short play. You should be off book by the time week three rolls around and our first full run-through.”
“That should be plenty of time.” Gabriella Englebottom arched her eyebrow and rose like a queen departing her court. She’d been the obvious choice for Beauty, and both Tom and she had known it the minute she’d appeared for the audition. Just shy of thirty but still looking like a teenager, a former theater major in college and part-time drama teacher at the high school, Gabriella never passed up a moment in the spotlight. Or at least she never had when they’d been in high school together. Not to mention her family pockets were deep, and Annie let slip she had a keen interest in promoting the arts and often bent the ear of her husband, the mayor, in that direction. Gabriella swept out, carrying the rest of the supporting actors in her wake.
As everyone filed down the stairs, chatting, Frank remained frozen in his folding chair. When he lifted his terrified golden-brown eyes, Tom wanted to reassure him. But this had been a miserable read. If it was any other actor, Tom would replace him from within the ensemble. Or the crew. Or one of the bookstore patrons downstairs.
John still scribbled in his stage-management notebook but looked up as silence settled in the almost empty room. He’d come straight from the construction site and had a smear of red mud on the side of his white T-shirt. Tom touched his shoulder to get his attention, hoping to relay his mental I need to speak to my lead alone message.
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