Take the Edge Off

by TA Moore

  Cal stroked a rough hand up his back, his fingers gentle against the long line of Joe’s spine.

  “So,” he growled in Joe’s ear. “About that satisfaction survey?”

  Chapter Three

  THE EASY, post-fuck endorphin rush spread through Cal’s body like warm honey as he stretched out over the empty, sex-musky bed. His joints felt loose and his skin the right size for once. The only body part that wasn’t in on the feel-good love-in was his brain.

  Fuck sake, he thought sourly as he folded his arm behind his head. He really couldn’t help himself, could he? Less than forty-eight hours after his big resolution to clean up his act and here he was in bed with some cocky rich kid who wanted to slum it with the staff.

  Okay, the whole arrogant “come here, bend over, suck my dick” thing worked for Cal. It always had. That was the problem. He was supposed to have arranged a second date with Doc, not fucked his employer two hours into the contract.

  Cal scowled at the flawless plaster ceiling. His brother was right. He was fucking feral.

  “What?” Joe asked as he came out of the bathroom.

  Cal glanced over. “What what?”

  “You look like the ceiling did something to you,” Joe said as he tucked a too-small-for-the-job towel around lean hips. His eyes were cautious as he rested his shoulder against the bathroom door. “Regrets?”

  Cal scratched the back of his neck and cast his gaze over Joe from knees to those cool, near-black eyes. It was a nice view, but the guy was pretty obviously not second-date material. With the come washed off his stomach and the bruises Cal had left on him yet to stain past red, Joe looked like he belonged on a spread in a magazine, not in bed with an ex-con who’d already been on thin ice with his employer before his latest fuck… up.

  That was okay. Cal knew the script. This wasn’t the first time he’d been someone’s bit of rough. It didn’t bother him. He was rough, and he liked to fuck. Nervous men in grotty bars, whose suits were worth more than the monthly wage of anyone who drank in there, appreciated that. And until about a week ago, Cal had appreciated that they were nearly as glad to get rid of him in the morning as he was to go.

  People like Joseph Bailey didn’t take people like Cal out for dinner and the opera. The only way he’d take Cal to either would be so he didn’t have to wait for valet parking.

  That didn’t bother Cal. He’d known the score from the minute Joe offered him the whiskey. It just pissed him off. When he’d been twenty, his parade of screw-ups and living down to everyone’s expectations of him had been funny—and fun, to be honest. Now he had to wonder if that hadn’t been a choice, if he was shitty at being a person.

  None of which, he reminded himself, was Joe’s problem.

  “Regrets aren’t really my thing,” Cal said. He stretched out on the bed and let himself enjoy the way Joe watched him. Why not? Once you’d nicked the car, you might as well turn the radio on. The ache between his hips was dull and weirdly pleasant, like the satisfying ache in his abs after a workout. Although, hell, it really had been a while since he’d been fucked. “You?”

  Joe tilted his head to the side. A dark curl of wet hair fell over his forehead and half hid the thumbprint of red on his brow. He looked surprised at the question… or maybe at the answer.

  “No,” he said. “Not this time.”

  The quiet statement invited questions. Cal figured they’d both be happier if he didn’t ask them. He was not the guy for a heartfelt conversation about, well, anything really. Certainly not about coming out. Cal had fucked that up so badly that El hadn’t spoken to him for a year, so about the only advice he could give was “don’t fuck your brother’s best friend and let his wife find out.”

  Not exactly universal.

  “I should go and get some sleep,” Cal said as he sat up. He scratched his stomach. The short scruff of hair was matted under his fingers. “Unless there’s anything else you want to know about me?”

  Joe crossed his arms and shrugged. “I’m fairly confident I got to all your hidden depths,” he drawled, amusement in the crooked curve of his mouth. “I’m not throwing you out, by the way. It’s a big enough bed, and it hardly seems worth the walk of shame down the hall.”

  The tie dangled around Cal’s neck as he stooped to grab his trousers and then pull them on. The wrinkles would take a visit to the laundry to press out, but thankfully he knew El would have stuffed a spare set of clothes in the boot of the Bentley.

  “Probably not a good idea,” he said as he hitched the trousers up over his hip bones. “Your head of security already warned me off.”

  The muscles at the hinges of Joe’s jaw clenched visibly under the skin. There was nothing amused about the tight smile he pulled back from his teeth. “Sometimes Edward oversteps,” he said. “He worked for my father since I was a kid, and sometimes he forgets he isn’t my father.”

  Cal shrugged and hung his wrinkled shirt over his arm. “To be fair,” he said, “I am the bad company people fall in with, so you can’t blame him.”

  The tension loosened around Joe’s mouth as he snorted. “Didn’t I seduce you?”

  Cal winked at him. “That’s what I wanted you to think.”

  “Really?” Joe pushed himself off the bathroom door. The towel gave up its precarious grip on his narrow hips and dropped to the floor as Joe walked over. He grabbed the tie and twisted it around his hand until the fabric was tight around Cal’s throat and Joe’s knuckles nudged up under his chin. The pressure made Cal tilt his head back, and Joe teased a kiss across the corner of his mouth. His lips were soft, and his breath was sharp with mint. “So you wanted me bad enough to come running?”

  The answer to that twisted a hot and hard “yes” in Cal’s balls. He bit that admission off the tip of his tongue. It was never a good idea to admit anything—not to the cops, your lovers, or yourself. Cal scruffed the nape of Joe’s neck instead, pressed his fingers down against tight muscle and tendon, and claimed his mouth in a rough slash of lips.

  His cock stirred lazily, not quite ready for round two, but up to being coaxed. Cal entertained the idea for a second and then quashed it with the mental image of Edward’s face when he brought breakfast in the morning. He assumed that was part of the old git’s duties.

  “You did the running,” he told Joe as he leaned back. “Hell, I hardly had to do any work, but….”

  Joe’s fingers tightened for a second, and then he relaxed them to let the strip of abused fabric slither free. A rueful smile tilted his mouth.

  “Maybe another time,” Joe said as he stepped back.

  It would be a bad idea. Cal knew that. He was on his last, thin chance with El—brother or not—and he didn’t exactly have the kind of résumé that would get him a job without the security net of a long stay in prison at the end of it.

  He folded his lower lip between his teeth as he looked Joe over. Broad shoulders arrowed down into lean hips and long legs. There was muscle there, tight and defined, but it ran to long legs and elegance instead of bulk. Cal had never really had a type—unless you counted “trouble”—but there certainly wasn’t anything about Joe he objected to.

  “Probably,” Cal admitted wryly. “Don’t make it a good idea. See you in the morning, Mr. Bailey.”

  This time Joe let him leave without protest. Cal closed the door behind him and stood in the dark as he took a deep breath to clear his head. It didn’t work. He could still taste sex and salt on his tongue. Cal’s skin was sticky with both.

  Fucking feral, he cursed himself as that lazy twist of interest stirred again. He really was.

  A soft click echoed down the hall, and the lights flashed on. They weren’t that bright, but it was unexpected enough to make Cal squint and blink spots from his vision. He turned and looked down the hall where Edward stood stiff and straight next to the light switch. The hard-faced man was still dressed in his nondescript black suit. Either he hadn’t gone to bed yet or he’d slept in it.

  “You’re no
t a man to take advice, are you, Mr. Tate?” Edward said quietly.

  Cal shrugged and shook his shirt out to shrug it back on over his kiss-bruised shoulders. He scratched his stomach again. Edward glanced down, grimaced in distaste, and looked away quickly. Cal walked down the hall to him.

  “You’ve seen my record,” he said. “You think nobody ever told me it would be a good idea to knock that shit off?”

  Edward’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “Joseph isn’t…”

  “Yeah, well, that’s his problem,” Cal said. “I am. If you don’t like it, well… looks like I’d be the only one doesn’t have a problem.”

  A cold light flickered in Edward’s eyes, and he leaned toward Cal. “I could change that,” he said.

  Cal shrugged. “Be an asshole, then,” he said. “No skin off my nose.”

  That took the wind out of Edward’s sails. Sometimes an instinct to self-destruct could work to your advantage, but not often. Cal waited for a second. When Edward glared at him in confused frustration, Cal shrugged and went back to his room.

  He thought about a shower. In the end he shrugged and stripped back down. Often enough he’d crawled into bed when he stunk of worse than Joe. The bed was soft, the pillows fat, and the linens smelled a helluva lot better than the ones at his place. If he was going to get fired in the morning, he might as well take advantage of clean sheets with no laundry.

  It felt like he’d only closed his eyes when the alarm went off.

  HE WASN’T fired.

  In fact, based on Joe’s cool demeanor when he came out of the bedroom the next morning in a tailored gray suit and his hair dry and styled in a loose quiff, it was possible Cal had dreamed last night’s encounter. But he hadn’t. The dull sting of the night—tender like sunburned skin—was evidence of that.

  Three days later the ache had faded and Joe hadn’t mentioned it again, not even late at night when Cal hitched up a knee in his rented bed and grabbed his cock while he wondered if Joe’d want to be fucked this time. Not that Cal would mind if he didn’t.

  Parked outside a narrow, gray office building in the Bentley, Cal dangled his hands over the steering wheel and passed the time with an attempt to remember how long it had been since he’d had someone else’s cock in him. A few years, at least. He hadn’t forgotten what it felt like, but he’d forgotten how… fuck, he didn’t know. Cal stretched his fingers as he fumbled at the feeling.

  Exposed, he supposed, but not in a way you wanted to stop. Like he didn’t have to front it out—whatever the hell it was this time—for once.

  He glanced in the mirror at the traffic warden who had worked her way down the road toward him. Usually playing chicken with a parkie would usually not be his idea of a good time, but he was still on his best behavior. Sometimes the universe didn’t put the boot in after you fucked up, but even Cal knew not to push his luck. So he had stuck to the speed limit, not poked at Edward, and the only thrill he had to look forward to was a close call with a ticket.

  She stopped next to low-slung, two-tone BMW and pulled her pad out. A pink-faced man with a yolk-stained napkin tucked into his collar burst out of a restaurant as she worked. His keys jangled in his hand as he waved them about angrily. The traffic warden heard him out as she finished the form and then slapped it on the car before he could object further.

  Cal chuckled. He’d be the first to bitch if he got a ticket, but Napkin guy looked like a dick, and he drove a dick mobile with red accents. So couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. The scene as the woman faced off against Napkin guy bought Cal a few more minutes before he had to move.

  He kept a casual check on the rearview mirror. Parkies could be deceptively light on their feet when they saw a chance to ticket you, and besides, Napkin was a dick, and even if they were a traffic warden you didn’t punch women.

  Granddad had always been firm on that. You didn’t punch girls, you only talked to the cops if it was pervert related, and he didn’t care what anyone else said, Mrs. Smith wasn’t from Pakistan, and even if she were, you never called anyone that. Whenever El got on Cal’s case about being a fuckup, it was some comfort to remember that, by Grandad’s moral standards, he was still on the straight and narrow.

  A woman who’d worn a cream pantsuit to breakfast, her hair pin straight and matte, stormed out of the restaurant. She shoved her purse back in her bag and marched over to snatch the napkin out of Napkin guy’s collar.

  “Now what am I going to call him?” Cal wondered out loud.

  “Call who what?” Joe inquired as he got into the back of the car, with a lockbox under his arm. His lean, elegantly suited frame impinged over the drama on the pavement. He pulled the seat belt across his body and clicked it into the anchor.

  “Nothing, Mr. Bailey,” Cal said. Company practice was to call the employer “sir” or “ma’am” unless instructed otherwise, but Cal had never been able to wrap his tongue around that. In his mouth, “sir” always sounded sullen. He started the engine and glanced in the mirror, his attention split between Joe’s lean, handsome face and the tail end of the confrontation as the woman threw the eggy napkin at the traffic warden. “Where to next?”

  So far it had been a round of banks, law offices, and the Bailey Property Trust’s London office building. Most of the time Cal waited in reception and cadged a cup of tea from whoever seemed amenable. The clerk at the last lawyers had thrown in a plate of cookies and his number. It was in Cal’s wallet. He was, after all, supposed to be on the lookout for a nice boy with a good job and a domestic streak.

  In the back seat, Joe laid the lockbox over his lap and tapped his fingers on it. His dark, straight eyebrows were pulled down in an expression a twist of the mouth away from a frown. Cal waited for directions while the engine idled quietly under his foot.

  “Mr. Bailey?” he repeated. When Joe didn’t react he tried again. “Joe?”

  Dark eyes—still close as dammit to black in the sunlight—flicked up to meet Cal’s gaze in the mirror.

  “Do you know where there’s a good florist?” he asked. “I need a wreath on short notice.”

  Cal raised his eyebrows at Joe in the mirror. “Flowers aren’t really my thing,” he pointed out dryly. “But there’s a place we use when a client wants to surprise someone with a car full of flowers. They’re usually pretty good.”

  Joe gave him a quelling look in the mirror. “I don’t need a résumé,” he said witheringly. “Just some flowers.”

  “Flowers, she can do.” Cal twisted around, his arm hooked over the back of the seat. “It’ll be about a half hour?”

  Joe shrugged and leaned over to set the box on the floor. He sat back and lifted his tablet from the seat. “I pay you whether you’re driving or drinking tea.”

  It might not have been a joke, but it made Cal laugh anyhow. Joe looked amused for a second, with a half-smile and a shrug that briefly reminded Cal of the other night. Then he shook his head and went back to work.

  Cal straightened up in the driver’s seat, checked the road, and pulled out. Old habits made him clock the nondescript Volvo parked opposite, its muted navy paintwork and tires so new and shiny the edges weren’t even scuffed. He dismissed it a second later. Even if it was an unmarked car, it was no skin off his nose. He wasn’t doing anything wrong and didn’t even have any plans to in the foreseeable future.

  A SWEATY man in misjudged yellow workout gear power walked between the gravestones. The sound of Taylor Swift on repeat was loud enough to hear through his headphones. Disapproving looks followed him as the people who were there to actually mourn registered his presence.

  Cal leaned against the front bumper of the Bentley and thought about whether he should stick his foot out to trip the guy. Probably not, but it was tempting.

  He dragged his attention away from the exaggerated jiggle of the guy’s ass—not a bad ass, as it went, but nothing looked that good as it pistoned up and down in acid yellow—and back to the phone tucked against his ear.

  “…
have you talked to Jane?” El asked. Casually. As though that weren’t the whole reason he’d interrupted Cal’s day.

  “Nope.”

  El cleared his throat. “When you do, could you tell her—?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cal, you owe me.”

  “I know,” Cal said. “Doesn’t mean I am going to pick sides in your divorce.”

  “You’re my brother.”

  “And Jane has never tried to bury me in the backyard,” Cal said. “So you aren’t coming out ahead there.”

  El snorted but didn’t argue the point. They loved each other—they had to; they were all the family they had left that was worth shit—but that didn’t mean they always got on… or had ever gotten on in the traditional sense. Their childhood had been spent alternately at odds or allied against any outsider who thought they could put their oar in. As kids, El had never quite gotten over Cal being born, and Cal had never quite gotten over not being El.

  “Fine,” El gave in. “How’s the job going? Any problems?”

  Cal rubbed the back of his neck—strong fingers dug into his shoulders, the heady weight of a cock in his ass, Edward’s grim, harsh face as he killed the afterglow with threats—and glanced up the hill to where Joe paced between the long, sunlit graves.

  “Uneventful,” he said. “Nothing an Uber couldn’t have managed.”

  A sigh trickled down the line. “Tell me you didn’t say that in earshot of the client,” El grumbled. “If the man wants to pay over the odds to be driven around the block in a fancy car, don’t put him off because you’re bored.”

  Cal watched as Joe paused at the end of the row, the wreath of purple and blue flowers tucked in the crook of his arm. Joe looked around—it was too far to see his expression, but Cal imagined it was the same irritated pinch of his mouth from last night—and then turned to the left. It didn’t take long for him to disappear out of sight behind a bank of spindly trees and shadows.