Take the Edge Off

by TA Moore

  “What happened?” Joe asked.

  Abigail wrapped her hands around her coffee cup as though she were cold despite the lingering heat of the day. Her throat worked as she swallowed.

  “It wasn’t a good time,” she said. “I don’t think about it often. I don’t talk about it at all. I’m Mrs. Abigail Beranger now, Clement’s widow instead of Harry’s ex. Ask Harry.”

  Joe gave a small, bitter laugh. “We both know he’d not tell me,” he said. “I know you’re not my mother, that you don’t owe me anything, but for the last month, I thought my mother was alive. Now I know she’s not. So it would be kind to give me something.”

  “I’ve not got long,” Abigail said. She glanced at her watch, shifted in her seat unhappily, and then nodded slowly. “Fine. That I, maybe, do owe you, Joseph.”

  It still took a second to collect herself. While they waited, Cal felt his phone buzz in his inside pocket. He fished it out quickly to turn it off and saw Van’s number on the screen. He held down the power button to switch it off. He could call back later.

  “I used to tell this story at fund-raisers,” Abigail said as she took a sip of her tea. “How my mother died of breast cancer when I was thirteen, my dad of bone cancer when I was nineteen, how I got ovarian cancer at twenty-four, and the charity helped me through all of those things, whether it was hospice care for my parents or the nurse who came to sit with me at night when I was scared. The bit that wasn’t their business was that I got married at twenty-eight to a man who said he didn’t care I couldn’t have a child.”

  “Harry,” Joe said. “My dad.”

  It had been a long time. A lot of the bitterness had worn off, but there was still a hint of it in the corners of Abigail’s tight little smile.

  “I cared,” she said. “In the end, I guess he did too, despite everything he said. He had an affair, he got her pregnant—I didn’t know anything about it, it went on for two years—and he left me. Eventually. Maybe a month or two later, he turned up with you. You were only a baby and, God, you had terrible burns on your face and your little arms. Cried all the time. He told me your mother had died—in a fire and that’s what happened to your poor face. He wanted me to take him back. Your mother’s ex-husband wanted custody of you too, to keep the family together, and Harry said that if we were together he’d have a better case against the ex.”

  Joe’s jaw was clenched so tightly that Cal didn’t think he could get any words out. So he asked the question.

  “But you didn’t want to take on someone else’s kid?”

  “Oh no,” Abigail said. She reached over the table and covered Joe’s hand with hers. “I wanted to take you so badly. You were hurt and you could have been mine, but…. For a while I did, you know. But I couldn’t forgive Harry. I couldn’t forgive myself.”

  Joe pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “I feel this has to be asked,” he said, a grim tiredness to his voice. “Did you have something to do with the accident?”

  She laughed—a startled squawk of humor—and shook her head. “No. God, no.” She tightened her fingers over Joe’s hand. “But it was what I wanted. My husband, a baby, and if this poor woman had to die to get me that… I was okay with it. I couldn’t be that person. I couldn’t take her baby. That’s all I know.”

  “Who was she?” Joe asked.

  Abigail shook her head. “I don’t know. I never wanted to know. She was bad enough as an idea without being given a name and a face.” She took her glasses off again and wiped the soft skin under her eyes with her knuckles. Tears filled the creases in her skin. “There was a man Harry had hired around that time. Afterwards. An ex-police officer or something. He might know. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can give you.”

  It wasn’t much. Cal gingerly put his hand on Joe’s knee, uncertain of how welcome it would be. Joe didn’t slap his hand away, but then, he didn’t seem to have noticed at all. After a moment of awkward silence, Abigail glanced over at the still-in-swing party. She nodded briefly and raised her hand in an a-minute-please gesture.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she nudged the chair back to stand up. “I have to go. Tell your father I… I hope he’s well.”

  She gave Joe a last, desperate look and then walked quickly away. Her heels clicked against the floor with each step. Cal squeezed Joe’s knee, but Joe still didn’t react. He sat and stared down into his coffee, his hands white-knuckled where they clutched the cup.

  “You know, in hindsight,” Cal said as he looked at the untouched puffs of fried sugar and dough on the table, “I should have gotten something that didn’t ooze.”

  It didn’t get a laugh, but Joe snorted and relaxed his fingers. He pushed the cup away. “I think this was more of a shortbread conversation really.”

  “You okay?”

  “Not the conversation I expected,” Joe said. He stared at Abigail’s chair for a second and then abruptly stood up. “But I got the answers I wanted, so we should celebrate, right? What’s the hottest gay club in town? The place to be seen?”

  That wasn’t exactly Cal’s scene. He’d dropped off a couple of soap stars at a club a few weeks back, to screams and camera flashes from the crowd.

  “Kiss, Kiss,” he said as he stood up. Joe gave him a look and he grinned sheepishly. “That’s the name. It’s five minutes down the road.”

  Joe grabbed the lapel of Cal’s jacket and pulled him forward into a quick, rough kiss that made—from the clatter behind them—the barista drop her tongs in surprise. After a second, Joe leaned his forehead against Cal’s, his breath warm against Cal’s mouth.

  “Let’s go somewhere I can show you off, then,” he said. “Somewhere I don’t have to think.”

  Somewhere, Cal thought wryly, Joe’s lying dad could be scandalized by his son’s bad choices in men. It stung a little, somewhere he didn’t think he had a soft spot, but he supposed if anyone had earned the right to spite his dad, it was Joe.

  THE CLUB was packed, bodies pressed against each other from one side of the raw industrial space to the other. Music pulsed from the speakers, loud enough to rattle the exposed pipes on the ceiling, and hips and shoulders bumped and pressed as people moved to it.

  Cal steadied himself against the tide that tried to push him one way or another. The air smelled like sweat and booze. Joe pressed against him, one hand under his silk shirt, his mouth hot against Cal’s neck, and his muscles tight as wires under his skin. Cal could feel the tension under his fingers as he cupped the back of Joe’s neck.

  The beer that dangled from his fingers had done nothing to loosen him up, and every time someone bumped into or pressed in around them, it made Joe flinch.

  The song faded out on a skirl of electronica and frenetic movement as the dancers slowed down and broke up. A girl, all glitter and hair, laughed and stretched her arms to the ceiling. Her underarms were fuzzy with pink hair.

  Cal grabbed Joe’s shirt in both hands and pulled him off the dance floor. They stumbled around the corner of the bar, their reflection caught in the stress of polished and shaped steel, and into the narrow hall that led to the VIP area. It was strung off tonight, a heavy velvet rope pulled across and a chalkboard No Entry sign slung from it.

  Cal pushed Joe up against the stripped-down chipped concrete and old-plaster wall. He slanted a hard kiss over Joe’s mouth, the taste of beer and salt ripe against his tongue. Joe hooked his fingers into Cal’s waistband and yanked him closer.

  “You’re not having a good time,” Cal said as he lifted his head. The flicker of the lights in the club cast long blue shadows over the wall.

  Joe smirked darkly and arched his hips up off the wall. His cock pushed against Cal’s thigh, hard and insistent. “You sure about that?”

  “This?” Cal snaked a hand over Joe’s hip and cupped a handful of ass. He pulled him forward and ground their hips together. Pleasure ached in his thighs and shot, hot and electric, along his taint to the tight pucker of his ass. “Yeah. That out there? Not so muc
h. If you want a headline on TMZ, I can grope your ass on the way out.”

  Joe growled under his breath and cupped the side of Cal’s face. He tucked his thumb under Cal’s chin to push his head back and spread his fingers along his cheekbone.

  “This isn’t about Harry,” he said roughly. “You’re the one thing in my life that’s not about him. Asshole.”

  Cal twisted his head around to plant a wet-tongued kiss against Joe’s palm. “Sure,” he drawled against the wet patch. “That’s why you wanted everyone to see us?”

  “I wanted people to know you were with me, that I knew what this was.” Joe slid his hand down Cal’s neck and traced the lines of ink with his fingertips. “And that I’d be the only one who got to see it tonight.”

  A shiver sparked under Joe’s fingers and ran down Cal’s spine to his tailbone. There was a sweet bloom of warmth in his chest that he didn’t trust. It was easier not to get hurt when you didn’t care. Last time he’d cared, it had been Van, and look how that turned out.

  And that had never felt like this.

  “So then why pick here?” Cal asked. “You were on edge since we came through the door.”

  He almost got an answer. Then Joe tilted his mouth in that sparse, arrogant smile that had hooked Cal on the first night. He brushed a kiss over Cal’s mouth and ran his hands down his stomach to tug his shirt out of his trousers.

  “Maybe I changed my mind and decided that I shouldn’t waste you and this suit on anyone else.” Joe shut up for a second as he creased the thin, silk fabric between his fingers. “I don’t want to think about anything except you tonight.”

  Even Cal—fucking feral ex-con Cal—knew that probably wasn’t a good idea. But he couldn’t resist it.

  He shoved Joe back against the wall and claimed the kiss that Joe had teased him with. It was hungry and eager, but not desperate. Both of them knew they’d get what they needed tonight. Cal lost a handful of the expensive buttons on his shirt as Joe impatiently pulled it apart. He spread his hands over Cal’s stomach, across the ridges of his abdomen and up to pinch the flat buds of his nipples. A moan scraped up out of Cal’s throat and slid between Joe’s lips.

  The heavy, almost physical pulse of the music tangled with the heady pulse of hunger and heartbeats.

  Cal dragged his mouth reluctantly away from Joe’s. Undeterred, Joe bit and licked along Cal’s jaw to his ear. While he sucked on Cal’s earlobe—his mouth wet, his tongue busy, and the memory of wet skin and Joe’s mouth around his cock vivid in Joe’s mind—Cal reached out and unhooked the velvet rope. It dropped and the heavy metal hook clanked against the wall.

  “Come on.” Cal pulled Joe toward the stairs. “If you don’t want up in the gossip rags, we should go somewhere a bit more private.”

  Joe saw the unhooked rope and laughed. “Look at that. Even in a nice suit, you’re still a bad influence.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one GCSE I got,” Cal cracked dryly as they hit the stairs.

  Joe stopped on the first step and tried to tug Cal back down. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You’re not stupid.”

  He sounded like—Cal made a deliberate detour around a comparison with his brother and got stuck with what that really meant—someone who cared. That didn’t mean he did. People got sentimental when they wanted to get laid. It still pulled Cal up for a second. He swallowed the jag of it.

  “And you don’t like crowds,” he said. “You really want to get into this now?”

  Joe looked frustrated for a moment but eventually shook his head. “No,” he said. “Later.”

  Cal pulled him up a step, tangled a hand in Joe’s styled curls, and grinned at him. “If you remember.”

  They scrambled up the narrow stone steps, clumsy with lust and unwilling to let go of each other. Cal guided himself up the stairs with one hand on the narrow metal banister and his other arm wrapped around Joe’s waist. Joe kissed bruises down Cal’s throat and ran his hands over Cal’s back and down to his ass.

  They finally tripped over the last step and into the long crescent curve of the VIP lounge. The walls were bare except for pink-and-blue scenes of anime porn, from fully colored sex scene panels to storyboard sketched outlines with scribbled arms and motion lines. Low pink-and-blue velvet sofas were discreetly angled around the room, and the anime girl oversaw a chrome bar. It was empty, booze relocated downstairs until they needed to restock, except for two jars that were full of theme-matched condoms and dental dams, respectively.

  Joe smirked against Cal’s jaw. “I guess they really do want us to kiss.” His hand was between Cal’s legs, his palm pressed against the hard jut of an erection that strained against the freshly tailored zip. Heat stirred like honey in Cal’s stomach, hot enough to stick and sting as his nerves twitched and fired under his skin. “I’d hate to let them down.”

  “Oh,” Cal said raggedly. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

  He dragged them both down onto the nearest couch, tangled together on the plush, fuchsia-pink velvet. Kisses bumped off lips and along shoulders as they fumbled at each other’s clothes. Cal’s jacket got tugged off and discarded, the navy silk of his shirt creased and plastered to his dance-sweaty skin. He hitched his hips up off the cushions to unbutton his trousers and laughed raggedly as Joe impatiently pushed his hands out of the way to do it himself.

  Cal stroked his hands down Joe’s back, traced the sharp jut of his shoulder blades and then down to his lean waist and the taut curve of his ass. He squeezed the firm rise of muscle and flesh and tugged Joe down against him. His cock pressed against the hard muscle of Joe’s thigh and made his balls throb with hot tight pleasure.

  “I bet I could make you stop thinking.” He licked a kiss over the scarred skin at Joe’s temple and smirked. “At least, stop thinking about anything but me.”

  Joe pushed Cal down into the cushions and leaned back, his hands braced against Cal’s shoulders.

  “If my father taught me anything, it’s never bet on a sure thing,” Joe said. He lowered himself down until his lips almost touched Cal’s. His breath tickled Cal’s skin as he spoke. “That first night, at the pool, your mouth on its own nearly made me forget how to swim.”

  Cal aimed a mock-bite at Joe’s mouth. His teeth skimmed the elegant curve of it. “It’s a good thing you didn’t,” he said. “I don’t think you would have made quite the same impact on me.”

  “Liar.”

  The flickered memory of wet skin and scant black trunks flashed through Cal’s brain. And yeah, Cal was.

  Joe closed the feather-width of distance between them and kissed him, slowly and deeply. It left Cal breathless and aching. He groaned when Joe tried to move away, and he pulled him back down. The pulse of music from the club thumped up through the floor, vibrated through the couch and up into their skin.

  A man’s voice, pure as a bell and raw with experience, growled about the Devil and deals over the wicked skirl of guitars.

  “… my Satan said with a grin.” The lyric caught in Cal’s brain like a hook. His Satan had always been a fast car and a bad decision, but maybe he’d traded up. Although the singer had one advantage over Cal. “Come with me and we’ll make Sinner’s Gin.”

  Joe was never going to ask him to go with him.

  It didn’t matter. Cal finally ended the kiss and let Joe pull away from him. This was enough.

  Liar.

  Cal ignored the drawled echo of the accusation and watched Joe shrug his jacket off and toss it aside. He dropped his hands to his trousers and tugged at the zipper with impatient fingers. Lust flushed his narrow, elegant face and made his eyes look even darker. His tie was pulled loose, a twisted knot of silk, and his collar hung open to expose the long lines of his throat. Faint marks faded toward purple on his skin, like Cal’s mouth had given Joe his own ink.

  Yet he called Cal beautiful. It made Cal wonder how Joe did his hair in the morning without looking in the mirror.

  “You going to watch?” Joe
asked as he freed his cock from his trousers. The fabric hung from his hipbones as he wrapped his fingers around the heavy shaft. “Or you going to roll over?”

  “Is that a please?” Cal mocked as he stretched out to his full, tailored length.

  “No,” Joe said. He stroked his fist along his cock in rough time to the underscored drumbeat. “It’s a choice.”

  “And if I pick watch?” Cal asked.

  Joe narrowed his eyes. “I still get off.”

  Cal smirked and ran a hand down over his stomach, muscles tight under his skin, to his waistband. The calluses on his fingertips scraped the tender span of skin between his hip bones as he put off gratification.

  “Me too,” he said as he raised a knee. His trousers gaped open and he slid his hand down farther. “But if you use one of those pink condoms, I might change my mind.”

  Joe looked over at the jar and its garishly colored contents. He snorted.

  “They could have been there a year,” he said.

  Cal grinned, he could feel the wicked in the edges of it. “They ain’t dusty.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE PIECES of Joe’s life had come apart like a dropped jigsaw. It was all unmatched edges and lost corner pieces, unanchored and unsolvable. Even though the idea had always been that Harry had lied, somehow the evidence of it had knocked the wind out of Joe.

  And like he always did when the pressure built up at the base of his skull, when he felt trapped even without walls, he wanted sweat, sex, and control, not novelty condoms and childish dares.

  So the only excuse for the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth was Cal’s ridiculous, infectious grin. It was the sort of squint-eyed, odd-angled grin that didn’t bother to be attractive but was full of humor.

  “You want me to steal a condom?” he asked.