Half My Blood

by Lauren Gilley

  “Okay,” he said through his teeth. And then speech wasn’t possible, because this was the frenzied, almost violent fucking he’d needed.

  The girl at his side stirred. He saw her hand settle on his chest, then move lower, gliding over the knotted, working muscles in his abdomen as his thrusts lifted his pelvis. The hand reached Jasmine’s knee and slid up the other woman’s thigh.

  A delighted sound left Jasmine’s throat and she bore down on him hard, her nails scoring his stomach.

  Okay, Tango thought, as the brunette’s hand slipped up under Jasmine’s skirt, maybe girl-on-girl wasn’t his least favorite thing in the world…

  It was two days later that curiosity finally got the best of him and he looked up his own online dating profile. Jasmine had given him the username and password she’d used, and he just happened to be the only one in the clubhouse at the moment. And Ratchet’s laptop just happened to be on, open, and abandoned. The web browser was even pulled up, the Google search bar waiting with cursor at the ready.

  He checked over his shoulder to make sure he was truly alone, then threw himself down into the chair. “Oh, fuck me.” His fingers were nervous on the keys, and he had to backspace and retype the web address three times before he got it right.

  Shit, shit, shit, he thought as he opened up the page and logged on.

  One-percenters didn’t have online dating profiles. They didn’t search out women on the internet. They didn’t let goddamn groupies find dates for them.

  Just humoring Jasmine, he reasoned. Because God knew he didn’t need another semi-awkward, semi-hot afternoon like he’d had a couple days ago. He wasn’t interested in making that a regular thing.

  He let out a slow, defeated breath through his teeth and scanned the profile. Jasmine had taken a picture of him while he slept on the clubhouse sofa. His head was turned to the side, one arm raised up over his head. He was frowning in his sleep, brows drawn together, making him look very serious. The seven little hoops marching down the lobe of his ear and the tat snaking out of the neck of his shirt were very visible.

  There was a second photo, a half-blurred cellphone shot from a distance. Jasmine had cropped his brothers out of the picture, so it was just a narrow image of him laughing at something Mercy had said. At least he was smiling. But then again, when he smiled, all the metal and funky hair sort of faded into the background, and made the fine-boned, almost-feminine lines of his face more noticeable.

  He frowned and saw his dim reflection in the computer screen. No matter how many tats or piercings or inches of shaved head, he would always be, beneath it all, the very pretty boy Carla had bought from Frederick. The boy who…

  Nope, not going there.

  There was an inbox up in the left corner of the screen, where other members of the site had sent him messages, and he had four. Three were from women: two normal girls looking to take a walk on the wild side, and one truly scary Goth chick he X’d out of quick.

  And then there was the fourth.

  No picture, just a screen name: Lord Byron. A man.

  The message read: My, I thought all you bad boys were drowning in pussy. God, I despise that word. It’s vile. Message me. We ought to catch up.

  “Ian,” he murmured, shoulders deflating. Only Ian Byron could have affected such a complete transformation of his life. And only he would have the resources and energy necessary to find this profile and reach out through it.

  Don’t do it, a voice in the back of Tango’s head urged. He should delete this entire account, tell Jasmine to fuck off, and pretend none of this had ever happened.

  But his hands were gliding over the keys.

  No!

  The inner voice railed against a body that seemed to move of its own accord, fingers typing a message and sending it.

  What are you doing, Ian?

  The response came within minutes. Talking to an old friend. Is that a crime?

  Tango could picture the asshole’s smug look, the way self-satisfaction put his austere features to their best use. He was, after all, from a prestigious London bloodline. He’d never been an English street rat, no matter how he’d been treated. Breeding was evident in everything he’d ever done, even when he was…

  Probably, he typed back. Isn’t it bad enough you’re trying to take down my club? You gotta cyberstalk me too?

  Not taking down, and not stalking, Ian typed back. Can’t we talk, Kev? Not as adversaries, but as the friends we truly were.

  Tango screwed his eyes shut tight. Unbidden, his mental picture of Ian as he was now – flashy suit, tidy slicked-back hair, manicured hands and shiny shoes – was replaced with an old image, one of Ian at seventeen, all arms and legs and lithe grace, eyes ringed in the black liner Carla had painted them with to “attract the customers.”

  Another message from Ian: Come have lunch with me. No club, no business. Just you and me.

  That was a terrible idea.

  But he could almost hear the guy’s voice, the gentleness and pleading in it that had nothing to do with the composed mask he’d shown the day the Dogs had entered his office.

  Tell you what, Ian typed. I have some business to attend in Knoxville. Afterward, I’ll be at the steakhouse at three o’clock. Give the hostess my name and she’ll show you to my table. If you feel like joining me.

  “Yeah right,” Tango muttered, closing the web browser and leaning back in the chair.

  But there was a voice in the back of his head reminding him that he’d never had much of a backbone.

  He shouldn’t be doing this. He should be as far away from this as was humanly possible. But here he stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the sign of one of the most well-known high-end steakhouse franchises. He’d never been in this place. He’d never been anywhere remotely like this place. He didn’t belong here, in his baggy jeans and scuffed boots, with his half-buzzed, half-spiked hair and all the bright rings in his ears. McDonald’s was fancy for the likes of him. He wasn’t fit to be a busboy in a restaurant of this quality.

  And yet here he stood. Like a fucking idiot.

  With a sigh, he pulled open the door and let himself inside.

  There was an airlock that led him to a second pair of doors, these wood and inlaid with frosted glass. Beyond them, the smell of buttered, perfectly cooked steaks curled around his empty stomach and reminded him that he was starving, but too sick at the idea of this meeting to eat anything.

  His throat tightened as he crossed the patterned carpet to the hostess station. The place was making a polite go at English library: dark paneled walls, hunt prints, wall sconces, heavy ceiling beams and linen-draped tables studded with glasses and tented napkins, awaiting patrons in the manufactured low light. Elegant, simple, tasteful. Nothing like him.

  The hostess glanced up from her podium and gave an obvious start. She was young, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, her uniform crisp and new-looking. She clearly wasn’t used to patrons looking like drummers from failing garage bands, and her mouth worked soundlessly a moment before she stammered, “G-good afternoon. Welcome to Ruth–”

  “I’m meeting someone,” he said, to spare her further awkwardness. “Mr. Byron. He should have reservations.”

  She consulted her list, cheeks pinking, then nodded. “Yes. Mr. Byron said to expect someone who…” She glanced back up at him and thought better of whatever description Ian had given her. “Come with me, please.”

  He followed her down the long narrow dining room, thinking, of course Ian was somewhere in the back, out of the fray. Just on the other side of a decorative panel-wrapped pillar, Ian had a table for two beside the shaded window, a view of the sidewalk that was one-way – no pedestrians could see in, but the filtered sunlight struck his marble face in glorious soft relief.

  The man who had established himself as Shaman in Tennessee was cut straight from some European men’s fashion magazine. He had picked a gray suit that fitted him tightly, accentuating his tall slenderness, rather than hiding it, darin
g anyone to find fault with his lean, dancer physique. His shirt was a pale green that picked up the darker filaments in his pale eyes, and his hair was, as Tango had seen it a few months before, slicked back off his face, behind his ears, and falling in a shiny auburn sheet past his shoulders. His face showed his breeding: cheekbones that could cut glass, narrow, high-ridged nose. And the way he stared out the window was just shy of casual, betraying the wealth of hurt beneath the surface. He was British, though, and from a good family – though they probably had no idea he was still alive – and he wasn’t going to wallow in what had happened. He was going to press elegantly forward toward what was to come. Stiff upper lip and all that.

  His head turned as the hostess dropped the menu on the table with a murmured word and disappeared.

  “Thank you,” Ian said to the departing employee, but his eyes were on Tango, with unnerving intensity. Eyes that were neither blue nor green, but some color between. An expression that, despite its intense energy, had some indefinable feminine quality to it. He’d always had that; it had been one of the reasons he had been so popular with Carla’s customers. It was one of the reasons –

  Not going there.

  He stood like a silent moron behind the chair opposite Ian, tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. He had nothing to say because this was stupid, and he shouldn’t be here in the first place.

  Ian gave him a partial smile. “You look well.”

  “I look like shit.” He started to turn. “And I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Sit down, Kevin.” It was said with gentle authority. “God knows you could use a good meal, and you didn’t walk all the way in here just to tell me off and leave.”

  Tango ground his molars together. No, he hadn’t come here just to leave. He’d been hoping the whole ride over that he’d find the balls to turn back around and head for the clubhouse.

  But when had he ever had the balls for anything? He was a follower. A friend. A wingman, and a sidekick. He didn’t make decisions that were his own. Never had.

  Cursing inwardly, he dragged out the chair and threw himself in it. “This is fucked up,” he muttered. “If my prez knew…”

  “Will you tell him? Ghost. Will you tell him you met with me today?” Slight tilt to his head, penetrating X-ray stare.

  Tango had to look away. “What do you think?”

  There was a smile in Ian’s voice. A gentle smile, like one a parent would give to a child. “I think this has nothing to do with your president, and I don’t think he has any right to know about it. You’re your own man now, Kevin. You don’t need anyone’s permission to meet with me.”

  He snorted. “The boss man wouldn’t agree with that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know how clubs work, don’t gimme that bullshit.”

  Ian made a soft, contemplative sound in the back of his throat. A sound Tango knew well, from all those years of captivity together. “I think,” he said, in that crisp accent he should have by all rights dropped during his time in America, “that for the most part, your president sees you as a solider in his army. Because yes, I do know how clubs work, and you can take all the votes you want, but at the end of the day, your president is your king, your general, your bloody Napoleon, and he dictates to you, because it’s all about the club for him, and not the individuals in it.”

  “That’s not true.” Tango whipped his head around, sent a vicious glare toward the Englishman. In his mind he saw himself at seventeen, sobbing hard enough to pull muscles, arching beneath the onslaught of withdrawal as the heroin left his system. Aidan had been there, but Ghost had been there too. He’d put his callused hand on top of Tango’s head and said, “Easy, son. Ride it out. We’re right here. You just ride it out.” The man was an unforgiving president…but as a father figure, he’d never looked on Tango with the scorn and contempt he’d always expected. He’d never given a damn about the things Tango had done in his previous life.

  His life that involved Ian Byron.

  Ian lifted his brows. “Isn’t it, though? Why else would he protest against this?” Elegant gesture of long fingers to the two of them seated across from one another. “Why would he protest two friends meeting for lunch if not for his club?”

  Tango braced his elbows on the table and dropped his face into his hands. “Fuck you.”

  Soft, cultured laughter. “Oh, that would be lovely.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m worried about you, Kev. You look unhappy, and that upsets me.”

  His chest tightened, some nameless emotion cranking his hands into claws against the sides of his face. “You have an empire now,” he said quietly. “Why give a shit about me?”

  “Because I always did.” Gentle, kind voice. “You know that. I had a plan. You know that if they hadn’t pulled you out of there I would have–”

  “You didn’t have shit.”

  “I did!” Ian insisted. “And obviously it worked, because as you just said, I have an empire.”

  Tango gapped his fingers and looked at the man’s face.

  “I got out, Kevin. I got the hell out of there, and look at me. Look at what I have.” A quieting of his face, as he leaned back in his chair. He gestured to the shaded window. “See him, out there?”

  There was a brick wall of a man on the sidewalk, dressed all in black, looking like nothing anyone wanted to mess with.

  Ian had regained his poise. “That’s George. Dumb as a bag of hammers, but let anyone get too close to me, and he’ll tear windpipes out. He’s loyal.” His eyes cut over to Tango. “He’s respectful.” Sharp, cutting smile, flashing straight white teeth. His parents had been wealthy enough Londoners to get him braces. So his teeth would be flawless when he was stolen from his bed at thirteen. “Can you imagine? Me, the nine o’clock special with loyal, respectful employees who’d kill for me?”

  He sat forward again, starling Tango. “You could have that too, you know. You don’t have to be a solider in someone else’s war.”

  Suddenly, Tango was exhausted. “I’m not doing this.” He started to push his chair back, and a waitress materialized at the side of their table.

  “Are you ready to order?”

  “I am.” Ian flicked a questioning look across the table. “Come on. My treat. You know you’re hungry.”

  He was. He was always hungry. He hadn’t checked the menu, but Tango ordered a New York strip, medium-rare, baked potato on the side.

  “Anything to drink?” the waitress asked.

  “Um…”

  There was a small bottle of red wine on the table, and Ian tapped it with one long forefinger. “You’re not afraid to admit you like it, are you?”

  “Nah. I’m good,” he told the waitress sourly, and she whisked away.

  With a quiet, pleased smile, Ian turned over the second wine glass and filled it with a deft tilt of the bottle. “I thought maybe you’d lost a taste for it, all that beer you must drink.”

  Tango reached for the glass and took a slow sip, the oily warmth of the merlot coating his tongue and bringing up a hundred half-buried memories. He set it down with a jolt. The reasons he didn’t drink wine anymore had nothing to do with the taste.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I don’t like wherever this is heading.”

  “And where do you think that is?”

  “Goddamn it!” He slapped the edge of the table hard enough for the silverware to jump. The nearest table was about fifteen feet away, but the lunching couple glanced over, eyes wide with alarm.

  Tango lowered his voice to an angry hiss. “Stop playing games with me. Stop trying to act all mysterious and villainous. You’re not Lex Luthor, you asshole, so knock it the fuck off. Why did you ask me here? Huh? Why the hell?”

  Ian sipped his wine, eyes growing distant as he pulled back within himself. He scrutinized him a long moment, swished the wine around in his mouth, lowered the glass slowly. Then he swallowed and sat forward with a little lurch, all the old remem
bered vibrancy coming back to his face, glowing from the inside out with all the raging, angry passion he’d had as a teenager.

  “Because it’s lonely,” he said in a low, intense voice that wouldn’t carry beyond the edge of their table. “At first, getting out, climbing up on top of the pile, creating a whole new identity for yourself – it’s exhilarating. It’s…” His expression was almost dreamy a moment, before the passion returned. “It’s indescribable, really, to know that you have achieved something that the ones who hurt you could only lust after. But then…then it turns lonely.

  “When I saw you on that dating site, I realized something. You’re lonely, too, Kevin.”

  Tango didn’t ask him how he’d mined that profile out of the vast recesses of the Web. Men like Ian had ways of finding things. Instead, he said, “That was just something one of the girls did. It was stupid. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But you are, aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Lonely.”

  “No.” But he had to look away as he said it, because it was a lie. He wasn’t bitterly lonely, not crippled by it. But he didn’t share Aidan’s zeal for anonymous sex and half-drunken revelry. He was at all the parties, and he’d crammed his share of dollar bills into strippers’ thongs, but that didn’t reward him in any way. Internally. Internally, there was a sort of aching melancholy that he’d learned to live with as a boy.

  Ian was studying him with outward sympathy, the lean pen strokes of his face softened marginally. “I know that, for you, the club was the best way to get free of Carla–”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t say her name.”

  “ – but I don’t think it’s really your place. I don’t think it’s where you belong.”

  They’re my people, he ought to say. My brothers. Their old ladies are my sisters and their children are my nieces and nephews. We are a family, and that’s something you’ll never understand because before they lost you, your parents probably didn’t even love you.

  Neither had his parents, but he’d found what they’d never given to him in the Teagues, and in the rest of the club.