On Duty

by A. R. Barley

  A finger pushed its way deep inside him. Then another one. Digits flexed, stretching him wide. It was slow and purposeful.

  Like they had all the time in the world.

  Like Troy wouldn’t beg to get what he wanted.

  The condom wrapper crinkled and tore open. Latex rolled down over Alex’s erection.

  It was an odd position, Troy lying back on the bed and Alex standing with his feet planted solidly on the floor. He didn’t think it would work at first, but then Alex’s palms landed on his knees, pushing them up toward his chest, and everything came together like puzzle pieces falling into place.

  After a moment’s pause Alex pushed inside him. His cock filled him to perfection. Was there a curve to it? A bend that managed to hit Troy in just the right way.

  The only light in the room came from the reflected glow through the bedroom window. It wasn’t enough to make out the book titles on the bedside table but nothing could hide the smile on his face. It was fucking radiant.

  His hips rocked back and forth. His nails dug into Troy’s chest. The woodsy scent of their shared body wash clung to their skin. It should have hurt. He blinked as awareness flooded him. Sex was a full-body act. It had been a long time since he’d taken his last painkillers, and his head was clear. Knocking his arm against the shower wall had hurt.

  But it wasn’t Alex’s weight pinning him to the bed. It was his own expectations. Their positions had been carefully chosen to put the least amount of pressure on Troy’s wounds.

  Alex’s slow moves weren’t about drawing things out, making him desperate, they were about checking and double-checking to make sure he didn’t cause any more damage. It was gentle, tender, and so damn sweet it was giving Troy cavities.

  Harder, he wanted to say, harder.

  But then Alex hit that place deep inside him and he forgot how to speak.

  He forgot how to breathe.

  “That’s the spot?” Alex’s sapphire eyes gleamed. His hips flexed back and forth. He hit the same deep place over and over again while Troy clawed at the white cotton sheets. Alex’s hand wrapped tight around his cock, applying the right kind of pressure.

  Troy’s hips bucked. He forced his way up into the warm tunnel. Audible gasps filled the air. Stars exploded all around him and his eyes rolled back into his head. Come spurted out across Alex’s fingers.

  He wasn’t the only one gasping for air.

  Alex’s careful rhythm had been replaced by something wilder. He moaned. For the first time all night, he lost control. His grip was tight enough to hurt. Troy didn’t mind. It wasn’t much compared to what he’d experienced during his years in the army or swinging through broken glass during the warehouse fire.

  And when he opened his eyes?

  When he saw Alex’s face as he orgasmed?

  Totally worth it.

  Alex’s body sagged as he finished coming. He collapsed sideways, but even then he was considerate. He shifted his weight and rolled his body to the side so he didn’t hit Troy. The sheets rustled. The used condom landed in the trash can.

  Together they scooted up to the top of the bed. Limbs tangled together. Troy pulled a blanket up over both their bodies and settled his head against Alex’s chest.

  Absolute perfection.

  Troy just hoped Alex would still want to be together when they woke up.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Alex freaking Tate. You going to let me in?”

  Riding a post-orgasm pre-waffle high didn’t leave an awful lot of room for higher brain functions, otherwise Alex never would have stepped back to let Ian into the apartment. “Can I help you with something, Detective?”

  “The hospital told me they let Troy go.” Ian’s hands clenched into fists, but he didn’t take a swing. Instead, he stood up a little straighter and cleared his throat. “I thought I’d stop by. See how he was doing.”

  Alex’s heart beat double time. It had been doing that a lot recently, like when he’d told the nurses he was Troy’s boyfriend or later when he’d told Troy the same thing. Damn. His stomach churned. He’d been so damn nervous, but then Troy grinned and everything clicked into place.

  He wiped his palms against his jeans. “He’s fine.”

  “Is that Connie again? Doesn’t she have a house of her own to go to?” Troy’s voice was muffled from the bedroom. “Tell her I want my damn sweater back.” He stomped out and stopped short. His eyes went wide. He was wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing else. “Ian, what the hell?”

  “Good, you’re here.” Ian’s clothes were rumpled. There were dark circles under his eyes and yellowed bruising around his nose. “I don’t want to have to do this twice.” He took another step forward, looming over Alex, and—

  “Troy walloped me a good one the other day. I might have deserved it.” He held out a hand. “I want to apologize for what happened at Smoke & Bullets. I was an asshole.” His words were hard and wooden. Every syllable was precise, like he’d recited them in the mirror a couple of times before coming over. “It was hard. Seeing you two together. I hope you’ll accept my sincere apology. I want this to be the beginning of a long and sincere friendship.”

  “You said sincere twice.” Alex crossed his arms. At least he was wearing a T-shirt and real pants. Cymbals banged away inside his head. Why the hell was Troy still standing around in his pajama bottoms?

  “Yeah, well.” Ian made a brief hand gesture, like that explained it all somehow. “I meant it.” His gaze slid across to Troy, skating across the cast on his arm and the stitches on his shoulder before settling on his six-pack abs and the thick treasure trail leading down to the drawstring of his flannel pants.

  His tongue swiped across his bottom lip.

  Like he was hungry.

  Wanting.

  Jackass.

  Ian was the one who’d tossed Troy out when he was hurting. He was the one who’d ended their relationship. He didn’t get to stare like a starving man in an ice cream factory.

  Two steps to the left and Alex was standing firmly between the two men. “Apology accepted. You can leave now. Unless there’s something else you want to tell us. Maybe you want to apologize to Troy for kicking him out. Sincerely.”

  Ian shifted forward like a boxer getting ready to throw his first punch, but he didn’t follow through. “Troy.” Ian’s hands unclenched, and his gaze dropped. “I really am sorry about the way things worked out between the two of us.”

  That actually sounded sincere.

  “Congratulations on the engagement,” Troy said. “And the baby. You guys come up with a name yet?”

  “Nicki likes Ivan—after her brother—but I’m not sure.”

  “There was that corporal in B-Company, right? Ivan the Terrible.”

  “Terrible smelling.” Ian relaxed slightly. “I’m surprised no one fragged his ass on the way to the showers.”

  They both laughed at the inside joke, all those years of shared history sweeping over the heartache and violence of the past few weeks like it was nothing.

  Un-freaking-believable.

  Alex’s eyes felt hot. No matter what Troy thought, he’d never been the kind of hot-shot alpha stud who couldn’t stand his man talking to anyone else. He’d never clubbed someone over the head and dragged them back to his cave. But none of that stopped a fresh wave of jealousy from swamping his insides.

  He’d never felt this way about anyone else before. Not any of the guys he’d dated in high school or the one-night stands he’d been spending time with more recently.

  Not even Daniel. Dr. Daniel Lafitte. The love of his goddamn life—at least that’s what he’d thought at the time—but he’d never felt jealous when they went out together.

  Hell, even when Daniel left him to go running back to Dave all he’d ever felt was
a white-hot anger like uncured liquor running through his veins.

  Nothing like this.

  Alex didn’t like it. “This is a touching little reunion. Really. It makes my heart go pit-a-pat. Are you going to leave sometime soon? Or do I need to make more eggs?”

  He wasn’t sharing his damn waffles.

  Or Troy.

  Ian’s lips turned upward. Someone else might have interpreted it as a smile, but it was a damn smirk. Like he could read Alex’s mind. “Some coffee would be nice, thanks for asking.”

  “Let me go get changed,” Troy said.

  “Don’t hurry on my account.” The smirk was even broader this time. Ian’s eyes freaking gleamed. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  A gust of air moved against Alex’s back as Troy made some kind of gesture. He hoped it was rude.

  Bare feet padded lightly across the hardwood. The bedroom door slammed shut.

  Time to get that coffee. Alex moved into the kitchen. The coffeemaker was bubbling cheerfully away. He retrieved three cups from the cabinet and poured. “You take milk or sugar?”

  “Milk, Troy likes—”

  “I know how Troy takes his coffee.”

  “Right, because you guys have been roommates for all of five minutes,” Ian said. “I’ve known him for more than half his life.”

  This time the gesture was definitely rude. Alex poured some milk into one of the cups and pushed it across the counter to Ian. “And look how that turned out.”

  Ian sighed. “I’ve made some mistakes recently. If it’ll help, I’ll put on a hair shirt and start with the self-flagellation.”

  “That’d be a good look on you.” Alex took a sip from his cup, drumming his fingers against the heavy ceramic. The coffee was hot, but it took him two more sips to taste his favorite mellow roast with the cherry finish. “Hard to find a hair shirt around here though.”

  “This is New York. You can find anything if you look hard enough.” Ian drank some of his coffee. “This is good stuff. You get it near here?”

  “Over in Brooklyn.”

  “Right. Brooklyn.”

  Like that explained everything. “I don’t know what you have against the borough of unity and hipsters, but they know how to roast their beans.”

  The timer he’d set beeped. The first set of waffles was done. He put down his coffee and popped open the heavy iron griddle on the stove.

  Waffley goodness.

  Crisp golden circles with square indentations and a hint of darker color around the outside. They weren’t something he made often—the waffle iron had been a gag gift from one of his sisters when he moved into the condo—but he didn’t need to taste them to know they were perfect. Special. Ready to be drizzled in maple syrup and coated in jelly. He popped them out of their molds and stacked them neatly on a blue ceramic plate.

  A quick spritz of vegetable oil and he poured more mix into the waffle iron. The batter sizzled when it hit the iron’s hot surface, and a yeasty scent filled the air. He got a little too close. He brushed his fingers against the hot iron and he bit back a yelp as he yanked back.

  Pink skin and fresh blisters. He’d burned himself. Luckily, there was a firefighter in the house.

  The door to the bedroom opened again. This time Troy was dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a worn T-shirt that had definitely seen better days. The jeans belonged to Troy, but he’d snagged the T-shirt from Alex’s drawers. It pulled against his shoulders and didn’t quite reach his waistband.

  The logo on the front advertised a bakery one of his cousins had started a few years earlier: Tate’s Tortes. It hadn’t done well, folded up shop in less than six months—these days she was the patisserie at a Jersey City restaurant—but the shirt was still cute.

  Alex lifted his cup to hide his grin, leaned back against the counter and waited to see how things would play out. Would Troy kick Ian to the curb? Or would they go back to pretending everything was all hunky dory?

  There was a moment’s awkward pause, and then...

  “How’s your arm?” Ian said.

  Troy shrugged. “The doctors say it’ll be fine. Eventually.”

  “You weren’t in the hospital long.”

  “Twenty-eight hours, maybe twenty-three minutes.”

  Hell. Alex hadn’t known he’d been counting, and even if he had? He wouldn’t have done a single thing about it. From what the nurses had told him, Troy had been damn lucky to get out in only twenty-eight hours and twenty-three minutes.

  “You never did like hospitals.” Ian finished off his coffee and put the empty cup down on the counter. “Remember that one in Germany—”

  “If you want to relive old memories, we can go get a beer,” Troy said.

  “Yeah, well.” Ian shifted uncomfortably, but his gaze never left Troy. He smiled. “That’s not the only reason I’m here. You texted me about the arsonist. You came up with something?”

  “Alex came up with something.” Troy cleared his throat. “It’s—” His entire face twisted like he’d tasted something nasty. “I don’t know if it’s anything. Maybe.”

  “All the fires,” Alex said, “are in the same firehouse response area. They’re all on Troy’s shift.”

  “I didn’t set them,” Ian said. “And it wasn’t my fiancée.”

  “Troy’s not the only firefighter who’s been on duty for every fire. Hoyt. Luke. The captain.”

  “You think someone’s after one of them? It’s an interesting theory.” He considered for a long moment, then shook his head. “We arrested a guy this morning. Antoine Tully.”

  “He’s got something against firefighters?” Troy took a few steps forward. There were two directions he could go: closer to Alex or closer to Ian.

  He didn’t move either direction.

  Perfect.

  Just perfect.

  Alex wanted to grab Troy’s arm and drag him over to the kitchen where he could keep him safe from Ian’s roving eyes. Instead, he flipped the waffle iron over so the new batch would cook evenly on both sides.

  “Not that I know of,” Ian said. “He’s the manager from the warehouse. The first one.”

  Alex tried to remember the man and failed. He remembered a uniform shirt and a pair of khakis, blood pressure inside normal range, but he didn’t remember the man. If he’d been paying more attention, could he have stopped this whole thing?

  “He did it because he hated his job? He could have just quit,” Troy said. “Instead of setting the freaking place on fire.”

  “The investigators think the fire at the warehouse was an accident,” Ian explained. “Captain Tracey turned him in for unsafe practices. The warehouse owners got fined. Tully was fired in the aftermath. He’s got three kids and two ex-wives. He didn’t take losing his job well. That’s why he started targeting the area around the station house.”

  Troy nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Thanks for letting us know.” Tully’s reasoning might not line up with the story he’d come up with in his own head, but his arrest was good news. Things were going to go back to normal.

  No more arsonist.

  No more watching Troy run into a building moments before it exploded and hoping like hell he wasn’t cut to pieces by the shrapnel or crushed by the debris.

  Instead, he needed to worry about all the normal trouble an FDNY firefighter could get into. Apartment fires, combative old ladies who refused to leave their homes, and a hero complex the size of New York state.

  Maybe Troy could go back to the army.

  It would be safer.

  After a few more minutes of small talk, Ian’s spine straightened. His smile when he looked at Troy was genuine, almost wistful. “I’ve got to go. My shift starts in an hour. Maybe we can talk some more after.”

 
Not a chance in hell. The backs of Alex’s eyes were itching. His temple was throbbing. In another minute he’d be tossing waffles at Troy like a discus thrower at the Olympics. Only, he wouldn’t be going for distance. He’d be aiming for the good parts.

  “Anytime.” Troy grinned.

  The dishes needed doing. Alex turned away. His hands shook as he turned on the water, forcing himself to focus on the simple process of soaping up plates instead of the train wreck going on behind his back.

  He was sponging off the waffle iron when the door finally closed. Troy let out a long sigh. “That was unexpected.”

  “No shit.” Alex put the waffle iron down carefully. “Are you really going to talk to him?”

  “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “You’re not friends. He’s—” He turned and slumped against the counter. His gaze never left the floor. All he could see was Troy’s feet. They were nice feet. “You’re not friends, Troy. You might have been once, but not anymore. He’s using you.”

  “For all my worldly possessions?” Troy laughed. “He already got the apartment.”

  “He wants to have sex with you.”

  “You’re acting like a jealous boyfriend.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to be your boyfriend.” Alex stared Troy straight in the eyes and his roommate blinked first. “There are some errands I need to run today.” Anything to get out of the apartment. “Then I’m going to see Sammy.”

  “I can go with you.”

  “No.” Alex clenched his hands. It gave him something to concentrate on other than the blood rushing past his ears and a growing need to take Troy into his arms. “You’ve got a doctor’s appointment in a little while.”

  Troy shifted forward onto the balls of his feet. “I’ll find you when I’m done.”

  His stomach didn’t so much churn as perform the entire Nutcracker Ballet. He was going to be sick. Troy was big and strong, handsome. He was a firefighter who challenged Alex’s preconceived notions. He’d stumbled into Alex’s life broken and injured, demanding chicken soup and commitment—everything Alex had never known he wanted, but damn he wanted him.