by Layla Reyne
The pink box of pastries on the coffee table brought the memories on stronger, a tsunami that forced Hawes to brace a hand on the nearest pillar. “Who told you?”
Dante looked up from where he stood behind the kitchen island, emptying takeout cartons onto plates. “Your sister.” He blindly tossed a crispy shrimp to Iris, who was stalking the tops of the cabinets on the kitchen side of the loft wall. “Since I was in Chinatown, I swung by my favorite place for the rest. You hungry?”
Yes, said his brain, but he couldn’t get the word out past the lump in his throat, drowning as he was in comparisons between this day and the day his parents died. He’d had to make the call that day too, and afterward, he’d brought Holt and Helena home from the hospital, cooked them breakfast, and tucked them into bed. Only once they were asleep had he retreated to his bedroom and screamed into the pillows. Alone. After he’d taken care of everyone else.
Unlike that day seventeen years ago, he wasn’t alone tonight. Dante was in his kitchen, dishing out food and treating his cat. Taking care of him. It was domestic, it was different, it was welcome, it was everything Hawes wanted, and his gut clenched in hope and fear. Was this—Dante—his chance at what Holt and Amelia, his parents, and his grandparents had enjoyed? A partner who got it, who understood and accepted what he did, and stood by his side? Who’d help him protect his family and the empire they’d built? But only until Dante found out what happened to Isabelle. Then Hawes figured he’d be staring down the barrel of his gun instead. He might finally get what he wanted, only to lose it, because that’s how his luck had been going lately. Hell, most of his life.
“Hey, Madigan, where’d you go?”
Hawes blinked, surprised to find Dante no longer in the kitchen but standing right in front of him. He stared into those bottomless brown eyes—wonder, hope, and dread a paralyzing cocktail.
Dante lifted a hand and coasted it over his jaw. “You with me?”
Hawes blinked again, shaking himself from the daze, and turned his face into the offered warmth, nuzzling Dante’s palm. “Thank you.”
“I’ll take that as a yes to the hungry question.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just—”
Dante cut off his words with a quick yet thorough kiss that left Hawes panting and pressed between the pole at his back and Dante’s hard body against his front. “Don’t apologize for anything tonight,” Dante murmured. “Feel what you need to feel.”
Hawes wanted to feel more of Dante—the bare biceps under his hands, the silky hair tickling his cheek, the hard thigh between his legs—but he also wanted to wash away the day and feel clean. And judging by the embarrassingly loud grumble of his stomach, he also wanted to feel full.
Dante chuckled, the sound rumbly and sexy, and Hawes was tempted to tell hygiene and his stomach to go to hell, but then Dante stepped back and turned him toward the bathroom. “Go rinse off, and I’ll have everything ready when you get back.”
Hawes couldn’t argue with that plan. Ten minutes later, when he came back into the living room, the kitchen lights were low, the Giants game was on, plates of steaming food were spread out on the coffee table, and two place settings were set up in front of the couch, a bottle of beer next to each.
“This okay?” Dante asked from where he sat on the couch. “I wanted to see the end of the game, but we can move to the dining—”
“This is good.” Hawes fluffed the damp top strands of his hair, then bent a leg under himself and sank onto the cushions next to Dante. “Perfect, actually.”
Dante handed him a beer and gestured at the food. “Pick your poison.”
“Bit of everything would be great.” Hawes took a swig from the bottle, the pilsner cold and refreshing. “I’m not too picky when it comes to food.”
“Could tell that from the cookbooks. You’ve got everything from slow cooker favorites to fine dining.”
Hawes shrugged. “The haute cuisine books are mostly there for the pictures, though I’ve tried a few of the simpler recipes. Sauces and the like.” He wedged the beer bottle between his legs and took the plate and chopsticks Dante handed him. “You know as well as I do, growing up in a city like this, every food and cuisine is out there to try. Whenever I found one I loved, I wanted to make it myself. Cal gave me my first cookbook on my eighth birthday. He bought me the last two months ago, on my thirty-third. Or I suppose Rose did, but regardless, I have them all still.”
“Did you ever want to be a chef?”
Hawes washed down his bite of Szechuan beef with a swallow of beer. “I flirted with the idea, but I also enjoyed afternoons at MCS with my parents. I wanted that too. I liked that our family had its own business.”
“And the other business?”
“Honest to God, by the time Cal sat me down and explained it all, I was just happy to know that my parents, who’d been gone a month then, were coming home, and that they weren’t dead or getting a divorce. I couldn’t figure out why sometimes one was gone and not the other, or both of them together, for long stretches of time. Knowing the truth, a lot of things finally made sense.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
Dante’s mouth opened—he wanted to say something, make some judgment—but he held his tongue, or rather occupied it with noodles instead and turned his attention back to the game. During the next commercial, he loaded up his plate with seconds. “Tell me about him, Papa Cal, and not the stories everybody knows.”
Hawes lowered his chopsticks. “I don’t want—”
“Trust me.” Dante slid back into the cushions beside Hawes. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Hawes wasn’t so sure about that, but the box of pastries on the corner of the table was an easy story he could share. Each story after that became easier, telling them between bites of fried shrimp, spicy beef, noodles, and then mooncakes. How Papa Cal had painstakingly restored every element of the Pac Heights house, and how Hawes’s mother had spent hours with Cal, laying the entryway’s mosaic tile, piece by piece, ultimately winning him over. How he’d regularly taken each of the grandkids to the office to see how the business was run. How, until the past few years, he’d taken Rose out to Tadich Grill every year on the anniversary of their first date. Then how Rose had brought the meal to him, once he’d been unable to go out anymore. How memory would flit through his eyes during those moments.
The stories went on, long past the food and the game, and what emerged was the picture of a patient, loving man when it came to his family, his friends, the waitstaff at restaurants, the neighbors up the street, the employees at his company. A counterweight to the quick, swift death he doled out in the shadows, that made him and the Madigan name feared in certain criminal circles. It was a balance, Hawes realized, one he was trying to recreate for himself and their family, albeit in a slightly different manner.
Dante reached out and brushed back the hair that had fallen over Hawes’s forehead. “You know what you’re going to say for the eulogy now?”
Hawes gaped at him. “How’d you know?”
“Who else would it be? You’re the one who holds it together.” His hand drifted down to cup Hawes’s cheek. “I’m getting the sense you always have been.”
“Doesn’t feel like that.” He closed his eyes and rested the weight of his head, his world, in the palm of Dante’s hand. “Almost everything that could go wrong today did.”
The statement begged the question, and Hawes expected the investigator to ask it. Instead, Dante curled his hand around Hawes’s neck and drew him closer. “Well…then let’s make something go right.”
Right was Dante’s mouth on his, deep and searching like their kiss that morning. Right was Dante gently pushing him back into the cushions so he could straddle Hawes’s lap. Right was Hawes’s hands touching every part of Dante he could reach. Over his hard chest and broad shoulders. Along his strong bearded jaw. Through the long strands of hair Hawes released from Dante’s topknot, a curtain of brown waves falling
around them.
Hawes could have stayed like that for hours, kissing and touching, except that their rolling hips reminded him of another something that would be oh-so-right. “I owe you a favor,” he mumbled against Dante’s lips. He slipped a hand between them and grasped Dante’s erection through his jeans.
Dante grasped his wrist and pulled Hawes away from his prize, pinning his hand to the couch cushions instead. “This is about what you need tonight.”
“I need this.” Hawes thrust his hips up, his erection through his track pants nudging Dante’s. He didn’t care how needy he seemed, how desperate. If Dante was offering, Hawes wasn’t holding back. He’d walked in here tonight feeling dead inside, but with Dante on his lap, kissing up and down his neck, he was burning up. Alive. He did not want that fire to go out. He clenched Dante’s hand, drawing his smoldering gaze. “I need to taste you,” Hawes said with another roll of his hips. “I want to return the favor.”
One side of Dante’s mouth ticked up. “All right, not gonna argue that offer.” He climbed off Hawes’s lap, pushed the coffee table back with his bare foot, and stripped without preamble or modesty.
Dante standing naked before him gave sexy a whole new meaning.
Honest to God, Hawes didn’t know where to look. The long legs and powerful thighs dusted with dark, wiry hair. The miles of ripped torso and fucking eight-pack abs. The light sprinkling of hair at the center of Dante’s chest—even broader out of its tank—or the line of hair that ran from his indented belly button, down his pelvis between cut hip bones, to the dark patch of hair around his erect cock. A ruddier tone of olive, it was thick and long, with a vein running up one side and moisture pearling in the slit. Scratch that, Hawes did know where to look. The same place he wanted to taste. His mouth watered.
“Like what you see?” Dante rumbled above him.
Stripping off his tee, Hawes slid to the edge of the couch and spread his legs on either side of Dante’s. Head tipped back, he shot Dante an incredulous look. “Has anyone ever said no to that question?”
“Not since high school.”
Even then, Hawes doubted that once a person got a look at Dante’s cock, they’d care overly much about his lanky limbs or then-unbalanced features. Teenage Hawes sure as fuck wouldn’t have cared. As far as Adult Hawes was concerned, all those now-balanced, handsome features were window dressing compared to what he wanted right here, to the man Dante was proving to be. Except maybe the hair, which Hawes was rather attached to already.
And while he couldn’t reach the long strands on Dante’s head from where he sat, Hawes could treat his fingertips to the springy hair on his legs, to the muscles in his powerful quads, to his firm, round ass cheeks. He cupped Dante’s generous backside, hauled him forward, and shoved his face into the crease between thigh and groin. Intoxicating, the powerful, musky scent tinged with a hint of eucalyptus body wash. Dante personified. The guy who rode a Harley, always had a book on him, looked and strutted like a rock star, and carried a pistol, knife, and cuffs. A mystery.
Hawes flicked out his tongue; the mystery tasted even better than he’d imagined. Fuck, he could live right there. Could forget everything and drown in Dante. In the smell, taste, and heat of his skin. In the blood thumping in Hawes’s own ears, and in the two points of pleasure and pain dominating his present existence—Dante’s cock brushing his cheek and his own achingly hard dick trapped in his pants.
Fingers wove softly through his hair. “You with me?” Dante asked again, voice both gentle and rough.
“Can I stay here?”
“Sure, but fair warning, you’re gonna get come on your cheek in another minute or so.”
That didn’t sound so bad, though what a fucking waste. Hawes tilted his head back and raked his gaze up Dante’s flushed torso. Power and desire surged through him at finding Dante’s face equally heated. “Can’t have that,” Hawes said with a smirk.
Dante’s answering laugh morphed into a moan as Hawes tongued the underside of his cock. He closed his lips around the head and sucked it into his mouth, the smell and taste of Dante kicked up a thousand. Wanting more, Hawes relaxed his throat and swallowed as much of Dante as he could before triggering his gag reflex. He fisted the base of Dante’s cock to make up the difference and began working him over, savoring every ridge his tongue skirted over, every bead of tangy precome that tickled his taste buds, every one of Dante’s moans that echoed in his ears. They grew louder, the thrust of Dante’s hips more urgent as Hawes trailed a hand over Dante’s ass, fingers sneaking into his crack to tease his hole. Hawes wanted to push inside, desperately, but the supplies he needed to make this good for both of them were in his room.
Not that this wasn’t already amazing.
Dante gently squeezed his scalp, not directing but enough to get Hawes’s attention. “You have boxers on under those track pants?”
“Nuh-uh,” Hawes grunted around his cock.
“Pull it out. Jack yourself.”
Best idea ever. Using his hand that was already slick with spit, Hawes shoved down the waistband of his pants and took hold of his cock, groaning in relief.
A shudder rippled through Dante, and his cock inside Hawes’s mouth grew harder. “Get there, Madigan. Hurry.” His hand slipped out of Hawes’s hair and down his neck, lightly grasping his nape like a collar.
Hawes pressed into it, reveling in the added support and the rhythm Dante set for them. He sucked up and down, in time with his own fist, speed ratcheting up in intervals until he couldn’t hold back his release any longer. Come spilled over his fingers, sticky and warm, and he groaned out his pleasure around Dante’s cock.
“Ah, Christ,” Dante cursed, body curling over Hawes’s, both hands landing on his shoulders.
He needed Hawes to return the favor, to steady him, and it was enough for Hawes to stave off the oncoming postcoital fog. He just needed to push Dante the rest of the way over the edge, and then they could drift there together. He cupped Dante’s balls with his come-covered hand and tugged. Dante thrust forward with a shout, coming over Hawes’s tongue and down his throat. Salty, pungent, hot—all the flavors of Dante in one potent mixture. A mystery Hawes could happily spend years solving.
Chapter Thirteen
An increasingly familiar sight greeted Hawes the next morning. Holt and Helena were milling around his living area while Dante made himself at home in the kitchen. After getting a surprisingly good few hours of sleep, Hawes had left Dante snoring on his couch in the wee hours of the morning. Once awake, Hawes was doomed to tossing and turning, and he didn’t want his insomnia to doom Dante too. Or his nightmare mumblings to unintentionally reveal the truth about Isabelle’s death. He’d retreated to his bed to starfish on his own, until Holt had texted a half hour ago to say he and Helena were headed over. Hawes had gotten up to do his business. Dante too by the looks of it. Hair up in a loose bun, he was dressed and at work behind the stove.
“Is this also becoming a thing?” Hawes said from where he stood at the other end of the island, admiring.
Dante grinned back at him. “They’re not trying to kill me this time.”
“Not yet, Mr. Hair,” Helena said as she claimed a barstool.
“Play nice,” Hawes chided. He gave her a peck on the cheek, then made a beeline for the coffee maker.
Dante passed him in the narrow space, and Hawes instinctively lifted a hand, fingers itching to trail over Dante’s back. But with his siblings in the room, he wasn’t sure how they or Dante would react.
Dante answered the question for him, stealing a quick kiss on his way back to the stove, bag of shredded cheese in hand. “You’ll need to make more coffee.” He cut a look to the dining table, where Holt was typing furiously on his laptop. “Someone drank the first batch.”
“Yes, please,” Helena chirped from her stool, voice at odds with her narrowed, assessing eyes. She definitely hadn’t missed the brief exchange.
Coffee before deadly sister. Hawes moved Dante’
s book clear of the machine, refilled it with water and fresh grounds, and pressed Brew.
“Rough night with Lily?” Hawes called to his brother.
“Rough night all around.” Holt finished typing, then shifted to straddle the bench. “Got her down about an hour ago. Grandma’s watching her. She seems to be one of the few things that brings Rose some comfort too.”
“And Amelia?”
“Hospital. She thought it was more important to take time off for the funeral tomorrow and through the weekend.”
For better or worse, Papa Cal’s declining health meant funeral arrangements had been on standby. Hawes just had to sign the papers and give them the go-ahead yesterday. Everything had come together quickly.
The coffee maker beeped right as Dante flipped off the stove. “Mug’s waiting for you on the table. Take that on over”—he nodded at the coffeepot—“and I’ll be right behind you with the food.”
Hawes peeked around him. “What did you make?”
“Egg scramble out of what you had in the fridge.” He sprinkled the shredded cheese liberally on top. “Didn’t have time to bake it into a frittata.”
“This weekend?”
“That could be arranged. You’d owe me another favor.”
“I’m good with that.” Favors worked out well for both of them. Hawes grabbed the coffeepot with one hand and trailed the other over Dante’s lower back as he’d wanted to do earlier.
Helena didn’t miss that exchange either. She slid off her stool and matched Hawes’s stride across the living room. “This is all very domestic.” Assessing for sure, cautious too, which in a way, Hawes was glad to see after her defeated manner yesterday. This was the sister he knew.
“You told him about the mooncakes,” Hawes said.
“You needed someone last night.” Empathy eclipsed her vigilance, but only for a second. “Keep your guard up.”
Definitely getting back to her usual self. And she was right. He couldn’t let hope for a future he’d thought impossible make him complacent.