Prodigal

by TA Moore

  Maybe it wouldn’t fix anything, but he’d feel better if Bob had to pick up his teeth off the floor.

  Morgan grabbed the broken stick halfway down its length and yanked on it. Bob staggered forward, glass crushed under his rubber soles, and Morgan drove his fist into the soft dough of spoiled stomach. Bob grunted yeasty breath into Morgan’s face as he hunched over and let the stick slip from his fingers. It clattered onto the ground, and Morgan kicked it under the table before he shoved Bob away from him.

  One of Bob’s coterie yelled, caught up in drunken enthusiasm, and lunged at Morgan. He swung a wild uppercut that Morgan dodged, and then the guy barreled into him. It didn’t do much, but the example was enough to drag a handful of Bob’s other friends off the sidelines to pile on.

  A few of the punches connected with a dull heat under Morgan’s muscle that would age into pain later, and someone drove a knee into his ribs that made it hard to breathe for a minute. They’d done this before, but they were used to beatings, not a brawl. Unlike Morgan, who’d been at the bottom of plenty of dog piles.

  Morgan ducked a bottle swung at his head and grabbed the guy’s shoulder as he staggered into reach. He smacked the man’s face down into the chipped wooden edge of the pool table. Something cracked, and the guy hit the scarred wooden floor. Morgan grabbed a ball from the table and used it to weight his fist as he laid out a broad-faced man who, two hours ago, had been keen to trade stories of football glory days.

  The key to a bar fight was to get your back to something, stay on your feet, and go for joint damage, not punches. A man with a broken nose staggered out of the fight, but you kicked his kneecap out, and he was in everyone’s way but yours. Morgan caught a fist to the jaw, hard enough to feel old damage click, and blinked stars out of his eyes. The inside of his mouth tasted like salt and copper. He’d bitten his tongue—a sliver of it was still caught between his teeth—and he spat the mouthful of blood into someone’s face.

  The man recoiled and tripped over a nearby table that collapsed under his weight and scattered broken glass and peanuts across the floor. One of the locals swore as the flood of beer splashed his jeans. He grabbed at the stunned man’s polo shirt, hauled him up by the collar, and slung him toward the door.

  Right into someone on his way in. The two men staggered in the doorway for a second, caught in the corner of Morgan’s vision as he ducked and rabbit-punched, and then Boyd shoved the dazed man out into the street.

  “What the—” Boyd spluttered.

  Something like guilt scraped at the back of Morgan’s throat. Or maybe he was just pissed off since he felt better when he stamped on an expensive sneaker and heard bones break. The last thing he wanted was for Boyd to see him for who he really was—bloody knuckles and the sick satisfaction of pain and all. He’d bet fucking Sammy Calloway never got into fights. He probably played the piano or chess.

  Jealous of a dead kid. That’s a new low.

  A bloody-nosed man with an angry grimace caught Morgan over the ear with a bottle. It smashed, and he went down on hands and knees in the muck and glass. Someone drove a dirty sneaker into his chest, and he hunched in on himself.

  It was better to stay down. If he got up, he’d hurt someone. He could feel the sticky need of it in his chest, blind, black, and drunk on whiskey fumes. That would be stupid. He needed to protect his head and take his beating.

  Fuck that.

  He hunched over and got one foot braced under him. Before he could shove himself back up from under the sweaty weight of bodies, they were dragged off him. For a second surprise took the starch out of Morgan. He let his shoulders drop and took a breath as he looked up.

  Boyd, straight dark brows drawn over his eyes in a glower, shouldered one preppy thug out of the way and then hit Bob with a chair. It cracked, legs bowed in, and Bob staggered backward. He nearly went down, legs folded under him, but one of his friends grabbed him and shoved him back toward Boyd. Bob managed to catch himself before they collided and took a wary step back.

  Well, fuck. Morgan scrambled up onto his heels and leaned back against the pool table, one arm hooked over the cushion, to watch the confrontation. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth. Just when he thought Boyd couldn’t get any hotter…. Although Morgan wasn’t sure if it was the tight gray denim stretched over Boyd’s ass or the blood on his knuckles that did it for him.

  Both. Why choose?

  Not like it was something that was going to come up a lot. People seldom got in the way of a punch meant for Morgan, not on purpose, anyhow.

  “This….” Bob wiped his face on his sleeve and tried to puff himself up. “This isn’t any of your business, Maccabee.”

  “I made it my business,” Boyd said flatly. “Get out of here, Robbie.”

  The sulky line of Bob’s mouth twisted at the nickname. He jabbed a finger at Morgan. “He stole money off me.”

  Snitch. Morgan caught his excuses on his tongue, ready for the look Boyd was about to give him. The “did you” look, the “gotta hear both sides” look.

  “Did I ask?” Boyd said. He took a step forward, and Bob—Robbie—took a matching one back. “Go on home and tell your daddy. Maybe he’ll care. I just want to get out of here.”

  “At least I have a dad,” Bob jeered.

  It was obviously a weak rejoinder, even before Boyd laughed at him. A couple of other people joined in. Color scorched Bob’s face up into his hairline, the stain of pink visible where his hair had started to thin.

  “Go home,” Boyd repeated the order. “You’re drunk and more pathetic than usual. Take your friends with you.”

  One of the friends blustered up from behind Bob. “Fuck you.”

  “Naw,” Bob said as he lifted his chin. “He’d like that too much. Right, Boyd?”

  Morgan pushed himself to his feet. His ribs ached, and his head throbbed dully where the bottle had hit him, but nothing was broken. He raked his fingers through his hair, sticky with beer and blood, and grinned. It felt sharp.

  “No jumping the line,” he said.

  Boyd flashed a quick crooked grin over his shoulder, and Morgan’s mouth went dry. He swallowed salt and spit, sticky on the back of his tongue, and reminded himself that Boyd Maccabee wasn’t in his best interests. The captain had made it clear that Morgan was to keep his distance, and if he didn’t, he could answer any questions from a jail just as easily as from the B and B.

  The smart thing to do was keep his distance, ignore the memory of Boyd’s mouth around him, until…. Morgan hesitated for a second and then let himself ignore what he knew the rest of that sentence would be.

  “You know what? The hell with it,” Bob spat as he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “It’s pocket change, and this place is a dive, anyhow. C’mon. Let’s go somewhere else to spend our money.”

  He blustered out of the bar, friends at his heels, already halfway convinced it was their idea. Boyd snorted and turned around. His gaze flickered from bruise to scrape, and he winced.

  “I didn’t need your help,” Morgan growled as the threat of sympathy put his hackles up. He didn’t want Boyd to look at him with that “who are you really” question in his eyes, but pity wasn’t what he wanted to see instead. “I certainly didn’t fucking ask for it.”

  Boyd rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “You looked like you had them on the ropes.”

  Morgan reached up and gingerly pushed his thumb against the tender spot on his forehead. “It was a cheap shot.”

  The bartender shoved a plastic cup of ice over the counter. “Cops will be here soon,” he said. “If you want to talk to them.”

  That was the last thing Morgan wanted, but he was surprised when Boyd also grimaced at the thought.

  “It’s up to you,” Boyd said as he turned to Morgan. “If you want to make a complaint against Robbie—”

  Morgan laughed harshly. That would go well—the out-of-town ex-con up against the judge’s kid and his cronies. No bastard in the bar would re
member a thing.

  Besides—he watched cotton stretch over broad shoulders as Boyd reached for the cup—fuck the captain’s rules. He rolled the cue ball back onto the pool table, the polished ivory smeared with blood.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  MORGAN SAT on the edge of the high lumpy bed, head tilted back to let Boyd do some first aid on him, and chewed on the raw inside of his mouth to keep from saying something stupid. His pride itched to swagger and bluff, to prove he didn’t need anyone’s goddamn help.

  Except it didn’t exactly suck.

  “So what do you think,” he said. “Am I gonna make it?”

  “That was a pretty nasty hit,” Boyd said as he pressed the sterile edges of the paper stitches down against Morgan’s skin. He sounded as though he regretted their flight from the bar. “You could have a concussion.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re a doctor now?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Not my first rodeo,” he said. “I’ve had concussions before. I know what it feels like.”

  The bed shifted under him as Boyd took his weight off the mattress. “You should probably stop getting hit in the head.”

  “Maybe I should keep you around,” Morgan said. He leaned back, arms braced behind him, and watched Boyd pack up the first aid. It was the closest to a “Thanks for saving my ass” he could stomach. “So you just get lucky and stumble into that, or were you looking for me?”

  Boyd wiped his hands on a towel and turned around. He leaned back against the heavy dresser as he twisted the worn cotton between his hands.

  “Sort of. It was lucky I turned up when I did, but Shay asked me to talk to you,” he said. “He wants to meet you, but he didn’t think he made such a great impression the other night.”

  Disappointment twisted in Morgan’s gut. It was stupid, but he hadn’t realized how much he wanted Boyd to say that he was there for him. Instead it was just some errand for the blond asshole.

  “Didn’t think you’d be doing him any favors,” Morgan said roughly. He cleared his throat to scrape the edge from his voice and looked pointedly at Boyd’s mouth. The split lip from the other night was just a thin red line now, but still visible. “Not after that.”

  Boyd absently ran his tongue over the injury, and Morgan’s balls tightened with immediate tactile memory. The wash of lust was cut through with sharp discomfort, a back-of-the-throat catch like he’d done something wrong. He’d had blowjobs before, sloppy preludes to the main event, and it always left him hard and vaguely disgusted with himself. The fact that thought of Boyd doing that—his mouth around Morgan’s cock, his tongue wet and busy—turned Morgan on was… vaguely perverted.

  He looked away and shifted uncomfortably to loosen the snug fit of his jeans over his cock. “I guess it’s none of my business, though.”

  “It’s not,” Boyd said.

  That should have been enough to end the conversation. Morgan knew when he’d been shot down, but he couldn’t quite swallow the irritation.

  “He shouldn’t have hit you,” he said. “I wouldn’t hit you. Ever. I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m that guy just because I hit someone with a pool ball.”

  What the fuck? Morgan cringed at the words as they left his mouth. What was he, all of a sudden? Taylor fucking Swift? He didn’t know Boyd, and whatever Boyd thought, no one in Cutter’s Gap knew Morgan.

  Boyd’s mouth twitched with an attempt not to smile, and there was the soft-edged pity that Morgan didn’t want. The slumming-it regret as he realized the stray dog he’d tossed a sandwich to thought he cared.

  “It’s not like that,” Boyd said. “Shay’s—”

  “Whatever,” Morgan muttered as he shoved himself up off the bed. His skin felt a size too small from the bruises and the ache of want in his balls. He’d had the brush-off before. The last thing he needed was to sit through it again. “You and the asshole can do what you want. I’m not interested in what he has to say. So unless you’re here for something else….”

  He gave Boyd a slow, pointedly lewd once-over, from his short, choppy hair down to his black Vans with mismatched laces. Because obviously Boyd had to be cute as hell as well as hot as fuck. Morgan dragged his mind away from that and shoved it back into his pants. That Boyd made Morgan’s cock hard was just… mechanical, nothing vulnerable in that. It was also—on the way back up, Morgan’s gaze lingered for a second on the hard span of Boyd’s shoulders—very understandable.

  When Morgan finally got all the way back up to his face again, Boyd’s whiskey-warm eyes had gone dark, pupils expanded in reaction.

  “Oh, I see,” Morgan mocked him. “Want to slum it again? Pretend you’re with—”

  “Don’t,” Boyd interrupted. “Don’t be an asshole.”

  But Morgan wanted to. He wanted to pull Boyd close and push him away at the same time, to let him fuss over Morgan’s bruises but not need him to. For Boyd to forget about this Sammy kid and his asshole brother but not actually ask anything of Morgan.

  He wanted to be an asshole and for Boyd to still look at him as though he mattered.

  “Go, then,” Morgan said. He sat back down on the bed and leaned over to unlace his boots. “I didn’t ask for your help, I didn’t need it, and—”

  The Vans appeared in front of him and then a pair of knees, black denim stretched tightly over them, as Boyd crouched down. He rested his arms on his knees and waited for Morgan to look up.

  “You were about to get your ass kicked,” Boyd said. “You needed my help.”

  Morgan scowled at him. “I can get my ass kicked without any help from you.”

  Boyd rolled his eyes. “You always did—”

  He stopped halfway through the sentence. There it was—the dead kid in the room. Morgan cupped his hand around the back of Boyd’s neck and pulled him in close. Boyd lost his balance and caught himself with one hand on Morgan’s thigh. His eyes were wide, warm, and close enough that Morgan could see the thin rim of plastic that explained why Boyd wasn’t wearing his nerd glasses.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Morgan told him. “Not what I always did, not who I always was. Stop looking at me like you’ll find someone else under my skin.”

  Then he kissed him, because what the hell else was he going to do?

  Chapter Nine

  THERE WAS something Boyd was meant to remember, but the itch of it skirted the edges of his brain. He couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly what it was—not with Morgan’s fingers against the nape of his neck and his mouth blood sweet and unexpectedly careful against Boyd’s lips.

  It’s important, Boyd’s conscience poked at him. He fobbed it off with a halfhearted later as he ran his hand up Morgan’s thigh. There was nothing soft about Morgan’s body. He was all hard muscle, clenched tight under Boyd’s touch, and strung-wire tension. Boyd traced the solid ridge of Morgan’s cock through his jeans, not sure whose groan it was that pressed against his lips, and he wasn’t about to complain about that.

  Or, he supposed, the rest. It was just…. He was used to being the hot one.

  Humor at the arrogance of that thought tugged at his mouth. Morgan broke the kiss and leaned back, gray-blue eyes wary.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Boyd licked the taste of Morgan off his lips and grinned sheepishly. “You make me wish I’d done a few more sit-ups at the gym.” He bit his lip as he pushed his hand under Morgan’s T-shirt and spread his fingers over the taut ridge of abs. “Or a lot more.”

  It took a second, but the amusement cracked Morgan’s guard. The set of his mouth softened as he leaned back in to slant the ghost of a kiss over Boyd’s lower lip and down his stubble-rough jaw.

  “I’d have suggested a shave,” Morgan mocked against the curve of his jaw as he scraped his teeth over the skin. Then he sprawled back onto the mattress, a study of muscle and blood-stained cotton framed incongruously against the inn’s curated cutesy bedspread. He braced himself on his elbows, and there was something
dangerously hungry in his eyes as he cocked his head to the side. “Go on, then. You’ve seen me naked, more or less. Your turn, and this time no one’s going to interrupt. Strip.”

  Heat crawled up the back of Boyd’s neck and made his scalp feel sweaty. He didn’t know why. There was nothing wrong with his body. He wouldn’t have a job if he weren’t a certain level of fit, and no one had ever complained. His personal issues were why his relationships never lasted that long, not his shoulders.

  Or maybe—Boyd’s conscience finally got purchase—it was because this thing was kind of fucked-up.

  Boyd groaned and sat back, the polished wooden floor hard against his tailbone. His cock felt uncomfortably trapped behind his jeans, pressed against the cold ridge of the zipper as he folded his legs in front of him.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Trying to,” Morgan said, his voice low and rough with frustration. The bed creaked under him as he sat up and looked down at Boyd. Lust flushed pink over his cheekbones and glazed his eyes. “Look, if I got the wrong end of the stick, just say. You seemed into me, otherwise—”

  “I was. I am,” Boyd said. He wished he could make himself shut up, give in to the static crackle of impulse, but…. “I just don’t want to…. Actually, I kind of do want to, but I shouldn’t take advantage of you. This whole thing has kind of messed up your life, whatever the truth turns out to be, and I don’t want to be the one who makes it worse. Whoever you are, whether you want to talk to Shay or not, I’d kind of like to be your friend, and not the sort of friend who fucks you to get what he wants after you’ve been hit on the head.”

  His cock called him a liar on that, but his conscience finally shut up. So it was probably the right call.

  Son of a bitch. It would be.