Chapter 12 At the Hanging Stoplight #3
“We have been lucky,” he said baldly. “I am willing to give up some of that luck to do what Ace and I did. Everybody in our home feels the same. This ugliness—it has touched all of us in one way or another. Even George and Amal, who have had to treat the children we are trying to protect. Do not be mad that they have brought the fight to us. Be glad, because it will be easier to cast their bones in the desert until the wind no longer screams their names.”
As he spoke, the giant man’s face became fiercer and more determined, and Burton saw an expression that matched what he felt in his heart.
Of course, a part of him whispered. Of course.
They weren’t in this cul-de-sac because they were all gay.
If that was their speed, they could have easily gone to live in Palm Springs.
They were here because they were warriors, and that was the thing that drove them all, even George and Amal and Ernie.
Every one of them would give his life—or their homes—to make the world safer for the people who couldn’t fight for themselves. It’s what Burton and Jason had dedicated their lives, their careers, to do.
And it was why he’d always admired the hell out of Ace, who had done it on a small scale, one crisis at a time, helping the people he knew because that was the only power he knew he had.
But that didn’t mean that later, after he and Ernie had taken their leave and Jason had come to claim Cotton for one more unexpected night together, he hadn’t almost lost his shit with Ace’s text.
“Oh my God,” he muttered, staring at his phone.
“It’s very Ace,” Ernie said.
“He’s letting some stranger sleep on his futon? Tonight?”
“Well he’s right,” Ernie replied reasonably. “He can’t turn the guy into the desert—that’s what we do for the people we kill, not this poor schmuck we were trying to keep alive.”
“Why is it incumbent upon us to save every random desert dweller anyway?” Burton complained. “Eric, Brady… this guy. Suddenly we’re just plucking people up and saying, ‘Hey, here we are! Come turn us in to the authorities!’”
Ernie glared at him. “Has it occurred to you that these people are godsends? That it’s like the karma gods are going, ‘Oh, hey, this one is gonna be big, and it’s gonna right a lot of wrongs, and Burton, Ace, and Jai can’t do it all alone. They are gonna need some help!’”
Burton glared at him. “No,” he said flatly. “Because life doesn’t work like that.”
“You mean the perfect mate for a giant Russian mobster didn’t start their relationship by crashing out of his campground to puke on Jai’s feet?”
Burton had to really work not to laugh at that, because it cracked him up every time.
Poor George. He could see that happening to George—norovirus was an awful, sometimes unpredictable thing, and George had been camping in the Tehachapi mountains to get over a breakup.
But to see it happening to Jai? And according to George, Jai had just picked him up under his arm and taken him to his tent, stripped him down, washed him off, and let him sweat out the last of the illness in his tent.
“He could have killed me and left me to rot, but no, he took care of me and made me smile. He was stuck with me.”
“Dire chance,” Burton muttered. “Fateful cockup,” he finished, quoting one of their favorite movies.
“Karma at work!” Ernie argued.
Burton stared at his phone, where Ace was making an argument that looked nothing like the one he and Ernie were having.
Ace’s was more like, This little old mobster ain’t no big deal—Sonny’s getting him some old sweats, and we’ll be fine.
We need him for tomorrow anyway, because our original plan had some shortcomings—here, wanna see how?
Ernie was arguing about karma and chance and fateful cockups, just like Jai had made an argument for warriors gotta do what warriors gotta do, and Burton was at that point where he just wanted to go out in the desert and kill some motherfuckers, because this bullshit was making his head hurt.
So he concentrated on texting some sense into Ace for a few minutes (and when in the history of ever had texting actually talked somebody into doing something good for them?
Texting was generally reserved for Hold my beer!
and should never be used for anything more complicated than that.) Which is what he was doing when he saw, in text, in indelible pixels, the phrase It’ll be fine from Ace’s feed.
Goddammit Ernie! He’d hit Send before he realized he’d meant to holler it out loud. “Goddammit, Ernie!”
“I am right here, Crullers,” Ernie said from the living room. “And I got the gist of it in text.”
“What did you say to Ace?” It took him a few quick steps to go from the kitchen table to the couch, where Ernie was sitting.
In his underwear.
Which he was peeling off.
“I said it’ll be fine. We’re not novelists here, baby. We’re going to use short words with a few syllables. ‘It’ll be fine’ carries a lot of weight.”
Burton glared at him, naked and vampire pale on their couch, stroking his… uhm… stroking his surprisingly big cock with a hand slick with lube.
“Uhm….” Well, Ernie was right about them not being novelists. At this point, Burton could be excused for thinking they were barely even wolves.
He certainly wanted to fall on his mate and rut.
Ernie arched his back and squeezed, his eyes going to half-mast. “Tomorrow,” he breathed, “is going to be difficult and dangerous.” He let his knees fall open, and Burton’s hands were on his own belt as Ernie splayed himself for hard use.
Burton saw where this was going, and the combination of his irritation and his worry and Ernie’s fine rangy body displayed for him, vulnerable and needy, had Burton hardening even before his fatigues fell to the floor with his briefs.
“Shirt too,” Ernie told him, his breathing growing quick. “I want to nibble on your nipples. They’re so pointy!”
And now he was naked and taking the bottle of lubricant from Ernie’s flailing hand.
“Let go of your cock, Club Boy. Nobody’s coming without me.”
Ernie gave him a sultry smile from half-closed eyes.
“Hurry,” he whispered.
Lee gave his cock a swift pass with the slick and lowered himself between Ernie’s spread thighs, thrusting in before his Club Boy could catch his breath.
The long, aching groan Ernie let out rocked Lee Burton to his balls.
It wasn’t slow after that, it was hard and dirty and desperate, with Ernie matching him, calling his name breathlessly, thrust for thrust. They knew this dance, and from the early days when Lee hadn’t known what love was, even when he’d been fucking it blind, they knew how to waltz, skin-to-skin, cock-to-ass, like it might be their last chance to touch in this lifetime.
Still, he was unprepared for Ernie’s unrepentant keen, his fingernails scraping Lee’s chest, his helpless little cry of surrender as his climax rocked him.
He spasmed on Lee’s cock and shuddered, and Lee’s vision went dark, his orgasm so hard and so furious the only sound that made it through was his heart roaring in his ears.
For a moment, they were both still, that breathless pause in midair after leaping off the precipice, and then they were falling, rocked and trembling, as their desire thundered in their ears, receding from their blood reluctantly, hampered only by biology and stirred to pain by will.
Their harsh breaths echoed under the lights in their living room until Ernie said, “I’ve got to remember to put a towel down before we fuck on the couch. Furniture cleaner can only go so far.”
Burton laughed into the hollow of his neck, feeling his cock stirring, still inside Ernie’s body.
“Either that or you need to find another way to shut me up and bend me to your will.”
Ernie’s chuckle was low and dirty. “Why? Why would I do that when this one’s so delicious?”
Lee started rocking again, and that chuckle echoed through the joining of their flesh. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” he said. “Because I’m still pissed at you, and round two’s gonna be rough.”
Ernie moaned decadently and lifted his hips, wrapping his legs around Burton’s thighs. “Fuck me harder,” he whispered. “Fuck me until I scream.”
His voice cracked this time, and Burton still thrust. He sobbed, begging for more, and Burton still fucked him. His scream of climax, when it came, rang in Burton’s ears long after the sweat cooled from their bodies, long after the come creamed from Ernie’s ass down his thighs.
But so did Burton’s, words and all.
You’d better fucking live, Ernie. You’d better fucking live.
IN A WAY it was cute, George thought. Jai didn’t like him to know when he’d killed.
And George got it. He’d become a nurse to help give back to his community—he wanted to help people. Technically, living with a guy who killed people on the regular seemed to be at odds with that philosophy.
And maybe, before meeting Ace and Sonny, before laboring alongside them to keep the garage going, to keep their little family going, that might have been true for Jai.
But after coming to regard Ace as a brother—and harboring quite a torch for Sonny, George was aware—Jai may have still been able to kill, but he was only able to do it in defense of his family, of his home.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t… enjoy his skill, George admitted wryly.
Because it was a skill, and part of it came from natural ability.
Jai had been the biggest and the strongest all his life, but part of it came from studying.
George reckoned that Jai hadn’t been a cruel child, nor a cruel teenager.
But he’d been forced to be the protector—first of his street gang, then of the mobster who had literally plucked him off the streets and flown him to America, where he’d been dependent on the grace of what amounted to a cold-blooded general.
Jai had learned to kill efficiently and painlessly, and to make necessity his guidebook.