Chapter 12 At the Hanging Stoplight #4
In this case, an idiot (as Jai put it) had stood on a bare excuse for a hill and fired blindly on Jai’s people.
This made the man’s death a necessity.
They’d needed information from the man. That made his pain a necessity.
Jai was efficient with the pain, so the man had spoken quickly, and his death had resulted in a cessation of pain.
And now they knew that the corrupt sheriff was recruiting criminals he’d taken money or bribes from to help in the hunt for Brady Carnegie. This was a thing that Brady had confirmed, and knowing that had driven Ace to launch a host of refinements on their simple plan.
In a war—and George had seen firsthand how life here in the desert could result in battle conditions for silent wars nobody knew were being fought—this would be called a successful operation.
But when Jai had to come to his home, shake hands with Lee Burton and Jason Constance, and look their friends in the eye, George could see how it felt like a betrayal.
Jai wanted so badly to protect George. Not just from the physical danger that sometimes came their way, but from the pain and fear of knowing there were monsters out there.
It was too late, of course.
That August, George and Amal had risked their jobs, their freedom—maybe even their lives—helping Jason get a busload of kids to safety when their government would have preferred they rot in a very real, very visceral hell.
Not long after that, Amal had been detained in an ICE facility for the mere suspicion of helping a woman who had been sexually assaulted by an ICE officer.
It turned out Ace and Sonny had helped some people with some very prominent connections, and with a little help from them—and some true heroics from everybody else—they managed to get Amal free.
But the damage had been done. George and Amal both knew there were monsters out there, and they both knew that they were as likely to be killed by the legal monsters as by the illegal ones.
It was one of the reasons Jai and George had offered to let Amal rent what amounted to a bedroom suite in their house.
Amal claimed it was bigger than any apartment he’d ever had, but George knew it was more than that.
Lots of people roomed with a couple—Amal could deal with knowing his roommates sometimes banged each other stupid (and loud), because he knew that if the legal monsters ever banged down his door, Jai, George, and everybody at the garage would have his back.
He’d told George once, not long after they’d moved, that it was the only way he would ever sleep again.
So George knew his lover had killed a man that night.
But he was a bad man, and George spent his time in the ER watching bad men walk away and innocence dying in tatters. He was fine with knowing that wasn’t always the case, and more than fine knowing Jai was an agent of justice.
And knowing what his man would do to keep them safe filled George with more than admiration.
It filled him with good old-fashioned lust.
After the others had left—and the text war had raged and ebbed, Jai stood up from the couch—where George and Amal were quietly watching television between the buzzing of phones—and grunted.
“I must shower, Little George,” he said, offering George a quiet touch on the cheek. “Do not stay up too late. You will be at the garage very early tomorrow.”
“I’ll take him,” Amal offered. “We both can’t take a day off, but I can drop him off so you can go do what you need to.”
Jai offered Amal a kind smile. He often treated George’s friends like helpful children, but children he was responsible for protecting nonetheless. “That is a generous offer, but Sonny will need to give the SUV a once-over, so it is just as well if I do it. You may need to pick him up, though.”
“I can do that,” Amal said, but he sighed. “Although it’s a shame to kill the SUV so soon after getting it. I would have liked a ride at the very least. Are you sure you can’t tank George’s piece-of-shit truck?”
Jai’s eyes popped open. He’d obviously had no idea George had kept Amal updated on text-a-geddon.
“I would be happy to destroy George’s piece-of-shit truck,” Jai said bitterly—he’d hated George’s truck since they met—“but I don’t know if it will do the things we have planned for it tomorrow.
The SUV can drive through the desert. The piece-of-shit is ready to be buried in it. ”
George giggled, because it was funny. “We’ll play taps when it happens,” he said, and Amal gave him a soft slug in the arm to indicate that they may be friends, but Amal still thought he was an idiot.
“If you make me sing, Little George, we will all regret it,” Jai said indulgently, but George could see the weariness in his eyes.
He may have been good at it, but that didn’t mean he liked to kill.
George watched him go, waiting for him to disappear down the hallway toward their bedroom with veiled eyes.
“What are you thinking?” Amal asked.
George and Amal had tried dating—once. One kiss was all it had taken to pronounce them friends for life. But they were friends, and they’d both tried the dating scene in LA and had, George readily admitted, slept with a lot of really boring men.
And had confided every boring second of that time to each other.
So they had few secrets.
“I’m thinking,” George said, standing up and stretching, “that if he thinks he’s going to bed without a master-of-the-universe blowjob, he’s sadly mistaken.”
Amal gave a ragged laugh, and George looked at him sharply.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You don’t tell me everything,” Amal said, “but I know enough to guess that tomorrow’s going to be harrowing and dangerous for all of you. And to know that he risked his life tonight to make whoever was shooting at the hit man across the street stop that.”
George winced. “We don’t know for certain Eric’s a—”
“Oh, we do too,” Amal said, rolling his eyes.
“That’s not the point. The point is….” His expression softened.
“Be careful. Seduce him, take him to bed, tell him he’s appreciated.
Make sure he stays safe too. You guys are my family.
The garage is my family. Don’t make me wipe my family’s brains off my hands at the end of my shift. ”
George grimaced, because… well… they’d both had to do things a lot like that. Life in the ER could be brutal and gruesome—and death in the ER even worse.
But if it was somebody they knew? There were no words for the fathomless awfulness of that.
“I’ll do my best,” George said, not sure what he could do about it from the cashier stand of a garage in the middle of nowhere.
“Thanks, George,” Amal said softly. “Now go make us gay boys proud.”
George gave him his best sultry wink, because Amal needed reassurance, and sauntered off toward the bedroom, where he could hear the water running in the adjoining bath.
Once in the bedroom, his posture changed, and he undressed grimly, like a soldier going in for his own battle.
Not because he wouldn’t enjoy what he was planning, but because he needed to make sure he was absolutely mindless with passion, because if he wasn’t, then Jai couldn’t lose himself, even for an hour, in the safety of George’s body.
When he was naked, he went to their end table, where he kept the lubricant and a small collection of sterile bulb syringes. He pulled one of those out and filled it with lube and, careful not to drip on the carpet, used it to fill himself with lube, and then a little more.
After disposing of the syringe, he walked carefully into the bathroom, clenching with every step. Jai was in the enormous shower, water sluicing over his broad, naked back as he leaned his forehead against the wall, eyes closed, an expression of unutterable weariness on his face.
An expression that changed when he felt the change in air pressure, felt George’s hands on his body, the small kisses George placed across that magnificent swath of skin.
“I am not feeling gentle, Little George,” Jai rumbled.
George thrust his cock—filled already from his ministrations in the bedroom—up against Jai’s thigh. “I’m prepared for that,” he said.
Jai straightened and turned to look at him, and George dropped his head, peeking up at Jai through his lashes.
“On my knees or on my knees?” he asked, pleased when Jai visibly shuddered.
“On your knees,” he demanded roughly. “Your mouth on my cock.”
George was there in a heartbeat, knowing that someday the tile would be too hard on sore joints, but glad today was not that day.
As he opened his mouth in invitation and used his hands to guide Jai’s cock inside, he hoped he spent half the night on his knees—in one way or another.
An hour later, as he lay face down on their sheets, he felt Jai’s gentle fingers as he plugged George’s gaping, dripping asshole. “You think I’ll be able to move for round three?” he slurred, his mouth musky with the taste of Jai’s first climax.
“Yes,” Jai said, rolling him over and suckling on his neck, his chest, his nipples.
By the time he got to George’s cock, it was weeping, begging for release once again, and George spread his legs, begging for Jai to remove the plug, to batter into his swollen body one more time.
Tomorrow may have been uncertain, but now, in this moment, they were one flesh.
Sonny
ACE WAS doing this for me.
I didn’t know how to put words to that, but I knew it. When he’d first heard about them kids, raped kids, stuck with a disease they never should have known ’cause some fucker’d done his fuckin’ thing, I’d known Ace would kill that fucker.
It made me happy.
It still made me happy. I wanted to kill all them fuckers, but Ace knew—he knew I might not ever stop.
So he did it for me, and that burden on him—it was a terrible thing.
We lay shoulder to shoulder in bed, watching my favorite movie about cars—Drive—on his phone, the dog curled up between us, making grunting noises.
I knew all the talking parts—weren’t much.
For a minute I had to close my eyes, I was so overwhelmed.
His smell, his hard body, the quiet chuff of his laughter.
It was funny, everybody so freaked out about the poor guy in our living room. He didn’t bother me none. I knew when someone had the mean whipped out of ’em. I’d seen it enough in my eyes. Then I took one look at Ace and wanted him, and he were too good to take me on desperation alone.
I found my mean again, found my spirit. Ace wanted me happy and fighting, and that part of me, that part he loved.
But he also loved my softness. I watched his eyes when I was holding our fierce little dog, or when I cooked for friends. It wasn’t only the fighting. He wanted me happy.
He made me happy.
And here he was, planning to do another dangerous thing to make me happy, to be the man I loved.
Love was a big fucking word to me and Ace. We didn’t just throw that one around. And suddenly the feeling was too big for my heart.
“Duke, crate,” I said, and Duke gave me a look of reproach but jumped off the bed and trotted to his crate in the corner of the room.
“You ready for bed?” Ace asked, surprised as I turned off the light.
“No,” I said shortly. I took his phone and set it on the bedstand charger, hitting Stop on the movie as I did.
“No?” he sounded confused, which he didn’t often, but which pleased me no end. I rolled on top of him and took his mouth, wanting to be tender but too full of feelings to go gentle.
“No,” I repeated.
“Oh,” he murmured as I pulled back and began kissing my way down his throat. “Aren’t you worried about—”
“No,” I said firmly, not wanting to talk about how I knew the guy wouldn’t be no trouble.
“Okay, then,” he whispered, and that was about all there was for talking between the two of us. Often we were rough when we did this—we were hard men, and my life hadn’t been no garden of daisies.
But he was doing dangerous things to make me happy, and I needed to give him…
softness. So many times I’d taken this thing between us and used it to hurt him.
Not on purpose, but because I didn’t know what to do with love when it was a pure thing like Ace had for me.
I handled it wrong. But this time, tonight, I’d take it and make it beautiful.
I kissed his skin, smooth and soft under where his clothes would be, sun-rough and brown around his neck and his forearms. I tasted it. I nibbled. I listened to his noises, the way he caught his breath, the little grunts he made when something felt good but he didn’t want to shake the walls.
I grinned up at him over his broad chest as I took his cock in my mouth, pleased that he was moaning softly into his hand.
“Louder,” I whispered, and I went about worshipping that thing with every skill I had.
When he’d about had enough, I slicked my asshole up and sat, slowly, ’cause if it wasn’t good for me, it wasn’t good for him, and that was one more thing I loved about this man.
Together we moved, slow again, ’cause it made the good hurt more good, and the sweat running down my face, dripping to his chest, made this feel like fine work, a sacrament, I guess you’d call it, a way of praying with our bodies that didn’t feel like lying, that felt like something real.
Finally, I could take no more, and I shuddered, shooting come on Ace’s chest, falling forward with a whimper while Ace thrust one more time, hard, into the cradle of my body.
His come inside me was a blessing, all I knew about God, all I needed to know.
He wrapped his arms tight around me and said, “I love you, Sonny Daye.”
“I love you too, Jasper.”
He hummed a little—I knew he liked his real name sometimes. And he also knew that Sonny Daye was my real name now. I’d all but forgotten the name I’d been born with, the name I’d had when I’d been sold as meat, when I was just a little kid.
Sonny Daye was who I was in Jasper Atchison’s arms. He was the only man my Jasper could ever love.
I’d move heaven and earth to be Sonny Daye for him.
But all I had to do, it seemed, was love him.
And pray for a better tomorrow. Wasn’t that what the song was about? Waiting for a sunny day?
I fell asleep in Ace’s arms, hoping that tomorrow would be a sunny day.