Chapter 3
Q uinn was still half asleep when he rolled over and snatched up his ringing phone.
He scratched his cheek as he answered. “Detective Hughes.” He yawned as he kicked off the mess he’d made of his sheets.
He had no idea who was calling him, but he always erred on the side of caution.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, it was from the precinct, and it was his boss, Riley, or his partner, Grady.
“It’s me.”
Quinn froze, and it took him a second to respond.
“Peyton?” Hearing his voice while he was in bed was something his libido didn’t need, especially after last night, when Quinn had almost betrayed every code he’d tried to live his life by.
Kissing a man that was taken was a line he never thought he’d ever come close to crossing.
Peyton jumbled his mind like only one other man ever had.
“I’m sorry to wake you—”
“You didn’t,” Quinn lied. “What’s going on?
Are you all right?” He ran a hand through his sweaty hair as he sat up.
What was the time? He peered at the clock on his nightstand.
He had to squint, the bright green colour mixing uncomfortably with the pitch black of the room. Quarter to five in the morning.
“We’ve got a… situation here.”
The tension in Peyton’s voice made Quinn’s heart drop.
He was out of bed a second later and pulling out a clean pair of underwear from his wardrobe.
“What kind of situation? Where are you?” He grabbed a coat hanger that had a full suit ensemble on it and threw it on his bed before sliding the pair of slacks from it and awkwardly hopping one-handed into them.
“I’m at home. I’m going to put you on speaker; hold on.”
Speaker? Quinn did the same and dropped the phone on the bed. He slid his shirt on and did it up hastily. He wouldn’t have been surprised if some of them were done up wrong. He ignored the tie and jacket and went in search of his shoes.
“Parker, if you’re going to be sick, do it in the bathroom,” Will was saying. “Or the sink.”
“Fuck off.”
“What is going on?” Quinn asked tersely.
“There’s a dead body, is what’s going on!” Parker screeched.
“Breathe, Parker,” Peyton said. “Head between your knees. Deep breaths.”
A body? “Will, check all the windows and doors, make sure everything is locked up tight. Do not answer the door for anyone but me. Do you understand?”
“I know how to secure an area,” Will said, his voice trailing off as he—Quinn assumed—went to do as he’d asked.
“Is anyone hurt?” What Quinn really wanted to know was, Peyton, are you hurt? If anyone so much as laid a single finger on him, Quinn would bury them alive.
“Um, sort of?”
The tentative hesitation was not reassuring. Quinn snatched his phone up and took it off speaker as he grabbed his keys and headed out the front door. “What the hell does that mean? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“No, it’s fine. Parker threw his phone at Seb. It’s stopped bleeding already.”
Seb? A dead body and a stranger. Neither of those things was making Quinn’s blood pressure go down. “Peyton, take the phone off speaker.”
There was shuffling for a moment, and then Peyton came through clearer. “What’s wrong?”
“Does Will keep cuffs at home?” He slipped into his Toyota Camry and started it before he’d even closed the door.
“What? Why?” Peyton asked, sounding a little choked up.
“Who is Seb, and what are they doing in your apartment?” Quinn thought his line of thinking was pretty self-explanatory.
Peyton was quiet for a second. “He’s not—no, he has nothing to do with this. He was with Will and me last night.”
Quinn’s brain short-circuited. Surely, he didn’t mean—”Together?”
“Yes.” There was a defensiveness in Peyton’s tone now, and Quinn felt guilty for putting it there.
“Just stay put and don’t touch anything, okay?
” he said, instead of the million things running through his brain that he wanted to blurt out.
Will and Peyton had been together for years as far as Quinn knew.
He wasn’t entirely sure on the exact date when they got together, but he knew it was roughly in the year following Peyton’s first deployment, when he’d come home a different person.
A person that Quinn hadn’t known how to get through to, when all he had wanted to do was give Peyton anything he needed.
Before Quinn had been able to work out how he could do that, Peyton had found Will, and mere weeks later, they’d moved in together.
The first time Quinn had seen them together, it had been obvious they’d had an instant connection, and Quinn had missed his chance.
And now… now they were inviting people into their bed? To what? Share?
Fucking hell, it was too early for this. “I’ll be there soon. Call me if anything happens.”
“Okay.” Peyton hesitated. “Hurry, please.”
Quinn put his sirens on the entire way.
HE'D BARELY KNOCKED TWICE before Peyton opened the door, and Quinn had an armful of him and hair in his mouth. It was only when he wrapped his arms tight around Peyton that the fact he wasn’t wearing a shirt registered.
He was unbelievably soft under Quinn’s palms. His fingers dug into the warm skin as he buried his nose in the top of his head.
This was torture of the highest form. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Sorry. Parker is freaking out, and it’s…” He trailed off, but Quinn understood. Peyton was a professional and could keep his cool under the highest level of pressure. But he and Parker were twins, and their emotions fed off each other. Parker being off kilter would put Peyton off kilter.
Quinn cupped Peyton’s cheek. “Are you hurt?”
Peyton shook his head mutely.
Quinn tucked him back under his chin, one hand buried in his hair. He couldn’t make himself let go, not yet. He’d never had Peyton in his arms before, and despite the situation, he wanted to soak in it for just a little longer.
The feeling of being stared at had him lifting his head. His body tensed in shock as he locked onto deep-blue eyes and a handsome face that he never in a million years thought he would see in Peyton’s apartment.
Sebastian glanced down to Peyton and back up to Quinn’s face, something undecipherable in his expression. That face had haunted Quinn’s dreams for a long time, and he still couldn’t read it. What was he doing here?
Seb.
Sebastian.
His Sebastian had slept with Peyton and Will?
Heat rushed over Quinn as white noise rushed through his ears, and his breath caught.
Fucking hell, it would have been beautiful. A sadness settled under Quinn’s ribcage. He felt like he’d entered some strange reality that was both a dream and a nightmare. Sebastian and Peyton together. His two biggest regrets, together.
“Quinn?” Peyton looked between them. “Oh. This is—”
“We know each other,” Sebastian interrupted abruptly. “Same circles. Well… opposite sides of the same circle. Our paths never cross for pleasantries.”
Quinn had learned over the years how not to flinch when Sebastian’s acid came out, but it was a close call this time. Everything was too near the surface, bubbling just under his skin.
Peyton’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, and the question in his eyes could be seen from space.
Quinn dropped his arms from around Peyton and cleared his throat.
“You said there was a body?” Quinn had called his work partner, Grady, and his boss, Riley, on the way, and they wouldn’t be far behind him.
Grady had said he would call it in officially and get a team to go over the scene.
Riley hadn’t said anything—the moment Quinn had appraised him of the situation, he’d hung up.
Quinn knew that meant “I’m on my way” in Riley speak.
“Yeah, it’s over here,” Peyton said. When Peyton took a step back, Quinn forgot how to breathe for a moment.
An insignia tattoo was visible on Peyton’s chest, over his heart, that Quinn knew signified his time as a commando in the Australian Army.
But it was the marks of passion that held Quinn’s attention.
There were red marks down the side of his neck, across his shoulder, and all over his firm, hard chest. Bite marks.
Some of them would have to be Will’s, but some of them were likely Sebastian’s.
Quinn wanted to touch them, wanted to run his fingers and his tongue around them, put his own mark on top.
His eyes met Sebastian’s again, and while his face was a stony wall, Quinn could see the heat underneath. He liked Quinn seeing marks he’d put on someone else. On Peyton.
God, what the fuck was happening?
He frowned as he noticed the bruise forming at the corner of Sebastian’s eyebrow, dried blood around it.
“You’re hurt.”
“Yeah, the twin hit me,” Sebastian said. “He threw something at me.”
“The twin has a name,” Parker said from where he was hunched over the sink. He sounded like he was seconds away from throwing up.
“He threw his phone,” Peyton supplied.
“Let me see.” There was nothing Quinn could do about the body, not until Grady, Riley, and forensics arrived. Triage was more important. And making sure that Sebastian was okay would always be important to Quinn. It was a switch he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to turn off.
“I’m fine.”
“Let me look anyway,” Quinn said. He crowded Sebastian against his chair.
Sebastian’s expression was defiant as he tilted his chin to look up at Quinn, but there was a hint of vulnerability underneath all of it.
The moment that Quinn’s fingers skimmed across Sebastian’s cheek, it occurred to him that this was the first time he’d touched him in eight years.
They’d been in each other’s orbits all that time, but they’d always been so careful to keep their distance.
Well, Sebastian had, and Quinn had had no choice but to follow his lead.
The final accusation he’d thrown at Sebastian had been the one that ended their relationship, and Sebastian had never forgiven him.