Chapter 7
Cole had an obscenely comfortable couch.
It was nice enough that once Will slouched down on it, he didn’t want to move.
It had been a long few days and even longer nights, and he’d gotten all of negative sleep last night while he was running around fucking things over for lawyers so that Cole could get in to see Jansen.
Now that he was stationary, it was quite possible he’d never be able to move again.
Naturally, the owner of the couch disagreed.
“Get off,” Cole said as he walked back into the room post-shower, his hair sleek in that freshly combed way and his general aura smelling of something cool and masculine.
He’d changed into a pair of sweats and a Henley that probably cost more than Will’s last take was worth, and God he looked pretty.
Fussy as hell, but pretty.
“No can do.” Will pressed back even deeper into the soft leather. “It’s got me! I’m trapped! I think your couch is my new best friend.”
“You admit your best friend is an inanimate object.”
“Hey, your best friend probably has a CPU, but you don’t see me judging.”
Cole stared at him for a long moment before something like resignation crossed his face. “That’s the side I prefer sitting on.”
“Hmm. It does feel nicely broken in, thanks for that.” Will grinned when Cole scowled at him, then got his knees up and crawled to the other side of the couch. “There. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you, honeybee.”
“Nice would be you deciding to leave tracking down the Puffin to me,” Cole muttered as he sat down, phone in hand.
Will chose to ignore the obvious jab and leaned forward. “Who’s gonna take care of your cat while we’re gone?”
Cole shot the beast in question a sad look, then went back to his phone. “Just made arrangements. A friend will pick her up later.”
“Oh.”
Cole continued messing with his phone.
Will shifted. “So, is this the part where you figure out how to seduce Campeau?”
“I already told you, it’s not that hard.”
“Sure, but there’s such a thing as competition. You’re not the only catfish out there looking to hook a rich sugar daddy for a night.”
Will had the distinct pleasure of seeing Cole’s face contort with disgust as he said, “Perhaps, but I’ve hooked him twice now. I know what I’m doing.”
“Mm.” Will leaned against the armrest of the couch, then decided to just go with it and hoisted his legs up. Stretched out, he was just long enough to be able to poke the side of Cole’s thigh with his toes.
Cole looked at him like he’d just committed a murder. “Get your feet off the couch.”
“It’s a couch,” Will said. “Couches are for lounging.”
“It’s a thirty-thousand dollar custom sofa from the House of Finn. It’s not for you to lounge on.”
“Who else is gonna do it then?” Will challenged. “Your parents might come to visit, but they’re not the lounging types, and you’d have to remove the cord plugged into your ass to lounge, so not you. You don’t invite people over casually, you don’t throw parties, you don’t—”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” Will insisted. “I know you’re smart as hell and pretty as the day is long, but you’re also an untrusting son of a bitch who would never invite a hookup into your home.
You probably keep another apartment just for booty calls, don’t you?
” The silence was damning. “Did you ever invite Marcus here?”
Cole was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “No.”
No. And yet here Will was, sitting on Cole’s fancy-ass couch in his private domain, irritating him into acting like a real boy. It was almost like having fun. He poked Cole in the thigh again. “Could put my feet in your lap instead, then they’d be off the couch.”
“I don’t want your filthy feet in my lap, either.”
“Hey, I’m clean as a whistle,” Will insisted. “I had to clean up after cutting that catalytic converter free, so I stopped by the YMCA to shower and change. You didn’t notice I was in new clothes?”
Cole glanced at him. “I thought you were pretending to be a bum, actually.”
Wow, this bitch. It would be hurtful if Will didn’t find it so weirdly hilarious. “Well, I have to keep your doorman guessing. First a pizza delivery guy, now a bum. Who will you bring home next? A taxi driver? A garbageman?” He poked Cole again, enjoying himself now, and then—
Warm hands closed around his ankles, and Will prepared for his legs to be forcibly thrown off the couch. A second later, though, he was staring, stunned and slightly turned on, as Cole settled Will’s feet in his lap and went back to whatever he was doing on his phone with barely a pause.
His feet. Bare feet. In Cole Dalton’s lap.
Will was so surprised he didn’t even want to try his luck by wiggling; he just took the win for what it was.
He moved down just enough so that his neck was supported a little better by the arm of the couch, cleared his throat, and said, “Okay, what’s the profile like? What picture did you choose?”
Cole tilted the phone so Will could see the shot. “Flexing abs.”
“Hmm, nice. Are they yours?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Cole said distractedly as he kept typing.
Yes. Yes, I would.
“I’m not sure abs are the thing to go with,” Will said. “I mean, yours or not, those are real nice, but you’re trying to golden goose this guy. You’ve got to make him think he’s got someone rarin’ to go on the line—someone into something new and kinky. What does he like?”
Cole’s lips pursed. “Campeau’s willing to try anything twice, from what I understand.
He’s not much of a fan of pain, giving or receiving, and he’s the worst, brattiest little sub imaginable when he’s in the mood.
I watched him in a club one evening, and whatever he was paying his Dom, it wasn’t enough to put up with his bullshit. ”
“Hmm.” That was actually good information. They needed something Campeau might not have tried before, from someone who gave off Dom vibes but wasn’t outright asking to bring pain into things… “What about foot fucking?”
Cole finally looked up from his phone. “Excuse me?”
“Foot fucking. Podophilia—just one syllable away from disaster, I know, but it’s one of the most common paraphilias out there. I’m sure he’s thought about it before if he hasn’t already done it, but I bet we could get him with that.”
Cole stared at Will, who smiled and wiggled his toes in what he hoped was an alluring fashion. “Just a thought,” he said. “We can go with whatever you want. You’re the one who knows has experience catfishing people on Grindr, darlin’.”
“Like you’ve never catfished anyone,” Cole said, but when he broke eye contact, he didn’t go back to his phone. No, he was staring at Will’s feet instead.
“I catfish people all the time, but that’s for work. Not for personal matters,” Will replied. “If I’m gonna have sex with someone, I’d prefer they have sex with me.”
“Nobody knows anything about you.”
“Everybody knows lots about me.”
Cole chuckled under his breath. “All anyone knows for sure is your name really is Will, because you respond to it when drunk, drugged, and otherwise incapacitated, and you’ve got a brother on a farm or a ranch or a compound somewhere in the United States.
I’ve heard Maine, California, Nevada, and Wisconsin all floated around in the past year. ”
Will grinned. “Aww, are y’all talking about me? I’m flattered!”
“You only come up in conversation when we’re talking about someone who survived something that should have killed him. Like the flight from Oyo to Lome.”
For fuck’s sake.
“That flight was a total success,” he said snippily.
“The plane crashed.”
“It ran out of fuel. It didn’t crash. I made it to a runway first.”
“Where you were arrested for smuggling live pangolins, if I heard right.”
“I was rescuing those pangolins! They’re critically endangered and the plane was headed for a processing plant on the eastern side of the continent, so I took ‘em the other way.” It gave him time to get the proper wildlife authorities enough advance notice to intercept the plane on the tarmac instead of letting the police in Lome confiscate and sell the pangolins all over again.
Sue him, they were Ellie’s favorite animal. He wasn’t going to let a bunch of animals that looked like his niece’s stuffy get processed into bush meat and bullshit medicine if he didn’t have to.
“And then you were thrown in jail. Again.”
Will waved a hand. “Eh. Jails have a hard time holding me. We’re getting off the subject—we’re talking about Campeau right now. So. Foot fucking.” He rubbed his feet together suggestively. “You think he’d be in?”
He wasn’t expecting Cole to snap a picture of his feet. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Will lunged forward. “Hey, no—”
But Cole was already standing, dodging around the couch with a smile on his face as he narrated his typing. “Looking for a big dick to fill the hole of my choosing. Must like lotion and lube; no allergies allowed. Bonus points if you paint my nails with your cum, then lick it off like a good boy.”
“Ew, gross, nobody’s going to want to do that!”
Cole shrugged. “Campeau might. We’ll see in a minute—I just uploaded the profile.”
Will gaped at him. “Using my feet as a lure.”
“Hey, they’re nice feet.”
It wasn’t a blush-worthy compliment, and yet Will found himself thankful for his golden tan, because that was quite possibly the nicest thing Cole Dalton had ever said to him.
Hearing it left him, pardon the pun, flat-footed.
He groped for something to say, anything to move them back into comfortable animosity, when—
Ping.
He was saved by the bell—or notification in this case. Cole’s eyes went slightly wide as he looked down at his phone. “That’s the fastest he’s ever responded.”
“Wow. Podophilia for the win,” Will said.
“I guess.” Cole tapped on his phone for a few more minutes, eyes intent as he paced around the room. There was a little line between his eyebrows that just begged for a touch to smooth it out, and Will was only mildly surprised when he realized he wanted to be the one to do it.
That Stockholm Syndrome sets in fast.
He pulled out his latest phone and shot off a text.
Tell me not to do something really stupid.
His brother got back to him almost immediately.
Stupid like trying to fly a plane you’re not certified on, or stupid like getting drunk, putting on a wig, and competing in the Miss Dolly Parton look-alike lip sync?
I won that contest!
I don’t want to know how you learned to do makeup like that. So it’s two, then? You’re about to do something embarrassing?
Quite possibly.
Embarrassing himself in Cole’s presence seemed inevitable, but then again, Will was never afraid of a little embarrassment.
He could do things that other people balked at—put himself into situations they never would—and pretend to be the kind of person others hated, all for the sake of getting what he wanted.
I think it might be fun, though.
Maybe wait until you’re not working a job, huh? Keep your mind in the moment.
Baby Boy, you think I can’t do both?
Dots appeared and disappeared as Davey stopped, started, and rewrote whatever it was he wanted to say. Finally all that appeared was:
All I want is for you to come home safe.
Will smiled.
You know I always do.
“Montreal.”
He looked over at Cole and waited for an explanation. Nothing was forthcoming. “Montreal what?”
“Is where we’re going.” He turned on his heel and walked down a comically wide hall for what was supposed to be an apartment. “I’m getting dressed. We leave in five. I hope you weren’t lying about the passport.”
“I’ll be ready,” Will called after him.
As long as there was no dress code, he’d be fine.