Chapter 5 #2
I hand him the glass. His fingers close around it. He looks at the soda, then at me, and one eyebrow asks the question he won't.
I step in closer than the room requires, inside the space men leave each other, close enough that the crowd noise seals around us. Wall goes very still. Up close his eyes are doing the thing they do in a shootout: giving me nothing.
His grip, however, is telling a story. Ice clicks against the sides of the glass.
"Theo and I are going up to the office at ten." I say it low, tipped up toward his ear, and feel him stop breathing. "Sponsor numbers."
A muscle feathers along his jaw. The glass creaks and he loosens his fingers a fraction.
I let one beat pass. Precisely one. "In case there's anything you want to look at."
His throat moves.
Deniable, every word of it.
Then I step back and walk away without waiting for a read, and the not-knowing follows me across the floor like heat off a stove.
My spine tracks Wall’s position for ten straight steps, and I don't turn around.
Turning around would ask the question twice, and I've asked it exactly as clearly as I intended to.
At the other end of the bar, I pick up a sponsor packet and review the same paragraph for four minutes.
At 9:38, Mama Paws rings the bell. Shortly after, Hendrix bites Becker during a disputed attempt to form a darts rules committee, resolving the matter through binding arbitration. I avoid checking my watch for what feels like twenty minutes.
Four. It has been four.
At 9:50, I stop pretending.
Over by the dartboard, Theo is somehow losing and winning simultaneously—fewer points than Becker, most of the cash, thanks to invented side bets about which Viper can distract which Wolf mid-throw. Lindqvist has earned forty dollars by standing behind Petrov and slowly peeling a banana.
I decide not to ask.
Theo spots me coming, and his grin tilts, a private curl at one corner, meant only for me. "Here to defend Milwaukee's honor?"
"Milwaukee's honor left when the blindfold went on. Come with me."
"He owes me a round," Becker protests.
I look at him until both his hands come up. "He no longer owes me a round."
Theo lets himself be pulled away, which tells me exactly how curious he is. On a normal night he'd make me chase him for the pleasure of being caught. Tonight he follows so close his chest bumps my shoulder when I turn for the stairs.
I don't look for Wall. The choice has to stay his.
The back of my neck prickles the whole way across the bar anyway.
Up the narrow staircase, the noise dulls with every step until I can hear Theo breathing behind me. He's gone quiet, which is remarkable on its own, and his hand slides from my wrist to the back of my belt, fingers hooking in. Each tug lands low in my stomach.
He doesn't ask where we're going. He knows about the office. What he doesn't know is why.
His fingers tighten.
Maybe he's catching up on that part.
Inside, I turn before he can inspect the room, and he walks straight into me.
Good.
My hand finds the back of his neck, and the first kiss sends him into the desk. Papers scatter under his palms. Groaning into my mouth, he grabs my shirt and hauls me between his thighs, tongue pushing in with enough aggression to suggest all of this was his idea.
I let him believe it for three seconds. Then I tighten my grip on his nape and tip his head back, and the fight leaves his mouth in one long exhale.
Better.
I drag my teeth down his jaw to the spot below his ear that dissolves him, palming him through his jeans at the same time. He's already hard.
He's always already hard.
Of all Theo's qualities, my favorite might be how little interest his body has in pretending.
"Patrick." My name comes out rough.
"Quiet."
A breathless laugh. "You don't get to—"
I press the heel of my hand along his cock and hold, and the argument dies in his throat. His hips chase my palm. I give him friction in exactly the wrong rhythm, enough to keep him straining, never enough to settle.
"Did you drag me away from winning to torture me?"
"You were losing."
"Financially, I was dominating."
My thumb finds the head of his cock through the denim. Whatever he says next isn't a word.
Behind us, the door sits open. Not ajar—open, a hand's width, a clean line of sight from the landing. And I've put him on the exact side of the desk I checked this afternoon.
He has no idea. Heat rolls through me at the thought, hotter than his mouth, hotter than the sound he makes when I pop the button of his jeans and drag the zipper down over the hard line of his cock. The cotton underneath is already damp at the tip.
"Jesus." His voice barely survives the word.
I hook my fingers under his waistband. That's when he looks past me.
His hand closes around my wrist. "Lock the door."
I hold his eyes. "No."
Confusion fights through the lust. He looks at the gap, then at me, assembling facts with a brain that has most of its blood elsewhere. Understanding takes several long seconds to reach him. Then his lips part. There it is.
I lower myself to my knees.
For a second his hand stays on my wrist. Then it loosens, and something feverish and bright takes over his whole face.
"You absolute menace." His chest heaves. "This is the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me."
The praise warms a place in me I have no intention of examining. I pull his briefs down and his cock springs free, flushed and wet at the slit, bobbing once in front of my face.
Below us, the bar hums through the floorboards.
No footsteps yet.
I look up at him. "Quiet now."
Then I close my mouth over his cock.