Isaac #4
The other one? Oh, he was dangerous; I could feel that at a glance.
Blond hair that was darker than Luka’s by a lot, and pretty blue eyes, I could see clearly even from a distance.
Like his buddy, he was built big but not nearly as bulky as the redhead next to him.
The worst, for me anyway, was the way his smile could only be called wicked when he looked at us, speaking of an easy confidence that probably flared into arrogance with the ease of flicking a switch.
His body language, unlike his friend’s, was more alert and attentive.
I snorted when I saw his eyes slide over me, going from my head to my feet and back up with a measured slowness that told me just what he was thinking.
Oh yeah, I was a sucker for nice guys, but I was going to have to be careful because I could be powerless in the face of a cocky one.
“Oh shit, brace for impact,” Luka muttered as we walked up, and he gestured to the friendly redhead and then to the blond. “This is Cade, and this is Clay.”
“Ah, I saw ya earlier,” Cade said, standing quickly to take my hand and shaking it with more force than was necessary, which I immediately attributed to enthusiasm.
He didn’t strike me as the sort to pull some power play and was genuinely enthused to have gotten to meet me.
“I thought ya might be a new guy comin’ in. ”
“Hi there,” the other man, Clay, said as he waited until my hand had been freed from Cade’s iron grip, took it, and shook it smoothly. His fingers lingered a shade too long to be friendly before he slipped back. “A pleasure.”
“A pleasure to meet, or a pleasure to look at?” I wondered and smirked when he blinked, momentarily taken off guard.
He was clearly not one to be deterred easily, though, and the grin slid back into place as he leaned his elbows on the table to look me over more openly. “What, it can’t be both?”
“Jesus, yes, thank you, Clay,” Luka said with a weary sigh.
Cade winked at me. “Don’t mind Clay. He can be a horn dog. Alright, well, he is a horn dog, but he’s harmless...mostly.”
“Oh, trust me, I know a bed-hopping player when I see one,” I said with a laugh, smirking when Clay frowned.
“Hey now, I haven’t done anything but said hi,” Clay grumbled. “We don’t all need to take turns beating on me.”
“Beatin’ somethin’ on ya is exactly what you’re anglin’ for,” Cade said with a chuckle as he drained the last of his drink with a wet slurp. “We’re just tryin’ to make sure the new guy knows the score.”
“Sounds like he already knows what’s up,” Clay told him with a scowl. “And in case you didn’t notice, he didn’t tell me no.”
“Oh, does that work? Then, no,” I told him, trying not to laugh when I saw his expression falter for a moment.
“Yeah, well, I’ve heard that before, and sometimes all it takes is for them to linger in this place, get bored and horny enough, and then suddenly I’ve got someone at my door looking for something they said no to previously,” he said with a shrug. “And sometimes they don’t.”
“Sometimes they even get to be your best friend,” Cade said with a snort. “He really tried gettin’ with me the first few weeks we were here.”
“Okay, but can you blame me?” Clay asked with a huff, gesturing toward Cade. “Wall of friendly muscle. I was getting mixed messages. But no, he had to be straight, so now I’ve got a Labrador in human form for a friend. Or maybe a mastiff is better.”
“You are quite handsome,” I told Cade, who beamed at the praise.
“See? That’s how ya tell someone you’re into ’em,” Cade said, poking Clay, making him yelp and jerk back from the touch. “Not...well, I ain’t repeatin’ what ya said the one time.”
“That was a joke,” Clay protested. “I wouldn’t say that to someone seriously!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, not someone who wasn’t interested in me to begin with. I’d save saying something like that for someone who was down for that sort of thing.”
I squinted. “Now I want to know.”
Cade grimaced. “It ain’t very polite.”
“Fun fact; you aren’t going to offend me easily,” I told him.
“And why’s that?” Clay asked, looking at me curiously.
“Don’t,” Luka muttered.
“I was an escort for over five years. There aren’t many things you could be into or say that would bother me,” I said with a shake of my head, watching with amusement as Clay’s annoyed expression at Cade snapped back to me with interest.
“I told him if he didn’t stop messing with me, I was going to find a way to hold him down and suck his soul out through his dick and give it back to him through his ass,” Clay said, watching my reaction carefully.
“A bold claim,” I said, appreciating the confidence with which he said it. I hoped, for his sake, he could back that ‘threat’ up if someone called him out on it; otherwise he was going to end up being nothing but talk at the end of the day.
“One I’m more than happy to back up if you’re going to be a skeptic,” he shot back with a smirk.
“You wouldn’t be the first man I’ve turned down an offer like that from,” I said with a shrug. “And unless I happen to keel over before the next one, you won’t be the last.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, then cocked his head. “Or do you?”
“Clay,” Luka said in a grave voice. “Don’t start making jokes about his previous job, that’s tacky.”
“And rude,” Cade told him, pushing him hard enough that Clay had to flail to stay in his seat.
“And not helping your attempt to get in my pants either,” I said, raising a brow.
Not that I had any intention of letting him sleep with me, or that I was all that bothered by his joke.
Thick skin was the name of the game when you dealt with people intimately, and mine was thick enough that a rhino would be envious.
Still, it was fun to watch him keep whipping back and forth between having a flicker of horny hope and falling back into respectful disappointment.
I had already told him no, but hope, as they said, sprang eternal, and he was clearly not one to let go of hope easily.
“Ohhhh, so there is a chance then?” he asked, making me snort because that was absolutely on brand for him.
Cade shook his head. “Ya should probably walk away now before he starts gettin’ any more ideas that he don’t need to be havin’.”
“Good idea,” Luka said with a roll of his eyes. “C’mon, I can show you some of the facilities we have. We’ll probably run into some of the other guys around here, and thankfully, most of them are like Cade, not Clay.”
“Hey, as a Guide, are you supposed to say stuff that could hurt my self-esteem?” Clay asked with a hand to his chest.
“Your self-esteem can survive the hit, I’m sure,” Luka told him with a shake of his head. “C’mon.”
Grinning, I turned to follow him out. “Interesting. I can see why you originally felt the need to tell me I was permitted to sleep with someone if I felt like it.”
Luka sighed. “I’ll admit it; you were right.”
“About?”
“Not trying to make your first introduction symbolic of how the rest of your time here will go. Could you imagine what it would have said if that was the sign of things to come?”
“True,” I said as I followed him.
Privately, I’d enjoyed the conversation with Clay and Cade.
The latter was a teddy bear as far as I could tell, but he clearly knew what his best friend was like and wasn’t afraid to call him out on it, a necessary trait for a best friend.
He was someone I could picture spending time with and feeling comfortable around.
And not just because he wasn’t interested in sex with men, but because that was just the feeling he gave off.
Clay though? Well, I would never tell him because he’d get the wrong idea, but the back and forth was kind of nice.
It made me realize that in my concern about how much or how little I was into sex, I had forgotten how nice it was to have someone who wasn’t waving a credit card be openly attracted to you.
It wasn’t going to get him laid, but despite how blunt he’d been, it had been nice to get some attention.
Or maybe it was because of that bluntness that I liked it.
Either way, as far as introductions to the people I would be living alongside went, those two hadn’t been that bad.