Chapter Eight #3
Shepherd’s hands were braced against the brick wall, fingers spread over the chipped smear of old graffiti. Sweat glazed the exposed nape of his neck and stained his T-shirt. Kel pressed a quick kiss to the spot, the skin salty and cedar–scented, as he fumbled with his jeans.
“Still determined not to let me in the house, huh?” he said.
Shepherd hitched out a laugh as he twisted his head around to graze a kiss over Kel’s jaw.
“I’m good at rules,” he said.
“But you like liars.”
“Didn’t say I liked rules,” Shepherd countered. “Just that I’m good with them.”
Kel finally managed to get his jeans unbuttoned. He pushed them down to his thighs, denim rough as it caught, and slid a condom onto his cock. It was already hard, slivers of pleasure firing back along his taint as he grazed his fingers back along it.
He snugged the band around the base and turned to pull Shepherd’s shorts, already loose, down over lean hips. His fingers grazed over raised scar tissue, slick and smooth under his touch.
His brain tried to file it under ‘the scar’.
He’d noticed it last time they fucked and thought nothing of it.
Everyone had scars. This time though, he had a better view, the long muscles of Shepherd’s back illuminated by the light over the fire door.
Kel traced the raised, clotted circle scored onto Shepherd’s thigh with his thumb.
“We did a show and tell about my scars, but you don’t mention this?” he said. “What happened?”
Shepherd twisted at the waist to look, as if he’d forgotten it was there. He wrinkled his nose and shrugged it off.
“Oh, that?” he said. “It’s nothing. Possessive ex. You know what they’re like.”
Kel leaned back to get a better look. Straight lines scored top to bottom of the circle, and a sort of tree rune was blistered on top of them. The whole thing was just slightly bigger than Kel’s hand.
Which did raise the question of how he’d missed it the first time, but…the answer was that he was self-involved. He already knew that.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “The worst mine ever did was steal my football jersey.”
“Yeah,” Shepherd said agreeably. “It’s the same thing, more or less.”
It wasn’t, but usually Kel wouldn’t have cared. Today he was still on the high of people—for once in their lives—playing the role he needed them to. The idea it might end, that he could be thwarted again by something as irritating as someone just not wanting to cooperate? That bugged him.
So he slid his hand over Shepherd’s hip and under the sagged waistband of his shorts.
Shepherd made a strangled sound in his throat as Kel cupped his balls. He arched his hips forward into his caress, muscles tensing around his back and down his arms.
It was the first time that Kel had tried to get the smoke to play along. The first time he’d admitted it was…maybe…more than a lingering dose of weed-inspired paranoia. He wasn’t sure how to get it to play along.
“So,” he drawled, drawing out the syllables to buy time, as he tried to spool the hot spice of it back up his throat.
For a second nothing happened, and then the dull ember of hunger in the back of his ribs flared to life.
The smoke scorched up the back of his throat, making his eyes burn and the inside of his nose itch.
He ignored it as he kissed the back of Shepherd’s neck again, smoke wisping up through blond, sweat-damp curls and slipping into the shell of his ear.
“Why don’t you tell me about your ex? And how much hotter I am? ”
Shepherd reached back and twisted his fingers into Kel’s hair.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“What?” Kel coaxed. He didn’t know if it helped the smoke along, but he squeezed Shepherd’s balls anyhow. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but the way Shepherd’s body hitched in reaction was satisfying. “You’re saying I’m not.”
“I’m saying…”
Fucking quit that.
The smoke spat the words back into Kel’s throat. He felt the heat of it against his teeth, a dull, dry ache down to the roots, and tasted smoke and burned flesh on the back of his tongue. He choked on it and staggered back a step, one hand to his throat, as he struggled for air.
His chest felt raw, the inside of his lungs parched with the same dry, parched taste that came from a hot engine.
“What the fuck—” he rasped out.
Shepherd turned to look at him, shoulders against the graffiti-scrawled brick. His shorts hung low, fly undone, on his hips. The worn canvas outlined the thick ridge of his erection.
“If you want to fuck, that’s fine,” Shepherd said. “But I don’t really do commitment, and definitely not on the second date.”
Kel coughed.
His mouth tasted like an abattoir, grease and smoke and char. He spat and wiped his tongue on the back of his hand.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Shepherd rolled his eyes and started to reach for the waistband of his shorts. He got them pulled up over his waistband before he stopped mid-button and cocked his head to the side.
“Oh, hell,” he said as he narrowed his eyes. “That was the truth.”
“Oh yeah, what gave it away?” Kel asked sourly. “Didn’t turn you on?”
Shepherd wrinkled his nose. “No, weirdly enough, it did,” he said. “But still…”