Bad Company

  Not wanting to get caught with his hand in the cookie drawer, he went over to lean on the bathroom door and listen for the spray.

  “The Sun is going to run some of the article we did tomorrow, along with one of Eli’s pictures,” he called into the bathroom.

  The water shut off. “He must be happy.”

  “Ecstatic. He’s out celebrating.”

  “Did you want to go meet him?” Kellan opened the door.

  The humidity from the shower escaped in a sweet-smelling cloud that made Nate want to lick his lips.

  Or maybe that was the chocolate frosting.

  “Or we could go out tonight,” Kellan added. “Didn’t your paper have something about the DJ at the Arena?”

  Nate jumped back. Kellan out at the Arena with all those guys grinding? Slap up another definition on the irrational-emotions wiki. Nate was jealous of a straight guy who wasn’t his boyfriend and who would probably laugh at the idea of grinding with another guy. “No. Yes, but he’s there for a week. Wait, do you want to go?”

  Kellan shrugged. “It’s hard following the clothes rule if you’re standing right there and my stuff is on the counter.”

  “Right.” Nate crossed over to where his computer was flashing through the series of Rag covers that made up his screen saver.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to find you a job.”

  “At your paper?”

  Nate turned and caught Kellan smoothing dark denim up over a pair of baggy Fruit of the Looms.

  Even that completely unsexy underwear made him have to turn back to the computer to hide a reaction. “No. In the help-wanted ads.”

  “Good, because that would be weird.”

  Nate had barely managed to open a site when he heard a strum on the guitar. “Mind if I fool around with this a little?”

  It was a little late for permission. “Go ahead.”

  “Needs tuning.”

  Kellan plucked and tuned while Nate stared at the screen.

  “I don’t want to freak you out or anything, man, but I think someone stole your TV.”

  Nate didn’t turn. “I don’t have one. If there’s something I want to see, I watch it on the computer.”

  “Seriously?” Kellan made a disgusted sound. “Do you have one of those Kill Your TV bumper stickers on your little scooter or something?”

  Kellan was pushing for some kind of reaction. Nate wasn’t going to give it to him. This was a game he remembered from when they were kids, though it hadn’t felt so potentially explosive back then.

  Kellan stopped the tuning and zipped through the opening riff of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” nailing all the minor chords without the slightest hesitation. He stopped the hum and then played the opening to “Wanted Dead or Alive.”

  Nate was shocked and insanely envious. He turned around in his chair. “So when I asked if you could play….”

  Kellan waved a hand. “Just something I picked up while I was wasting my life. I can mimic a lot of stuff I hear.”

  “Without the sheet music?”

  “Usually. If it’s not too weird. I can’t read the rhythm, I have to hear it.” Kellan stopped before the first verse and went through the opening again, every note annoyingly clear. “So you want me to show you the F chord now?”

  “Okay.” Nate stood.

  Kellan handed off the guitar and then moved right in back of Nate, close enough that he could smell the soap from the shower.

  Nate sidestepped. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to be over here, where my fingers are on the board?”

  “I can’t do it from the side. I have to do it like I’m playing it.”

  Nate had seen this, rolled his eyes at this, in too many movies. Guy teaching girl to play pool or whatever activity the writers could think of to create some false sense of intimacy as he rubbed up against her ass.

  Kellan didn’t touch him anywhere but at his fingers, though. “Relax.” He grabbed Nate’s first two fingers and shook them. “Here, do it on the couch so you don’t have to worry about it slipping out of your hands.”

  With the guitar braced on Nate’s legs, it was easier to let his fingers be moved around, but now Kellan pressed up against Nate’s back, breath tickling Nate’s neck.

  “See, if you angle your finger back like this, it’s not as hard.” Kellan was right. Damn it. “Now go from—” Kellan’s hand covered Nate’s on the fretboard in a couple of quick motions, like he was remembering the chords. “You’re going to need a shift from G to F, like this. Don’t forget to angle back.”

  Nate made it through the first verse and a halting chorus, Kellan whispering the chords as he sang softly in Nate’s ear.

  “Good job.” Kellan tapped his shoulder. “Want to try the opening?”

  “I can’t pick that fast.”

  “I’ll pick, you do the fingering.”

  Eli would have been able to fire off a lewd comeback, something to get them all laughing, but this much of Kellan’s attention was making Nate’s brain short-circuit on words. It was weird to be the one learning from Kellan.

  “Ready?” Kellan asked, and then tapped Nate’s hip to give him the rhythm before reaching around him for the strings.

  It was perfect. Kellan made it easy, and the music flowed by the second time through. Nate went into the first verse, and Kellan strummed while singing, thumb creating exactly the right resonance on the strings.

  As Kellan increased the volume and speed for the second verse, his hand kept almost brushing the inside of Nate’s thigh, until even the most basic chord was too much for Nate’s brain to communicate to his fingers.

  “What?” Kellan didn’t back off, resting his chin on Nate’s shoulder.

  Nate started to swing the guitar away and then realized he needed a cover for his lap. “Oh.” Kellan’s cheek dimpled against Nate’s with a smile. “Is that for Bon Jovi or me?”

  “What?” Move, Nate told himself. Put the guitar in its case and move before the conversation goes exactly where diving headfirst into the deep end of the cliché pool is leading.

  “The semiwoody in your jeans.”

  Nate wished the fact that Kellan was talking like a twelve-year-old was enough to back things off. “Your hand kept going between my legs. Do I have to explain how dicks work to you?”

  “So you want to fuck?”

  The vision in his head of Kellan’s head framed by the fragments of the guitar was tempting, but Nate put it into its case and shoved himself away, turning to face Kellan from the safety at the end of the couch. “Make up your mind, Kellan. Are you asking to have sex? With me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No. I’m not going to have sex with you.”

  Kellan had the balls to sit there and stick out his lower lip. “What’s the big deal? We’re just guys. It’s not like one of us could get pregnant or—I mean, you aren’t, um, right?”

  “The question is ‘Are you positive?’ and no, I’m not. I don’t have any STDs. But that’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  Kellan didn’t seem upset by that. He lifted one corner of his mouth and stared steadily at Nate’s crotch.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Nate said. “Listen carefully. I don’t care what you think you’ve figured out about wanting to try things with guys, it’s not going to happen. I am not having sex with you.” There. No more of this mixed-message bullshit. Clear communication, exactly the way he would have advised someone in his column. Of course, there was a reason why advice columnists got a lot of hate mail. They were morons doomed to spend their lives alone—with their overactive consciences. Nate pushed to his feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get laid.” Nate grabbed his wallet from his desk and headed for the door.

  “Bring a little something back for me.”


  Nate held his middle finger up over his shoulder as he shut the door behind him.

  BALTIMORE HAD a gay neighborhood and a good-sized community of guys who were good-looking and looking for it, but the options for finding them at four thirty on a Thursday afternoon were limited. Nate could have gone to the gym, which would have helped work off his sublimating sex with Berger cookies, but he hadn’t grabbed a bag, and hanging out in the showers or at the juice bar felt a lot more awkward than a casual meet-up over free weights.

  He hadn’t ever been in a bathhouse, didn’t have a Manhunt account. The fact was, until recently, sex had just happened. There’d been guys and they’d fucked, or they’d dated with fucking, or they’d dated and then fucked, and it hadn’t been anything Nate had to work at.

  He wished this sudden dry spell was something else he could blame Kellan for, but the truth was that it had been going on for longer than his seventy-two-hour recrudescence in Nate’s life. Christ, had it only been three days?

  Nate shouldn’t have been surprised when Kellan found him at J.J.’s later. Nate had been nursing his second 7 and 7 for the last forty-five minutes when Kellan bumped shoulders with him as he hiked his ass onto the next barstool.

  After grabbing Nate’s glass and taking a swig, he made a face and ordered one of the microbrews they had on tap.

  “How’s the getting laid working out? Seems kind of dead in here.”

  “Staying power is one thing, but it doesn’t take me two hours.”

  “So, not at all, huh?”

  “Fuck you and shut up.”

  “I got a job.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Yes. Amazingly enough, I can operate a computer without people giving me directions. I’m working for the bakery that delivers to Manna Café. I’ll be in the back dumping flour into mixing bowls, so my dad shouldn’t care even if he finds out.”

  Nate swallowed a gulp of flat soda and whiskey as the bartender put Kellan’s glass in front of him. Glancing over, Nate saw Kellan’s cheeks start to blush as he realized he couldn’t pay for the beer. With a sigh, Nate pulled another twenty from his wallet to put on the bar.

  “Thanks,” Kellan murmured into the thin head of foam. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to pay you back, but I’ll try.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “Because you love having something to hold over me. Proof that you’re the better man.”

  “It’s not like that.” It wasn’t. Not exactly. He didn’t care about money, other than having enough to pay his bills. But that wasn’t what they were talking about.

  “Whatever.” Kellan downed half his beer in three gulps, and despite Nate’s best effort, he couldn’t help but watch the way Kellan’s throat worked, the movement of the muscles and tendons under the warm skin he was trying not to think about tasting.

  The bartender was down at the other end of the bar, watching the news, but Kellan still pitched his voice so low Nate had to lean in to hear him.

  “So you were right. I probably would freak out if you—if I got what I was asking for. But I’ve never liked getting no for an answer.”

  This was good news. Then why did Nate feel like he’d swallowed all the ice cubes along with his last sip?

  “It’s no big deal. I know you’re not gay or bi or whatever.” Nate managed a half smile. “There’s nothing wrong with being straight.”

  “Funny. Yeah, well, you were right about me freaking out back then too, and I’m sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine.” Nate wasn’t lying. Somehow it didn’t bother him as much anymore, and it wasn’t only from Kellan’s half-assed apology.

  “So, can we call a truce?”

  “Sure.” Nate offered his hand.

  Kellan grinned and used the handshake to pull Nate close but didn’t kiss him. “Thanks, man. I did kind of miss you, you know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  NOT ONLY was Kellan great at lying, he also had no problem reneging on a promise. There wasn’t going to be a truce. Nate had seen to that. If there was one thing Kellan couldn’t handle, it was being told no. He knew it was childish and stupid, but telling him no was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It sent him charging after whatever he’d been told he couldn’t have.

  And Nate had just waved Kellan’s favorite red flag. Kellan hadn’t been really sure he wanted to go there with Nate until Nate told him he couldn’t. He’d made a career of convincing girls who swore they wouldn’t have sex with him to be ready and willing in his bed.

  He was going to have to be extra sneaky, though. Nate was smart, and this game had a whole other set of rules that Kellan hadn’t figured out yet. Besides flowers and presents being out, he didn’t think Nate was going to give it up for attention and compliments.

  He gave it two nights, and then waited until he heard Nate make a sigh like he was drifting into deeper sleep. With his back toward Nate, Kellan made a little flop, dropping his shoulder and upper arm along Nate’s chest. Nate gave another noisy breath, a contented sound. Kellan lowered more of his shoulder onto Nate, more contact and warmth, but no skin.

  Damn, Kellan should have tried this without a shirt on.

  He shifted until his forearm rested along the bristles under Nate’s jaw, thumb knuckle in perfect position to provide a tiny massage to the soft skin behind Nate’s ear.

  Nate’s breath hitched for a second. Kellan froze.

  The “accidental” contact could be blamed as normal sleep motion. He’d use the excuse that he thought he was petting Yin if Nate asked what he was doing. Then Nate took a deep breath, and Kellan went back to moving his knuckle, circling with light pressure.

  As seductions went, it wasn’t particularly effective, wasn’t doing much to raise Kellan’s temperature—or anything else for that matter—but he liked doing it. Maybe because he was getting away with it, or maybe because Nate’s breath came so slow and even, and resting weight on that warm hard body was good. Kellan fell asleep just like that.

  The next night he skipped the T-shirt, complaining about the heat.

  “It’s been hotter,” Nate said, looking anywhere but at Kellan’s chest.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s being around all those ovens all morning. I’m hot all the time now.” Working at the bakery was nowhere near as fun as working at the café. Kellan usually worked alone, in the back, doing the big batches of cake batter and/or dough that would get turned into something special up front by the real bakers.

  “Fine.” Nate stripped off his shirt.

  “Why are you taking off your shirt if I’m hot?”

  Nate shrugged. “I hate sleeping in a shirt.”

  Nate had been sticking to that wearing-clothes rule like there was some kind of fine he’d have to pay. Of course, Kellan had to be at the bakery hours before Nate got up, so he might have missed some opportunities to gawk.

  If someone had asked Kellan what he’d be looking at on a bare-chested guy he maybe-almost-definitely wanted to have sex with—after spitting out “Seriously?” and “Just hypothetically, right?”—Kellan would have said the other guy’s pecs. He thought he’d be checking out the definition, the nipples, the width, but instead the dark, soft-looking hair on Nate’s body sent Kellan’s gaze directly to that path from navel to waistband, a spot that made Kellan want to touch or even taste because something about that trail of hair had Kellan’s throat working and his balls tingling. It was what he couldn’t see that was making him nuts.

  Yeah, there’d been that awkward blowjob thing a week ago, but other than thinking This thick thing is choking me, Kellan hadn’t paid too much attention to Nate’s dick. Now he really wanted to see it. Touch it, definitely. Maybe try licking or sucking it again.

  As Kellan stared, the bulge under the navy boxer briefs moved a little, as if Nate’s dick could read Kellan’s mind. Nate sat on the edge of the bed with his back to Kellan, so he stared at that instead, at the muscles under the skin, the line of his spine, the dip
right before Nate’s ass. That looked like a lickable spot too.

  Kellan was too tired to wait for Nate to fall asleep tonight. He edged up against him until they were back to back, butt to butt.

  “Kellan.”

  “Yeah?” His throat was a little dry.

  “I thought you said you were hot.”

  “My front’s hot. My back’s cold.” Kellan waited to see if Nate would roll away and tell him to find a blanket or put a shirt on, but Nate simply dragged the sheet from their hips to their shoulders and didn’t say another word.

  THE BAKERY job wasn’t much fun, but Kellan didn’t deliberately mess with the batter to get himself fired. The thing was, he’d heard a woman out front complaining about the height of the sheet cake she’d picked up for her son’s confirmation. So he did a little math and decided an extra half a cup of baking powder in the batter would give the bakery the fluffiest, tallest cakes in the city. And maybe he’d be a hero. But the batter tasted funny, kind of metallic, after that, so Kellan put in more vanilla, and then more sugar, and then it looked too syrupy so he added a few more eggs. Now it looked the same and didn’t taste all that strange so it would probably be all right. He wasn’t sure how much of everything he’d added at the end, but he knew he could repeat the success when the baker asked him about it.

  He filled the sheet pans exactly to the right line and shoved them in the ovens.

  If it had only been the five sheet cakes, they might not have fired him. And probably wouldn’t have said all that stuff in Hungarian or Polish or whatever it was they’d chased him off with. But Kellan’s special cakes had exploded in the ovens, their dramatic death also obliterating six pies, eight trays of cookies, and twelve nut-bread loaves. The smell was indescribable.

  They didn’t offer to mail him a check.

  It was only seven when he walked to the bus stop. Most people hadn’t even gotten up for work yet, and Kellan had already lost his second job.

  The bus doors hissed open, but the driver put up his hand to tell Kellan to wait. The bus tipped toward the sidewalk, and a tiny old man with a cane made his laborious way down the stairs. Kellan wanted to help him—hell, he probably could have picked him up and carried him down the block—but the man seemed very intent on his shuffling path. A gust of wind made him tip a bit as he stepped onto the sidewalk, and the backpack he was carrying slid sideways. Kellan managed to save the man from falling, but the backpack went into the gutter under the bus. As Kellan retrieved it, the bus pulled away from the sidewalk.