Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty

For everyone who read the Dirty Series and said, “God, I want Bobby to get what’s coming to him.”

This book, dear reader, is for you.

Acknowledgments

If you’ve read any of these, you know I am always going to mention The Five (Jenn, Tamm, Penn and Lea), Ree, Ren and Lisa. Because raaawwwr.

A huge thank you and dearest affection to Grace, Brian, and the rest of my editing team at Dreamspinner. Poor things. I am so sorry. So much thanks to everyone else at Dreamspinner, especially Elizabeth, for polishing my coals into diamonds.

More thanks to the Guinea Pigs, my First Betas (including the San Diego Crewe) who deal with my gnashing of teeth, and the second Betas who deal with my flailing. Wow, you guys put up with a lot.

Lastly, hugs and thanks to the inkers down at Flying Panther Tattoos. You might inflict a lot of pain on me, but damn, you leave some nice ink behind. Thank you for your artistry and professionalism. Best studio ever.

Chapter 1

B
OBBY
DIDN
’
T
know why he’d let himself get conned into fighting LAX traffic and then back up to Hollywood, but Cole asked for a favor, so when a guy’s best friend coughs up gas money and a Starbucks gift card for a trip to Air Cargo, he’d have to be an ass to say no.

He wanted to say no. God knows he wanted to. Because transporting the heavy leather massage table to Hollywood meant getting up close and personal with Ichiro Tokugawa, Cole’s hot and definitely off-limits little brother.

There were rules.

Lines a guy did not cross with regards to friends.

A guy didn’t drink the last beer. He didn’t throw up on anything without cleaning it up, and a good friend paid his friends with beer and pizza when they sacrificed a Saturday to help him move. A guy got drunk with his friend at funerals and wrote embarrassing speeches about them when they married the love of their life. A guy did not date an ex—an ex defined as someone who once was considered an actual boy/girlfriend and not a trick. Same thing went for siblings and possibly cousins.

Especially where
good
friends were concerned.

Doubly so when the other guy was the best friend Bobby’d ever had in his entire life.

But that all meant shit, because deep down—and not so deep down—Bobby was keenly aware of one glaring claxon of trouble.

He badly wanted to fuck Cole McGinnis’s younger brother.

Hollywood Boulevard at noon was a game of Frogger and Dodge-the-Ped. Oblivious tourists didn’t seem to understand the black stripe going down the middle was filled with cars, and the various freaks working the strip in superhero costumes or their own version of weird were more than willing to risk dying under American steel as streams of buses disgorged fat-walleted victims. Every inch of space along the street’s main stretch was filled with people, sound, and a riot of color.

Old-school glamour and faded glitz fought valiantly against the encroachment of the shiny-bright, neon-rich flash of buildings marching up from the coffers of a newer Hollywood. Only bits and pieces remained of the days when a woman asked a man if he knew how to whistle, and those remaining shreds were being quickly swallowed up by glass and steel monuments to capitalism.

“Jesus, Dawson,” Bobby muttered under his breath. “When the fuck did you get so old?”

He didn’t
feel
old.

He could still beat Cole down in the ring and hit a mile mark in six minutes. Hell, the night before he’d kept up with the three twinks trolling the Down and Dirty looking for a good time. He’d shown them a hell of a good time, even going so far as to dip more than his wick into the blondest of the trio, but fifteen minutes into wringing cries for more out of the man, Bobby’s mind drifted off. Instead of concentrating on the blond he’d impaled on his dick, Bobby found himself thinking about Ichiro, a snarky Japanese man who was more off-limits to him than a radioactive vibrator.

“Like the goddamn apple in the Garden of Eden.” Stopping long enough to let a gaggle of visor-wearing tourists cross the road, he stared out the window at a sea of bobbing Hawaiian shirts and zinc-slathered skin. “You know you want a bite, Dawson. One big fucking bite, and if you do it, your world’s going to go to shit. And no guy is worth that kind of trouble.”

But damned if Ichiro didn’t look like he’d give it his best shot.

The man was just swinging off of a Harley Fat Boy Lo when Bobby pulled up in front of Ichiro’s new shop. Snug leather chaps framed Ichiro’s ass and ran down his powerful legs, the leather nearly blending in with his black jeans. After taking off his helmet, Ichi shook out his razor-edged mane, running his fingers through the bright red-streaked strands to work out any knots, his leather jacket wrinkling as his shoulders moved. Mirrored sunglasses shielded Ichi’s cinnamon brown eyes from view, but nothing could hide the man’s lush mouth. Its plump lower lip promised sin and wickedness with every moue and nibble from Ichiro’s white teeth.

“Fuck, get your shit together.” Bobby took advantage of the truck’s higher profile and tugged at his crotch to loosen the denim around his growing bulge. “It’s just another piece of ass. Just like the thousands you’ve looked at before.”

Then Ichiro bent over his Harley’s seat to lock it down, and Bobby’s mouth crackled with the sudden lack of moisture on his tongue.

“Goddamned cock tease.”

Getting out of his truck, Bobby nodded a hello to Ichiro, who was digging something out of his pocket. The worn-in chaps didn’t seem willing to give up their prize, but the leather finally gave in, and Ichi tugged out a loop of jingling metal keys.

“Hey, thanks for going to get the table, Bobby.” Ichiro’s roiling purr was huskier than his older brother’s, and he caught each word carefully before speaking, as if testing out its flavor before letting it go. His English was flawless, a tinge of softness to his consonants, but his voice was firmly masculine, a rough velvet Bobby liked listening to.

Damned if he didn’t like hearing the man say his name.

Even better if he could hear Ichiro scream it.

“Not a problem.” That was a bald-faced lie.

The Air Cargo guy had given Bobby a ration of shit about picking the table up, and even when he’d been promised someone from the back would help him wrestle the thing up into the truck, no one seemed willing or able to pitch in. A passing security guard finally took pity on him, and after unboxing the damned thing, they’d gotten Ichiro’s table loaded onto the truck bed.

He’d left the packing materials strewn about Air Cargo in a passive-aggressive fuck you to the man smirking from behind the dubious safety of the receiving counter, driving off without a shred of regret when the attendant barreled out to scream at him.

“Really, thanks. I wasn’t expecting them to send a full sample, and not like I could go get it on my bike.” Ichi fumbled a bit with the keys as he walked up to a shop with painted-over windows. “We probably can get it in through the double doors here. The back entrance’s got a tight hall for some damned reason. The construction crew’s going to take it down tomorrow.”

It wasn’t much to look at, and from what little remained of its former life, he’d gathered its last incarnation was a hair salon. Sandwiched between an antique car showroom and a costume shop, it was a sad, tired place with fallen plaster painted up with bright neon symbols marking where work needed to be done. Old duct tape crisscrossed the front windows, the sun dulling the silver adhesive strips holding together a few thick cracks in the glass. The shop stood out like a sore thumb among the other businesses. Hell, even the trashy lingerie store selling scraps of lace for fifty bucks a pop looked better than Ichiro’s new place.

“You on schedule?” Bobby eyed the shop’s exterior, wondering if it wouldn’t have just been easier to demo the place out and start over. “You’re planning to open when? A couple of months?”

“No, not for about six months. Maybe more.” Ichiro got a key into the lock and squeaked it open. “I don’t need to rush things, and I’m guesting over at a couple of local places. Between inking, looking for artists to work here, and fighting to get permits, I’ll be lucky if I get the place open before the end of the year.”

“So you’re going to give it a go, then?” Bobby flipped down the truck’s tailgate. “Staying here, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Ichiro replied as he locked the double doors open. “Family—the guys are—I want to get to know them better.”

“You and Cole seem to be doing pretty good.” If the conversation got any more inane, Bobby would have sworn he was back in high school chatting up the quarterback just to get a whiff of his sweat. In about five minutes, he’d start asking Ichi if it was hot enough for him. “Mike can be a bitch sometimes, though.”

“Cole’s easy to get along with. Mike’s harder. He likes to boss people around.” Ichiro’s grin was a flash of sardonic white against the shop’s black shroud. “He sees me as a younger brother and tries to treat me like he does Cole. Thing is, I don’t like being told what to do.”

“Yeah, neither does Cole, but Mike hasn’t caught on to that yet.” Bobby chuckled. “You’d think after all these years, he’d figure that out by now.”

“Mike is… tenacious.” Ichiro laughed at Bobby’s smirk. “Maddy I love. And Jae—ah, he’s like a best friend I found after being gone too long. I also think he likes someone who sides with him when Cole’s being stubborn. No one can do pigheaded like my older brothers. You’d think they were the Ox instead of me.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Bobby replied. “Okay, you grab that end, and we’ll pull it out. Doesn’t weigh a shit ton, but the thing’s bulky as hell.”

“Just let me take my leathers off first,” Ichiro murmured as he reached down to undo the laces of his chaps’ waistband. “I’ll be sweating like a pig otherwise.”

He should
not
have been watching Ichi slide the black leather off his ass. At the very least, Bobby knew he should have found something else to stare at besides the wiggle of Ichiro’s hips and then the man’s back bowing up as if taking a cock while he tugged the chaps down his legs.