Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City) (18 page)

You’ve got the most level head in this whole group,
Tyler had said, sounding worse than angry—sounding disappointed.
What happened, man?

When he calmed down some, Vaughn had told him. And he’d told him also that Mica was a colossal dick and ought to be kicked out of UE for all the shit he stirred up.

It’s like you guys don’t even see it,
he’d told Tyler.
Every fucking day, he’s starting something with somebody. Why’s that okay? Why’s he even get to be here?

Your dog,
Tyler had said.
Tell me about her.

Confused, he had. Told him she’d been the best dog, well trained, never barked unless something serious was happening, was protective of him and his mom without ever snapping at anybody who didn’t provoke her.

See, you’re Roxy,
Tyler had said.
You were raised right. Maybe poor, maybe in a rough neighborhood, but your parents, they trained you right. You know those bad dogs every neighborhood’s got—they snap at everything, bark at everyone?

Sure.

Mica’s like those dogs, V. Nobody trained him. He’s been loose in the streets since he was a puppy, right? And the street taught him he better snap first, better bark real loud, if he wants to be left alone. That’s how a man gets when he grows up without any kind of security, any kind of discipline. We’re all here—all you guys, and us counselors, too—because our folks couldn’t afford vacations, didn’t have the means to get us out into nature like this. We’re all alike that way. But what’s not the same for each of us is what the rest of our realities looked like. You, you had two loving parents, and you’ve still got your dad. Some of these other guys, they don’t have what you do. It made you real angry, Mica teasing you about missing your dog. Why? Because it felt like he was teasing you about missin’ your mama, right?

He’d nodded, cheeks heating.

You know what makes other kids real angry, sometimes? Seeing their peers enjoying the things they don’t got.

Like what?

Tyler had shrugged.
Could be anything. The right sneakers, the girl they wish they were with, the grades they can’t seem to earn. You, you got something way more important than any of that junk. You got a family. You got a good father. You know how rare fathers are in this crew, here? Fathers who stick around, let alone raise a boy right?

Mica was a dick to me because of my dad?

I can’t know that for sure. But you’ve got things he doesn’t. Self-control, for one—a cool temper, most of the time. Maybe he wanted to see you lose your shit, to feel like you two are still peers, you know?

Maybe.
Vaughn had turned that around and around for the rest of the day. The counselors had kept him and Mica separated, and by the next morning, he’d cooled off. He’d taken that shit to heart, asked Mica if he wanted to partner up on that afternoon’s outing.
He’d never thought of himself as any kind of privileged before. Back in Pittsburgh, he went to a majority-white high school—not a private one, but way better than the one he’d been at through junior high. He’d earned his way in on a merit scholarship, took two city buses to get there and spent his days feeling like a tourist in an alien world. It was worth it, for a decent education, but never had it ever given him reason to feel like he had any advantages. To imagine that skinny, obnoxious asshole from LA actually thought Vaughn was somebody worth feeling jealous of . . .

And who feels jealous now?
he had to think, his gaze jumping down the dark hall, the closed door beyond which the woman he liked slept. The woman he’d be entertaining this morning, even as she wished it was Mica who’d be greeting her.

“Fucking
fuck
,” he muttered, and pulled the coffeepot out of the machine, needing once again to brew enough for two.

C
lare floated through the next few days on a cloud of lust and hope, rocked by the occasional wash of happy guilt.
When exactly did I become the sort of person who has these kinds of memories?
On Wednesday night she had plans to go out with girlfriends after work, and she wondered if they’d all know something was up, just looking at her face. She still hadn’t told Bree and didn’t intend to, but she also didn’t trust her lips to stay pursed if she got too warm a buzz on. She assigned herself a three-drink maximum.

I shouldn’t be feeling so smug, anyhow. He might never call again.
Or he might call ten minutes from now, or at four a.m., or next month in the middle of her workday. There were absolutely zero guarantees with that boy.

Still, she felt cheerfully resigned to the not-knowing as she perused potential outfits that evening. Even if Mica never called her again, she’d always have her photos of him, and her memories. And the promise and focus of the gallery show. That was what she
ought
to be obsessing over, after all—

Her phone buzzed. Not the short zap of a text, but the long hum of a call.

She looked to the screen. “I’ll be damned.”
Mica.
She answered with a smile, feeling flirtatious. “Why, hello.” She was dressed in unbuttoned jeans and a bra, a selection of tops laid out before her on her bed.

“Hey,” he said, and just that tiny sound lit her bright as Christmas. “What are you up to?”

“Waiting by the phone.” She let her singsong delivery tell him it was a silly lie, but she couldn’t help but think it was at least half-true. Pathetic, but true. Happily, though, she had plans already. If he said
jump
, she could say only
not tonight.

“You free?”

“Not for long.” She paced lazily around her room. “I got some good news yesterday—my show is a go.” She’d stayed up all night Monday madly editing the final sample shot, a portrait of a university professor who Alia had hooked her up with—Shawnee and Chinese and white. “You’re officially going to be hanging on a gallery wall come August, mister.”

“That’s cool,” Mica said.

“Indeed. My friends are taking me out to celebrate tonight.”

“Well, that ruins my evening.”

Inside, she rejoiced—finally, a little taste of the upper hand.

A moment later she mourned, however. There was no denying she missed his body, his touch, the sex . . .

“Well, if you can’t spare the night, have you at least got a minute?”

“Just the one?” she teased, fingering the strand of beads that hung from her vanity. “You’re feeling efficient.”

A cocky huff of a laugh. “Fine. Make it twenty.”

“I knew it—you’re terrible.”

“I’m horny.”

“Well, me, too, so you’re in luck. And I have”—she moved the phone from her ear to consult its clock—“thirty-four minutes. Then I need to head out.”

“Plenty of time. You home?”

“Yeah, just getting ready. We’re going dancing.”

“You dressed up?”

“Halfway there. You literally caught me with my pants down,” she fibbed, and pushed her jeans to the floor. “What uncanny timing. What about you? You in your room?”

“Just shut the door.”

She stepped out of her shed pants and sauntered to her bed, as languidly as if he were sitting there, waiting for her. “And what are
you
wearing?”

“Satin negligee.”

She laughed.

“Jeans,” he said. “T-shirt. Nothing too sexy.”

“I beg to differ—you could make parachute pants and a bustier look good.” And jeans and a tee? Christ, the boy never looked better than in worn cotton. Aside from when he was naked, that was.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“On my bed.”

“What’s your room like?”

She glanced around at the patterns of her covers, her curtains, the silk scarves draped at the corner of her vanity mirror, the little paper lanterns lit up red and dangling across the tall double windows. “Girly,” she decided.

“Good.”

She laughed. “It’s the opposite of your room. I’ve got more furniture crammed in here than makes any sense. And every color in the rainbow, everywhere.”

“What’s my room like? A prison cell?”

“No, but you’re clearly a nomad. And do you really want to use our remaining . . .” She checked her phone. “Twenty-nine minutes to talk about décor?”

“Not at all. Just want to picture you. I know what you look like when you touch yourself. I just needed the setting.”

“Filthy man.”

“Tell me you’d prefer me some other way. A gentleman, like him.” Like Vaughn, he meant. He could be so strange about not saying his best friend’s name.

“I like you as you are. Filth and all.” She sat on her bed.

“Good. So tell me what I’m missing out on tonight, since you’re choosing your friends over my invitation.”

“If you bothered to invite me with more than a half hour’s notice, we wouldn’t need to theorize, you know. But since you ask . . . You tell me. Just the two of us, or is Vaughn home?” Maybe he was working, on an overnight, even. She kind of hoped so. It meant she might have a regular old two-way late tonight, if she played her cards right. Funny how exotic that sounded. The bar wasn’t all that far from their place—

“He’s out until ten,” Mica said.

Damn, there went her short-lived hopes. She imagined she could get herself invited to another three-way, but she couldn’t say she was totally up to it. Any night with Mica was intense, but add in a third and it went beyond a hookup to something approaching a performance. An event. What she wanted was to fuck Mica, then swap whispers in the dark, be they dirty thoughts or dark secrets or sweet nothings.

Oh well. Better this way, really. Better to stay out late with the girls, and prove to herself and Mica both that she could keep away for a night.

“Tell me what we’d get up to,” Mica said, “if you weren’t busy breaking my heart.”

She blushed at those words, as deeply as she might from far
filthier ones.
Only words, though. He could have any woman he wanted warming his sheets tonight.
She told her own heart to cool it and turned matters over to her libido. “Oh, do I get a say? Here I’d thought the maestro had our encounters all mapped out ahead of time.”

“I live only to serve you.”

She smirked. “Uh-huh.”

“So tell me.”

She flopped back against the covers and studied her feet, her freshly painted toenails.
These feet would look awfully good slung over Mica’s shoulders,
she decided. “Your mouth, for starters.”

“Why settle for just one mouth?”

“Why indeed. But which of you gets me first?” Something hot stirred in her middle, to goad him like this. He wanted to hear about the three of them. And actually . . .

“Hold up,” she said, her legs dropping back to the mattress. “Can I ask you something? Something personal?”

“I sure hope so, considering the shit we’ve gotten up to together. Is it dirty?”

“Very.”

“Then shoot. I’m all ears.” And she could just picture his hand, cupped over his crotch, or perhaps already fisting his erection.

“You and Vaughn. Have you . . . How far have you two gone together, exactly?”

“Not much further than you’ve seen.”

“Oh.”
Pity.

“Why?”

“Just curious,” she said. “I’ve wondered, that’s all.”

“I’m curious about that, too, trust me.”

“Can I ask you about all that? About when you’re with guys?”

“Absolutely.”

“Are you the . . . Do you tend to be the one who . . .”

“Am I the top or the bottom?” he prompted, making her feel about twelve.

“Yeah.”

“Depends on who I’m with.”

“How so?”

“Well,” he said languidly, sounding as though he were stretching, “for one, it depends on what the other guy’s into. I’m flexible. I’m a switch, it’s called. I can go either way—giving or receiving. If we’re talking about anal, that is.”

“Yeah, we are.” No point mincing words with this bluntest of men.

“So, either way excites me. If the guy’s more aggressive, and I’m attracted to that about him, then chances are I’ll want to see that taken all the way, with him on top. Though sometimes it’s the opposite. Maybe I meet some cocky, pushy type and get curious about what it’d be like, topping a guy like that. Messing with personas and that kind of thing.”

“With Vaughn, if you two had gotten that far, which of you do you think would be on top?”

He answered without hesitation. “Him.”

“Oh yeah? He doesn’t seem all that aggressive to me.”

“No, but he’s straight. Trust me, a straight guy’s going to default to being the one penetrating.”

She shivered—a pleasurable little tremor. He was speaking frankly not to titillate her, but something about that word,
penetrating
, pinged hard on her sexual radar. “That makes sense.”

“Though, believe me, I’ve spent more nights than I can remember imagining every possible scenario with him.”

“I know you said before you don’t get feelings for guys, and that it’s all just physical . . . but really? You don’t think you love him, that way? Not even a little?”

“Not exactly. I’m not in love with him, no. But there’s nobody in the world I’m closer to, and few that I’m that attracted to. He’s my best friend, and that’s the most important thing, but I’m also infatuated with him. I have been since we were teenagers.”

“And he knows you feel that way?”

“Yeah. Every bit of it.”

“It’s pretty cool that it doesn’t freak him out. Some straight guys would probably be totally terrified if their best friend told them all that.”

“Probably. But our bond, or whatever you want to call it, it is what it is. It’s been intense almost from the very start. The same way he probably sensed that I was attracted to him, how he always knew I was bi, I could sense he was curious. Not ready to do anything with that curiosity, not for years, but I knew it was there. I bided my time. I got him drunk. Shit happened, and we stayed friends long enough for it to happen again.”

“Huh.” She was both impressed and upended by how casually he was saying this, admitting to having plotted and coerced Vaughn into whatever they’d done in the past.

“Clock’s ticking,” he said, his voice warm and conspiring. “You want to talk more about this, we better make it filthy.”

She laughed, but actually . . . “We could. If you’re serious.”

“Just tell me what you want to hear.”

“I don’t know. What you’d do with him, if he’d let you, maybe.”

“Everything.”

“And you’ve imagined it all, you said. Tell me about it. Anything.” And to Clare’s surprise, it was her own hand that was inching low now, settling between her legs, over her underwear.

“What I want most for now,” he said, “is for him to go down on me.”

“Not a big leap.”

“Yes and no. Doesn’t seem that way, considering what I’ve done to him. Seems only fair, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“But doing
anything
with me takes him out of his comfort zone. When it’s me sucking him”—Mica’s voice had dropped lower, his tone darkening, ripening—“at least he’s still in the masculine role. Going the other way would be a mind fuck.”

What if I dared him to?
Clare had to wonder. If they had another threesome, and she asked Vaughn to do it in a seductive way, like he’d be making her fantasy real, not Mica’s . . . To tell Mica so felt too much like them scheming. She’d just have to keep it to herself and maybe see where it took them all. If she had the balls in her, that was. The balls, and enough wine to rally them to the task.

“So you’ve imagined that,” she prompted.

“A million times.”

“How does it happen? Or is there no context?”

“Oh no, there’s context. I love context. Sometimes it’s spontaneous—we’re on one of our trips, I get him off, expect that’s all that’s going to happen, and then he surprises me. Puts a hand on my chest and pushes me onto my back, doesn’t say a word. Pushes me down and opens my fly, takes me out.”

“What’s it like?”

She didn’t need to clarify. Mica knew exactly what she was after.

“He’s clumsy,” he said, a smile in his voice. “I don’t dare give him directions at first—I’m too surprised, and I don’t want to put him off. But he figures it out, and I tell him when it feels good. Stroke his head, moan when he does something right. Tell him,
Like that. Nice and deep
.”

The scene unfolded in Clare’s mind, as surely as it was playing in Mica’s. She couldn’t guess what one of their campsites looked like, but her imagination sketched one together, putting the two of them on a blanket on the scrubby Southwest earth, a campfire lighting it,
a bottle of something strong open on the ground nearby. Two beautiful male bodies, weary from a day’s exertion but loose from the alcohol and warmed by the flames at their sides. Warm from more than the fire, as well. From the fresh memory of what Mica had just done to Vaughn.

“What’s he like?” she asked. “Excited, or nervous . . . ?”

“Nervous. Unsure, but curious behind it all.” Mica was stroking now—she could hear it in the quickened pitch of his breathing.