Love for the Cold-Blooded (10 page)

The AI blooped at him, flashing a prompt on its screen in an annoyingly impatient manner.

“Yes, yes, I’m on it, gods.” Pat put down his textbook and highlighter and went over to the interface to do this by the book. The AI had evidently decided Pat was useless when it came to managing hookers, and had already called up the list of approved companions, helpfully putting a ‘call contact number’ icon right next to the names. Pat — or rather Padraig — was third from the top.

Pat hesitated a moment over the topmost name before surrendering to curiosity and giving the file a tap. It opened to reveal the details of a generically gorgeous, broad-shouldered model clone indistinguishable from all the others. The second file featured an underwear model who’d been retinted to have blue eyes and golden hair, but who was otherwise identical with his colleague, from his perfect smile and perfect teeth down to his perfect cheekbones and perfectly toned and styled everything.

And then there was Pat, with his profile photo blurred to unrecognizability. Even if it had been a good pic, there would have been no denying that one of these things was not like the others.

Not that Pat didn’t have his own brand of good looks and appeal, of course. He totally did. Recent events pretty much proved that, didn’t they?

Anyway, time to get on with the task at hand. Pat pulled a grimace at his own profile, carefully ignored the fact that the measurements were now all filled in (he was so not going to think about where Cea had gotten those numbers, seriously), and hit the ‘call’ button.

His phone immediately began to vibrate in his pocket. Pat cleared his throat before accepting the call, trying for a theatrically casual voice. “Whassup?”

He switched over to business-like briskness as he muted the mobile phone and took a large step to the side, turning to speak directly into the AI’s phone receiver. These calls weren’t recorded — he’d checked very thoroughly to make sure — but even so, he felt it was only right to uphold a certain level of protocol. “Good evening, sir, this is the Andersen Estate night manager. I’m calling in a matter of some urgency. You see, we’re in desperate need of someone to set our principal’s head straight about some astronauts, among other things. The extremely cool, highly attractive and not at all short Mr. Ouest would be the ideal candidate.”

One large step back to the other side, Mr. Ouest unmuted his mobile phone and made thoughtful noises. “Let me check my appointment calendar… ah, excellent. I’m free immediately, and will be there in two shakes of an underwear model’s booty. Keep that bonus warm for me, you hear?”

“Why certainly, sir. Have a lovely night, you irresistible rascal you.”

Pat hit ‘disconnect’ with a triumphant flourish, put away his phone and took a few minutes to dot and cross all the administrative ‘i’s and ‘t’s in order to spare the AI another attack of the ‘insufficient data’ vapors. This time, everything would go strictly by the book. Except of course for the tiny detail that the hooker of choice was the night manager in disguise, but hey. As long as everyone was happy, where was the harm, right?

Right. Pat nodded decisively, high-fived himself for good luck, and quickly popped into the employee bathroom to check his hair and make sure nothing was caught in his teeth. He also took the opportunity to settle his baseball cap at a slightly more rakish angle, and even smoothed some wrinkles from his t-shirt.

He could so do this. Andersen would never even know what hit him. Figuratively speaking, of course.

~~~~~

“I
f you had to spend a year on a deserted island with no company and no access to technology, but with sufficient food, water and shelter,” said Nicholas Andersen, aka Silver Paladin, dark eyes fixed on Pat with unwavering intensity. “Provided you could choose any three objects of reasonable size to bring to the island, which objects would you choose?”

Wow, the man was a complete freakshow.

“You are a complete freakshow, man,” Pat informed him. He couldn’t help the hint of admiration that crept into his voice alongside the censure. Come on, this much fail didn’t just happen by chance; it was, like, an achievement. “For starters, what does ‘of reasonable size’ mean? Way too much wiggle room, here. Because, right, I choose a fitness center, which is totally reasonable. Gotta stay in shape, you know. And an Olympic sized swimming pool. And for my last choice, the university library. The main one, not one of those department thingies. You’re not sticking me with the microbiology department’s library or some shit like that.”

Andersen snorted impatiently, rolling his eyes as though Pat had been the one to come up with this silly scenario and then fail to offer proper parameters. “Single objects lesser or equivalent to an average elephant in size or mass, whichever is greater.”

“Indian or African elephant? Plus, elephants aren’t single objects any more than gyms and libraries are. They’re assembled from all sorts of parts, like livers and kidneys and tusks and ears. You really didn’t think this one through, did you, bro.”

Pat was just messing with the dude at this point, but Andersen was looking increasingly irritated and a bit nonplussed, which was a dozen kinds of hilarious. There was pretty much no way to resist messing with someone so serious.

Not the most by-the-book approach to his revered employer, perhaps. But whatever, the man would have to deal. Pat wasn’t about to start being all serving hearty at this late stage. Certainly not just because he was about to be paid obscene amounts of money for having sex with a hot guy. Again.

Man, Pat’s life. So hard, right? Heh.

When Andersen opened his mouth, hesitated briefly, and made as though to actually specify his ‘marooned on a deserted island’ parameters, Pat waved a hand to cut him off. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Because the first thing I would want to take would be BadMadRad’s new limited edition album. Get it?”

Incredibly, to judge by the blank face and empty look, Andersen did not get it at all. And Pat had been totally impressed at himself for slipping in the reference to his tragically lost album so naturally, too.

Pat stared at the dude in mute disgust for almost a full minute before breaking. “Seriously? I’m not even getting an ‘I fucked up, sorry about that’? Man, you suck so hard. I can’t take
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Ho
to my deserted island because of your botched rescue, and all I get from you is a cow-eyed look?”

For a reputed genius, the gears in Andersen’s head turned painfully slowly. Pat was tempted to go over there and help by cranking a lever of some kind.

Maybe there was some kind of convention where hookers and johns pretended they were strangers if they ran into each other in a non-hooking context. Was that why the dude looked so blindsided — because Pat should not have mentioned that whole rescuing thing, now that he was back to his original context?

Yeah, fuck that. If there really was such a convention, then it was a stupid one, and Pat was going to henceforth ignore it in exactly the same way he’d been ignoring it up to now. Problem solved.

“I saved you,” Andersen said at last, slowly but firmly, like Pat was an idiot child who had to be reminded of the basic rules of the universe. To wit:
Gravity exists. Time purports to flow in a linear fashion, but it’s only trying to fool us. I saved you.

Wow, condescension, too? Nice. What a hoagie thing to do. Yeah, a hoagie thing — the term ‘superhero’ certainly did not apply. There was nothing either super or heroic about dragging someone who was doing perfectly fine off the roof of a building, parting them heedlessly from their cherished possessions.

“Thanks a bunch,” Pat snapped, glaring. “I guess I should be happy you didn’t leave any of my arms or legs behind, too. Great job, dude, gold star for you.”

Sarcasm at least appeared to be a familiar concept to Andersen, who now frowned darkly at Pat. “Usually, people show some gratitude.”

“Then I guess usually people know better than to carry anything important when getting saved by you!”

Silence fell. Andersen was still not pyrokinetic, although he was certainly practicing his ‘trying to incinerate you with the intensity of my stare’ a lot. Whatever. Pat had grown up with three older sisters; Andersen would have to do a lot better than this to daunt him. Maybe if he actually did turn pyrokinetic… though really, portable fire extinguishers came in conveniently small sizes these days.

Still, the dude was so clearly utterly clueless about how to proceed that Pat might have taken pity on him, had the offense been a lesser one. Depriving Pat of BadMadRad’s limited edition album through sub-standard rescuing, though? There could be no mercy.

After several beats of mute staring, Andersen blinked and cleared his throat awkwardly. “I… apologize.”

Pat’s carefully built and fanned indignation crumbled immediately, collapsing in on itself like a house of cards.

The West Sister Dating Rules were clear on the matter of apologies. On the evolutionary scale of dating, a guy who apologized solely for the sake of ending the argument and getting back into your good graces was on the level of primeval slime — especially if he was clearly doing so merely because he was hoping for sex. The proper response was to unveil the offender’s deceit by demanding he explain what exactly he was apologizing for, and then scorn him when he betrayed his ignorance.

Luckily for Andersen, Pat was way easier than that. He couldn’t help but find it super cool that a hot dude was saying sorry to him even though he didn’t have a clue what he was apologizing for, just so he’d get to have sex with Pat. That was a pretty neat compliment, right?

“Yeah, whatever,” he said accordingly, mollified. “Shit happens, I guess.”

For the first time, Pat consciously registered that Andersen — Nicholas, rather; it seemed weird to think of him by his last name when Pat hoped to sleep with him in the near future — was wearing jeans and a faded blue Ghost Matter shirt. The one before had been faded gray… which meant that, implausibly, he must own more than one.

“Dude.” Pat stepped closer, jerking his chin at the offending logo. “You listen to Ghost Matter?” Maybe Nicholas didn’t even know what those intertwined letters meant, and just liked the comfy shirt. Maybe his personal shopper secretly hated him, and was exacting revenge by supplying him with merchandise of the worst bands she could find. (Pat would be seriously impressed with the hypothetical personal shopper, if so. Most people underestimated the viciously subtle kinds of vengeance.)

“Yes,” Nicholas said quickly, seizing on the new subject with every sign of relief. “They’re my favorite band.”

For a moment, Pat was speechless. Even if that was true, how could Nicholas admit to it just like that, without the least sign of shame?

Though… well. That Nicholas was so calm and matter-of-fact about liking Ghost Matter, that he refused to feel self-conscious or embarrassed over his horrible taste in music — in a weird way, that was actually damn impressive.

“Cool,” said Pat, lamely.

Nicholas gave him a thin, bland smile. It was hardly more than a slight curve of the lips, but it was unmistakably a smile even so. Pat felt ridiculously proud of himself.

High time to get with the program.

“So then!” Pat said brightly, grinning and bouncing on his toes a little. “What can I do for you tonight?” Serving heart or no, it was easy to show enthusiasm when serving the customer meant Pat got to sleep with a guy he would never have been able to pull in a million years, left to his own seductive devices.

Nicholas stripped off his shirt without fanfare, just like last time. This time, though, Pat was considerably better prepared, and didn’t waste time gaping before following suit. Neither did he hesitate when Nicholas turned and went through into the bedroom attached to the lab, where he proceeded to kick off his sneakers, drop his pants and sit on the bed in his boxers.

If Pat had suspected his fevered imagination had exaggerated Nicholas’ physique since the last time he’d been in a position to fully appreciate it… no. No, it hadn’t.

Pat fumbled a little as he hurried to unbutton his jeans and slide them down his legs along with his underwear. He could have made a bit of a show of it, he supposed, but the idea occurred to him too late, and then he couldn’t think of a way to make taking off his socks sexy.

“I’d like you to suck my cock, please,” Nicholas said evenly.

Oh, Pat thought. Yeah, of course he’d be back to that. Pat should have been expecting it, really.

And the thing was. Sure, in a perfect world, Pat would have preferred not to be impersonating a hooker while giving his first blowjob. That was bound to set the bar pretty high, right? But really, a luxurious suite in a mansion, with a stone-cold sober dude willing to pay thousands of thalers for Pat’s company… this was a lot closer to being a perfect world than a dim-lit, sticky and somewhat smelly bathroom in a frat house, with a handful of sticky and somewhat smelly frat guys. All in all Pat should probably be glad that everyone involved on the latter occasion had been so drunk they’d been forced to abandon the attempt due to lack of basic motor skills.

Plus, if you counted porn, Pat could actually claim heaps of experience. He bet watching porn counted as research for hookers. And how hard could it be, anyway?

“Sure thing.” Pat gave Nicholas a rakish grin. He’d been doing a lot of research lately; he’d be fine. “I can do that, no prob.”

“Thank you.” It came out flat, nearly without inflection. Nicholas’s expression was seriously odd, and it took Pat a moment to realize that the dude’s wide-eyed stare and prim little grin were his best attempt at an appealing smile.

Abruptly, Pat realized he was trying hard to be polite about asking for a blowjob. It was kind of absurd, but weirdly endearing at the same time. Sure, Nicholas’s stab at an apologetic smile looked more scary than anything, but Pat gave him full points for the ability to learn from his mistakes. He’d come a long way from ‘suck my dick, you little slut’.

Nicholas lost the boxers and arranged himself comfortably on the bed, hands behind his head. He wasn’t hard yet, but he
was
gorgeous, and Pat’s momentary uncertainty drowned in a surge of incredulous desire.