Melting Point (2 page)

chapter two

G
AGE HAD KNOWN
Brady would be here, but knowing didn't prepare him for how his chest muscles locked up like he needed a tetanus shot. Three weeks ago, Darcy had asked if it was okay to invite the surly chef—“I won't if it would hurt you to see him”—and Gage had waved off her concerns. It wasn't as if they had been together for a long time. Barely a month, the word
together
a complete mischaracterization. Like calling Velveeta real cheese. Or saying you were from Chicago when you were born, raised, and would likely shuffle off the mortal coil in bumblefuck Lombard.

His brain just had to go there. Merely thinking of the shit he had to deal with out in the burbs made his palms itch and his heart jackhammer.

Not Brady Smith.

Tonight he was rocking the Bratva enforcer look to perfection. Jeans tight enough to mold his ass perfectly, a black tee that stretched taut against his powerful chest. And those tattoos?
Dayum.
Every time Gage saw his ink—the Scoville heat scale for peppers on his left arm, the colorful sleeve of bird feathers on his right, that smoke curl tat at the base of his close-cropped skull—heated tingles tripped across his skin.

At least Brady would keep his distance. He'd played it so chill between them before that there was no good reason why tonight would be any diff—
shit.
Here he comes.
Good thing Gage had this block of wood hiding his . . . block of wood.

“Hey,” Brady said.

“Hey, yourself.”

Brady picked up the special cocktail menu Gage had designed and studied it like it was a complicated contract where the sale of his soul was up for negotiation.

“Hear the Cock-Sucking Cowboy's a winner.”

“Sorry, all out.”

Brady put the menu down with an expelled breath, all resources for making small talk apparently exhausted. The angry scar tissue on the right side of his face, the zigzags Gage had dreamed of stroking and kissing, drew tight in a frown.

“We're probably not going to run into each other much,” Brady said with a sidelong look at Darcy, their common denominator. “But when we do, I'd hope we could be—”

“Friends?”

“Friendly.”

For real?
Brady wanted him to be friendly about the fact Gage had chased him for six weeks and, when he finally caught him, when he told Brady he'd be fine with taking it slow and making sure he was coloring inside the lines with all Brady's fucking rules, the big chef still freaked out. Because Gage pushed for
a date.

Leaning his elbows on the bar, he drew close enough to see those gold circles, like dying embers, around Brady's irises. He had once thought his espresso-colored eyes were plain, emotionless, but that was all wrong. Those eyes, fringed with thick, velvety lashes, were barely contained weather systems that could turn heated and frigid by turns. To cap it all off, the man had to go and smell good with it. Maybe it was the spices from the kitchen at Smith & Jones combined with pheromones. Whatever it was, Brady had it going on.

Gage dialed up smile number four in his arsenal—killer cool, but friendly with it. “Like you said, we probably won't be running into each other. You're more likely to come across me on one of those dumb billboards.”

Two spots of color lit high on Brady's cheekbones. Was that a blush? Ah, hell. Just when Gage thought the guy had struck the hard limit of ways to turn him on.

“Well, uh, it was good to see you.” The words ran together in Brady's Louisiana accent, a heady brew of warm syrup and bayou heat.

“Likewise, Chef.”

Brady stalked off to play strong 'n' silent to Darcy's chatterbox while Gage spent five seconds too long admiring that Southern-fried ass. Someone bumped against his hip. Gage turned to find his sister Alex doing the are-you-okay blink with those big green eyes of hers.

“I
know
you're wearing that dumb hat because it makes
cock-sucking cowboy
sound even more filthy.”

“Every master needs his props.” Laughing off his bad humor, he threw an arm around his closest sib. With her chocolate curls and cat's eyes, she was easily the most stunning woman he knew, but her temper frequently landed her in trouble and had potential suitors clutching their balls. To add flavor to her already-complicated-life soup, she'd had a hard time of it lately after a video of her slicing and dicing a VIP citizen's car during a rescue run went viral.

She sighed and settled in the crook of his shoulder. “Thinking that going lesbionic might be the next logical step.”

“Nah, society has too hard a time believing in lesbian sex. How does it work? Who plays the man? Do they
both
wear strap-ons?” He held her tight while her shoulders shook with laughter. “Worry not, fair sister o' mine. One day you'll find a prince you can crush underfoot.”

She arched a dark eyebrow at his cocksure confidence. “You can get anyone except the one guy you want. I've got all the dicks on Facebook trying to ‘friend' me since that video. Why can't it be easy? Are we that ugly?”

“Me and ugly have never appeared in the same sentence.”

“Losers, then.”

“Getting warmer.”

“Yet, I think there's hope for you.” She nodded unsubtly in Brady's direction. “Guy still has it bad.”

Gage let his gaze wander to where Brady stood talking to Darcy and Beck. More like being “talked at” by Darcy. Communication was not one of Brady's strong points, but during those few brief weeks of not-dating, he'd managed to string together enough sentences to detail his rules:

No kissing Brady (except Brady's lips could go where they pleased).

No touching Brady (but Brady could stroke his hands all over Gage's body).

Most important, no asking Brady questions about his time in the Marines.

Alex narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what the problem was again.”

“He wanted to give me endless orgasms and insisted I not return the favor.”

“Sounds awful.”

Yep. Anyone else would be celebrating his big win in the all-you-can-come lottery, but Gage was left feeling like a blow-up doll.

So the chef had a few intimacy issues. Being captured and tortured by Afghan terrorists and losing a member of your team in the process would throw any man's world out of whack. Gage got it. He had two brothers who were former Marines and had been out-and-out assholes for a few months after they'd returned stateside. But this had happened to Brady six years ago, and he was still letting it rule his life.

Impatient with the pace, Gage had pushed back. He wanted to kiss Brady from that close-shaved head to his Doc Martens–covered toes, and then maybe go see a fucking movie together.

“He's not interested in a relationship, sis.” He broke out his devil-don't-care grin. “Hey,
I'm
not interested in a relationship.” Or, not one that took so much work.

But hell if his body agreed with that. Hell if his body wouldn't relish the work because the reward—Brady begging for the pleasure only Gage could give him—would be the sweetest payday of all. Shit, Gage wanted Brady more than he'd ever wanted anything.

It was his weakness, how much he craved affection, anything to prove he was loved. Take the kid of a drug-addicted religious zealot who did everything in her power to force her baby boy into the light, and was it any wonder Gage would seek out a different kind of warmth? Between the sheets had always been the perfect place to find it.
Love my body, love all of me.
But with Brady . . . he could be in real trouble with this guy.

Gage really needed an orgasm that involved another person. Maybe multiple other persons. He tweaked one of Alex's springy curls. “You want to hit a club after this and play my winggirl?”

“While there's nothing I love more than watching you work your sex wizardry on unwitting gay Muggles, I can't. On shift tomorrow.” She nodded to the speakers set up on the other side of the patio. “Maybe we can create our own dance par-
tay
.”

“I like your thinking.”

Five minutes later, they'd moved a couple of the picnic tables back and created a mini dance floor. Getting down outside felt weird at first, but soon everyone was touched by the Holy Spirit of Dance and was making Club Dempsey the place to be. Gage let his body undulate, tried to lose himself in the music.

He had never been shy about showcasing his talents: great body, stellar ass, enough swagger to fell all the pretty boys in Boystown. He twisted and turned with the cowboy hat shading his eyes, enjoying how the cover allowed furtive looks at Brady. His hulking shape loomed near the bar chatting—shocker—with Gage's oldest brother, Wyatt. The two least talkative people on the planet and as yet, no fissures leading to hell had cracked open the ground beneath their feet.

A split-second flicker confirmed that those eyes as dark as sin had zeroed in on Gage shaking his thang. Satisfied he'd made his point, Gage turned away.

This ass could have been yours, big guy. Need it and weep.

chapter three

“I
'M SORRY, MR. SMITH,
but I can't let you leave by yourself. Hospital policy requires a patient with a suspected concussion be signed into the care of another responsible adult.”

Brady glared scalpels at the officious discharge nurse at Northwestern Memorial's ER, who was doing a really, really suckass job of discharging him. He'd like to tell her where to shove her hospital policy. Or where that stapler on her desk could find a new home.

The painkillers they had dosed him with a half hour ago were finally clicking in, pretty high-grade stuff that dulled the pain in his shoulder and his head to achy throbs. In twenty years of bike riding, he'd never had an accident on the hog. This morning, heading back from the farmers' market, he'd taken a virgin dive. Nothing too serious, but his reward for his dumbassery was a sore head, bruised ribs, flayed skin, and a dislocated right shoulder. His chopping arm, of course.

As a chef, he was constantly burning himself, and he usually felt nothing. He'd forgotten how much a dislocated shoulder, a dislocated anything, hurt. Now all he wanted to do was go home, knock back more pills, and shower off the puddle of rainwater he'd been introduced to in true insult-to-injury style.

And wasn't that going to be a total fucking joy?

His cell phone vibrated in the hand not currently bound by a sling.

Help is on the way.

Darcy.
Sa-weet.
But because he didn't like how that nurse was lording it over him, he got in another dig. “I'm pretty sure I can walk out of here and you can't stop me, Nurse Ratched.”

Up rose the pissy eyebrow. “And I'm pretty sure I can knock you on your ass, Tattoo Boy.”

A chuckle washed over him, a sound so familiar it raised gooseflesh all over Brady's body.

“You tell him, Gladys. Don't let Tattoo Boy give you any lip.”

Brady didn't need to turn—would've hurt anyway—because Gage had sidled up to lean on the counter, gifting the world of medicine with his sun-blasted grin. And the world went gaga right back. The entire nurses' station reacted as if the Messiah had descended carrying a bottle of Château Lafite 1787 and a tray of chocolate cupcakes.

“Gage, honey child!”

“Baby, we've missed you!”

“My cousin is looking for a date for his friend's gay wedding. You guys would be awesome together!”

While Gage grinned like a doofus under his halo, Brady chanced a peek. Only a week since Darcy and Beck's engagement party, and the guy had become hotter in the interim. Because that was fair. Standard-issue CFD tee, dark-wash jeans, dirty blond hair looking a little mussed like he'd just fallen out of bed.

Maybe someone else's bed.

Brady's heart twanged at the thought, though it had no goddamn right to. He'd given up all claim when he'd told Gage it was over before it had even started.

Done with the homage, Jesus H. Simpson turned back to Brady, his good humor pinned on that sickeningly handsome face. A hint of smoke on Gage's skin traced the air between them and curled through Brady's blood.

“Darcy,” Brady muttered.

“Yep. She's stuck in the burbs doing a custom ink job for a bachelorette party. Lots of roses and hearts, apparently.”

“And you drew the short straw.”

“Uh-huh. What happened?”

“Just me bein' a dumbass.”

“The bike in better shape than you, Chef Dumbass?”

Brady rolled his lips in to hide his grin. “Slightly. Towed to the shop.”

“So still a chance that one day I'll get to feel all that power between my legs?”

Ignoring that and the heated flush Gage's provocative words created, Brady glared at Gladys and thumbed at Gage. “This is my ride.”

The nurse gave a sweet-as-rotting-fruit smile. “And aren't you the lucky one, Tattoo Boy?”

Nope. Brady Smith and luck had never been on speaking terms.

G
AGE HAD ALMOST
had a heart attack.

He'd just returned home from his shift at Engine Company 6 and had made it to
bedgasm imminent
with a slide beneath cool, eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton—Gage did not skimp on bed linens—when the text came in from Darcy.

Brady's been in
an accident. Call me ASAP.

No doubt the little witch had purposefully led with the drama, hoping to provoke a reaction. Nicely played, Darcy Cochrane, thy evil plan hath worked.

Gage had jumped into the truck and was careening around the first corner before realizing he didn't even know which hospital he was headed to. By the time he got to the Northwestern ER, he knew everything was okay, but the relief that deluged him on seeing that Brady was upright had still pissed Gage off in the extreme. Now here he was toting Brady's scuffed-up leather jacket, a bag of pain meds, and a distinct case of I-wish-I-could-quit-you. That amazing view of Brady's ass as he climbed the stairs to his loft in the West Loop was not helping in the slightest, either.

Get a grip on your dick, Simpson.
All Gage had to do was make sure Brady was comfortable and hightail it out of there before . . . before what? It wasn't as if Brady was going to do or say anything that would give Gage an iota of encouragement. He'd made it clear. They were a nonentity. Not even friends, just friendly, and barely that. Gage was doing a favor for Darcy, that's all.

“When's the last time you took a pain pill?” Gage asked as soon as they stepped inside. He cursed the impatience that colored his voice.

“About an hour ago.”

“Then you'll have to wait another three.” The space hadn't changed in the five or so weeks since he'd come over last, the night he walked out in a huff. On the walls were food posters, those French ones everyone had in college, but these were framed, and because there were so many of them, they looked classy against the terra-cotta brick. Still just that one ratty tweed armchair, the softest spot in the wide-open loft that had as many hard edges as the man before him.

You know what that solitary armchair said?
I don't need anyone,
that's what.

He put the meds on the kitchen island and the jacket over the seat of a high stool. Duty performed. Time to go and catch some z's before he made the weekly trek out to beautiful suburban Lombard. Oh joy.

Except Brady had this look about him like he wanted to say something.

“What?” Gage asked, crossing his arms.

Brady shrugged and winced, forgetting his injury. Any other time, Gage would be smiling at how cute that was, but right this minute? Not feeling it.

“Brady, spill it.”

“I need to take a shower, but I'm guessin' it's gonna hurt like a mother to take my shirt off.”

“Duh. You dislocated your shoulder, fuckwit.”

One hundred percent cocoa eyes clashed with Gage's silver-blues. There was a moment between them, a sizzle of realization that shit was about to change. During those few weeks of blowjobs-for-one, Gage had never once seen this man with his shirt off. He had subsisted on brief glimpses of the guy's tatted arms, the flash of skin on his neck, the lickable triangle at his throat. Like some
Masterpiece Theatre
show where a guy got all overcome with the sight of a girl's stockinged ankle.

“Come on then.” Gage walked toward the bathroom, torn between impatience to get this shit over with and annoyance at how excited the prospect of half-nekkid Brady made him. He turned the shower on. Brady had one of those awesome deals with a multitude of knobs running the gamut from “rain forest” to “I didn't need all that skin anyway.” Touch the wrong thing and there goes the Eastern seaboard.

Turning, he found Brady hovering at the bathroom's threshold, looking like there actually was a threat of nuclear annihilation in his future. Heat rushed to Gage's groin at the thought of seeing his guy—no,
this
guy—naked for the first time.

For fuck's sake, the guy's hurt. How about reining in your inner horn dog?

“C'mere.”

Brady approached, those dark, sinful eyes wide and wary.

“You know I'm an EMT. I can make this less painful for you.” Gage could—
woul
d
—be a professional about this. Unhooking the sling gently, he laid it on the vanity, then slipped his fingers under the hem of Brady's tee. A few inches up, and Brady grimaced. “Hurts?”

Mr. Macho shook his head.

“Got scissors?”

“Right-hand drawer.”

Gage held them up. “Much easier this way.”

Brady nodded and snagged his teeth on his bottom lip so it emerged moist. Gage choked back a groan. Keep that up and Brady was going to find himself bent over that sink, jeans at his ankles, with Gage sliding deep into his hot a—
now where were we
?

He started to slice through the fabric, forging a path from Brady's abs to his chest. With each inch revealed, Gage's pulse quickened. Skin, muscle, ink—all of it blurred as Gage cut to the neck and peeled the shirt off Brady's good side. Then carefully removed it off his injured shoulder.

Hot.
Daaamn.

The man was built, which Gage had known from how his clothes molded to him like a second skin, but shirtless, he was mytho-freaking-logical. Sculpted muscles from lugging stockpots and sacks of Idahos, elaborated with vibrant ink over his chest, drew Gage's greedy gaze. Darcy's artistry was on full display here: the military tats he expected, memorializing Brady's time spent in the service, but more surprising was a fully worked-up wolf across his shoulder. Nobility and danger in one striking, badass image.

Everywhere Gage looked, his fingers itched to touch and his brain raced to keep up. A snake coiled beneath Brady's right pec, an eagle took flight over his left. Stars, numbers, and Celtic symbols fought for real estate. Gage would need weeks to explore the storied terrain of Brady's body.

Better put in for some vacation time now.

Even with the protection Brady's leather jacket and T-shirt had provided him in the accident, his entire right side was red and raw. He must have hit the street at a good clip, but the present injury couldn't hide the past. Healed-over scarring from burns, likely chemical. Those al-Qaeda fucks.

Gage's heart snapped in half. Is this what had kept him so distant during those borrowed moments together? Did he think this made him less attractive to Gage? Less of anything? Not nearly done with his survey, he figured it was rude to stare, so he raised his eyes. Brady's color was high, a deep flush of . . . oh, God, shame.

Unacceptable.

“Brady. You are fucking beautiful.”

“I'm a fuckin'
de'pouille,
” Brady grunted. “That's Cajun for one hot mess.” His broad chest lifted on a jerky inhale, the wolf with it as though gearing up to strike. “Guess you've seen all sorts. In your job.”

“In my job. In my bed. But I've never seen you.”

And here you are. So close and still a million miles away.

Brady considered him, a typhoon of emotion swirling in his eyes. “This is your fault.”

“What is?”

“Why I crashed the bike.”

“Thought it was because you were being a dumbass.”

Brady looked at Gage like he was the dumbass. “I was on the way home from the Green City farmers' market but I took a detour over to Western and Diversey. There's something—someone—over there I like to check in on every now and then.”

Gage's heart dropped and started a sick, dizzy spin. Was the guy serious? Was he really forcing Gage to stick around playing nurse and making stilted conversation so he could talk about some new piece of ass?

Those dark pools with the gold-striped flare stared back at him. “It's you.”

“It's me what?”

“What . . . well, who I was checking in on. Your fucking billboard.”

If a packed-to-the-gills clown car had rolled through at that moment, Gage could not have been more surprised.

“I take a spin over there on occasion. I don't park or anythin'—I mean,
that
would be pathetic.” A shy grin bloomed on his face.

The drugs. It had to be the drugs.

“Usually I have my move down if I'm not stopped at a light. Drive by, look up, one, two, eyes back on the road, but today I was more distracted than usual.”

Gage was having trouble dragging air into his lungs. There was no oxygen. No existence outside this moment.

There was only Brady.

“Thought I knew that billboard inside out. Every patch of skin, every bead of sweat, that fuck-me look in your eyes. But this morning, I saw something I hadn't seen before.”

Thunder in Gage's chest beat like surf in his ears and the next word he managed sounded like it came from someone ten feet behind him. “What?”