Pretty pretty baby, legs so damned long
Stop for a little bit, hear some of my song
You’ve got a twitch in your hips
Something sparkly in your hair
A twinkle in your eye
And not a damned care
Watch who you tease
Watch who you break
’Cause maybe one day
Gonna be your heart that aches
—Sweet Little Tease
“I THINK you broke me,” Damien gasped. “Bloody hell, Sionn.”
His blood stampeded through his veins, and he could feel his pulse in his ears. His chest couldn’t seem to move fast enough to draw a single full breath, and he was halfway convinced he’d snapped his knee in half. Or maybe his back. Either way, he wasn’t going to be moving any time soon.
“You were on the treadmill for fifteen minutes, you whining git.” Sionn leaned over him, his smile tinged with playful disgust. “And don’t think you’ll get any sympathy from me acting like you’re dying on the floor. It’s marble. You’re only lying there because it’s as cold as shite and you’re a damned sweaty mess.”
“If you loved me—”
“I love you enough to tell you to get your lazy ass up off the floor and into the shower, boyo.” Sionn nudged Damie with his toes. “And get out of the way so I can get a run in.”
“You just biked like….” His brain hurt trying to calculate how many miles Sionn could have done in the time it took him to get dressed, stretch, then run on the treadmill. “Like five hundred miles or something. What do you need the treadmill for?”
“Going to cool down,” Sionn said, stepping over him. “Go hit the shower, D. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
“Yeah, like I’m still going to be in the shower by the time you’re done hiking up the Alps,” Damien grumbled, rolling over onto his stomach.
Getting up was painful. Cramped up from hours of sitting in the van, Damien winced when his back complained louder than his legs. The treadmill was probably a good idea to loosen his muscles, but Damien wasn’t going to give Sionn the satisfaction of agreeing with him. Especially since he didn’t seem like he was going to be rushing to the shower.
“Do you need some help there, D?” Sionn didn’t even have the grace to sound breathless as his feet pounded along the treadmill.
“No, I’ve got it, asshole.” Staggering to his feet, Damien flashed Sionn a V and ignored Sionn’s hearty, boisterous laugh. “Yeah, funny. We’ll see how much you giggle when I pass out on you before you can get your rocks off, fucker.”
The hot water on his tortured body felt good, but not as good as the travertine tile under his bare ass. Damien felt every inch of the past two thousand miles in his bones and under his skin. Despite the brutal slog on the treadmill, he felt looser than when he’d walked into one of the hotel’s luxurious suites and stripped down to just a pair of briefs. The run pushed him to the very end of his limits, and soaking his sweat and stress from his skin seemed like the best way he could spend the evening.
Although it came in a far second to fucking Sionn, but Damien wasn’t sure he had the energy to even make it to the bed.
“We could fuck here,” he muttered to himself, examining the enormous glass-enclosed shower.
It was larger than most bedrooms, and the wraparound bench held an allure to it. There was even a handrail to hold on to if they needed it, and Damien debated testing it with a firm tug but gave up hope of ever lifting his arm again.
The place was discomforting, styled so much like his childhood home Damien half expected to find his father waiting with a switch around every corner. The delicate wood and brocade fauteuils in the sitting area were nearly an exact match for the ones he’d squirmed in while his father paced the study’s floor, berating Damien over the slightest of failures in his schoolwork or music. A missed note during practice merited a barrage of angry screaming. Flubbing a section meant not sitting down for a week without something soft underneath him.
Everything around him reminded him how small he’d been, how pushed into a corner and whipped until blood ran down the back of his legs and soaked into his socks. The heavy silver chargers under the fine porcelain plates were too much like the ones the housekeeper spent hours polishing to a sparkling sheen, only to have his father throw one at Damien’s head because he’d cleared his throat at the dinner table. Everywhere he looked the suite held echoes of nightmarish hours spent wondering when the next burst of pain would come or if the silence around him meant he was alone or simply being stalked.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when Sionn opened the shower door and stepped in.
“Jesus, warn a guy.” Damien sucked in a mouthful of steam from the jets blasting his back and legs. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“I think that’s from the running you did,” Sionn murmured, sliding around Damien to sit on the bench beside him. There was more than enough room for his lover to walk around. Hell, the damned stall was big enough to hold a tiny rave in, but Sionn seemed to take great delight in slithering his hard, toned body over Damien’s shaky legs.
Naked, Sionn made Damien’s mouth water. Or dry. Depending on what he had in mind. But it eventually led to one of them being on their back or stomach and both of them screaming each other’s name. Sionn’s flat belly was banded with muscle, and a faint sketch of hair caught at the water drops, turning them into tiny streams coursing down to Sionn’s sinewy thighs. His cock swung loose, cowled and dipping to the right. His balls were flushed pink and dappled with fine brown hair, rolling to the side when he sat down.
Everything about Sionn touched off every nerve in Damien’s body and set him to humming whenever Sionn was near. There were childhood nicks and scars on Sionn’s lightly tanned hands and arms, along with a few dings from battling kegs and rousting drunks. The scars on his knee from being blown out and rebuilt were cleaner than Miki’s, but then Sinjun’s injuries bordered on crippling while Sionn’s larger, healthier body shook off most of the damage as if it were nothing.
Damien knew better. There were days when Sionn ached, but suggestions he slow down were usually met with a slow smile and then a long, sensual lesson on how Sionn could still give as good as he got.
Sucking at Damien’s lower lip, he lengthened it into a kiss, then let go. Patting Damien’s leg, Sionn teased, “If you could call what you did there running.”
“I ran. And it got me nowhere but on my ass in the shower.” He wasn’t going to admit he felt better for doing it, even as his thighs ached. “And there are a lot of better places I could have put my ass.”
“That I’m not arguing, boyo.” Sionn laughed, turning the hot water up. “There’s quite a few places I’d rather have your ass than on a treadmill, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”
“That’s it. I’m a sacrifice for the great….” Damien eyed his lover. “What kind of fucked-up god do you guys have over in Ireland? One of the older ones. Like that thing that grabs you and drags you down into the water.”
“It scares me that you’ve got a tally of murdering spirits in your head, love.” Grabbing the plastic soap carrier he’d tossed in earlier, Sionn nodded at the long scrub cloth hanging on the rail near Damien’s shoulder. “Pass me that, will you?”
“Only if you promise to use it on me too.” Damien fought off a yawn, but it triumphed, cracking his jaw when he succumbed. The soap Sionn brought with him was a pungent, familiar rush of sweet citrus, vetiver, and cliché. Tossing the cloth into Sionn’s lap, he pulled a foot up off the tile floor and dramatically plopped it on Sionn’s thigh. “You know, I still can’t fucking believe you use Irish Spring. It’s so… who the hell uses Irish Spring?”
“I do. You do too when it’s around and all we’ve got in the shower. Besides, it’s nice,” Sionn protested lightly, lathering the cloth up, then grabbing Damien’s foot. “And it reminds me of you, Cowboy. Back when you were scraping up coins just to do laundry. All scruffy, worn down, and sexy. Kind of like you are right now.”
“Shit, don’t call me that. And that’s my favorite hat.”
“Yeah, I know. You look good in it, D,” Sionn said, winking. “And I love when that’s all you wear too.”
He was too old to be embarrassed, or so Damien told himself. Still, he couldn’t ignore the light heat working across his face and down his chest. Soap bubbles frothed over his foot where Sionn scrubbed. His lover slid his way up Damien’s leg, then did the other, gently working over his body until Damien was a slithering mess in Sionn’s hands.
He was also harder than the tile under their feet.
“Hey, babe, I’ve got to get some food in me. I haven’t eaten in… well, since the Hoover Dam.” Damien gasped when Sionn’s hands found the inside of his thighs. “You keep doing that, and I’m going to—”
“Just let me finish. Then you can complain some more.” Sionn bit at Damien’s thigh, sinking his teeth into the spot he’d just rinsed. His wet hair tickled Damien’s hip, and Sionn licked the spot, then bit again, working Damien’s skin between his teeth. “Sometimes, D, the only thing I’m hungry for is you.”
“Can’t believe you can taste food with the shit that comes out of your mouth, Murphy. I’ve heard Kane say that to Miki too. You guys just swap cheesy pick-up lines?” Damien tugged at Sionn’s hair, loving the feel of the silken wet strands between his fingers. “And I’m going to get heat stroke in here. And—”
“And there’s a bed out there. And room service,” Sionn said, tweaking Damien’s left nipple with his fingers. “So we should move.” Sionn circled Damie’s throbbing nipple with the tip of his tongue. “Out there. Where the bed is.”
Out there.
Outside of the steamed-up shower stall where the nightmare of his childhood lurked in every couch, rug, and sconce. Damie hated every damned pretentious, delicate curve of the chairs and loathed the tasteful flower arrangements sprouting up in every damned room like a floral fortress of solitude. The place was making him jumpy, wound up tighter than Miki when someone else’s fork strayed too close to his plate. Sionn’s hands on him were a distant sensation compared to the memory of his back’s skin being shredded, then having to mop up his own blood from the floor so the housekeeper didn’t find it when she came in the next morning.
The ink on his back couldn’t mask all of his scars, just like Damien ignoring the suite’s overblown gold, white, and brocade decorations couldn’t make it all disappear so he could focus on the one man who’d found his way into Damien’s heart. It was stupid and childish. His brain rebelled at the thought, but Damien was past arguing with his own mind. Logically, he should be able to handle anything the world threw at him. He fucking escaped from an asylum and a serial killer. A few couches shouldn’t even be a blip on his radar.
But they were.
“Can I ask you a favor, Sionn?” Damien caught up Sionn’s hands, stilling their journey over his ribs.
Sionn frowned and stroked Damien’s cheek with his thumb. “Yeah, love. What do you be needing?”
“Can we just….” He kissed Sionn’s thumb pad. It tasted of soap, Sionn, and the flat water only found in Las Vegas pipes. “Can we just get the fuck out of this room? This place gives me the creeps.”
THEIR NEW suite was smaller, but then the mini apartment they’d just left was bigger than a lot of clubs Sinners played when they were first starting out, so smaller was relative. Damien slung his bag onto the red velvet chaise at the end of the bed, then walked over to the window, taking a deep inhale of the cold canned air the hotel pumped through its ducts. A king bed was plumped and readied for them, the covers pulled down, and a towel swan squatted in the middle of the duvet, its beak slightly off-kilter from its hasty creation. There was a sitting area in the main room right off the entrance with a dining table large enough to seat four people. A peek through the bathroom door showed a shower much like the one they’d left behind, luxurious and massive enough for him and Sionn to shower together.
But not a damned faux-Rococo or fake Renaissance Revival piece in sight.
“I literally hate that I know what all that shit is,” he muttered at Las Vegas’s skyline. “Who the hell teaches their kid about furniture? Oh yeah, my sick asshole father.”
Off the strip, the city was mostly flat, racing out to the horizon in a cobweb of flashing lights. The windows were too thick for him to hear anything, but he could still feel the scrambling pulse of thousands of desperate souls dancing as fast as their devils could play. They’d come to stay for a few days, intending to hole up someplace where no one could find them and do nothing but eat, play music, and sleep.
Miki, for some reason, changed all of that, throwing Damien’s plan out the window, a piece of wadded-up paper soiled with the grease of their disparate personalities. But Sinjun definitely knew what he was doing, because he hadn’t heard a damned peep from the others in hours.
“You talking to yourself over there, boyo?” Sionn called out from the kitchen. “Think any of the guys are looking for us? Or can we call it a night?”
“I left messages with the guys that we were done for the night. I’d say it’s weird no one but Sinjun picked up, but I’ve spent weeks with those bastards, so I guess I can let their boyfriends have some time with them.” Remembering the dazed expression on Forest’s face when Connor bear-hugged him, Damien smirked. “They’re probably all having hot rock-star platypus sex on every flat surface in their rooms. I’ll be lucky if my rhythm section can walk by the time we head out.”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll be saying that about your lead guitarist too.”
His lover’s laugh warmed away the rest of the chill in Damien’s soul.
“Would you be wanting any of the leftovers? Or should I stash them in the fridge so housekeeping finds their dead, rotting corpses after we check out of here?”
“Nah, I’m good.” The air was still canned, but Damien found it easier to breathe. It became even easier when Sionn came up behind him, wrapped his arms around Damien, and rested his chin on Damien’s shoulder. “Yeah, I like your plan for the guitarist. He’s had it rough these past weeks. Probably could use a bit of down time.”
“Not to put too fine of a point on it, but I’m hoping for an up time.” Sionn’s low murmur was rich with the hint of rolling green hills and whiskey. “But right now, love, this is very nice. Even if I had to wait two hours before we had a place to sleep again. And then you ate chocolate cake in front of me.”
“You ate it too,” Damien pointed out. “Can’t believe you bitched at me because I wanted to eat dessert first.”
“It’s just not how things are done, love. Pudding comes after meat.” Sionn’s reflection in the glass grimaced at Damien. “I was all right with it until you started licking the cream from your fingers. Then… things got interesting. Pretty sure the waiter kept that serving plate of his in front of him to hide that hard-on you were giving him.”
“Left him a tip.” Damien leaned back, curving his body into Sionn’s. “A really good one. And please don’t say you’ll give me more than a tip.”
“Ah, Mitchell, you know me so well.”
“Did you miss the part where I’ve been stuck in a van with your best friend?” He stroked the fine hair on Sionn’s forearm, reveling in the tickle on his palm. “Man, do I have a few stories about you in high school. Rafe can talk for days. And does.”
“Talking. We should be doing less of it, because I’ve got to tell you, D,” Sionn whispered. “I’m kind of hoping I’ll not be walking too well either.”
DAMIEN WOKE up screaming.
Or at least he tried to.
His mouth was open, throat straining to break past the thick membrane of sleep, but there was no sound. No anything but a pitch-black pressing in on him and his past unleashing a herd of nightmares to ravage the already muddied landscape of his broken mind.
The dark clung to him, wrapping him tight and oozing into his mouth until he choked on the gloom around him. Phantom searing pains slashed across his back, legs, and chest, his body jerking at the flashes of heat his skin remembered all too well.
“A ghra.” A thin silvery thread wrapped around the tentacles of fear shoving their way down Damien’s throat and yanked at the stygian terrors. “Damien love, wake up. God in Heaven, please.”
Damie’s world shook, rattling his bones and rapping at his skull. His breath was being stolen away, shoved out of his lungs by the rapacious tendrils his mind sent out. The fight to survive the attack was real, a betrayal of thoughts buried so long ago Damien’d thought they were dead.
Instead they were merely stewing in the hatred and violence that forged them, waiting for a moment when Damien’s walls cracked and they could push through, intent on sucking his will to live until it was nothing more than dust on his soul.
“Damien.” A familiar voice urged him to follow its brightness. “Wake up!”
He surfaced, breaking the sticky black bubble encasing him in his dreams. Grabbing onto Sionn’s voice, Damien forced himself up out of the tar he was drowning in. The air he sucked in was stale, deader than what he’d shoved out of his lungs, but at its edges he found Sionn.
His lover smelled of his damned soap and the sex they’d had, a sweaty, messy romp where they’d run out of lube and fell asleep midcuddle. Sionn was solid under Damien’s hands, a buoy he could cling to in the storm of his panic. A single blink, forced but necessary, and the inky shroud covering him fell away, leaving only Sionn and the lingering sandpaper feeling of drying fear in his chest.
“I’m good,” Damien gasped, stroking his trembling fingers across Sionn’s worried face. “Awake now. I’m good.”
There was enough light to see, a bleed from the still-churning Strip despite the early-morning hour. They’d forgotten to close the drapes or hadn’t really cared if anyone saw them fucking, Damien was never sure which, but it was something to bother him now. Sex was a celebration. This fear—his fear—was a haunting too intimate for him to bare to the world.
“Close… can we close the curtains?” Damien struggled to sit up. His legs and torso were trapped in the bed linens, and he couldn’t find an end to begin unraveling himself.
“Stay there,” Sionn ordered softly as he got up. “I’ll be getting the curtains and some water for you. You going to be okay while I’m gone?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” His stomach hurt, and Damien tried to swallow around what seemed like the mouthful of sand he had in his throat. The bedroom fell back into shadows, but they were softer, warmer than the hard-edged ice he’d woken from. There was still enough light to see, a faint hint of gold coming from the windows in the next room, but the dimness helped soften the worry aging Sionn’s face. Smiling brightly, Damien said, “Water’s good. I could use water.”
His dreams were whispers, half-seen and barely heard nothings lingering at his memory’s horizon. Damien didn’t want to chase them. It would be a futile trip to the edge of an abyss he’d stared down more times than he cared to count. Suppressing the urge to shower the creep of sweat from his body, Damie pulled his legs up and waited for Sionn to come back.
Sionn came back with tea. Scalding, delicious-smelling English breakfast hot enough to scald the sweet off of a virgin’s tongue and sugary enough to convince the Devil he’d gotten his wings back.
“God love you,” Damien whispered, taking the dish-towel-wrapped mug. “God just fucking love you for the rest of your life for bringing me this.”
“That’s what I love about you, D.” Sionn chuckled, climbing into bed next to Damien. “You’re a slut for a good steeped leaf.”
“Sometimes you just need tea.” His first sip was a brief slurp of molten heaven. “Must be a genetic thing, because for as much as I love coffee, there’s nothing like a good black tea.” Another sip and Damien sighed. “Thank you, Murphy. For… everything.”
The concern tightened Sionn’s gentle smile, and he nodded curtly. “How about you get some of that in you, and then you tell me what’s got you screaming in your dreams.”
“It’s Sinjun’s nightmares. They’re contagious.”
He tried a laugh, but its acidic hiss only succeeded in creasing Sionn’s brow further.
“No, really—”
“I don’t mind you lying to yourself, D,” Sionn said gently. “But don’t you be lying to me. Not after everything we’ve gone through and probably some shite we’ll be going through in the future too. Don’t you be cheapening us with some tinfoil lies you’ve got on that silver tongue of yours.”
Music was easier than words. Sure, he could talk nearly anyone into doing what he needed, but if there was one thing Damien couldn’t do it was speak for himself. The darkness helped. The feel of Sionn’s fingers down his naked back went a long way in stilling his jangled nerves. But his tongue lay thick and still in his mouth, a heavy, damp lump unable to form a single word to explain away the ghosts he dredged up in his sleep.
“I don’t know where to start,” he confessed. Biting back the sour rising over this tongue, Damien shook his head. “I don’t know, Sionn.”
“How about if you start with why we had to move rooms. That’s as good a place as any,” he suggested, his hand trailing down Damien’s spine, caressing each bump. “Because that’s not something normal, D. And don’t talk to me about the spoiled-rocker crap you pulled on the front desk. You didn’t give one shit about the view.”
“It was the whole fucking place, Sionn.” That was the best he could come up with, and Sionn’s hand stilled. Once he started, Damien found he couldn’t stop talking, and he caught himself stumbling over the words pouring out of him. “I don’t know if I am just really worn out or what, but it was like pieces of my life were coming up out of my childhood and slapping at me. I couldn’t look at anything in that suite without flashing back to when I was a kid, you know?
“Every bloody shadow in the hall was suddenly my dad, waiting for me to go into his study or the living room so he could beat the shit out of me because I tied my shoes the wrong way or didn’t write my name neat enough on a fricking test. I couldn’t fucking breathe in that house… or in that room, Sionn.”
His hands began to shake, and Sionn took the mug out of Damien’s hand and set it on the nightstand.
“I don’t feel real when everything around me is thousand-dollar chairs and silverware on gold plates. It’s why I like the warehouse. Shit, probably why I love you and Sinjun. You feel real to me.”
“We love you too, D. So long as you know that, yeah?”
Sionn pulled Damien into his arms, an ungainly wrap of limbs and skin, but Damien reveled in the heat of his lover’s body and the comforting brush of Sionn’s lips on his cheek.
“You know you don’t have to be afraid to talk to me, D. Anything you need out from your soul, you can depend on me to help you muck it out.”
“Most of the shit there is caked on and dried, Sionn. And it’s what I’m standing on. I don’t think there’s anything good under there to dig out.” He curled up in Sionn’s embrace, bathed in Sionn’s warm breath and soft words. “I lived in my dad’s toy box, babe. He took me out and pulled me apart whenever he was bored.”
“And your mum?”
“Mom. My mom kind of floated around the place, drunk off her ass and buying these spindly fucking gold chairs, like if she made the horror show we lived in prettier, no one would see the blood on the floor.” He exhaled, hard. “That penthouse? It was like being right back there, Sionn. It’s why I don’t like staying at fancy hotels or eating dinners where I need escargot tongs. There wasn’t a silver spoon in my mouth when I was born. That metal taste was a loaded gun shoved past my lips, and my dad’s finger was always on the trigger, squeezing.”
“You’re safe from that now, love. No one’s ever going to do that to you again.”
“Babe, I love you, but that’s exactly what they did when they put me in that loony bin and told everyone I was dead. That was just another little box where they could poke at me whenever they wanted to. Look at the mind games my uncle and dad pulled on me.” He bit down at the anger growing in his gut. “They paid a couple of people to pretend to be my parents. Tried to convince me I wasn’t even me. He wasn’t happy with just locking me up, Sionn. He had to unmake me, fuck with me so much I couldn’t even be sure of even Sinjun. I can’t go back into that kind of box and not feel him beating me down, Sionn.”
“Staying in motels with roaches the size of a dog doesn’t fix that, D.” Sionn laughed at Damien’s disgusted snort. “It doesn’t, but I can see where you’d be wanting something earthier. And as that earthier something, I’m glad for it.”
“I wanted to do this trip with the guys because I really fucking needed to feel like this was genuine. It’s because you guys make me feel like I’m not some goddamned wooden boy puppet who can’t get anything right. With you guys I’m not my dad’s goddamned Pinocchio. Although Miki says he’s the puppet, he ain’t got shit on me.” Damien grinned despite the chill in his blood. “I like the bad food and the long drives because I know at the end of it, I get to climb up on a stage and play with some of the best fucking guys there are to be with. Then when it’s all said and done, I get to crawl home and have you. I’ll take that over a plate of escargot any day, Sionn. Any fucking day.”
“Just one thing wrong with that, D,” Sionn drawled slowly.
“What’s that?” Damien sniffed.
“You never have to wait to crawl home to have me, love,” his lover said, lowering Damien into the pillows, then covering him with his long, hard body. “Whether I’m there by your side or not, you’ll always have me with you. Every fucking day.”