“What?” Kane growled.
The singer yawned and squeaked a little kittenish noise. “Thanks for… everything. For being here. Shit, for making me dinner. It was a good dinner.”
Neither one of them mentioned their interrupted kiss, but the memory of Miki’s tongue lapping at his mouth simmered in Kane’s brain.
“You’re welcome.” He reached up to tangle his fingers into Miki’s thick hair, drawing the strands away from the man’s sharp cheekbones. “You’re supposed to be asleep, remember?”
“It’s kind of weird. You being in bed. I’ve never slept with anyone,” Miki rasped. “Well, Damie when we were first touring, but that doesn’t count. We didn’t have money for separate rooms, so we’d rent one with two queen beds. Johnny kicks in his sleep. Dave lost the rock-paper-scissors, so he got stuck with him.”
Kane sighed and edged forward, wishing he could somehow take away the bruises in Miki’s heart. The man sighed and laid his hand over Kane’s, shuffling his body away from the wall and closer to Kane’s heat. It wasn’t the time to tell Miki about the fallout from the leaked photos, not when he was wrapped up and sleepy. Kane stroked Miki’s face with his thumb and the singer practically purred under his touch. The kitten noises coming from Miki’s parted lips made Kane’s cock stand up and take notice and when Miki’s knee edged against Kane’s thigh, he had to close his eyes briefly and take a deep breath to calm his dick down.
“I’m not sure I won anything. D talked in his sleep.” Miki grimaced. “He mumbled some nasty things I didn’t think anyone could do in bed.”
“It was always you and Damien then?” Losing Damien probably drove Miki to the edge of his sanity, and Kane still wasn’t sure the singer hadn’t fallen off that particular cliff.
“Yeah, always me and D.” Miki laughed. “Dave called us the Prince and the Pauper. I didn’t know it was a book until he said something. I always thought it was a Mickey Mouse cartoon.”
“Mark Twain wrote it.” Kane chuckled. “You guys didn’t look anything alike.”
“Never said we were the sharpest spoons in the drawer. It’s ’cause he was rich and, well, I was shit Chinatown ghetto,” he replied. “Damie was the smart one between the four of us. I never graduated high school. He went to college when he was like fourteen and got some degree in music.”
“But you wrote a lot of Sinner’s Gin’s songs.”
“He liked what I had to say.” Miki’s shrug was barely discernible in the faint light. “D used to say I wrote good music because I didn’t know what the rules were when I started. What’s the saying? Put a thousand monkeys in front of typewriters and eventually one of them writes Shakespeare? That’s what I told him.”
“Did he tell you to shut up?”
“Yeah. Kind of. Mostly it was, ‘suck my dick, Sinjun, and fucking take the compliment.’” A grumbling, soft woof came from the floor near the foot of the bed. “He let me get stoned out on music. I’d want to listen to things and pick them apart. Damie was good like that. He’d let me talk everything out until I was too tired to go anymore.”
Kane didn’t need Miki to say he missed his best friend. The heartbreaking loss in the man’s voice was evident.
“Johnny and Dave, they were my friends, but Damie, he was my brother. Tonight, when you and Connor were together, I thought ‘that’s what me and D were like.’” Miki smiled. “Except Damie was more of a smartass than Connor. Johnny used to say God gave Damien a big dick to balance out how big of an asshole he was.”
“Well, that theory explains Connor’s dick.” Kane chuckled. “Horses are jealous of him.”
They lay there, simply breathing, and for a moment, Kane thought Miki had fallen back asleep. Then the man looked up and sighed. “I miss D. You’d miss your brothers, wouldn’t you?”
“Hell yeah.” He nodded. “Quinn for sure. He’s younger than me. We’re close. Connor’s always been the big badass in the family, but I’d miss him. He used to kick the shit out of me when I stepped out of line when we were kids. I think Braeden and Ian are scared to death of him.”
“He’s a cop too, right? Connor?”
“Yeah, he’s SWAT, ’cause being a regular cop wasn’t hardcore enough for him.” Kane’s fingers stilled, resting on the curve of Miki’s face. “The twins just made junior inspector now, and Ian’s in the academy. He’ll graduate probably next year. Braeden’s the freak. He’s a fireman. Ryan’s the baby. Mom’s hoping she goes out and gets a real job like Quinn.”
“Way too many kids.” Miki wrinkled his nose.