“She’s a menace,” Connor agreed. “But she’ll do the job. Kiki’ll find who did this.”
They sat together in silence, and for a moment, Forest could pretend Connor was there for more than just an oddly constructed, misplaced friendship. He promised himself he wouldn’t relax, wouldn’t depend on the man, but when he dug his hands out of the now toasty covers, Connor’s fingers found his, and Forest’s heart skipped into a rattle a hyped-up electro drum would envy.
It was stupid that Connor’s skin on his made his cock thick and hard.
It was damned fucking lucky the blankets hid it, because from what Forest could feel, the hospital gown they’d given him to wear wasn’t good for hiding anything other than maybe his belly button, and even that was suspect.
“Thanks, really. For everything,” Forest ventured softly. “You’ve done so damned much. You really don’t have to stay. I mean—”
“I want to stay, Forest,” Connor murmured, and his fingers moved, tightening over Forest’s in a slow, seductive dance of sliding skin and rasping glides. “I’m going to stay. Maybe even after you tell me to get the fuck out, I’ll be here.”
“And here you told me I couldn’t have you.” He laughed it off—that feeling of dreadful hope he’d buried every time it stuck its head out of his soul. Forest couldn’t risk it spreading, not if he wanted his heart to survive Connor walking away.
“Yeah, I was wrong about that,” Con whispered, shattering Forest’s mind as he leaned forward and kissed the corner of Forest’s mouth before murmuring, “You’ll have me, a ghra, for as long as you need me and maybe even long beyond that.”
Chapter 11
Hey D, you ever notice we don’t write any songs about God?
I don’t think God’s been paying us much attention there, dude.
Really, maybe. But for all the shit things that hit us, life’s been okay. Good even. Sionn. Kane. Hell, even Brigid when she’s not too fucking crazy. Kane says he thanks God for me all the time. Kinda nice to be in there, you know?
Oh, is that what I’m hearing when he’s screaming in the middle of the night, Oh fucking God? A prayer? Shit, and here I’ve been thinking you’ve been getting some.
—Rooftop Writing Session
IT’D BEEN definitely a kiss. Forest was damned sure of it. It didn’t last long. And when the damned cheerful smiling woman with her white buck teeth burst in just as Forest was about to take a breath to ask for another, Connor was shoved aside and a long needle was plunged into Forest’s unsuspecting IV, sending him off into la-la land before he could tell her to get the fuck out.
If anything, he was more pissed off he hadn’t gotten a good taste of the man before the drugs took him under, and when morning hit, as bright and sunny as that damned nurse, he didn’t have it in him to ask Connor what the hell happened.
Because Forest suspected he’d been crazy from the pain, and he’d hallucinated the whole thing.
He’d been released into Connor’s care, and there’d been a quick chat about getting Forest’s things. Problem was, Forest didn’t know where exactly he and his things were supposed to be going. Hazy from the mild confusion he’d woken up with, he’d been lost in his thoughts for what seemed like an instant, but suddenly, the Hummer was pulling up in front of the Amp.
Now, instead of being able to grill Connor like he’d hoped, the world seemed to be crawling with Morgans, and he couldn’t really open up to the one he actually wanted to talk to. Two redheads and a couple of tall black-haired men. He counted four people, and then another man popped out of the back of the building. From a distance, he looked to be the other detective Forest met earlier, a supposition kind of confirmed when Kiki, the younger of the two redheads, ambled over to talk to him about something.
The building was a mess. Someone’d covered the front with plywood, but the whole building seemed to be wreathed in crime-scene tape. The two detectives he knew were stomping around the perimeter, debating something, from what Forest could see. The others milled about, and the taller of the two men spotted Connor’s Hummer, saying something unintelligible, but it caught everyone’s interest, and they turned, en masse, to stare at the vehicle.
Then they began to move toward it like a zombie herd drawn to an all-you-can-eat brain buffet.
It was like watching a scene from the Ten Commandments or a live-action D&D game with a cleric turning the undead. Connor held up his hand and shook his head. As one, the shambling horde stopped, then slowly backed away. Forest wondered if he could get Con to show up for studio sessions, because if it was one thing he hated, it was gathering up musicians when it was time to play. They were like the mindless dead. Or close enough.