Whiskey and Wry (Sinners, #2)

Then he heard music—a mournful Delya tune—and Sionn smiled up at the ice-blue heavens, sending up a quick thank-you before struggling to his feet. “Ah, I know the sound of that guitar. You, God, are never to be discounted for giving a poor man a miracle when he needs one.”


It took him a bit to find Dee. Tucked away in a warren of shops, Sionn heard the guitar before he came around a corner. The strings wept with a mellow sound, painted blue and Mississippi by skillful fingers. Dee’s rough voice carried softly over the tune, and even before Sionn had the man in sight, he could hear the shuffle of feet and people murmuring nearby.

He spotted the black leather cowboy hat he’d wanted to pull off of Dee’s head between a cluster of people gathered around a fountain. Like he had at Finnegan’s, he’d set the acoustic’s hard shell onto the sidewalk and played his heart out. A small crowd had gathered, large enough to cause foot traffic to move around the cluster of people. Some stopped to listen, and others paused in front of the case to drop money into its open flat.

There was no mistaking Dee for any other than what he was… a musician. Stripped bare of everything but a guitar, he shone brighter than Sionn thought possible.

Even from where Sionn stood, he could see Dee was lost in the music, focused on nothing anyone could see. Gone was the sarcastic twist to his mouth, and the brashness in his face had been replaced by something Sionn could only call pure. If Dee was beautiful before he picked up a guitar, he was ethereal with it in his hands.

The blues tune segued to something hot, Latin, and complicated. His fingers plucked and pushed the song out, his head bent over the guitar as if to coax out another seductive moan with a kiss. The cowboy hat Sionn hated sat forward on Dee’s inky hair, but a fleece jacket Leigh’d given him from the lost and found had been tossed aside, leaving him clad only in his T-shirt and faded jeans.

As if sensing he was being watched, Dee looked up and found Sionn standing behind the crowd. His playing continued, slowing down to a sensual crawl, as if to entice him closer. There was more than heat in the song. It sang of wet mornings spent naked and sipping wine from one another’s cupped palms. Dee swayed with the music, feeling every note on his skin and face.

It was the most erotic thing Sionn had ever seen. And it pissed him off there were others seeing it as well.

Dee ended the song with a whispering flick of his nails on the strings, then placed his palm over the guitar’s face to stop its hum. They stared at one another through the crowd, and Sionn stepped forward, shouldering past the thinning streams of people. He reached Dee’s side, unsure of what to say to the man he wasn’t sure if he wanted to bend over his legs and spank or stretch out over someplace flat and drive into.

Or both. Both sounded like a good idea. If he was with the man much longer, he’d need something sharp to carve the man out. He was going to need to find a way to exorcise Dee.

Either that or find a way to keep him.

Sionn spoke first, spotting the goose bumps prickling Dee’s bare arms. “You need to put on your jacket and come with me, boyo. And don’t think about giving me any of your lip. It’d be pretty easy to knock you out and toss your fucking body over my shoulder. God Almighty knows, it won’t be the first time I’d thought on it.”

“You need to be less bossy,” Dee grumbled, but handed the guitar over to Sionn. Shrugging the fleece on, he pushed its too-long sleeves up over his wrists. “I couldn’t play with it on. And I needed to… play.”

He almost said Dee shouldn’t have played at all. He didn’t want to share the angelic-faced musician with his long legs and kissable mouth with anyone. The cowboy hat was a mistake too, Sionn thought. It gave the young man a sense of wild, something that begged to be tamed. Flexing his fingers around the guitar’s neck, Sionn tamped down the urge to shove Dee into a dark corner and bite at his cold-blushed lips.

Instead, he gave the instrument back and picked up its case, careful not to spill any of the money lying on the shell’s red velvet insides. Singing for the crowd might turn the man blue from the cold, but from the bills Dee was plucking from the case, it was apparently profitable.

“About a hundred.” The guitarist’s damned, haunting mouth twisted into an assessing pout-smile. “Not bad. I’m still rusty, though. My fingers are fucking hurting. My calluses were all gone before. But it’s enough, I think.”

“If that’s rusty, then God help their wallets when you break off the cobwebs.” Sionn held the case while Dee put the guitar away and locked it up. “You sounded plenty good, a rún. You should be playing someplace big. Not here in front of a burger joint for coins.”

Dee bent forward to tuck the cash into Sionn’s front pocket, the back of his hand sliding down Sionn’s thigh before he could pull away. His fingers burned through the soft cotton fold of Sionn’s pocket, and he nearly put his hand over Dee’s to keep him there.