“Dude, you don’t understand what this means.” Damien’s fingers twisted in Sionn’s shirt. “I kind of know where I can find Miki. I was looking in the wrong places. The damned warehouses are off someplace near Russian Hill. I just need to find them. I know where the fuck I am—here, this place. This is where we—I—began.”
“And what does that mean, Damie boy?” Sionn was afraid to hear the answer, and he continued to push Damien along, hoping to lose the man’s words in the rain. It was a futile hope. He heard every whispering syllable… every aching word twisting a knife into his heart.
“It means I can go home.”
Chapter 8
You’ve danced around us for far too long
Hooked your fingers into my soul
You flirt and wink, pulling me along
What you want us to be
Just ain’t going to last
I’ll take a sip of your mouth
Then I’ll be walking out fast
—No Good Johnny
“I FUCKING hate lima beans.” Damien grinned up at Sionn’s bemused face. Cupping the Irishman’s cheeks, he pushed his palms in until Sionn’s mouth puckered up. “I mean, I really fucking hate them. Isn’t that great?”
He couldn’t remember the last time he actually ate one, but the graininess on the roof of his mouth was distinct and… green. The taste triggered something else, a flash of fluffy trees and oily orange gloop. Giddy, he bent forward and kissed Sionn full on the mouth, making smacking noises against his lips.
“And broccoli. I hate that shit too. Especially with that fake cheesy crap on it.” He laughed and flung himself back onto the bed, pulling out of Sionn’s grip. His wet hair hit a pillow with a splat. “And fake peach anything. Like those fruit roll-up things. I fucking hate those.”
“Stop wiggling about, Damie boy.” Sionn grabbed his foot and tugged a sock up over his cold toes. “We’ve got to get you warm.”
He was freezing; he had to give Sionn that. It was cold all the way down past his chest and into his spine, spreading out and gripping his limbs, making him clumsy. The shivers hit before they’d gotten to the street corner, and he’d barely been able to put one foot in front of the other. Sionn nearly carried him the rest of the way, his thickly muscled body feeding its warmth into Damie’s icy skin.
Damien would have been ashamed of the hard-on he got from Sionn’s hands roaming over him, but it seemed like the only warm spot on his whole body. Of course, his cock should have had the decency to soften a bit once they’d gotten inside and Sionn began stripping the wet clothes from his body, but it had other ideas, poking its head up as if to see what was going on. No, being too cold to keep his teeth from chattering like a rabid Chihuahua definitely cut into the possibilities of pulling down Sionn’s pants and exploring what he found there.
Mostly because he was afraid his jaw was rattling too much and he’d bite something off he’d want inside of him later.
God, he remembered sex.
Miki aside, sex was possibly the single most fantastic memory sparking through his aching brain.
And he wanted it with Sionn.
There was something about Sionn that hooked into a part of him he couldn’t identify, and Damien wanted to steep himself in the man’s warmth, bask in his smile, and most of all, lay naked under the man’s rough hands.
Instead, he was lying down on the man’s bed with damp hair and all of his blood currently dancing a happy dance in his cock.
Those hands were now gone, tugging at the quilts under Damien’s legs. He tried to pull them up, but his knees responded too slowly to be much help. Sionn muttered at him to stay still, sliding his hands under Damien’s ass to roll him up and then back down again. After covering Damie with heavy blankets, his fingers brushed Damien’s forehead, sweeping a damp piece of hair out of his eyes.
“Stay here, boyo,” Sionn ordered gruffly. “I’ll be going to get you something hot to drink. See if you can get upright. I don’t want to be trying to pour coffee down your throat.”
It took him a few tries, but Damien inched his way up until he could rest against the bed’s wooden headboard. He grabbed a towel Sionn left for him and scrubbed at his damp hair. Shadows flitted on the ceiling, elongated silhouettes of Sionn moving through the loft. Then a grinder roared on, the sound of it chewing up beans drifting over the room’s open walls.
“God, how the hell could I forget about sex?”
He’d meant only to close his eyes for a second, long enough to send the pounding in his head to the back where it belonged. It seemed only a moment; then Damien felt the bed shift and heard Sionn through a haze of comfortable gray.
“Here you go, Cowboy.” Sionn waited until Damie scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes before handing him a cup. “Watch your hands. It’s hot.”