Take the Edge Off Read online

  The first time had been a Hail Mary, as likely to get his teeth knocked in as anything else. This time they would have both known what Joe expected, and that wasn’t a good look. Joe knew what he’d think of himself, and he didn’t want Cal to see him that way.

  “Maybe you should have tried harder,” Edward said, and the rough edge of his voice dragged Joe’s attention back to their conversation. It took Joe a minute too long to realize that Edward still meant Kristen, not Cal. He didn’t feel good about that. “Lust isn’t love, Joe. Don’t throw away what you had, what made you happy, to chase some… itch.”

  Itch. That’s how it had always been done in his house—anything difficult was never said out loud, never faced up to. Things like his mother’s death, the fact that Joe was not quite the son his dad expected, were brushed under the carpet and never mentioned again. All that was left behind was expectation and disapproval, like ghosts.

  Joe had learned to stitch everything untidy away behind a composed facade. He could ride elevators without sweating, even as his stomach clawed itself raw with the conviction that he was going to die, and he could convince people he was happy with Kristen—even himself for a while, until he found himself in the back room of some club or hotel bar with a man.

  To be honest, part of the reason he wanted to find out the truth about his mother wasn’t even about her. He didn’t remember her, and no one had told him stories about her that he could stitch together and pretend were his. She was a blank form in his head, a few dreams that were as much wishful thinking as anything real, but she was something untidy of his dad’s that Joe could throw in Harry’s face.

  “Edward, I appreciate that you’ve been with my father for a long time and you think you know me,” Joe said as he pushed away the remnants of his omelet. “You don’t, and who I fuck isn’t your job.”

  Silence for a second as Edward took a long drink of his tea. Then he set the cup down on the table and glanced at his watch.

  “Six twenty-five. I’m not on the clock yet, Joe,” he said. “All I am right now is an old friend of the family, who doesn’t want you to make a mistake you can’t take back. Kristen could make you happy, give you a family, a place where you felt at home.”

  Edward glanced away from Joe as though he could see Cal through the heavy, hotel walls. It looked like he was going to bite the bullet and actually talk about what they both knew had happened. Joe waited, a nervous prickle of anticipation on the nape of his neck. Instead Edward got up and walked to the sink to toss the oversugared dregs of his tea down the drain. He flicked on the tap to wash the sludge away.

  “I don’t have your itinerary for next week yet,” Edward said. “What are your plans?”

  The hollow space that cracked open in Joe’s chest was either relief or disappointment. It was beyond him to identify it. He rubbed his hand over his face. The scuff of last night’s stubble was still rough on his jaw.

  “I’m taking the week off,” he said. “I haven’t been to England since I was a child. I want to see some of the sights before I go home.”

  Edward paused midrinse of his mug. Water spilled over his fingers and into the sink for a second before he finished the job. He set it down to drain and turned around.

  “Do you have time?” he asked. It sounded casual. “You have to wind up all the company’s business dealings in the UK by the end of the month. You’ve only got three weeks left.”

  Joe sat back in his chair and studied Edward’s face for a second. In the long run, Edward would back whatever decision Harry made, but how much did he already know? Edward had worked for Harry back then, although he always said he never met Joe’s mother.

  “I’m going to spend a few hours at Buckingham Palace,” Joe said. He fastidiously wiped his hands on a napkin and then crumpled it. “Or the Tower of London. Not take a hike to John O’Groats. If an emergency arises, I’ll be available to deal with it. If my dad has a problem with that, tell him he can call me.”

  Edward gave him a disapproving look. Let him. Joe tossed the ball of his napkin into the bin and got up from the table. He paused on the way out the door.

  “I don’t want to talk about Kristen again,” he said bluntly. “If you’re so worried about her love life, find someone to set her up with when we get back.”

  “How many times did you cheat on her?” Edward asked.

  “Too many,” Joe said. Four times, four different men, but he doubted Edward wanted that information. “Now are we done on this topic?”

  Edward looked thoughtful, but he nodded without further argument.

  OLD PHOTOS. Old postcards. Harry had once had a sense of humor. Letters addressed to Mrs. Bailey, filed in yellowed envelopes with brittle cellophane windows.

  Joe didn’t know what he expected to find in Harry’s old safety deposit box, although the part of him that had binged Blacklist on the flight over had its fingers crossed for a collection of fake passports. Instead it was just a box of memories Joe had missed out on.

  Most of them anyhow. He lifted a newspaper clipping from the box, the paper yellow and rough under his fingers, and studied the low-res photograph. Three men and two women stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside a hospital, fund-raising buckets clutched in their arms. The caption identified the tall, awkwardly smiling woman on the far left, captured as she scratched her eyebrow, as Abigail Bailey. It wasn’t the first picture Joe had seen of her, but most of them were contextless portraits where she smiled blandly into the camera. This was the first where you could see something of… her… in it.

  It was also the only picture Joe had ever seen where he was in it with his mother. Even if she might have only known about him for a few weeks at that point.

  He supposed he should feel something about that, but it was a smudged black-and-white photo of a stranger in a local paper. Maybe he wouldn’t have liked her if he ever got to know her. Or maybe she wouldn’t have liked him. It didn’t feel set in stone that they’d have loved each other.

  Right then it didn’t feel as though he’d found his mother, all he had was another clue in a treasure hunt. If he wanted to find the next, he had to solve the first.

  The beep of Joe’s phone interrupted him, and he glanced at it. A reminder about his afternoon appointment at the lawyers sat on the screen accusingly, as though it knew full well that he’d forgotten and didn’t really care. Joe closed his eyes for a second as he tried to find the person who, a year ago, would have eagerly embraced the responsibility of divesting the firm of their UK holdings. It should have been hard, with everything else on his plate, but if Joe were honest, it didn’t take long.

  He might not like his father much, but he was still Harry Bailey’s son, and he still wanted to prove he deserved everything he inherited. Besides, he’d always been good at his job.

  The meeting was a few hours away, but if Joe left now, he could get lunch first. Joe pulled his jacket on and, after a moment’s hesitation, tucked the clipped story into his pocket. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it seemed like what someone would do in that situation, the same way he looked sad when he talked about his mother’s death—habit and a desire to look like everyone else.

  He brushed his hand down his front to listen to the muted crinkle of age-softened paper and then went to find Cal.

  He should have knocked, not that Joe could quite bring himself to wish he had. He paused in the doorway and watched Cal finish a set of sit-ups. Tight bands of muscle clenched across Cal’s stomach, pronounced under inked, sweaty skin, and his old gray sweats had slid dangerously low across his stomach. His steady pace faltered midrep when he caught sight of Joe in the door, and he grabbed his knees to steady himself when he stopped.

  “Sorry,” Joe said through dry lips.

  Cal thought about that and then leaned back onto his elbows. His knees were still bent, feet flat on the floor, and they framed the long, lazy sprawl of his body.

  “You sure about that?” Cal asked as he licked sweat off his upper lip.

 
A few scenarios flickered through Joe’s mind. All of them ended up with both of them on the ground, Cal’s legs over Joe’s shoulders, and his cock in Joe’s mouth. The fantasy was potent enough that when Joe imagined the tug of Cal’s fingers in his hair, it sent a prickle of pleasure through his scalp and down the back of his neck.

  “Well,” Joe admitted in a voice that sounded a lot smoother than he felt, “I was enjoying the show, but I have some business today. The lawyers we were at the other day, Atkins, Kinsella, and Beattie.”

  Cal snorted and scrambled to his feet. He grabbed a discarded T-shirt from the bed and casually wiped the sweat off his torso with it. Joe felt a twist of mixed lust and regret as he wished he’d crawled onto Cal when he had the chance.

  “Give me five minutes,” Cal said as he chucked the T-shirt to Joe. It smelled of Cal and sharp, salt-fresh sweat. “I’ll be ready to go. Stick that in the laundry bag, would ya?”

  Joe hung the shirt over the handle of the door. “You give all your employers orders, Mr. Tate?”

  “Naw,” Cal said as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his sweats. They slid precariously lower, the sharp angles of his hip bones and the trail of fine, tawny hair that arrowed down from his belly button somehow more sexual than full frontal would have been. “Only the ones that wanna watch me undress.”

  Joe cleared his throat and chuckled dryly. He looked down at his feet. “Now that makes me sound like a pervert.”

  “I didn’t say I minded,” Cal pointed out.

  In the corner of Joe’s eye, he saw the gray sweats hit the ground and Cal step out of them. He left them crumpled on the floor, and Joe wondered how long it would take until that got on his nerves instead of making him hard. He shook the thought away before it could settle, because you got annoyed at clothes on the floor in a relationship, not… whatever you called a one-night stand that dragged on.

  He let his eyes track up Cal’s legs to his cock, half-hard at being admired, and then up over his chest to his face.

  “You sure about it?” he asked. Joe was aware he was a lot of things that weren’t particularly nice—a cheat, a liar, cold—but he didn’t want to add predatory to that. “I do pay your wages right now. If you want me to back off—”

  “Fuck off. I told you, I don’t need you to say please in private.” Cal licked his lips and reached down to give his cock a lazy tug. “Thank you will do.”

  He smirked and turned his back as he swaggered into the bathroom. Joe watched the tight curve of his ass, the bunch and play of muscle as he walked, until Cal swung the door shut behind him. It felt like something gave in his chest. He wasn’t even sure what it was, but it was done.

  Call it any expectation he had of leaving there in time to get to his meeting.

  The water turned on in the bathroom, and Cal hummed off-key to himself. Joe took his jacket off and tossed it onto the bed. The lawyers were paid well enough. They could use some of the billable hours they overcharged for and wait for him. He followed Cal into the bathroom.

  If Cal had expected company, he showed no sign of it. He stood under the stream of water, eyes closed and head tilted back. Soap trickled down his body in sudsy rivulets, very white against the red splash of color on his ribs, and his hand rubbed at his stiff cock with lazy interest.

  Not a cold shower, then, at least.

  Joe opened the door and stepped into the steamy cubicle. Water splashed against his face and spotted wet across his T-shirt and jeans. Cal turned and grabbed his shirt in one smooth, violent motion, and as Joe’s shoulders hit the tiles, he thought he’d misstepped. Then the immediate threat of violence faded from Cal’s face and was replaced with surprise and amusement.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked with a laugh as he wiped water out of his eyes.

  Joe glanced down at the fist knotted into his now-soaked T-shirt.

  “Either I’m going to get my ass kicked, or….” He curled his hand around the back of Cal’s neck and leaned in to brush a careful kiss over wet, soapy lips. It was supposed to be quick, an invitation rather than the start of anything, but Joe couldn’t resist that mouth. He caught the lush curve of Cal’s lower lip between his teeth and chewed the kiss into it. Then he explored the softer bow of the upper one with tongue and lips. Finally he pulled himself back and admired the soft, well-bitten flush of Cal’s ridiculously pretty mouth. “That.”

  Water dripped down Cal’s face as he blinked and then laughed. There was nothing practiced, nothing flirtatious about it. It was an incautious splutter of amusement.

  “You’re a nut,” Cal accused as he leaned in for another kiss. It was… sweet. The corners of his mouth were still curled with warm humor and the water warm and flavored with lemon. That wasn’t something Joe usually looked for in his one-night stands. His hand slid down Joe’s side to his hip, and he hooked his fingers in the waistband of his jeans. “If you get a chill, Edward’s gonna have my balls on a plate.”

  Joe licked water off Cal’s jaw. He slid his hands down wet, slick skin—his thumb caught a thread of scar tissue buried between ribs and lost in the spread of red ink petals—and round to the curve of Cal’s ass. “You’ll need to keep me warm.”

  He kissed his way down Cal’s throat to his chest. The flat, pink bud of Cal’s nipple, framed in dark hair and black ink, puckered under the scrape of Joe’s teeth. A groan rumbled out of Cal’s throat, and he laced his fingers through Joe’s hair, callused fingertips rough where they pressed against his neck. Joe flicked his tongue around the nipple and sucked at the flat disk of the aureola.

  “I like that people can’t see your tattoos,” he said as he went down onto his knees. The water swirled around his legs and soaked into his jeans. He had others. Joe brushed his thumb over the scribbled star on the thin skin over Cal’s hipbone. The ink had been worked in roughly enough that he could feel where the scars had lifted under the black lines. “It’s like we have a secret.”

  “People have seen them,” Cal said raggedly. His cock lifted toward his stomach, the foreskin pulled back from the wet, slick head as his cock hardened.

  Joe huffed out a laugh and scraped a bite over the taut, flat plane of Cal’s stomach. “Do you have a romantic bone in your body, Cal?”

  “There’s one,” Cal said pointedly as he looked down.

  “Still no ink?” Joe mocked him.

  “Maybe I’ll let you pick something,” Cal said. “Fancy your name on there?”

  The idea was hot enough to grab Joe’s balls and twist, but no… not his name. It wasn’t a serious offer, but Joe slotted it away to daydream about later anyhow. He ran his hands up the back of Cal’s thighs—all rough hair and corded muscle—and leaned in to press an openmouthed kiss to Cal’s balls. The fine skin was suede soft under his lips and tongue. Joe pushed Cal’s thighs apart as he sucked and licked at the tender sac. He pushed his tongue along the taut, nerve-rich thread of skin that ran back from Cal’s balls toward his asshole.

  Cal moaned and braced his hand against the wall, his fingers spread wide against the damp, marbled tiles, His body was pulled into one long, brutally elegant line that ran from fingers to shoulders and down toward his thighs.

  “I bet I could get you to put anything I want on it,” Joe said as he finally turned to the hard curve of Cal’s cock. He feathered light, breathy kisses along the length of it, from base to the taut ridge of the head. “Right now.”

  Cal dragged in a ragged breath. His fingers flexed and relaxed against Joe’s neck. “I wouldn’t want to take that bet right now,” he said. “How d’ya think I ended up with the rest of these.”

  For that, Joe slid his hand up and gave Cal’s balls a rough tug. It made Cal twitch, the muscles in his thighs clenched rock hard, and his fingers squeaked over the tiles as he shifted position. Joe ignored the stubborn gnaw of what wasn’t jealousy—because he never got jealous—and wrapped his lips around Cal’s cock.

  It was slippery with water and precome, salt and lemon on Joe’s lips.
He slowly sucked his way along the thick shaft, his tongue flattened against the ridged base, and squeezed Cal’s balls with each bob of his head. The pulse of the shower battered against his back and plastered his hair flat to his scalp as Cal scruffed the back of his neck.

  Cal pushed his hips forward in a jerky, unsteady thrust. The head of his cock rubbed over Joe’s tongue and bumped against the roof of his mouth. Joe pushed his tongue up, and Cal squirmed. His hand squeaked against the tiles as he slipped, and a choked noise that could only be called a whimper scraped out of his throat between eager, unsteady murmurs of encouragement.

  The thickness of Cal’s cock in Joe’s mouth, the weight of it against his tongue, made Joe wonder what it would be like to be under Cal. Joe’s hands braced against the headboard, Cal’s weight on his back, and the mutter of encouragement against Joe’s throat as his ass stretched wide around Cal’s cock.

  His stomach tightened with the thought, and his ass clenched. Hunger balled low in his stomach—a hot flush of want that tugged at his ass and his balls simultaneously. His jeans were uncomfortably tight as his cock pressed insistently against the zipper.

  He pulled back until only the head of Cal’s cock was caught behind his lips. The taste on his tongue was heavier as the salt and copper of sex overwhelmed the left-behind hint of soap. Joe ran his tongue along the flared underside of the head and then pulled it up over the top. He lapped at the slit to taste the musky richness of the precome.

  “God, Joe,” Cal groaned out. He tightened his fingers on Joe’s neck and then pulled away and pushed both hands back against the wall to steady himself. “I’m gonna come.”

  Joe growled his satisfaction around Cal’s cock and sucked the thick shaft back into his mouth. His throat spasmed as Cal’s cock hit the back of it, and Joe pulled off a bit. He wanted to taste it. The weight of Cal’s balls in his hand shifted as they pulled up toward his body, and Joe gave them one last squeeze.