Bad Things (3 page)

“Get your fucking hands off me!” Doughy screamed again, even though no one was touching him.

“
We’ll get you a cab.” Two of the other security guys were flanking Doughy, grinning. “Jeff. Could you flag a cab for this gentleman?”

“
You won’t call me a fucking cab. I paid. They charged my card.” Doughy rose up on his toes and drove his chest against Xavier’s, maybe only because he’d lost his balance. Leaning against him like that, he seethed in Xavier’s face, “I want my fucking piece of art. I want my fucking piece of snatch.”

“
The charge to your card will be reversed, Sir.”

The doughy man tried to spit in Xavier’s face, but drunk and dehydrated as he was, the airy glob barely made it past his lips, and flopped onto his own chin. Like two Rottweilers who´d been waiting for someone to throw a steak, Jeff and Joey lunged. Joey flung his arms around the guy, belting his arms down on his body. But Jeff had grabbed his telescoping truncheon, whipped it up to its full length, and swung down. Xavier caught it, inches from Doughy’s shoulder.

“Easy, Jeff. We don’t want to get the club sued, do we? Or worse, invite the police to our private party.”

Minutes later, Doughy was bundled into a departing cab. When Xavier turned to head back into the club, Brian was leaning against the wall by the entrance.

“That’s a whiskey on me, after your shift.”

Xavier gambled on a playful grin. “Tequila?”

Brian smiled. Fuck, he had the ugliest smile Xavier had ever seen. “All right. Tequila, hombre!” He slapped him on his shoulder. So, Brian spoke Mexican, just like George Bush.

Xavier headed for the john. So, he’d moved up a rung. How many performances like that would he need to put on before he’d be considered for one of the jobs they didn’t advertise on Craigslist?

Before he even had his fly open, the door swung open with a squeak and the bartender was two urinals over, as if he’d followed him on purpose. Again. But the way the piss gushed out of him, he’d been holding it ’til he’d been ready to burst.

Xavier snaked his dick through his fly and exhaled through a moment of sharp, pleasurable discomfort, then soothing release as his bladder drained. Out the corner of his eye he caught the bartender staring at his cock. Happened all the time. But the weird thing with this guy was, Xavier couldn’t quite read his look when he met his eyes. Usually it was easy: resentful envy, or desire. But this one was too guarded—even more guarded than the average straight guy caught staring at another man’s dick in the men’s room.

When the front doors were locked at the end of the night, Brian dragged Xavier over to the bar and slapped his hand down on its onyx surface. “Carson, our best tequila for Xavier, on me.” He said it like he was giving him a fucking car. “Go on, take a load off. I’ve gotta deal with some bullshit in the office.”

“What do you like? Patron?” the bartender asked.

“
You got Avion Añejo?”

“
Coming right up.” After getting caught gawping in the men’s room, the bartender looked abashed compared to his usual gregarious self.

“
That kind of crap happen a lot here?” Xavier asked when Carson set the glass in front of him and poured, hoping to put the guy at ease again ASAP. He was useless if he was too embarrassed to so much as say hello. “Customers getting handsy with the girls?”

“
No. Maybe once a week.”

“
I’m guessing this is a pretty sweet bartending gig.”

There. That was an improvement. The contented, boyish grin of someone who thought they’d gotten away with something. “Oh, yeah.”

“You got a PhD in mixology, or something?” He gave him an amused grin. Not a warm or flirtatious smile, because he still hadn’t decided if this guy was so embarrassed about the encounter in the men’s room because he was interested, or because he wasn’t. These rare situations where Xavier couldn’t read someone really threw him off his game.

“
You know the real key to being a great bartender?” Well, how about that? The guy was being almost playful, now. Safe behind his bar, like a warrior in his suit of armor.

“
No. What is it?”

“
Knowing how to keep secrets.”

“
Are you keeping secrets?” Xavier asked, carefully calibrating the teasing tone of his voice: innocuously playful, with just a note of admiration.

“
I’m guarding my share,” he said in a mock conspiratorial tone that could easily be veiling the truth of his words.

After work Xavier called Elena, but she still didn’t want him coming over. That vague, cold dis-ease, that anxiety that she was being stubborn rather than feeling strong. But if she needed to find her equilibrium on her own, he’d give her that space.

He had a fleeting impulse to call Jacob and finish what they’d started at the tattoo shop before he’d been summoned to Elena’s. Even if he didn’t usually go for twinks, Jacob had been so deliciously eager, Xavier been hard as fuck for him. But that business at Elena’s soured the idea of bending that delicate sprite to his will. Instead he went to Hinano for a burger and a round or two of tequila. Otherwise he’d have to go grocery shopping, and he really couldn’t be bothered.

Half his burger and two shots of tequila down, a deep, familiar voice said, “Xavier Gutierrez?”

The cop from Elena’s, with an affable smile he hadn’t revealed in the course of taking witness statements about the rape.

“Detective Porter, right?”

“
James, since I’m off duty,” he said. They shook hands. “How’s your sister?”

“
A bit shaken up. But she’s tough.”

At Elena’s, Xavier had missed how good-looking Porter was. Like a thick-set Will Smith. Buttery skin, slightly Asiatic eyes.

“I left her a message a couple hours ago. All three suspects we picked up last week were a DNA match. Looks like a solid lock for jail time.”

Three DNA matches. The implication of that information turned Xavier’s stomach. “How’s the woman doing?”

“Good, given the circumstances.” Porter looked at Xavier’s half-eaten burger. “Well, I’ll let you finish your dinner.”

“
Join me. Unless you’re meeting someone.”

A glint of suspicion deep in those eyes the color of black coffee. Xavier didn’t resist his urge to grin. His ulterior motive, for once, wasn’t the one Porter probably suspected. That affable smile, again. Dimples. “All right. If you’re really in the mood for company.”

Again, something churning in those dark eyes that contradicted the wedding band. Platinum? On a cop’s salary? Probably silver. Xavier flagged the waitress. “What are you drinking?”

“
I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“
Dos más, guapa
.”

“
Por supuesto
.” She always flirted with him, giggling out the few words of Spanish she knew. But she flirted in that way pretty girls flirt with guys they know are gay. With the liberating ease of knowing he’d never expect her to follow through.

Porter stared after her, and for a second Xavier thought he’d read him wrong. But when he met Xavier’s eyes, Porter looked more surly than frisky. “How old you think that kid is?”

Xavier just cocked an eyebrow.

“
Damn well not old enough to be serving alcohol,” Porter muttered.

“
It’s a family operation. Her brother’s sick today.”

James leaned in and said in a low voice, “I don’t want to cross any lines…”

Xavier grinned. Crossing lines was the only thing that made life worthwhile. And it was a long fucking trip for most people to get anywhere near his.

“
I can give you the name of a counselor. She specializes in PTSD. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. You could pass it on to your sister. I know you say she’s fine, but to be honest, I talk to a lot of witnesses, and she has me concerned. And, you know, she and I know each other a little, through work, but not quite well enough for me to suggest—”

“
She has someone she goes to.”

“
Oh.” A flustered pause. A gap of blankness while Porter considered what that meant. “All right. Well, like I said, sorry if I’m overstepping.”

“
No. I appreciate you being concerned.”

“
Aquí lo tienes,” the waitress chimed the latest phrase he’d taught her as she set their drinks on the table.

Now that Porter was there, she needed to change her verb conjugation, but he let it go. But because he liked how she smiled (she even blushed sometimes, though less often lately), he said, “Gracias querida,” in the low voice he normally saved for his lovers, delivered with a mischievous grin.

She chirped out an ebullient, “De nada!” and was off, back to the kitchen.

They clinked glasses, Porter leveling a stern look at him. “Watch that,” he said, pretending to be teasing, but with a distinct note of reprimand in his tone.

Xavier grinned and leveled a taunting look at Porter.

“
This line I won’t apologize for crossing,” Porter said, not teasing anymore. “Statutory rape’s not a joke to me.”

This time Xavier laughed.

“And what are you finding so funny?” Porter asked, with a quiet calm that told Xavier he was edging toward real anger.

“
Not statutory rape, certainly.”

“
Then what?”

“
First, the idea that you could find my line, even with a pair of long-range binoculars.”

Porter’s hardening anger softened into something that looked like curiosity. “And second?”

“And second, the idea that you think I’m trying to get into that girl’s pants.”

“
Not your type?” Porter was honed in on him with the focus of a sharpshooter.

Xavier risked a flirtatious grin. “No. Definitely not.”

“What’s your type, then?”

What a fucking delicious question. He let Porter watch him blatantly look him over, from the close-cropped nap of his black hair, those espresso-dark eyes fixed on his own, his full mouth, no trace of a smile, now. Over tawny skin of his bare arms, thick and firm but not cut. A perfect contrast to the sprightly blonde Lolita waiting on them.

“My type is the precise opposite of Kelly.”

He waited for the blush. For those hunter’s eyes honed to probe facial expressions for lies and evasions to dart away to safety. For the line of that thick mouth to tense against the threat of a suggestion that Detective Porter was prey to be hunted, just like Kelly. But Porter didn’t flinch or blush or dodge. He held Xavier’s gaze, and then only broke eye contact to look Xavier over in turn.

“And what’s your type?” Xavier asked.

No smile. No dimples. Just that sharp, penetrating look. “My tastes cover a pretty broad spectrum.”

Xavier looked at the band of silver on his ring finger. “How long have you been married?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Eight years.”

“You still enjoy fucking her?”

There. A subtle tremor. A faint flare in the dark depths of his eyes, but his voice was still smooth when he said, “Yes.”

Under the table, Xavier shifted one leg farther and farther to the right, until it pressed lightly against the inside of Porter’s leg. When Porter didn’t pull away, Xavier pressed against him more firmly. “But sometimes, you enjoy some variety?”

“
Sometimes.”

“
My place is a five minute walk from here.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Seriously.”

“
We’re neighbors, then.” Porter didn’t sound happy about it. But he left with him, anyway.

When Xavier opened the door and turned on the lights, Porter scanned the retro décor Xavier had gradually accumulated in the six years since he’d bought the house.

“
Shit—what did you do, move into one of the Mad Men sets?”

“
Another tequila?” Xavier asked.

“
No.”

“
I have beer.”

“
No.”

Straight to the feast, then. Good. Xavier was randy as fuck for the beefy detective. Not a puppy who’d show his belly at the first sign of bared teeth, like that one that had gotten away the week before. That tender bit of veal, Jacob.

In three slow, measured steps Xavier moved in on him, until there wasn’t an inch between them. But not touching, yet. Quietly, forcing Porter to be still and silent so he could hear, Xavier said, “So. I’m not the first?”

A small smile. Shadows hinting at the dimples that framed his bigger smiles. “The first what?”

“The first man you’ve fucked.”

Now the big smile. The dimples. “That’s kind of presumptuous. Don’t you think?”

“No. I don’t.”