Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty (15 page)

“Shit. Your handwriting is shit, Ichi babe.” Bobby frowned at the scrawl of blue ink on a page torn from a legal pad he kept on his coffee table. “And you could have taped this to the coffee machine. Would have found it there. Holding my cock while thinking about you made me hard. Fucking impossible to piss when my dick’s pointing at my chin.”

Now that he had it, Bobby was scared to open the note.

“Like I’m a goddamn little girl in middle school,” he snorted, tossing the note onto his coffee table. “I’m going to brush my damned teeth, get some coffee, and
then
read it.”

The brushing of teeth happened.

The coffee didn’t.

He didn’t even bother to pretend he was going to pour a cup. After spitting the toothpaste foam into the sink, Bobby splashed water onto his face, then headed back to the living room.

The note sat there. Mocking him. Daring him to open it up so his heart could be broken.

“Pussy,” Bobby scolded himself. “Man up. So what if it’s a thanks-but-no-thanks piece-of-shit letter. Not like you haven’t written them before.”

Still, his fingers shook as he unfolded the piece of paper. Then his chest twisted and buckled when he read what Ichiro left him. Bobby went over it once, blinked, then focused again on the words swimming across the page. Huffing in a breath, he read it out loud, not quite believing what Ichiro left behind for him to find.

“Didn’t want to wake you. Yeah, you snore. Been thinking about—us. Don’t think there’s any going back—you and me. Last night, both of us—I think we need to talk. Figure it out between us—if there is an us.” He took another breath, exhaling hard. “And then, maybe see if we can tell Cole. I’m going out on a limb here, writing this, but life’s too short. Yesterday—was it only yesterday? But Cole and the gun and shit, everything—made everything so real. So yeah, I want you, Bobby. Even if it pisses my brother off. I want you. Give me a call later. I’ve got to call Cole and apologize for being an asshole to him.”

The ink on the back of the note wasn’t bleed-through. Turning the page upside down, he chuckled and shook his head, foolishly grinning at Ichiro’s surprising silliness. Tossing the note onto the table, he got up to get himself a cup of coffee and stopped short when he spotted another note on the fridge, Ichiro’s now familiar loopy scrawl boldly darkening the page.

“I was serious about the cat,” Bobby read. “You’ll need something to keep you company when I’m not around. I worry about you being lonely. And I might be a little jealous about you spending so much time with my brother. Okay, mostly I worry he’ll accidentally shoot you. And then who will I fuck?”

Chapter 9

H
IZOKU
I
NK
wasn’t quite open for business, but it was already filled with laughter and music. An odd thing for seven in the morning for most inking studios, but Ichi’s client felt better in the mornings, and he’d wanted to finish up the piece before they soft-opened the studio in a week.

The metallic purple coffee machine he’d bought for the shop had already spat out two pots by the time eight rolled around, and Hizoku was vibrant and busy behind its locked doors. A dual-cello rendition of “Thunderstruck” played through the shop’s sound system, and the two artists Ichiro’d hired were setting their stations up and beaming over the new tattoo machines he’d given them as welcome gifts.

Both were young, but other than an insane amount of talent to put ink to skin, they were as different as any two people could get. Quaide was a tall, muscular man with braided long black hair and snapping sienna brown eyes. Dressed in a casual tank top as he organized his area, he flashed quiet smiles at his coworker, laughing as she teased him about the quirky artwork he’d chosen for his sleeves.

He took V’s teasing well. They were both even-tempered, professional, and humble about their talents, traits Ichiro demanded for his shop. V was short, buxom, and full of laughter, tossing a mane of crayon red curls about, and her smiles were bright enough to deepen the lines crinkling at the corners of her bright blue eyes. Unlike Quaide, her ink was mostly hidden under her shirt and jeans, but as she moved, a peek of a feather folding into bright flames poked out of her collar, promising an elaborate, vivid piece beneath the fabric.

They chattered, already falling into a pattern of bantering, while asking Ichi if he needed anything as he worked on his client, Karin. She’d already sat for him three times before, and now, going into the final hour, they were both impatient to see the piece done but mindful of her body’s stress. He dipped his needle into the cerulean he’d mixed up to highlight the scales of the nearly completed blue dragon winging its way over her shoulder and down her arm.

“You doing okay?” He caught a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye, watching intently as Karin worked her fingers in and out as much as she could while he daubed at some runoff near her bicep. “We can stop. I’ve got about ten or fifteen minutes left to go, but—”

“Oh no.” The spiky-haired woman grinned up at him from her lounging sprawl on his padded table. Shifting so she could see over her generous breasts, she wiggled her eyebrows at him, laughing when Ichiro snorted in return. “Hey, my rheumatoid arthritis is just going to have to suck it up. How often do I get a pretty Asian guy leaning over me and rubbing me down?”

“I’d say pretty often,” he teased back, winking when her grin grew broader. “I keep this going much longer, I’m going to owe you money for your company.”

“Nah, I quit doing that. I kept giving it away for free.” Karin chuckled. “Let’s blow this puppy out.”

“If you need to stop, you let me know, okay?” He bent back over her arm, edging his rolling stool away from her crimpled fingers and twisted wrist. “I’m going to be highlighting its tail down here. Adding some white spots, so breathe through it. White hurts like a motherfucker.”

“Never did understand where that phrase came from,” Karin hissed through the burr of the machine as it began to tick into motion. “Go for it, Ichi. They’re kind of numb anyway. So, onward, Macduff.”

He took nearly the full fifteen, laying down the white through the filigree swirls he’d dappled through the dragon’s tail fluke. She bore the inking in silence—relative silence anyway, if he ignored the wolf whistle she gave when Quaide nearly lost his shirt on a coat hook as he hung a piece of artwork up in the hallway to the back door.

Wrapping Karin up, Ichiro sniffed derisively at her credit card when she dug it out of her wallet. “No, last session, this one is on me. You just let me take a picture of it after it’s all healed, and we’ll call it even.”

Half an hour later, the studio was empty, and he slumped down onto one of the couches in the waiting area, toeing off his sneakers with a grateful hiss and wiggle of his toes.

His ass still hurt a bit—stretched out and satiated from the hours he’d spent with Bobby.

Bobby.

Dawson.

“Shit, I must have been fuck-drunk to leave him that note,” he groaned, rubbing his face. “We
talked
about… fuck.”

His phone burbled, and Ichiro froze at the tone. Grabbing the cell before it jiggled off the couch in its enthusiasm to vibrate and sing at the same time, Ichi answered it softly, poised for rejection when Bobby’s deep, silky voice slithered into his ear.

“Hey, sexy,” he rasped, bringing Ichi’s cock up to full attention. “Wasn’t expecting you to be up.”

“Oh, you have no idea how much I’m up right now.” Ichiro grinned despite the clench of anticipation in his guts. “It’s almost eight thirty. I’ve been up for hours. Did you finally roll out of bed? You were snoring when I left.”

“Yeah, some hot guy fucked me senseless last night, and I had to sleep it off.” Bobby paused, drawing in a breath so deep Ichiro could hear it across the line. “Kinda was hoping he’d do it again—like soon.”

“Did you get my note?” He was going to lay it out there. No dancing around things for Ichiro Tokugawa, not after he’d spent his life trying to be the good boy—the perfect son—and hiding his emotions behind a mask his family forged for him. It wasn’t who Ichi wanted to be—yesterday with his brother proved that for him. “Is this us talking?”

“It can be,” Bobby replied gently. “I’d rather do it in person, but yeah, everything you… wrote? I’m—” There was something deep in Bobby’s voice, a conflict Ichi heard in the husky sigh and sliver of desperation in his words. “I know we joke and call it this
thing
between us, but yeah, Sunshine, last night was something I wasn’t prepared for but… I want to keep. So you and me, we need to figure it out and go forward with it, okay?”

“Scares me, you know,” Ichiro admitted, nearly whispering into the phone. The stereo changed over, stomping out a dance track more suited to a rave than a discussion about relationships and fears. Grabbing the remote, Ichiro turned off the music, and the studio descended into a steeped silence, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the man waiting for him to speak his mind and heart. “I don’t mean being with you scared me—fuck, it was just so intense, and I felt like—hell, I just
felt
, Bobby. I’ve never really
felt
someone like that before. Scared the hell out of me when I woke up this morning.”

“So you booked. I get it.”

“Booked?” Ichi wrinkled his nose, working out the slang. “Oh, left… ran away? Well, not because I didn’t want to see you. I had to finish up a piece this morning. She’s got joint problems, and sometimes later in the day is too hard for her hands. I did her up a sleeve but had to do some detailing. And I also hired a couple of inkers, so they came in to set up their areas and pretty much fuck around while I worked.”

“Team Ichi, then.” Bobby chuckled. “So you didn’t run away from me, then.”

“Nope. No running. No booking. No… isn’t someone being arrested called being booked?”

“I don’t invent the shitty slang. I just speak it,” he laughed. “What are you doing tonight? I’d ask what you were doing the rest of the day, but your brother called me to come over. I think he wants me to run down with him to Santa Monica for something but hasn’t gotten around to asking. Shouldn’t be long.”

“Is he still tracking down that April woman? I thought—oh wait, no. She wasn’t one of the ones in the apartment. He thinks she’s in Santa Monica? At that nail salon?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Bobby agreed. “You said you were going to call him. You do that yet?”

“I was about to.” Ichi sighed when Bobby called him a liar under his breath. “Okay, I was thinking about calling him. I just don’t know what the hell to say.”

“How about… sorry I freaked out. I’m Japanese, and we don’t own guns?” It was a flippant suggestion, but Ichi had to admit it had merit. “Look, your brother’s a pretty easygoing guy. He’ll forgive you for just about everything.”

“Except maybe for sleeping with his best friend.”

“Yeah, well, I think he’d be more pissed off about his best friend sleeping with his younger brother.” Bobby snorted.

“He’s known you longer than he’s known me,” Ichiro pointed out. “I keep coming back to that, but no one seems to listen. I love Cole, but he’s my brother, not my keeper.”

“He seems to think I’d just toss you out when I’m done with you, and I’ve got to be honest with you, Sunshine, it’s been pretty much how I’ve dealt with everyone I’ve fucked in the past. Cole knows me. Probably better than I want to admit, so let’s face it, I’m not exactly looking like a winning deal for you here. So last chance here… you want to walk away? Or do we keep… figuring this out?”

“I think I’ve already got it figured out,
anata
.” Ichiro tried to steady his breathing, staring down a path he never thought he’d take in his lifetime. “You and me—we—hell, Bobby, it’s stupid that we’re saying no, we can’t at least try to… hell, what the hell do
you
want?”

“Truthfully—” Bobby’s breath hitched, and Ichiro waited a long moment before he continued. “—I was kind of sad to find you gone this morning. It… hurt something inside of me, and I haven’t felt like… I wanted someone like I want you in a long damned time. So yeah, I’m kind of pissed off I’m letting
Cole
tell me I can’t give it a go with you. And… I’m fucking scared I’m going to hurt you.”

“Are you scared I’m going to hurt
you
?”

“Fucking terrified. But… goddamn it if I don’t want to take that chance with you.”

“So then this thing? We’re going to do it?” Ichi’s nerves wept in relief, a numbness spreading out from his chest and into his limbs. “Because yeah, I’m in. And I’ve—”

“Going to have some explaining to do to your brother?” Bobby interjected wryly. “Because we’re not going to be stopping this anytime soon.”

“If ever,” he replied in the silence of his studio. “I know it’s crazy. Fuck, it was just one night, you know? I mean… shit. I keep asking
why
? Why you? Why me?”

“Because it’s going to piss off someone we love. And that’s kind of how the universe works, Sunshine.” Bobby’s sardonic smirk carried over into his voice. “Bread always lands butter side down when you’re really hungry, and you always fall for the person who’s the worst possible choice for you. You call your brother to say you’re sorry for wigging out on him. Then you and I get together tonight and talk this out some more.”