Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty (21 page)

“Ichi is about as young as a rock,” Cole scoffed. “I think he was a thousand years old when he was born. Naïve as shit but old. Not who I’d expect you with, but hell, maybe it was meant to be. Maybe you need someone older inside, because, dude, you are one messed-up fucker.”

“Yeah, I am.” He exhaled, releasing the hot sour inside of him. “But maybe I’ll be okay. Shit, I can’t be worse.”

“You going to talk to Jamie?” Cole cocked his head, searching Bobby’s face. “Because dude, really. Closet. Aren’t you getting sick of jumping in and out of it?”

“Yeah, I am. I just need to figure out if I’m going to tell my uncle.”

“I don’t know about that one. He’s pretty…. What’s a good word for it?”

“Old-fashioned?”

“I was going to say bigoted.”

“Set in his ways.”

“He called me a gook.” Cole eyed him skeptically. “To my face.”

“He has issues, left over from ’Nam,” Bobby countered.

“Your uncle was never in ’Nam.”

“The war hit him hard. Lost um… fuck, okay, so he’s an asshole. All of the Dawsons are assholes. It’s like our family motto.”

“Just don’t be an asshole to my brother,” Cole grumbled.

“So are we? Good, I mean?” A weight hung in his chest, threatening to drop into his belly, but Cole nodded, and he could breathe again. “I didn’t… fuck. I never meant this to hurt you, man.”

“You broke the rules, you know. Sisters—and brothers—are supposed to be off-limits.” Cole rolled his chair back again, putting space between them. “Isn’t there like a code you’re supposed to follow? I’d never touch your brother.”

“I don’t have a brother. Or a sister for that matter,” Bobby amended quickly, “Okay, maybe I could because my dad was kind of a whore. I’ve got cousins, though, but they’re pieces of shit who don’t even take care of their own father. Tell you what, how about if I give you a free shot? Just to get it in, and we call it even.”

“And no retaliation? Free shot?”

“Totally free. Just one. Anything past that, and it’s fair game.” He made a big deal of looking around the office. “Place could use a little redecorating if you want to go for it.”

“Nah, Claudia really likes her desk.” Cole grinned. “Stand on up. I don’t want to hit a man when he’s down on his ass.”

Chapter 13

“W
ELL
,
THAT
went well,” Ichiro muttered as he flung his car keys onto the kitchen counter. “I can’t fucking believe he hit you.”

“I can’t believe he only hit me once,” Bobby replied, closing the front door behind him. “If he’d at least shoved me, I could have gotten a shot in. Never knew your brother had that much self-control. I can usually count on that asshole to leap off buildings after kittens and shit. Who knew?”

“Are you guys okay? He wouldn’t talk to me about it.” Unpacking the bags Jae’d shoved into his hands, Ichi tried to find space in the fridge for the leftover food. Neither of them would probably feel like eating for a few weeks after the afternoon they’d had, something Bobby silently seconded when he reached over Ichi’s shoulder and snagged a couple of beers from the icebox.

“Yeah. For now. He’s got conditions. You heard him.” A bottle hissed when Bobby twisted off its cap. He bent the soft circle in half, then chucked it at the trashcan, hitting the rim once before it bounced in. “And before you argue, he’s right. I’ve got to tell my son. Hell, I should probably even tell my uncle, because it’ll piss him off, and he’ll call one of his kids to come get him. Which they won’t. Because they’re assholes like he is.”

“Go sit down. I’ll get you another ice pack to put on your face.” Ichiro studied Bobby’s jaw. “Hell, are you sure it’s not broken?”

“Pretty sure,” he mumbled as he moved his jaw around. “I don’t know. I’ve never broken my jaw before. I’ll be pretty pissed off if he did. Going to make giving you blowjobs a bitch and a half.”

“Probably why he hit you in the face.” Rooting around in the freezer, Ichi found an ice pack buried under an enormous opened bag of peas. “Here, put this on your jaw. I’ll grab you some ibuprofen.”

“Can’t I just grab you instead?” Bobby teased, snagging him as he went by. “Maybe you can kiss and make it better?”

“That ever work?”

He could drown in Bobby’s eyes, their silky depths so much like the shadowed waters of his family’s communal hot spring baths. Ichi tried shoving away the sting of pain growing to a throb in his chest, but it resurfaced, flaring up when Bobby brushed gentle fingers over his mouth.

“Where’d you go, Sunshine?” His lover tugged at Ichi’s lower lip between a pinch of his fingers. “What’d I say?”

“You didn’t do anything. Didn’t say anything. Just… maudlin? Is that a good word?” He rubbed at the spot where Bobby’s fingers touched him, sending the tingle in deeper. “Melancholy… maybe?”

“Good words. Let me wipe them off of you, though. So he tapped me on the face. I asked for it. He gave it to me. Tell me you don’t do stupid boy shit back in Japan.”

“No.” Ichi laughed, pulling up his jeans leg to show Bobby a small white cat with a bow near his ankle. “Losing bets to other tattoo artists there can be dangerous.”

“What did you bet on?” Bobby leaned over to inspect the ink. “You know I can’t really see it. You might have to take off your pants all the way. You know, for full examination.”

“Pervert.”

“That’s what you like about me,” his lover reminded him. “Seriously, what was the bet on?”

“That I could eat two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Ichi shrugged at Bobby’s recoil. “It was Christmas. It’s what you do there. You get together and eat KFC, get drunk, and then do stupid things like pretend to be Samurai X in the middle of a busy intersection.”

“Okay, suddenly leftover turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches for a week don’t sound so bad.” Bobby slid his hands down Ichi’s back, stopping at the rise of his ass beneath the denim. Squeezing Ichiro’s cheeks, he pulled Ichi close until their bellies touched. “How far did you make it into the buckets?”

“Four pieces. But they were huge! I thought I’d start with the breasts first. That was a huge mistake.” Ichi grinned at the memory. “I always did like breasts.”

“Miss them?” Bobby walked him backward, shuffling them to the bedroom.

“Breasts?” He chuckled. “No, not really. I never knew what to do with them. Most Japanese girls are small, you know. Well, they start off that way, and then the ones I knew go out and get this huge melons put there. What do I do with that? And I can’t ever… I don’t know how I’m not supposed to remember it’s squishy plastic. Weirds me out a bit. Only the really big ones. Normal sized, I can handle that. It’s when they’re bigger than a prayer bell that gets me worried.”

“I’m more worried you use a prayer bell as a comparison.” Bobby stopped his shuffle, angling Ichi away from a table.

“Are you trying to get me to the bedroom?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Because at the rate we’re going, it’ll be morning before we get there.”

“I’d pick you up but….” Bobby made a show of eyeing him. “You’re not a girl, and I don’t think you’d get into that whole carried over the threshold thing. I didn’t even do that to my ex-wife.”

“Life lesson, when trying to seduce a guy, don’t bring up your ex-wife,” Ichi suggested as he broke loose from Bobby’s embrace. Grabbing his lover’s wrist, he tugged Bobby along. “Come on. You can try to convince me my stupid brother didn’t damage your face.”

“Hey, you okay? With Cole. Did you guys talk?” Bobby tackled Ichiro when they got close to the bed, and he grunted, gasping when the air whooshed out of his lungs.

“Dude, heavy. Ouch, get off,” Ichi choked, wiggling out from under his lover’s bulk.

“Yeah, you’re kind of scrawny. More red meat for you.” Bobby’s fingers were making quick work of his jeans’ buttons, and the denim was being tugged down Ichi’s hips before he knew it. “And cheese.”

“I’d be sicker than when I ate all that chicken.” He slapped at Bobby’s busy hands. “Stop that. I can get undressed by myself.”

“You take too long.” He tried to block Ichi’s pinch to his nipple but failed, squeaking low in his throat when Ichiro caught Bobby’s nub in a tight clench. Rubbing at his chest when Ichi let go, Bobby flopped back into the bed to watch Ichiro undress. “Seriously, you okay? With Cole? He was just being… well, shit… an older brother. You’d probably react the same way when that sister of yours gets old enough.”

“Doubt it.” Ichi sat down at the edge of the bed to tug his socks off. He rolled them up then tossed the ball into the pile of jeans and T-shirts he’d made in one of the space’s armchairs. “I’m probably never going to meet her anyway.”

“What are you talking about? It’s like a plane ride over. Hell, I’ll go with you.”

The bed tilted as Bobby got onto his knees and came up behind him. The older man’s hard cock pressed up along the ridge of Ichi’s spine, and he shivered at the wet smear Bobby’s precome-dampened underwear left on his back.

“Okay, so we don’t have to tell them we’re… you know, together or anything, but shit, she’s your baby sister.”

“She’s going to be my father’s daughter. One he’s having with my ex-fiancée—my very traditional ex-fiancée. I can tell you exactly what her life is going to be like. She’s going to be educated just enough to be a good corporate wife—just like Megumi was—but not so smart that she’ll have her own opinions.” He tried not to sound bitter, but the hatred of who he’d been, how he’d let them control his life until he’d finally broken free of his father’s manipulations still burned a hot fire inside of Ichiro. Megumi was just the tip of the iceberg, a shadowy betrayal amid countless disappointments and humiliations.

“You can’t be serious—”

“I am. How do you think Megumi and I met? We’re commodities. My father not only married the daughter, but he also bought out the company her father ran. We’re like amoebas, eating each other or spawning off identical replicas. I just didn’t want to—be that kind of man. Not anymore. He—my father—is not worth that kind of sacrifice of self.” Ichiro almost laughed at Bobby’s horrified expression.

“That’s… fucked-up.” Bobby’s hands were hot on his skin, rolling over his tense muscles, and Ichiro leaned into the man’s touch, drawing strength from him. “Yeah, I know. Different culture. Different… everything. Cole’s always getting on my ass about that, but shit, baby, that’s just not right. Who’d do that to their kid?”

“Trust me, as soon as he can, he’ll arrange a marriage between her and either some other corporate kid or some guy who he considers worthy of being his son. Because that’s what’s going to happen to whoever marries my sister. They’re going to win the lottery. My father’s going to put him on the family registry and have that perfect Japanese son he’s always wanted.”

“Fuck that,” Bobby growled, pulling him down onto the bed, flopping them both onto their sides. “If my kid turned out half as good as you, I’d be okay with it.”

“Kind of went to the weird there, Dawson,” Ichi teased. “But thanks. Icky weird, but thank you.”

“Admit it, you kind of like me weird.” Bobby did a few calisthenics on the mattress in an attempt to shed his clothes without getting up. Sighing heavily, he finally gave in to physics and sat up.

“Yeah, I do,” Ichi agreed, tracing Bobby’s spine with his fingertips.

There was power in Bobby’s body, a core strength he’d built on. The interplay of muscles along his back and hips was a tight ballet of lean threads and hard curves. A spray of freckles dappled his hips, and he’d gotten a scar along the edge of one rib, probably from something Cole did to him. Ichi was fairly sure of that. There were other blemishes, leftover reminders of a life lived hard and a bit too fast.

The age difference between them showed in the grit of Bobby’s hard, muscular body and the light sheen of silver flecks in his soft brown hair. Stubble roughened his square jaw, frosted more than the tousle across his scalp, and the faint silken strands across his chest and down his belly were a tawny mink on his tanned skin.

But it was the sardonic quirk of his grin that grabbed Ichiro by the balls and twisted them up into desire. There was a dash of cowboy and pirate in Bobby Dawson’s swagger, a bravado hiding the sometimes-tender soul within. Here was a man who worked his body into a sweat wearing gloves and a mouthpiece, pounding the hell out of his opponents—the same man who sprawled out onto a comfortable couch while the rain beat away at Los Angeles’s grime-ridden streets and read Ichi passages out of sweet gay romances.

“What are you looking at?” Bobby paused in midwiggle, his briefs tangled up around one knee. “Better yet, see anything you like?”

“Everything,” Ichi whispered, reaching over to slide the offending piece of underwear off his lover. “You were everything I was looking for.”

K
ISSING
I
CHIRO
was possibly the best thing Bobby had in his life. Being inside of him ranked closer to heaven, and his body burned with a whispering need he’d chased for decades. It’d been years since he’d let another man in him. He’d hidden his desires behind a cloak of secrecy, and with those secrets came shame and, worse, ignorance.