Darwin's Natural Selection

Darwin’s Natural Selection Katie Allen

Human Design, Book Two

Tom Cooper’s life was changed with one swift act of brutality. It’s been months and he still can’t forget that night, still lives in fear…especially fear of intimacy. So when a big, beautiful construction worker expresses interest, Tom freezes with every touch. How can the same man inspire both lust and terror? His hungry looks seem both dangerous and delicious?

Darwin Bloom is a man without a life, an identity, even a real name. But he might have found a home in Tom. Living on the lam isn’t exactly conducive to relationships, but Darwin wants Tom too much to stay away. He’ll soothe his damaged lover with soft caresses, with patience, with his hard body—until the best sex of their lives in interrupted by agents from Darwin’s mysterious past.

But that’s okay. There’s something wickedly naughty about love on the run.

Darwin’s Natural

Selection

Katie Allen

“Anyone sitting here?”

Tom glanced up and almost choked on his mouthful of
huevos rancheros
.

The guy standing next to the table had the blond, athletic good looks of a former high-school football star. The stranger seemed surreal, as if Tom would blink and the image would change, turning the man into some toothless, smelly and depressing representation of reality.

Testing this theory, Tom blinked.

The guy kept his teeth and his pretty face, his expression shifting from geniality to uncertainty as his question hung in the air, unanswered.

Swallowing his bite of eggs, Tom shook his head.

“Mind if I join you?”

Tom waved at the empty chair across from him. “Sure,” he said warily. Watching the stranger settle into the seat across the table, he tried to puzzle out what was happening. The guy was a solid eight. Why would he be hitting on Tom, who was a six, six-and-a-half at best? And that was in club lighting. Right now, the diner’s fluorescent bulbs were most likely not doing him any favors.

“I’m Dave,” the blond said, extending a hand and holding eye contact a few seconds too long for the guy to be straight.

“Tom.” He accepted Dave’s hand, still not quite believing this guy was picking him up at this too-bright diner. Things like this just didn’t happen to him.

If you think every guy who tries to pick you up has ulterior motives
, he warned the cautious voice in his head,
you’re never going to get laid again. You might as well buy a bathrobe, start breeding Shih Tzus and resign yourself to being a lonely old queer.

Eyeing the blond sitting across from him, Tom wondered if maybe the dating gods were finally smiling on him. If so, it was about time. After eighteen months of being kicked in the nuts by those same fickle gods, he deserved a little luck.

“Nice to meet you.” Dave shifted in his chair and fiddled with the napkin-wrapped silverware. His gaze bounced around, from the tabletop to the front door to the top half of the cook, visible through the service window behind the counter. The waitress walked toward their table, coffeepot in hand, but Dave headed her off with a shake of his head.

“Not hungry?” Tom asked, sitting back.

There was no way he was about to try to eat in front of this guy and dribble Tabasco sauce down his front. He wasn’t too upset about missing out on the eggs. This apparently gay stranger was a lot more interesting—and probably tasted better too.

Dave shook his head again, his gaze still refusing to settle on one spot.

“So why’d you come in here?” Tom asked, partially teasing and partially really wanting to know.

“I was over there for a while.” Dave jerked his head toward the window.

“At the club?” Tom asked, deciding to ignore the fact that the other man hadn’t answered the question. It probably didn’t matter anyway.

“Yeah,” Dave confirmed. His gaze touched Tom’s face for barely a second before bouncing away again. “So why aren’t you
over there? It’s still early.”

With a shrug, Tom edited his story in his head before opening his mouth. “I was in there earlier but it was too,”
heartbreaking
, “boring. I left, realized I wanted eggs and ended up here.”

“Boring?” Dave repeated, focusing on Tom for a moment before his gaze skittered away.

“Same club, same music, same people.”

Although the music and the club weren’t the problem.
“But it’s the only option if I want to go out and not risk hitting on a straight redneck with a bad case of homophobia and a gun.” Tom paused, waiting for a laugh, but Dave didn’t even crack a smile.

Tom sighed, disappointed. A sense of humor wasn’t everything but it sure made things more fun. “So if it’s not the food, what brings you in here at eleven thirty on a Saturday night?”

Leaning back in his chair, Dave stretched his feet under the table until his shoes bumped Tom’s. “Same as you. Couldn’t take the club again tonight.”

Tom jumped at the contact. Considering Dave’s twitchy inability to meet his gaze, Tom had started wondering if he’d misread the whole thing. That shoe-to-shoe touch made the entire odd situation—dingy diner, eggs and a cute guy—seem more…possible.

He grinned at Dave. Since Tom credited the “half” part of his six-and-a-half rating to his dimples, he figured it was time to bring out the big guns.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Dave asked, waving toward the eggs.

Shaking his head, Tom nudged his plate a few inches away. “I’m full. Want some?”

“No thanks.” Dave was shredding a paper napkin into tiny paper snowflakes.

“Not really hungry.”

Watching him destroy the napkin, Tom cocked his head. “You okay?”

The other man’s head jerked up. “Yeah,”

he answered, quickly enough to make it sound like a complete lie. “I’m fine.”

With a nod, Tom let it go. “So what do you do?”

“What?” Dave’s expression was so suspicious, Tom had to hold back a smile.

Did the guy think he was asking about what he did in bed?

“Your job,” Tom clarified, proud he managed to hold a straight face. Poor Dave was so obviously anxious it took the edge off Tom’s own nerves. It was a nice change to feel like the assured, confident one. “Where do you work?”

A dark-red flush darkened Dave’s cheeks.

“Right,” he muttered, gaze back on his hands. “Sorry. I’m…in sales.”

The pause raised Tom’s curiosity but the other man’s blush kept him from prying. He didn’t want to embarrass the poor guy.

Instead, Tom just nodded.

“I can see you in sales,” he said with an encouraging smile, even though he was stretching the truth. The guy had the natural good looks that could be used to charm customers, but he couldn’t even make eye contact for more than a couple seconds.

Dave’s expression was skeptical.

“Really?”

“Sure.” Tom brought out the dimples again. “I’d buy…whatever it is you sell.”

Instead of enlightening Tom about exactly what kind of sales he did, Dave asked, “What about you?”

“Engineer.”

“Yeah?”

Tom shrugged.

“It sounds more glamorous than it actually is. I’m just a cube monkey, really.”

Dave gave a short laugh. “Aren’t we all?”

“Well, no,” Tom teased. “You could be a cube lion or a cube parrot or a cube bear…”

At the last suggestion, Dave’s smile fell away and his gaze shot to Tom’s.

Confused by the almost hostile look in the other man’s eyes, Tom frowned. “Are you ok—”

“Want to get out of here?”

Tom was tempted but he hesitated. He couldn’t seem to get a good read on Dave.

The twitchiness, the nervousness, the way his eyes looked everywhere except at Tom.

This didn’t feel like a normal pick-up.

At the thought, Tom almost laughed. It wasn’t as if he were an expert on correct behavior for hitting on another guy in a diner. Still, going home with a man he’d just met would freak him out, even if the stranger
weren’t
acting so squirrelly.

When Dave shifted his weight, still waiting for an answer, Tom sighed and shook his head. “I should head home. Early morning tomorrow.”

Dave’s face tightened. “Right.” He stood up so abruptly the front legs of his chair popped up a few inches, coming back down with a clatter, startling Tom.

“If you give me your number…” Tom said, trailing off when the other man gave a short shake of his head.

“Forget it,” Dave muttered and headed for the door.

Watching the back of his blond head, Tom sighed again. When the door swung shut behind the other man, Tom dropped his eyes to his congealing food. He picked up his fork and gave the eggs a poke.

“Cold eggs and no sex,” he muttered under his breath. “What a fun life I have.”

After paying his bill, Tom left the diner, turning right on Front Street toward his condo. Earlier, he’d had such high hopes for the evening. He’d even left his car at home and walked the eight blocks to the club, thinking he was going to be drinking and dancing and having fun for the first time in too many weeks.

Just ten minutes after he’d arrived, though, he’d spotted Andrew and the new boyfriend dancing, looking happy and sweaty and so into each other that Tom’s anticipation had drained out of him, leaving him depressed. Which had annoyed him.

Why was he letting Andy determine his mood? The club had suddenly seemed claustrophobic and Tom had escaped back into the street, where he’d decided to exchange a night at the club for a tired diner and mediocre eggs.

Jamming his hands into his pants pockets, Tom kicked at a pebble, sending it skittering across the sidewalk. Seriously, what a suck-ass night it had turned out to be.

“Tom.”

Startled, he stopped, looking around for the owner of the voice that’d just called out to him. He couldn’t see anyone.
Great
, he thought.
Am I hallucinating? Can I add mental illness to social incompetence now?

“Tom. Over here.”

Whipping his head around, Tom spotted a male figure standing in the parking lot to his right. The man was in a darker section of the parking area, where the sodium lights struggled to penetrate shadows created by the buildings bordering the lot.

“Who’s there?” Tom asked, proud that his voice didn’t shake.

“It’s Dave,” he said, moving away from the cars so the light caught the blond gleam of his hair and brightened his face enough for Tom to recognize the man.

“Dave?” Tom took a step closer to the lot, relieved that the dark and menacing shadow had been identified. “What’s wrong?”

“My car won’t start,” he explained, gesturing to the SUV behind him.

“I’m not much of a mechanic. I don’t think there’s much I could do to help.”

Dave shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much anyone can do. The thing’s dead. I forgot my phone at home. Mind if I use yours to call for a tow?”

“Sure.” Digging his cell out of his pocket, Tom walked over and handed it to Dave.

Turning toward the SUV, he frowned. “It can’t be more than a couple years old. What do you think is wrong with it?”

“Nothing.”

Confused, Tom turned around in time to see Dave flick his wrist, sending his phone flying across the lot.

“Hey!” Tom protested.

His baffled annoyance shifted to fear as Dave charged him, using his body to slam Tom against the vehicle.

The force of the blow knocked the wind out of Tom and he struggled to breathe, panicking when all he could do was suck in quick, shallow breaths. Before he could get enough air in his lungs to yell, Dave’s hand covered his mouth.

Tom bit him.

“Fuck!” Dave snarled, slamming Tom’s head against the window hard enough that he was surprised he didn’t break the glass.

“Do that again, you queer piece of shit, and I’ll break your neck. Got it?”

When Tom didn’t answer, Dave shoved his head back again and the pain finally registered, zigzagging across his skull. His vision had narrowed until all he could see was Dave’s face, features tight and twisted and bizarrely still handsome. He managed to jerk his head in the shortest of nods, although he couldn’t recall what Dave had asked. He just knew that if he didn’t answer, his head was going to hit the window again.

Still holding Tom pinned against the SUV, hand clamped over his mouth, Dave reached over and opened the backseat door.

When Tom saw it swing open, he began to struggle, knowing if Dave managed to get him in the SUV, things would get much worse very quickly.

Tom swung his fists toward the bigger man’s sides, hampered by the difference in their heights and Dave’s proximity. He twisted his hips, trying to position himself to knee Dave in the balls, but he restrained him easily, not even seeming to feel the blows.

In fact, even through their layers of clothes, Tom was pretty sure he could feel the other man was hard.

“Christ!” he gasped, but the word was muffled by Dave’s hand and came out sounding embarrassingly like a sob. Tom didn’t know if he was about to be bashed or raped or both—and not knowing made everything so much worse.

With distressing ease, Dave forced him into the SUV. When the backs of his legs hit the seat, Tom fell backward, his attacker following him down, using his legs and weight to pin Tom’s thighs against the seat.