Dirty Kiss (14 page)

“No,” I replied. “I didn’t think there was anything here but a suicide. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“So you think someone killed Hyun-Shik? Really?”

“Yeah and my gut tells me Jin-Sang’s death is connected to it too,” I said, nodding my head. “So I guess I’ll have to see what Victoria has to say about her husband.”

“She’s a bitch. Don’t let her good manners fool you.” His face turned waxen, and he turned his head, struggling to keep his nausea down. “I don’t feel good.”

“It’s the concussion. Let’s get some soup or something into your stomach.” I stood up, and he grabbed at my hand. “What?”

“Why don’t I call Scarlet? She’ll come over and take care of me. She’s not working tonight.”

“I don’t mind.” He didn’t look good. Not bad, because someone as pretty as he was never was going to look bad, but there was a need for sleep and food on his face. “I can crash on the couch. You shouldn’t be alone. Remember?”

“I know,” he said with some regret. “But you’re going to have to go.”

I waited for a heartbeat. Mike always said I was slow about catching on and often expressed surprise that I’d made detective. “You don’t want me here? Okay, no problem.”

“No, the problem is, I do want you here. Too much.” He let go of my hand, pulling back into the pillows. Regret curled his mouth, and I wanted to kiss the wickedness back into it. “You’re hot, and you’re taking care of me even when you’re pissed off, which kind of gets me off. So yeah, I’m going to call Scarlet, and you’re going to go home. Now.”

“So he
kicked you out?” I wasn’t going to give Bobby the satisfaction of teasing me, but sometimes, after a few beers, my tongue doesn’t do what I want it to. “Because he was turned on by you?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I counted glass bottles, soldiers I’d lined up on the bar, wondering if the bartender was going to cut me off soon. I got my answer when I signaled for another and he tipped off the bottle cap without even flinching. The bartender was elevated to archangel status. I reminded myself to leave adequate tribute.

“Did you tell him you were gay?” I saw Bobby smiling around the lip of his glass. “Although I think that horse has left the barn. I’m pretty sure he already knows.”

“Nope, I was too….” I couldn’t think of the word. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t reach it. “Yeah, I don’t think I need to tell him.”

“Chickenshit?” Bobby offered up. Always helpful, that Bobby.

“No,” I denied emphatically, then shrugged. “Maybe. I met him yesterday. It’s not like we have a relationship.”

“Cole, we’re guys. We fuck first and then look for happy ever after.” He drained his whiskey and sighed before asking one of the guys behind the bar for a club soda. “That’s the best part about being gay. We don’t have to deal with all of that crap women bring to the table. We screw and then see if we like each other. That way, if the sex is bad, we’re not stuck with someone we don’t like.”

“That’s what I love about you, Bobby. You’re a romantic.” Tipping the bottle back, I doused my face with beer. Somehow my mouth moved when I wasn’t looking. Wiping off the foam, I muttered at him, “Laugh and I’ll kick you in the nuts.”

“You couldn’t find my nuts right now if I had my pants down and was waving them in front of you.” Hooking his hand under my arm, he pulled me off the bar stool. “Come on, I’ll walk you home, Princess.”

“I’d like to see you say that to me when I’m sober.” Thinking hard, I remembered he sometimes called me that when we were boxing, usually when he was pounding the crap out of me. “Never mind. Forget I said that.”

“I’m pretty sure you will.” Bobby paid for the last of my beers and hustled me outside. I struggled to get back in. After all, I’d promised to leave the bartender an angelic tip. “I left him something extra. Home you go.”

The cold air hit me hard, and I drew in a lungful of ice. With no cloud cover, the basin’s heat had fled to the stars and the night sank its chilled bite into the city. After the searing day, the desert grew cold. By one in the morning, there’d be frost on the grass that would be dew when the sun rose. It was no wonder I kept losing some of the bushes in front of my place.

Compared to the Chicago winters I’d endured as a teen, I’d take Los Angeles’s chilly nights during any drunken stumble back from a bar. I felt the urge to break into song, probably my father’s Irish blood.

“I should learn the words to ‘Danny Boy’,” I mumbled.

“God no,” Bobby said, guiding me around a lamp pole. “I’ve heard you at karaoke. You utter one note, and I’m leaving you in a pool of your own puke.”

“I don’t puke.” The beer was making it hard to think. “Okay, I’ve puked once or twice, but that was a long time ago. I was thinner then.”

“And you’re mountainous now.” He snorted as he turned me up the walk. My legs were firmer than they’d been when I’d slid off the barstool but still a bit weak. “Sleep this off. Go dream of your pretty-faced little boy.”

“He’s not a boy.” The crafty bits of my mind sent me images of Jae’s pale body stretched out onto a soft bed, one leg crooked and that damned mouth of his open just wide enough for me to slip my finger into. Swallowing, I tried to push away the image, not liking where I was going. Sure, I wanted Jae’s body under me, his sleek skin glowing with a sheen of sweat. I wasn’t dead. He turned me on. For some reason, there was something about his feral, lying sweetness that made me twitch. “Trust me. You’d want him too.”

“Yeah, from the sounds of it, I would.” Bobby deposited me on my front stoop, waiting for me to open the door and get inside before he left. “Get some sleep. Skip the gym tomorrow. I’m giving you a get-out-of-a-beating card.”

“Yes, Master,” I burbled, and he laughed, slapping me on the ass.

“If only you played those games, Princess.” Kissing me on the back of my head, Bobby pushed me into the hallway. “Don’t forget to lock the door. I’ll see you later.”

I fumbled with turning the deadbolt when I got inside, certain that someone had come in and moved it an inch or two to the left since I’d used it last.

“Or could be the six beers you drank, dork,” I mumbled, tossing my keys on the table where I’d have to hunt for them in the morning. A shower sounded both nice and disgusting. I wanted to get the smell of alcohol off me, but it would sober me up too much. I compromised with a quick splash and a scrub, dousing my head with cold water before staggering over to the bed.

And of course, sleep eluded me. My brain was too busy circling back to Jae’s mouth and the line of his body against rumpled sheets. My alarm clock mocked me, taunting me with its glowing numbers and illuminating my cell phone, which had its own silent sneer going.

“Fuck it.” I had his number. I’d even programmed it in. A punch of a few buttons rolled over into a purring ring, and a sultry voice answered the line, husky with fatigue. “Jae?”

“No, baby. This is Scarlet.” The purr wasn’t for me. It was one Scarlet always had in her voice. She probably practiced it in the echoes of a bathroom, listening for the right pitch that could curl the hairs on a man’s belly. It did nothing for me, but I had to appreciate the seductiveness in that rough velvet purr. “Is everything all right?”

“I was… calling to see if Jae was doing okay.” I could lie. I was a trained liar. Scarlet’s tsking chuckle made me feel like I was three years old again and caught stealing a cookie. Feint, my brain screamed, dodge! “Is he asleep?”

“Yes. Let me go outside. I don’t want to wake him.” I heard movement on the other line and then the sounds of faint street traffic as Scarlet stepped outside of Jae’s stone fortress. “Hold on. Aish, you’re an idiot.”

There was some discussion, a heated exchange between Scarlet and a deep-voiced man. She was shooing him away from the front door, first in English, then with a flare of hot Korean. I was imagining the worst when I heard another rumbling argument from whoever was outside of Jae’s door.

“You okay?” I didn’t like the neighborhood Jae was in. I was liking it even less with what I was hearing. “I can be over there. Get inside. I’ll have someone come around.”

“I don’t need saving, baby.” She murmured into the phone, laughing at me over the line. “That was one of the boys hyung sends with me. Believe me, honey, the last thing they want is going back to him with a hurt Scarlet. Nice Korean boys, thick in body and sometimes in the brain too. Just told him to go sit in the car with the other one, not stand on the doorstep.”

There was a flick of a lighter and then Scarlet’s inhale on a cigarette. I could almost see her standing in the cinderblock enclosure around Jae’s front door, her hip tilted against the wall as she angled the phone against her chin, exhaling a cloud of smoke before returning to the half-drunken pest on the line.

“Honey, why you calling so late?” The polished exotic English she’d spoken at the club blurred under the weight of the hour. Her Pinoy accent was richer now, a darker, earthier sound to her voice. When I didn’t answer immediately, she filled in the silence with a low murmur. “Ah, so that’s how it is.”

“How what is?” Even in the haze of what beer I had left in my system, I had an inkling she wasn’t just guessing at the fire Jae stoked in me. Hell, she made a living at stroking men’s egos and tickling that nerve in our brains that went straight to our dicks. I wasn’t hiding anything from Scarlet.

“I thought you were liking men. I guessed but weren’t sure,” she said. “Most men like you at least look at the boys, but no, none for you. Before Jae, I thought maybe you were funny kind, and not in my way. Not liking either boy or girl.”

“Hey now!” It kind of hurt to have my sexuality stripped away, even if it was imaginary. “I do okay.”

“Honey, I’m sure you do fine,” she said. It sounded like she’d said those words a million times. Probably had. “So you’re gay. Who isn’t right now?”

“Did you tell Jae?” I asked around the lump in my throat. It was one thing to be taunted about being gay, but to be asexual was too much of an insult. “About me….”

“He probably knows. He’s not stupid.” Another drag on her cigarette made a hissing noise in my ear. “I saw when you were here. You want him. Hovering and checking on him, like he was something you couldn’t have right now, but in a little bit, maybe, he give you some honey. I know men. I know how they are.”

“Scarlet, I just called to see how he was doing, not date him. He got kicked in the head pretty hard today.”

“Like I said, honey, he’s asleep now.” Scarlet sighed. “I’ll tell musang you called to see how he was. You go back to sleep now and try to pretend you didn’t call for something different.”

I tried protesting. I even made a few noises that sounded like I meant to grumble at being shoved aside, but her tsk pierced my eardrum, and I had to hold the phone away from my head.

“It’s not wrong to want him. My Jae-Min is pretty, and maybe you both can kiss each other’s boo-boos away.” The traffic noise subsided, followed by the solid clunk of the heavy metal door. “Go back to bed, baby, and dream of something really good.”