Sinner's Gin (14 page)

“I was wondering what that thing was,” Miki said softly. “I knew what the egg beater was, but that thing was all kinds of fucked up.”

“You can mash parsnips with it too,” Kane replied.

“What’s a parsnip?” Miki cocked his head, his wet hair falling to the side. “Is that like a vegetable? Don’t like those much.”

“You don’t like beans or vegetables?” Kane tsked. “What the hell do you eat? Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’ve seen what you eat. I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

“I eat.” Miki pointed to the pantry. “There’s food in there.”

“There’s a salt lick and artificial preservatives in there,” Kane shot back. “I’m surprised you’re not a giant, salty Cheeto. Here, taste this and tell me what you think.”

Kane held out a spoonful of potatoes for Miki to taste. The man closed his eyes and leaned forward, opening his mouth into an O and waiting for Kane to slide the spoon in. Swallowing at the erotic sight, Kane braced his trembling hand by the wrist, then slid the potatoes through Miki’s parted lips and into his mouth.

“Tastes good. Like KFC’s.” Miki opened his eyes and mumbled around the mouthful. “It’s really good.”

“Really? Kentucky Fried Chicken?” Kane scoffed. “Fucking hell.”

“What? KFC makes the best potatoes. Better than Denny’s. I like their gravy too. Lots of pepper.” Miki nodded. “Their coleslaw rocks. It’s like the only salad I like.”

“I don’t even… don’t say shit like that around my mother. You’ll give her a heart attack,” he said, checking on the steaks. “Then she’ll beat the crap out of me for not feeding you actual food.”

“Yeah, don’t think that’ll happen. I don’t do so good with parents.” Miki leaned forward. “Most of them think I’m crap. Johnny and Dave’s parents are okay. They e-mail once in a while, but Damien’s probably wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”

“You don’t get along with them?” Kane tested the steaks with his finger, feeling the meat bounce back.

“They hate my guts.” Another shrug, but Miki’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s okay, really. I mean, now it is. I guess I figured since Damien and I were close, we’d… have a connection or something. They just don’t feel that way.”

“Were they assholes to you?” Kane flipped the steaks on the grill.

“They’re still assholes,” Miki replied. “I lost him too. Fuckers keep coming after me for shit like merchandising rights and stuff. Last week, they wanted to use
Blind Crossing
for a car commercial. I told them no… well, I told Edie no. I don’t talk to them directly. Lawyers think it’s better that way.”

“So no commercials?” Kane grinned. “Don’t want to sell instant coffee?”

“Hey, I don’t care.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’d pay the rent, but Damien hated that kind of shit. Said it would be over his dead body. So now… even over his dead body, I’m going to say no.”

“You and he ever….” Kane refused to look over his shoulder at the singer. “You know, ever hook up?”

“With Damie? Hell no,” Miki said, shuddering. His heels set a beat against the cabinet door as he swung his legs. “It’d be like you hooking up with… what’s your older brother’s name? Connor? D was the one who… I don’t know… it was like he got me. I never had to explain what I was thinking or what I wanted to do. He just knew. We could write stuff together, and it was easy. Everything just was… easy. Now, everything’s kind of fucked up, and I don’t know what to do without him. Especially with the band stuff. He took care of all of that. I only had to write music and sing.”

“How’d you guys meet?” He turned around and leaned against the counter, watching Miki’s expressive face as the man gave him a gentle smile.

“I was on a break over at the Golden Phoenix Palace. I used to grab some food and go out onto the fire escape to listen to music. I think it was like two in the morning when he was leaving a club and coming down the alleyway. I guess I was singing to Joplin with my headphones on, and he stopped and listened to me.”

“And asked you to be part of his band? Just like that?”

“Yeah. I thought he was fucking crazy. Well, okay, first I thought he was hitting on me, and
then
I thought he was fucking crazy.” Miki grinned. “But I said sure. It seemed like free money from what he said. They were doing covers then, so I didn’t have to worry about learning new songs. He and I started writing stuff together after that.”

“How old were you?” Kane tried counting back Sinner’s Gin history from what he remembered, but it seemed off in his head.

“Almost fifteen.” Miki laughed at Kane’s horrified expression. “I’d just shaken loose of Carl and Shing, so anything I could bring in was good. Damien used to tell the club guys I was eighteen but short because I was Asian, so they’d let me in to play. Caught some shit when we started making CDs a couple of years later, but the record company took care of that.”

“I would have loved to see them trying to figure out how to get you a passport.” The meat gave slightly when he poked at it with the tongs, and Kane said, “Hey, these are almost done. Grab some plates, and we can dish up some food. I take it the living room couch is where you eat.”

“Pretty much.” He shrugged. “I kind of took the dining room over as my bedroom. Climbing those fucking stairs with my knee was not on my list of things to do every day.”

Miki found a box of plates stacked up in the kitchen’s unused walk-in pantry. The forks were mismatched, rescued from a thrift store back when Sinner’s Gin lived together in a two-bedroom apartment, and a pair of jelly glasses were the best Miki could find to hold the red wine Kane brought with him, their crisscross pattern sparkling from the scrubbing Kane ordered Miki to give them.

Miki’s lone steak knife had cousins, and Kane excised the thick bone from his porterhouse to hand over to Dude. The dog accepted the offering with a delicate bite, then pranced off into Miki’s bedroom with his prize.

“He’s not going to eat that on the bed, is he?” Kane leaned back to see if he could spot the dog. “You don’t sleep enough as it is. If any bone’s going to poke you, it’s going to be mine, not the dog’s.”

“You’re….” Miki shook his head. “For a cop, you’re kind of a whore.”

“So long as he’s not eating that in your bed.” Kane smirked. “Okay?”

“Nah, he’s got a blanket in there he hides stuff in. He’ll eat it there. I give him dog cookies, and that’s where he takes them.” Miki took a sip of the wine and swallowed. His mouth twisted slightly, but his expression remained the same as he murmured something desultory at Kane.

“Want me to get you some Gatorade?” he drawled at Miki.

“No, it’s um….” Miki tried another sip. “God, yeah. This is bad.”

They ate slowly, with Kane talking about the people he’d run into while investigating a teenaged girl’s disappearance. Dude came out from the bedroom and gnawed loudly on his stripped-clean bone, perking up when Kane laughed at something Miki said.

Miki slid back into the couch, his plate still half full. Kane glanced at the leftover food, then drifted his gaze up to Miki’s face. The man reached over and nudged the plate toward Kane. Falling back in a slump, he waved negligently at the cop. “Go ahead. You look like Dude when I’m eating hot dogs.”

“Now that’s something I’d like to see,” Kane murmured as he stabbed the remainder of Miki’s steak and lifted it to his own plate. The thought of Miki’s full mouth wrapped around a length of sausage got him hard. Of course, seeing the man laid out on display bare to the waist under bubbles was a hard memory to shake.

He leaned back over to steal a forkful of potatoes, solely to tease, but Miki’s mock frown was too delectable to pass up. His fork clattered onto the plate, and Kane ran his fingertips under Miki’s chin, capturing the man’s jaw in his palm. Miki’s eyes widened, deepening in color when his pupils dilated. His lips parted, and Miki sat stone-still, transfixed as Kane lowered his mouth down on his.

It wasn’t fair, Kane decided. In that sweet moment when he first tasted Miki in his mouth, there should have been something sexy playing on the stereo and the promise of something hot and chocolate to pour on the man’s body for Kane to lick off.

Instead, they were being serenaded by a terrier chewing through a steak bone, but Kane savored the moment anyway. Especially when Miki moaned into his open mouth and their tongues touched briefly, sharing the heat building between them.

Then the sound of the front window’s glass shattering into a million pieces broke them apart.

Kane came up off the couch and reached for his leather jacket, where he’d stashed his gun. After shoving Miki down against the sofa, he came up with his weapon held steady and slid around the storage locker, using front wall as cover. Reaching the switch, Kane doused the overhead lights and waited by the door for something else to hit. He could hear Miki breathing hard on the couch and the concerned whimpers coming from the dog somewhere in a corner of the room.

Nothing happened. Nothing moved, and nothing more came through the windows. Keeping his weapon down, Kane turned on one of the switches, and light flared in the far side of the living space.

“Stay there,” Kane ordered Miki. “Keep Dude with you. If you can reach your phone, call 911 and tell them I need backup.”

He was barefoot, having shed his sneakers earlier, but Kane didn’t want to approach the remains of the window. Even from a few feet away, he could smell the rancid pungency of death and rot coming from the dog’s stiff body. The canine’s fur was a patchy ashen blond, running darker in places where mange ate at its skin. Its belly was slit open and stuffed with what looked like rocks to give it enough weight to break the window.

At first glance, he would have assumed the dog was Miki’s, so Kane reasoned that was what the intruder intended. A neon-green piece of paper was partially stuffed into the dog’s slack mouth, and Kane craned his head around to see if he could read the writing on it. The black marker bled through, and the letters were a childish block scrawl, but the words were clear enough.

“
Your next
?” Kane snorted. “Damn dickwad fucks up my night and can’t even spell.”

Chapter 9

The sweet smell of you stayed when the sun came up.

I needed you there, in the flesh not in dreams.

And on the nights when I cry, so deep from inside.

The sheets are cold and filled with my screams.

—Untitled song, Hidden Track 34

A
ROUGHER
, larger version of Kane was waiting for them when they came back from another round of questions at the police station.

Connor stood by the curb, his thick arms crossed over his wide chest. His hair was shorter than Kane’s, a black thistle following the lines of his skull, and his bright blue eyes were warier than his brother’s. The younger Morgan definitely shouted cop to Miki, but Connor’s stern face and tightly sculpted bulk screamed danger, even when he shot his brother a welcoming smile as Kane got out of the car.

Kane jerked his chin up at his older brother in passing and walked around to the car’s passenger side where Miki was struggling to get out of the cab. “Hey, hold up.”

“I can do this, you know,” Miki said, waving Kane off. “I did fine without you.”

He grabbed the doorframe, easing himself down onto the pavement, and held on tight as his leg threatened to face-plant him before he could take a single step. Gritting his teeth, Miki took short, skipping breaths to ride out the pain, then shuffled back to close the door.

He couldn’t trust himself to touch Kane. There was too much going on in his head. Torn between needing to lick his wounds and wanting Kane to spread him open and pierce him through with his hard, long dick, Miki knew he’d come apart if Kane ran his hands over him. Everything he’d been through was too close to the surface, and it scared him. The monsters haunting him in his nightmares were suddenly walking around in the daylight, and Miki didn’t know where else he could hide.

“Would you just fucking wait until I can help you walk to the door?” Kane muttered as he came up behind him. “You are so damned stubborn.”

“If this was you, would you let someone help?” Miki sniped as he dug his fingers into Kane’s arm.

“I know you’ve had a shit day,” Kane grumbled back. “Don’t be crappy to me too.”

“See you’ve got your hands full,” Connor rumbled, opening the door. “Need some assistance there, little brother?”

Miki tensed up, and Kane gave his brother a filthy look. “You’re not helping, Con.”

“He might be more willing if you weren’t growling at him.” Connor strolled up to Miki and lowered his shoulder. “Here, lean on me. My brother can lock up the car.”

Good. Connor was safe. Miki didn’t get the rush of tingles along his spine like he did when Kane was near. Reaching out for the older Morgan, Miki heard Kane mutter a few choice words at his brother and then swear when Miki slid his arm around Connor’s waist for support. It was like hugging a tree trunk, a large, shambling tree trunk that smelled almost like Kane. Miki looked back over his shoulder, meeting Kane’s gaze, then bit his lip when the cop winked at him.