Wicked Lies: A Dark Mission Novella (8 page)

He had no idea what Jonas could survive on. And what his body demanded of him.

It wasn’t worth the risk. Jonas stepped aside, peeled himself from the wild energy of Danny’s physique. The kid was intense.

And so not a kid.

“Thanks, mom,” he replied lightly. “Go sit down, Danny, I mean it.”

“Or what?”

Or . . .

Not a single thought in his head seemed appropriate.

Danny wasn’t his kind of guy. Period. Wasn’t going to happen. Jonas didn’t play with the nice ones, and damn it, Danny was a nice one. He deserved hand-holding and shared smiles and
hi, how was your day?
, not the hard, quick fuck of a man who didn’t deal with morning-afters. Jonas didn’t play well with others.

He’d never known how.

And he was too young for Jonas’s brand of interest.

He shoved a hand through his hair.

Flinched when Danny caught his wrist in his larger hand. Those dark eyebrows knotted again as he turned Jonas’s hand palm down. Unlike Danny’s, Jonas’s fingers splayed crookedly at his ring- and smallest fingers, broken too badly all those years ago.

The scars over his knuckles weren’t nearly as intense as they used to be. Time and therapy had faded them to smooth discolorations rippled out from each point of trauma. Fire, shrapnel.

They were worse on his legs. His waist, even low on his back.

“What happened?”

He pulled his hand away. “None of your business.” The words fell out before Jonas could stop them; the same words he gave every one-night-stand he’d ever had.
My history doesn’t concern you except to note I’m clean.

Jonas’s fingers curled into his palms as he hobbled stiffly across the apartment. Halting at the couch, he jerked the abused pillow into his hands and tossed it on the other side. It bounced once, a deflated cushion. As he reached for the first of two tangled blankets, intent on straightening up, Danny watched him. He could feel his gaze on him, practically sense where those damnably intense eyes landed. On his shoulders, his back. His

No way.

He turned, but too late.

Strong hands thudded against his shoulders. Snapping off a sharp cry of surprise, Jonas’s knees buckled, sent him down onto the couch as Danny bent, braced both hands against the back of the couch and hemmed Jonas in between them.

Jonas’s hands flattened into the cushions by his legs. Even as his cock pulsed in record time awareness. Readiness. “Stop it, Danny.”

“
You
stop it.” There was nothing amused in his eyes now. Nothing
nice
. Even, steady, they met his with a challenge Jonas would have to be dead not to understand.

He’d settle for dead.

Because this close to Danny’s mouth, sculpted and so very masculine in a too-charming face, Jonas was having a hard time remembering exactly why he wanted to put on the brakes.

“I’m not playing with you,” he managed, summoning up a stern facade from somewhere. Hell if he knew where. He didn’t have the energy to fight this. To fight him.

Danny didn’t push away. Didn’t even soften his posture, which had to be awkward as hell. Instead, jaw hardening, he said, “So you say. Did you mean anything you said back there?”

Shit! There it was. The blowback. Jonas’s fingers curled into fists against his thighs.
I’ll follow you to hell itself.
He wanted to close his eyes, but didn’t dare. Forcing his lips to curve up into a smile, he deliberately filled his face with sympathy. “I see,” he said gently, itching to brush away the fall of dark brown hair from Danny’s forehead.
Bad.
His fingers cracked, muffled in the cushions. “Danny, I’m a troubleshooter.”

His eyes narrowed. “I know.”

No, he didn’t. “It means,” Jonas explained patiently, “that when I go in somewhere, I do whatever needs to be done to get someone like you out of a jam. People need to trust me in there. If it means I flirt with an agent to put her at ease, or joke with a guy, or even listen to a feed full of threats and vitriol, I do it.”

The muscles in Danny’s arms clenched. Tightened, until he could all but feel them vibrating as Danny stared at him. “Did you mean any of it?”

Yes.
But Jonas would never admit it. “No,” he said, lifting his chin. Forcing himself to go stern, unyielding. The kid had to learn. “Not even the part when I said I couldn’t see you in that cell.”

The skin over Danny’s cheekbones went taut. A ruddy flush climbed his cheeks and dulled his throat. Something dark and hurting flashed in his eyes, and Jonas steeled himself. Pushed every word past the ache in his chest.

“I watched them beat you for three days, Danny.”

“That won’t work.” Quiet words. Nearly a whisper.

Jonas shook his head. “So you can be damn sure I’d do anything to get you out.”

“Sorry.” Those dimples flashed, even if the smile didn’t quite burn off the shame in Danny’s eyes. “You’re going to have to do better than that.” He leaned in, arms bending in a surprising show of strength, until Jonas inhaled the same air. Smelled the mint of his toothpaste, the subtly musky fragrance of his skin and the cheap soap Jonas had picked up at the market.

The dull thud in his heart dropped to echo painfully in an erection he couldn’t fight.

“You’re just feeling grateful,” Jonas whispered.

But his eyes dropped to the other man’s mouth.

Want.
Like a fist to his chest. Around his cock.

How long since he’d wanted so badly?

“Did you flirt with the male agents on your teams, Jonas?”

Never.
Never had he wanted like this.

“Are you gay?”

Chapter Six

I
T WASN’T A
taunt, but it may as well have been. The words jerked something raw and wounded inside him. Something Jonas didn’t ever want to reveal, not to him. Not to this aggravating, pushy, fucking amazing kid.

“Are you interested in men at all?” Danny’s breath was a warm caress across Jonas’s lips. “In me?”

Jonas sucked in air to say something, anything. Too late. Too slow.

Danny let his arms slide, caught his weight on his forearms. Suddenly, Jonas’s world was filled with hot male skin, the solid weight of a man over him.

Danny’s mouth, touching his.

Turning his world upside down.

Any other time, any other man, and Jonas would have called it sweet. Danny’s lips were soft, his mouth relaxed—a kiss as beautifully exploratory as it was a knife of pleasure slicing all the way to Jonas’s soul.

His hand rose without permission.

His fingers locked in the back of Danny’s sweatshirt.

Pull him away
, he thought wildly,
don’t do this, don’t—Oh, God.
The sound Danny made as his tongue stroked Jonas’s bottom lip slammed into him like a fist. Stripped him of everything he was until the rush of sexual anticipation filled the void.

Danny licked his way into Jonas’s mouth, balanced all his weight on one forearm to slide his hand into his hair, and Jonas’s fingers loosened. Splayed.

They flattened low on Danny’s back and pulled him closer on a shuddering moan.

Just a little bit more. And then he’d say no. He
had
to say no.

The kid was . . . hell, he was just a kid. “No,” he rasped as Danny’s lips skimmed the edge of Jonas’s jaw and lowered to nuzzle the sensitive skin beneath his ear. Every brush of skin on skin, every breath, tugged like fingers around his erection. Hard and sharp and so good. So wrong.

Danny’s teeth scored over the side of Jonas’s neck.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he whispered, half a guttural groan. The muscles of Jonas’s arms locked. One straight at his side, the other still buried in the other man’s sweatshirt. “Danny, stop.”

Dark head lifting, Danny studied his face, eyes bright. Fever bright, but it wasn’t illness riding him now; Jonas could all but taste it between them. Knew how good it could be. Lose themselves for an hour or two, indulge in sweat and skin and
nothing
until the hurt, the memories, washed away.

He knew that road. Danny was too good for it.

“You’re telling me no,” Danny said huskily, one thumb tracing Jonas’s cheekbone. A knee hit the sofa, and Jonas’s breath shuddered as the warmth of Danny’s leg cradled his hip. So close. “But you’re the one pulling me in, Jonas.”

“Oh, God.” He was. The hand at Danny’s back strained, not to push him away but to bring him closer. Harder. Keep him trapped, his weight solid and real and everything Jonas wanted.

This kid. This man.

Eyes gone bottomless, knowing,
strong
, Danny reached back, captured Jonas’s fist in his. A tug, a gentle twist, and Jonas’s fingers twined with his. Palm to palm. “I’m not complaining,” he whispered. “Kiss me, angel.”

“I’m not—I can’t be—”

Danny’s laughter undid him. Throaty and sexy, wickedly sharp. He bent his head, slid his lips against Jonas’s again. Slow, lingering. The flesh of his bottom lip caught against Danny’s, elicited a ragged groan that might have been his own. Jonas couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he was breathing, if his heart still beat.

All he knew was—

Now.

Jonas found himself reaching out with his one free hand, hooking his fingers into Danny’s collar. Twisting them as Danny’s tongue slid between his lips, stroked against his. Warm, wet. A sweet appetizer to the fire in his gut, and suddenly, Jonas couldn’t wait. Didn’t want to wait.

Burned out of excuses.

His back strained as he straightened, struggled to meet Danny’s mouth with his, to push into him. His hips tilted against the cushions, unconscious demand, and Danny sank to his knees on either side of them. The weight of his body, firm but not crushing, registered on every level.

“No,” he rasped as Danny licked the underside of his jaw. “No promises. No—God,
yes
.” Fingers tight in Jonas’s hair, Danny’s mouth descended on the ragged pulse at his neck. Teeth closed over the muscle, tongue swirling over the tender flesh, and Jonas groaned as every nerve from forehead to dick to heels lit up like a bonfire.

“Jonas.” A growl in his ear.

“What?”

“Stop talking.” Danny’s hips shifted. The first brush of the rigid line of his erection against Jonas’s broke him.

And then he forgot all about pain and balance and good deeds and age. He forgot about all the reasons he couldn’t do this, forgot the line he tried so hard to draw in the quicksand at his feet. His fingers fumbled at Danny’s waistband, not fast enough, and he dimly heard laughter as he struggled to get the man’s pants off. Was it his own? Why couldn’t he tell the difference?

Why didn’t it matter?

Lust rode Jonas’s brain, a need sharper than he’d ever known.

Somehow, Danny’s jeans peeled off. The sweatshirt followed, leaving the athletic man outlined in the unforgiving lamplight. It traced his muscles, taut with youth and sculpted by days spent doing . . . whatever it was he did . . . It didn’t matter. Jonas didn’t care. His gaze skimmed the man’s long limbs, his sculpted chest beneath the bandage and his trim waist, the dark thatch of hair across his chest, narrowing below his navel to circle a cock Jonas craved.

There was something wrong with that. Something wrong with the way he lusted after a twenty-something-year-old like a cat in heat.

He raised both hands to his face.

Danny caught them in his. Pulled them away. “Look at me some more,” he ordered, a whisper. His eyes shone, black and hungry. “Just like that.”

Jonas’s throat closed. His mouth dried. He sat on that damned busted-out couch, fully clothed, a hard-on jabbing into his zipper and his hands held away from him like an errant kid, and he’d never been so turned on in his life.

Or felt so fucking wanted.

He wrenched his hands away.

A split second of uncertainty flickered across the other man’s face. A moment of doubt, of hurt, but Jonas didn’t give him time to make a decision
he
should have been the one making. He struggled to his feet, used the grip Danny curled around his wrist to pull himself up. Mouth set, pulse hammering, he stripped off his long-sleeve shirt and dropped it to his bare feet.

Every scar shone in smooth, mottled flesh a few shades darker than his naturally pale skin. Danny’s eyes flickered as Jonas pushed his jeans down his legs, revealing each mark—the patch at his hip, the darker discolorations at his thighs, the obviously twisted direction of one leg, and the shrapnel divots where no leg hairs had grown afterward. Grooves where the flesh had been torn away.

“Oh, angel.”

Ice splashed into his gut. Frigid, painful. He stiffened, as much as he could, ignoring the pain that lanced down his spine. “I don’t need your pity.”

Danny shook his head. “I don’t pity you.” He stepped forward, erection bobbing between his muscled thighs, but he didn’t make a grab. Didn’t try to seal the distance with a play, the way every other man who’d tolerated Jonas’s scars had.

Ice shimmered to confusion as Danny sank to his knees in front of him.

Confusion erupted into a supernova of need, of strangled panic, as the man wrapped both arms around his waist and lay his cheek against the shiny patch of skin along Jonas’s hip. He froze, one hand hovering over Danny’s dark hair. The other held out, as if he could find something to hang on to, something to give him balance in this suddenly shark-infested territory.

Danny didn’t say anything more. God, what was there to say? His lips brushed over the patch of skin. Rasped over his hipbone, licked a path to a mass of shrapnel ridges.

He kissed them, feather-light, his eyes closed.

Jonas stared, knees shaking, his heart shattering against the cage of his ribs.

And then Danny turned his head, his cheek against Jonas’s upper thigh, and those ink-dark eyes opened. Met his own.

When his lips closed over the head of his cock, Jonas jumped. Danny’s fingers dug in to his hips, held him still as he reverently slid his tongue down the shaft. Tasted him, took him in so completely. So many words surged into Jonas’s throat, so many sensations whipped through his body, but all he could do was groan, “
Fuck
,” and curl his fingers into Danny’s soft, thick hair.