Boston Avant-Garde 6: Chiaroscuro (11 page)

Jason took Owen’s silence for compliance. “The fight is this weekend. The usual place. Be there by midnight.”

“I told you I’m not fighting anymore,” Owen said calmly. “I put two guys in the hospital last time and almost wound up in a box myself. I’m done.”

Jason’s dark eyes gleamed with malice. “Grandmother will be so sorry about that. She’s been having some trouble with vandals. There was a break-in at her neighbor’s house just last week. So far nobody’s been hurt, but you know how these things tend to escalate.”

Anger rose like a tidal wave inside Owen’s chest. Blood roared in his ears, and he clenched his hands to keep them away from Jason’s neck. “So let’s say I fight this weekend. What then? This is bullshit, and you know it.”

“You could always do another kind of job for me.” Jason’s deliberately casual tone put Owen on edge.

He mulled over his options before choosing the one least likely to end badly. “What’s the job?”

“Some weird ritual.” Jason smirked, looking pleased with himself.

Apparently his brother had been branching out from doing odd jobs for local criminals to renting himself out to the occult.

Owen wasn’t impressed. “What kind of ritual?”

“Some binding thing.” Jason shrugged off the potential danger of messing with power he didn’t understand with an ignorance that made Owen want to roll his eyes. “This crazy-ass guy came down to the rez talking about ancient power places and crossroads and some other bullshit. He talked to Dad, but you know how he is about that kind of stuff.”

Owen did know. Xander Bloodmoon liked a lot of things about his Narragansett heritage. Mysticism wasn’t one of them.

Jason wasn’t through. “So Dad told him the only ones who still bought into the old mumbo- jumbo were living in the houses the tribe keeps for the old folks.”

“He talked to Grandmother?” Owen cursed the strain in his tone, but he couldn’t hide his concern for the woman who’d taken him in as a child and raised him as her own. With his grandfather dead, it should have been Owen’s responsibility to see to her care. Instead he was forced to stand back and hope his idiot brother would keep his word that he’d direct his clandestine activities somewhere else.

“You know how she is. Always going on about the seasons, her weaving, and all that other bullshit.” Jason crossed his arms and scoffed. “This idiot ate it up. Next thing I know, he’s asking around for a couple of us who might want to make a few bucks on the side.”

“What’s the guy’s name?” Owen had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The kind that told him life was about to get messy fast.

“Daniel Hyde.” Jason was oblivious to Owen’s obvious unease and rattled on without a clue. “So I’m in, and Tony and Phil said they’re in, but we need a fourth guy. You don’t want to fight, you do this instead.”

Owen ground his teeth, squashing his anger into a tiny box and cramming it behind a locked door in his mind. “Why me?”

Jason looked miffed. “Because this Hyde loony says he needs guys from the local tribes. Phil has a couple drops of Wampanoag. Tony here is a half-blood Shinnecock, and you and me are Narragansett.”

“And nothing about this concerns you…at all?” Owen couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice any longer. “Not even if I tell you that your buddy Daniel Hyde got arrested here in Boston last year for performing animal sacrifices?”

“At least they weren’t human,” Jason joked.

Icy dread filled Owen as he realized just how crazy this whack job Hyde really was. It was obvious he had an interest in Mattie as much as he did her art. What if he was planning on trading up on the object he wanted to sacrifice?

Why Mattie?

Jason’s voice brought Owen crashing back into the moment. “You do this for me, and I’ll arrange it so you can visit Grandmother.”

Owen’s heart did a double tap. It had been years since he’d seen his grandmother. She’d been a constant presence in his life for so long. A guide always willing to lend an ear, give a hug, or offer insight, she’d loved him unconditionally. Thanks to one night of losing control and giving in to the violence within, Owen had to leave. He’d severed his relationship with the one person who’d always welcomed him home, proving he was the disease his stepmother had always accused him of being.

This was no time to rehash the past. He had no good options on the table. He didn’t want to play champion in Jason’s illicit fight club, but helping Jason perform some jacked-up occult ritual with Daniel Hyde would be the height of stupidity. With Owen’s luck, they’d piss off some ancient deity and kick off a supernatural war. Not to mention Mattie’s unwilling involvement in that scenario. Or the fact that Jason was dangling a chance for Owen to go
home
, even if it was only for a little while.

I can’t remember the last time I had a sense of homecoming.

“Well?” Jason’s voice gained a menacing note.

“When?”

Now his brother looked downright smug. The dick. “Halloween.”

“Whatever.”

If Jason’s broad smile was any indicator, he didn’t even consider the fact that “whatever” wasn’t an agreement or a disagreement. At this point there was no need to start shit with Jason when Owen might be able to use him for information while he tried to diffuse whatever nonsense Hyde was cooking up with Mattie. However, there was no way in hell Owen would participate in a ritual that promised to give the goatkiller some extra mojo.

Jason slapped Owen on the shoulder. “Cool. So I’ll contact you in the next couple of days to give you the details.”

“Sounds good,” Owen said.
Especially since I’m going to use those same details to make sure this never happens.

He watched Jason, Phil, and Tony head back toward Triptych’s front entrance, feeling as though he carried the entire world on his shoulders.

LARS MEMORIZED EVERY detail he could about the three losers walking away from Owen. They’d been too far away for Lars to hear more than a few snippets of conversation, but it was enough for him to know it wasn’t good. They obviously wanted something from Owen. It would be up to Owen whether or not Lars ever found out what.

Owen looked haggard. His neutral expression was set in stone as if he had retreated behind a mask. Strands of long dark hair had escaped the elastic tie at the back of his head and hung like loose silk around his face. He stood with arms crossed and feet spread like an immovable statue guarding the door to Triptych’s exclusive Underground. Lars knew better.

Even through the cacophony of club noise, Owen’s low voice was discernible. “Can’t stay away, huh?”

“I think it would be more accurate to say that I don’t
want
to stay away.” Lars wondered at the wisdom of making such a bald statement.

“I can’t deal with your emotional bullshit right now,” Owen said wearily. “But if you can keep your fucking head on straight for five minutes, I could use your help. It involves Mattie.”

Owen’s mask slipped, and Lars’s gut clenched at the desperation concealed beneath it. Everything else slid into the background—Lars’s family issues, his mother’s expectations, his own personal battles, and even his doubts about his manhood became unimportant. The only things that mattered were the two people whose lives had become inexplicably linked to his.

Lars took a deep breath. “Try me.”

Instead of speaking, Owen motioned to Trace, one of Triptych’s other managers. “Can you cover for me an hour or two?”

Trace raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word. He stood in front of the door and took up a stance Selena often referred to as “troll mode.”

Owen motioned that Lars should follow. “Come down to my suite. I don’t want to discuss it up here.”

Lars followed Owen down the familiar path, feeling as if every step pushed him just a little farther over the edge. He didn’t know what Owen had to say, about them, about Mattie, about what had happened. Lars wasn’t even sure he cared anymore.

He had a little less than two weeks left until he was scheduled to fly back to London. The problem was, he didn’t really want to go. Oh, there was a still a big part of him that wanted to escape Boston and his mother and her expectations and the reality that he was eventually going to have to come clean with her. Not to mention this whole clusterfuck with Isabel suddenly showing back up in his life. Somehow all of that paled in comparison to what was going on with Mattie and Owen.

Owen unlocked his door and pushed it open so they could enter. The medieval-style oak slammed shut behind them. It sounded final. Appropriate considering the fact that if Lars didn’t lay all his cards on the table, he would have no choice but to walk away for good. He couldn’t keep doing this to Mattie, to Owen, or even to himself. It wasn’t fair. He was either in or he was out, and Selena’s words kept ringing in his head.

“You have to tell her.”

So even though Lars didn’t know if he was brave enough to look Mattie in the face and explain he could never give her what she wanted most in the world, telling Owen seemed different.

Lars opened his mouth, and the words just tumbled out. “I have to tell you something.”

Owen rubbed a hand over his face. “I told you I didn’t have the stomach for your—”

Lars didn’t let Owen finish that thought. “This isn’t emotional bullshit. I just need to tell you a few things before we go any further with”—Lars didn’t even know what it was they were discussing—“anything.”

Owen crossed the room to a small kitchenette. HIs phone, wallet, and keys went on the counter before he pulled a beer out of the fridge. He held it up to ask Lars if he wanted one, but Lars shook his head. He couldn’t drink right now. Not with his stomach in knots.

“So?” Owen twirled his fingers in the air to tell Lars to continue.

Lars was suddenly at a loss. How was he supposed to start a confession like this?
Just dump it out there?
“When I was twenty-two, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.” Owen’s expression didn’t shift at all. There was no hint of pity or disdain. The steadiness of his lover’s regard strengthened Lars’s resolve. “They had to remove both testes. I had them—replaced—with implants.” Whatever courage he’d found began to drain away. He couldn’t meet Owen’s dark gaze any longer. “I…I have to eat these tablet things”—he gestured to his mouth—“for hormones. I used to do injections, but the mood swings were…” Lars trailed off, feeling more vulnerable in that moment than he did when Owen was fucking him in the ass.

“You thought telling me this would change how I see you,” Owen said quietly. He took a long swig of beer.

Lars shut his eyes, trying to get his bearings. “How could it not?”

“For a guy with no balls, you sure have a lot of brass.” Owen set the beer down and grabbed Lars. Owen pulled him into a hug. “You’re no less of a man today than you were yesterday, and I say you’ll still be one hell of a man tomorrow.”

Acceptance washed Lars like warm rain. He wrapped his arms around Owen’s broad frame and hugged him hard. Lars hadn’t realized until that moment that he needed so badly to hear Owen say the words.

One second they were hugging, the next they were grappling with clothes and kissing as though they were starved for the connection. Lars grabbed Owen’s T-shirt and yanked it up and off. Owen groaned when Lars curled his fingers into his thick deltoids before skimming Owen’s sleek torso on the way to his waist.

“Nothing has changed for us,” Owen growled. “I want you more now than I ever have before.”

Lars peeled off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, gratified to feel Owen caressing his bare chest. His cock was full to bursting. Lars unfastened his slacks, and then unzipped Owen’s jeans. Owen bracketed Lars’s hips. He pulled him closer and ground their erections together.

It was pure torture for Lars to feel Owen’s rock-hard shaft nestled against his own. He slid his hands around Owen’s sides and stabbed them into his lover’s jeans to cup his firm backside. Their mouths met in a tangle of tongues and teeth as both wrestled for dominance.

Owen began pulling Lars toward his bed. For the first time in Lars’s life, there was no voice of doubt in the back of his mind. When Owen relaxed back onto the rumpled sheets, there was only desire between the two of them.

“Take off your pants,” Owen told him.

Lars toed off his dress shoes and skinned his pants and underwear to the floor. He watched while Owen removed an eight-inch Bowie knife from its place against his right calf before unlacing his boots. Once Owen was naked, Lars climbed onto the bed beside him.

Owen brushed his fingers across the pale lines near Lars’s hips. “I’m guessing these are scars from your surgery.”

Lars started to nod but froze when Owen leaned down to run his tongue over each crease. Arousal made Lars’s belly shrink reflexively while he groaned. Sensation exploded through his system. Owen licked a path down the grooves on either side of Lars’s abdomen, heading toward his cock.

Owen shifted on the bed, pushing Lars onto his back and stretching out alongside him. The position put Owen’s thick erection within reach of Lars’s mouth. The temptation was too great to resist. Lars palmed the thick shaft of Owen’s cock and puckered his lips around the head. He sucked lightly and tickled the hole with the tip of his tongue.

Owen growled like an animal and thrust against Lars’s hold. “You sure you want to tease like that?”

Lars would have responded, but Owen chose that moment to swallow Lars’s cock whole. The crown rubbed up against the soft flesh in the back of Owen’s throat, and Lars almost came undone. Owen’s tongue rubbed hot trails along Lars’s skin. The sensation was so intense. Lars fought the urge to ejaculate. Forcing himself to focus on something other than the hot pressure wrapped around his cock, Lars put Owen’s dick inside his mouth and sucked hard.

For every wet stroke of Owen’s tongue, Lars gave the same. He lost himself to the rhythm of oral sex, to the give and take of pleasure. Lars felt his orgasm begin to build. Heat lanced through his nerves and settled in his haunches. He clenched his ass. His puckered anal entrance felt achy and empty, yet he wouldn’t have pulled his cock from Owen’s clever mouth even to feel his lover’s cock in his ass.