Boston Avant-Garde 6: Chiaroscuro (12 page)

Lars cupped Owen’s balls. He felt their heaviness and marveled at the life held within each sphere. Kneading gently, he stretched them away from Owen’s body and was rewarded with a deep groan that vibrated against Lars’s shaft. The sensation spiked Lars’s arousal past the breaking point. He sucked on Owen’s cock and moaned as he came hard.

Owen stroked Lars’s sac as Lars continued to come. The gentle touch transcended the sexuality of their experience and went deeper. Lars sensed Owen’s acceptance in every touch. A shot of emotion Lars was afraid to examine made him giddy. He wanted so badly to give Owen the same kind of pleasure he’d received.

Lars renewed his assault on Owen’s cock. Gripping the base with one hand, he stretched Owen’s sac with the other and bobbed his head up and down as quickly as he dared. Owen arched his back and thrust his hips. Seconds later Lars felt the warm spill of semen on his tongue. He swallowed it down, licking up the remnants and savoring every drop.

The tension left Owen’s body, and Lars let go of his cock. Both men lay on their backs, chests heaving as they shared a companionable silence. Owen idly ran his fingers over Lars’s calf. When he rolled to his side, Lars gazed into his face and knew he would never say never again.

Chapter Nine

Owen waited for the words, but they never came. Seconds turned into minutes, and the knot in Owen’s belly began to ease. He’d brought Lars back to his suite to talk. He’d never expected his lover to confess something so incredibly personal. It went beyond the casual boundaries of their relationship and into unfamiliar territory.

He should’ve been pissed. This wasn’t the time in Owen’s life for touchy-feely emotional bullshit. The problem was that the only thoughts Owen could muster involved what his life would’ve been like had Lars died of cancer before Owen had ever met him.

The idea left Owen cold with dread. It pushed even the shadow of violence in Owen’s past into the background. Nothing mattered but Lars. The last five months had been full of ups and downs, but they’d been full. Before that, Owen had lived a half-life, day to day going through the motions. Doing his job at Triptych, living at the club, taking extra shifts because he literally had nothing else to do.

What the fuck was I doing?

Then Lars came along, stirring up trouble. Owen could still remember the first time he’d seen him almost a year ago. It’d been before Selena got involved with Malachi and Demon. When she and Lars had been trying to get into the Underground without a pass. Owen had liked Lars from the start. Mostly because of the other man’s sassy personality, though there’d been a strong physical attraction too.

If Lars had died, Owen would’ve missed out on every lively exchange between them. He would’ve never discovered a lover who could match him wit for wit before igniting the kind of fire between the sheets Owen had never expected to find in this life or the next.

I would have never met Mattie.

Owen hadn’t thought beyond a night’s pleasure before. Lars had changed that. What the two of them shared was hot. It was wild and satisfying in ways Owen knew he’d never find with another man, but there was still an element missing. Until they’d added Mattie to the equation, Owen couldn’t have said what it was. Maybe he hadn’t even taken the time to acknowledge that he felt its absence.

Lars made a low noise and flopped over onto his stomach. He folded his arms and rested his chin on top. “If you’re waiting for me to leave, you’re wasting your time.”

“If I wanted you to leave, I’d kick your naked ass to the curb.” Owen made himself comfortable, smashing a few pillows into position and lounging against the headboard.

“Good to know.”

There would be no better opportunity for Owen to get his questions answered. “What did Mattie say to you that sent you running away from her?”

Lars briefly covered his face with both hands, looking as if he’d been gut kicked. “You have to understand that Mattie has a bone-deep desire for a family with all the trimmings. She told me she loved me. That she could see the two of us having a future together.”

Owen had suspected as much. “So you ran.”

“I panicked.”

“And now?” Owen wondered if the two of them were so far gone down the path of self-destruction they would be unable to turn back even if they wanted to.

“You think I don’t wish it was different? I can’t give her what she needs, Owen. I can’t!” Lars got to his knees, his soft cock lying against his leg, and his sexy-as-hell body looking like an open invitation.

Owen thought of a thousand reasons he should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t. “I can.”

“What?” For a split second, Lars looked ready to throw down. Then comprehension broke over his face, and he seemed to waver between hopeful and appalled. “Just because the three of us enjoyed a little ménage action does not mean we can waltz into a committed threesome relationship. Are you insane? Do you have any idea how complex that kind of thing is?”

“I live at Triptych,” Owen said irritably. He couldn’t believe he was the one arguing in favor of a long-term attachment. Had he lost his mind?

“So watching the relationship between my cousin, Malachi, and Demon is a shining example of how to make it work?” Lars’s expression oozed sarcasm—something Owen of all people could well appreciate. “First of all, Demon and Malachi were a committed couple for more than a decade before adding Selena to their relationship. The three of us are practically strangers.” Lars climbed off the bed and started pacing. “It’s all moot anyway. What are we supposed to do? Go knock on Mattie’s door and tell her we’ve got a fucked-up solution to an even more fucked-up problem? She probably hates us by now.”

Knocking on Owen’s door interrupted Lars’s tirade. He froze midstride and gazed at Owen as if to ask how he wanted it handled. Owen appreciated the gesture, but at this point he couldn’t care less who knew he was fucking Lars Aasen. In fact, Owen was ready to take out an ad in the
Herald
if it would shut Lars up.

Owen got off the bed and walked to the door. The massive piece was a replica of something Malachi’s former mistress, Seraph, had seen in an Italian castle. It was heavy and lacked any sort of peephole.

“Who is it?” Owen asked.

To his shock, it was Mattie who answered. “Please let me in, Owen. I need your help.”

Owen paused for exactly ten seconds to consider the ramifications of letting Mattie know he was in his room with Lars, and they were both naked.
We have to open the topic somehow
. Owen slid the bolt and yanked the door open. “Come on in, baby.”

EVERYTHING MATTIE INTENDED to say flew right out of her brain the minute she saw Owen’s gorgeous naked body at the door. The man absolutely belonged in the primitive corridors of Triptych. Inside his room she noticed a thick area rug in rich earth tones, a tiny kitchenette in one corner, and a massive bed in the other. The style was medieval, yet the space had a Spartan feel to it. If he lived here, where were the pictures and knickknacks? He didn’t seem like a warm, fuzzy guy, but he had to have
some
kind of personal stuff.

Mattie hadn’t come to Triptych to see Owen. She’d been hoping Malachi could dig up information to shed some light on the Wheel of the Year her mysterious visitor had left on her tree. Now that Selena had directed her to Owen, she couldn’t deny she was happy about it. Maybe even a little excited. Except Owen seemed a little apprehensive. What if he was entertaining someone else? Surely he wouldn’t have let her in if he had another woman or a guy in his room. Would he?

Then she caught a glimpse of Lars, also naked, standing near the bed. Horror, anger, and betrayal lanced through her body and left her breathless in their wake. How could she have been such a fool? They’d used her like a toy and then told her it was over between all three of them.

Except I didn’t feel used, I felt pleasured beyond belief. And I could’ve sworn they were telling the truth.

Doubt ate away at her confidence. How could she be so wrong about so many things? Maybe the problem was hers. Maybe it was time to seriously pursue a way to neutralize the “English” curse. Family legend held that someone had hexed them generations ago, and Mattie was starting to believe it.

“Mattie, it isn’t what you think.” Lars was frowning, but not at her.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Then tell me what it is. Because it
looks
like the two of you have been screwing around.”

A sexy smile curved Owen’s lips into the most kissable shape. “That part is exactly what it looks like.”

“Owen, dammit!” Lars stabbed both hands into his dark hair and yanked so hard she was shocked he didn’t rip it out. “I didn’t come here for this, Mattie. I came here because Selena let it slip that Owen might be in trouble.”

It was Owen’s turn to be shocked, and if the storm clouds gathering in his expression were anything to go by, pissed too. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Lars looked uncomfortable. “Those three guys that came to see you. Selena said a rough-looking guy named Jason came here to find you last night. I just…” Lars seemed to change his mind about what he wanted to say. “I just needed to see if you were okay. All right?”

For a second, it appeared it was anything
but
all right; then Owen’s expression cleared, and he gifted Lars with a smile so soft it made Mattie’s heart hurt. Why the hell couldn’t she get a man to look at her like that?

Owen glanced from Lars to Mattie. “That’s actually what I meant to discuss with Lars earlier. Then we got distracted.”

Mattie couldn’t stop herself. “I bet.”

Owen was obviously peeved. “Can you just give us a chance? Please? Will it help if we put clothes on?”

Actually she was kind of enjoying staring at them. Her luck in keeping guys might be bad, but at least the two she’d managed to hook up with recently were built like gods. Between Owen’s thick muscular physique and Lars’s sleek athlete’s body, she could stare all day and not get enough.

Owen’s dark eyes gleamed with seductive heat. “Mattie?”

“I like the view,” she admitted.

The two men shared a look. While it didn’t strike her as though they were agreeing on something, it was obvious they’d had the same thought. How odd.

“Come sit down, then,” Lars urged. He took a spot on the bed and patted the mattress.

She eyed him with no small amount of misgiving. “Oh sure, because that’s not weird or anything.”

Before she could make a decision whether to take Lars up on his suggestion or not, Owen swept her into his arms. He was warm and vital, and he smelled so damn good. It felt amazing to be close to him, but it also hurt. He’d rejected her. They both had. And it was going to take her more than a minute to get over it.

I did come down here to ask for his help.

Owen set her on the bed and got in beside her. Now she was sandwiched between two hot, naked men on a bed that had looked a lot bigger before she was on it.

“Why don’t you start,” Owen suggested to her. “You said you needed my help.”

His words brought her back to the reason she’d come. Unzipping one of the pockets in her baggy cargos, she pulled out the piece of parchment she’d found in her tree. “Someone left this for me in a tree at the edge of my yard.” She opened up the Wheel of the Year and showed them the markings. “I’ve never known anyone to use a noose to symbolize Samhain. I was wondering if either of you had?”

Owen lifted his hand but stopped short of touching the parchment. Mattie knew without asking that he could feel the evil just as she had. Lars didn’t share the same sense. He took it and examined it from multiple angles, even holding it up to catch the light.

Owen arranged his stoic features into a glower. “What kind of tree was it hanging on?”

“A hawthorn, why?” She hadn’t thought that might be significant until Owen mentioned it. “You’re thinking they picked a hawthorn because they’re believed to harbor old magic.”

“Seriously?” Lars’s voice was laced with the kind of skepticism she was used to but none of the derision that often came with it.

Owen looked pensive. “It was Daniel Hyde.”

“How can you know?” Lars demanded. “I could run some tests at the office. Maybe figure out where someone could get parchment like this.”

Owen tugged the elastic band from his hair. His hair was longer than it looked, flowing over his shoulders like an onyx river. He finger combed it before pulling the entire mass up into a fresh ponytail. Mattie had seen women do that a million times. She’d never thought the process of any particular interest. Now she considered it drool inspiring.

“The guy who came to see me earlier was my older half brother,” Owen explained. He shoulders slumped as though he’d finally grown tired of carrying the weight of his problems. “We’re not exactly close.”

“How not exactly close are you?” Lars asked, tone flat. “From where I was standing, it looked like a fatal dose of sibling rivalry.”

Mattie tried to harden her feelings against Owen, but it was difficult when he looked so worn down. It was like she couldn’t help herself. Even though this man was more or less her rival for Lars’s affection, her heart seemed hell-bent on getting broken. Hesitantly lifting her hand, she laid it against his warm bicep.

He smiled at her. Such a simple gesture, but it felt like the sun had come out. Lowering his head, he kissed her fingers where they rested on his arm. “We share the same father, but he was married to Jason’s mother. I’m nothing but a bastard. My mother tracked down my father after she got pregnant, and my paternal grandmother took me in.”

Mattie felt a wave of kinship. “That’s no small thing. My grandmother did the same for me. I never stopped loving her for it.”

“It’s not uncommon in our tribe. You only need a drop of Narragansett to be considered one, and Jason is three-quarters, which is more than most. My looks always bothered him because he was the ‘real’ Indian, and I was the bastard.” Owen spread his arms to indicate his complexion, but to Mattie it was much more than that.

For being admittedly multiracial, Owen looked shockingly Native American. From the coppery hue of his skin to his strong features, he could have been the poster boy for the Narragansett tribe.