Ex's and O'S (8 page)

Except he caught the glint in her blue eyes and the twitch to her full lips. “Really? Not ever? That’s got to suck, a man being your age and as attractive as you are.”

“Christ,” Les muttered as he missed his turn. He couldn’t concentrate on how to get out of this verbal mess and drive at the same time, not when his heart was banging in his chest and his mind was spinning. Had he buried his sexuality all these years under the weight of his fears? Les hadn’t questioned his lack of desire for the opposite sex, he’d just resigned himself to being alone. In his mind, sex had always only been an option with a woman, and he hadn’t been interested for several reasons. Les hadn’t bothered with introspection, just taking the surface answers and leaving the whys and other options alone.

But now he wondered, and his blood heated with images of Adam’s lithe form under his bigger, bulkier body. How would Adam’s lips feel against his, or, God, even better, wrapped around Les’ dick?

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Just the thought had Les hard again, his cock pinched painfully between his pants and thigh. He started to shift in his seat then thought better of it as Charlene smacked his arm again.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well, what?” Les snapped, so confused by his own thoughts that he didn’t remember what Charlene had asked—at first. Then his whole face burned as her questions slammed back into his head. “Not with a man,” Les mumbled after several minutes of sweating under Charlene’s stare. It wasn’t a complete lie, he just hadn’t added the rest—not with a woman, either.

Charlene tittered and even snorted a bit, which for some strange reason made Les

want to laugh. “So this is one of those gay-for-you type of things.”

Les was so goddamned lost in this conversation. The sirens seemed like a better idea every second, fuck his pride. Charlene had already trampled it anyway. He reached for the switch only to have his hand batted away hard enough to make his knuckles sting.

“Hey!” Les yelped, shaking out his hand as he glared at the woman. “That’s assaulting an officer! So is hitting me like you keep doing!”

Charlene did another laugh-snort combo that sapped some of Les’ irritation away.

“Oh please, you gonna tell someone a big ol’ guy like yourself got smacked around by a tiny thing like myself? Seriously?”

No, he wasn’t, damn it. Les turned onto the street the apartments were on and bit his lip against the question threatening to spill out. It didn’t work, he had to ask. “What do you mean, gay-for-you?”

“Oh boy, you really are clueless,” Charlene snickered as Les pulled the car into the parking lot. He bristled at the amusement in her voice but, wisely in his opinion, kept his mouth shut. “It means, you weren’t interested in a man, only women, until you saw my beautiful baby boy.”

He was not going to admit he hadn’t been interested in anyone until he’d seen Adam.

And he wasn’t sure he was interested, exactly, but he did want to fuck the man something fierce. And there was absolutely zero chance of him spilling that bit of news to Charlene.

Instead he gave the woman an arch look as he put the car in park. “I bet Adam just loves it EX’S AND O’S

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when you call him your baby boy. He’s, what?” Les struggled to remember the birth date on the man’s licence. “Twenty-three? Wouldn’t that make him a man?”

Charlene scoffed at him as she unbuckled. “Close on the age, and it doesn’t matter, he will always be my baby boy, just like your mama would say you’re always going to be her baby boy.”

The declaration sent icy chills down Les’ spine. His mother would never say anything so trite, not when she’d spent the last thirty years in prison for killing his brother and nearly killing him. He got out of the car and wrapped himself in the cold weight of that knowledge, cloaking himself in the armour of pain and fear and, though he hated to admit it, hate, that had kept him from letting anyone get close to him for the past three decades. Even Charlene couldn’t penetrate that shield.

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“I’m telling you, that man just ain’t right.”

Adam glared at his mother as she set the last cup in the drain. He took the cup and dried it quickly with the towel, irritated by her constant comments about Stanton. Since Adam had got out of the hospital, it seemed all his mom did was rant about the cop—he was obviously unstable, so deep in the closet he couldn’t find his way out, a robot, dangerous, a walking, talking mess. Holy crap, she couldn’t go a single day without saying something negative about the man.

And yet… Adam caught that brief flicker on her face, the one that caused her eyes to narrow and her lips to purse even as the edges canted up. Wasn’t that her plotting look? The

‘tell’ that she was up to something? He’d seen that look before, hadn’t he? It smacked of manipulation coated in a mother’s love.

Not good. Adam turned and stretched his arm out, placing the cup in the cabinet and only hissing a little at the pull of muscles in his lower back. Out of everything Rollins’ thugs had done to him, it’d been those damned kidney punches that had made him suffer most. A little over a week later and he was still sore, although nothing like he had been—certainly not enough to distract him from catching on to his mother’s scheming. Like a switch flipped in his head, sudden certainty of what Charlene was trying to do bloomed bright. Adam risked a glance up, the backs of his eyeballs aching as he tried to see directly above his head. There really should be one of those cartoon light bulbs there.

Charlene wiped down the sink with the sponge, scrubbing vigorously at a spot Adam was pretty sure was a scratch in the cheap aluminium. “I just think you should stay away from him, that’s all I’m saying. He’s so big and—”

“Oh, you do not,” Adam said, tossing the towel onto the dish drainer in exasperation.

It really shouldn’t have taken him so long to catch onto his mother’s game. He leant back against the cabinet and crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you really think this would work? Don’t tell me you’re not trying that reverse psychology sh—stuff, Mom.”

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Charlene shook a sudsy finger at him, splattering his cheek with the stuff. “Adam Masterson, you best watch your mouth!” Then she ruined her scolding by grinning

unrepentantly. “And I figured it couldn’t hurt. You haven’t said a word about that man, so I thought reminding you he existed might be a good idea—although I really do think he’s a closeted mess.”

Adam hadn’t said anything about Stanton because of this very thing. He hadn’t

wanted his mother to get it in her head that he and the cop were going to have some fairy tale happily-ever-after. Not that Adam didn’t want one, mind, he just figured it wasn’t going to happen, and certainly not with Stanton, who’d yet to approach him. The best Adam could hope for was some fantastic fucking, and for that he’d needed to be healed up. Hard to be flexible when it hurt to even draw a deep breath—but he was doing a lot better now, wasn’t he? Still a little sore, but—

“I think he needs some TLC,” Charlene continued as she turned the faucet back on to rinse her hands. “And not just from you, the other kind as well. You know, like a…like a mom, sort of.”

Adam blinked, then blinked again but the blush creeping up his mom’s neck to her

cheeks wasn’t a hallucination. He didn’t know whether to be astounded or jealous.
Fuck. I’m
both, which makes me one of those petty assholes!
And he could rationalise it however he wanted—he was an only child, he’d had his mother to himself since his father had split when Adam was eight,
etc.
etc.—but the truth was, he was an adult and maybe… Adam ran

through the past week. Maybe giving the woman someone else to nag and manipulate would be a good thing. He loved his mom, he really did, but how many times had he bitched about her needing a project other than him? She meant well, and her manipulations were never done with ill intent, but there was a reason he’d had his own place back in Billings.

But, no sense in making it easy on her. If Adam didn’t put up some resistance, she’d become suspicious and start poking and prodding at him some more. And he still couldn’t get over the little knot of jealousy that his mother wanted to mother someone else. It stung just a bit, like he wasn’t enough of a son for her, or a good enough one, anyway.

“Oh, now get that look off your face.”

Adam brought his vision back into focus just in time to open his arms up for his

mother’s hug. “You will always be my baby boy, always,” she said as she slipped her arms EX’S AND O’S

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around his torso, carefully keeping her hands higher up on his back. “But I’m telling you, there was something about that man that made me hurt just looking at him, especially when he went all stone cold like he did. I’m not sure, but I bet he clams up like that when he gets scared.”

He couldn’t help it, Adam laughed, ignoring the twinge of pain it caused all the way to his ribs. “I don’t think Stanton is scared of anything,” Adam began, then shut up when the memory of the cop trying to run out of the hospital flitted through his mind. The man hadn’t gone all stoic then. If Adam remembered right, Stanton had looked terrified. Or pissed, hard to tell—it wasn’t like he knew the man.

Charlene patted his shoulder before releasing him. “Everyone’s scared of something.

He’s no exception, and neither are you.”

Yeah, that point had been hammered into Adam, literally, with fists and kicks, but somehow he doubted his mother was talking about him being afraid for their lives.

“I know,” seemed like the best answer. Adam was glad his mother let him get away

with just that admission. He didn’t have the time to dwell on or debate what she really meant.

Josh sniffed like he was offended and tipped his nose up in the air. Maybe he was offended, how the hell would Les know? “Well, I just thought you might like to know, so excuse the hell out of me.”

Les wanted to glare, yes he did, but he managed not to, barely. The idea of Adam

working at the Xxchange didn’t sit well with him at all, but he had no grounds for his anger over it. The man had to make a living, and jobs were scarce. Wouldn’t be right to take it out on Josh, either. Instead he kept his attention on the ER doors as a small child darted back and forth in front of them, making them open, halt, start to close, halt—where the hell was this kid’s mother, anyway? Les spotted the woman sitting in the waiting room, one leg crossed over the other, her top foot bouncing as she flipped the pages of a ratty magazine.

“He starts tonight, eight until the club closes,” Josh muttered. He nodded at the kid.

“Does he look sick to you?”

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Les watched the boy run back and forth, giggling as the doors whooshed. His stomach tensed and felt jittery at the same time as he batted back thoughts of his own childhood. He darted a glance to the mother, still more interested in the magazine than her kid. There was none of the dramatic tears and fussing like his own mother would have kicked up. What did that mean?

Josh huffed, his breath causing the fringe on his brow to flutter up. “Oh well, it’s better to bring him in even if it’s a false alarm. You can never tell with the little ones how sick they really are.”

Or aren’t. Les bit the words back as he checked the time on his wristwatch. Another hour and a half to go. He watched Josh round up the boy and lead him over to his mother before taking both of them back to the exam rooms. Without Josh or the kid to distract him, Les’ thoughts went right back to where they usually ended up—Adam Masterson.

Les tugged the hem of his jacket down and sighed. He should be used to that, getting a hard on when he thought about Adam. Seemed to be a near constant state since seeing the man. And he really didn’t like the idea of Adam working at the Xxchange. If Rollins wanted to get to Adam, it’d be easy to do in a place like that. Les couldn’t watch over the blond there, not like he’d been trying to do since Adam had got out of the hospital. Telling himself he wasn’t being creepy, Les had spent most of his nights off camped out in the convenience store parking lot across from Adam’s apartment complex. He could see the windows of the second floor apartment from there. Maybe he should have actually knocked on the door, talked to Adam, but Charlene was there, and she scared the beegeezus out of Les, or at least made him really uncomfortable. He didn’t quite know how to act around her, and she probably thought he was a nut anyway.

Besides, what would he say to Adam? Hey, guess what? I’ve been watching your

place—well, really, watching for you. Don’t mind the erection tenting my pants, I swear I’m just working a hunch Rollins will try to finish what he started. Yeah, that’d go over well.

There’d be a harassment charge filed against him so fast his head would spin. And now Adam would be working at the Xxchange—Les might see the guy a lot. The police

department had received numerous calls about disturbances at the place, especially on weekends. Usually the calls were lover’s quarrels that had got out of hand, but sometimes, the calls were worse. A lot worse.

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“God damn it,” Les mumbled, checking his watch again. Why did Adam have to work

there anyway? Surely he could have got a job at McDonalds or something. Anything other than a club where Les responded to calls about drugged drinks and sexual assaults. Not that the straight clubs didn’t have their share of calls like that, too, but… But Adam wasn’t going to be working at one of them, and the blond was, well, he was just tasty looking. Les cringed at the thought, slapping one hand to his forehead and rubbing as if to shove it out of his head. He’d had enough time to come around to the fact that he was attracted to Adam—hard to deny it when Les couldn’t beat off without picturing those tempting lips stretched wide around his dick—but did he have to think such…such sappy, corny thoughts? Shit.