Uncommon Passion (10 page)

laugh.

He almost wished she had. She wasn’t what he expected for an almost virgin, and she certainly wasn’t

his typical, experienced lay. When he told her to make it happen for him he expected her to just ride him.

Bite her lip tentatively, maybe. Be uncertain and ask for guidance. Not that sex was rocket science, or

getting a guy off after an hour of foreplay was all that difficult.

Instead she’d given him the hint of slow, sweet pain that drove him crazy. The edge of her teeth. Her

nails, stinging in his shoulders not because he was driving her to the edge but to hold him where she

wanted him. She’d taken him apart then set him on fire.

His response was to practically shove her out of the truck like a one-night stand he regretted. He never

treated women like that. Never.

Three guys left the bar, no big deal, but the two girls they supported between them caught his eye. The

women had come in alone a couple of hours earlier and now they were leaving, stumbling drunk. He didn’t

need special anti-terrorist training to read the looks the guys exchanged. He stepped off the curb and

crossed the lot, intercepting the group at a Challenger.

“Evening,” he said. “You know these ladies?”

“Yeah, sure,” two of the guys said, trying to keep the women on their feet while the third said, “No.”

“Which is it?” Ben asked as he reached out and tipped one woman’s chin up enough to see her glazed

eyes, dilated pupils.

The two who said yes shot the third a glare. “We met them inside. We’re taking them home.”

“Conscientious of you,” Ben said, then turned back to the woman. “Ma’am? What’s your name?”

The woman’s head turned to him, moving like it was on a slow, rusty crank. The man standing next to

her tried to remove his hand from her arm, and she sagged at the knees. With a curse the guy held her up

again.

“What’s her name?” Ben said.

“Sharon,” her escort replied.

“I’m Sharon,” the other woman slurred.

Ben quirked an eyebrow. “Where do they live?”

In the silence that followed, not-Sharon hunched forward and threw up. “Jesus,” the big one said,

stepping away.

“Right,” Ben said. “Get them over against the side of the building.” After the men all but dragged the

women to a sitting position on the curb by the bar, he said, “She has to be sober enough to consent. No,

you’re done,” he added when the guys walked back toward the bar. “Go home.”

“You can’t stop us from going back in there.”

Ben gave a sharp whistle. The bouncers and Steve all looked up. “They’re done,” he called and got a

single nod in response. “Sure I can,” Ben said easily. “Get in your car and go home.”

“Asshole,” one of the guys muttered under his breath.

“Step over here and repeat that,” Ben said.

The smaller, smarter guy urged his friends into the Challenger, but not before one of them spat on the

ground at his feet. Ben just smiled.

He stayed by the women until the cab arrived, then helped the driver pour them into the back seat and

gave him the more sober woman’s address from her license. The rest of the shift was uneventful.

Until Juliette and her posse emerged as the bar closed. “You sure you don’t want to come over? Marta

and I have something special in mind for you.”

This was what he did. Comfortable. Routine. Same old same old.

His phone vibrated. He pulled it out to see his brother’s response:
Prove it.

“Got something to do,” he said to Juliette. “Another time.”

Galveston’s streets were near empty as he drove up Seawall Boulevard to the Kempner Park

neighborhood. He passed a patrol car driven by a young, yawning cop, who raised one finger in response to

Ben’s half wave. Sam’s house was dark when he backed into the driveway, but the garage-turned-

workshop at the end of the driveway was lit up. Ben strode up the driveway, along the paving stones arcing

to the workshop door, and let himself in.

Sam shot three final nails into a sheet of drywall, then rose from his crouched position. The last time

Ben had been here Sam was working on a couple of new pieces of metalwork art, but those materials and

tools were neatly arranged at one end of the workbench. Electrician’s tape, wiring, outlets, and plate covers

now occupied center stage, with more drywall stacked at the back of the space. Sam wore jeans and a short-

sleeved shirt, and tiny burns marred the skin of his forearms.

“My brother, conjured out of the dark,” Sam said lightly as he crossed the workshop to stand in front of

Ben.

They were so identical their mother couldn’t tell them apart. People asked if standing in front of Sam

was like looking in a mirror. It wasn’t. Mirrors only showed the external similarities. Standing in front of

Sam was like being known. Being seen. Sam was true north, gravity, air.

Or had been, back when they were kids.

“Beer’s in the fridge.”

“Thanks.” Ben helped himself, then sat down on the cement floor with his back to the exposed studs.

His breath eased from him as his back sang with relief at the absence of weight. He tipped back the Shiner

Bock can. Ice-cold beer slid down his throat, into his stomach.

“Long night?”

“The usual,” Ben said.

“What time is it?”

“Three.”

“Hope I didn’t keep you from something.”

“Just bed.”

“Your own bed? Alone?”

He huffed. “Yeah.”

“Call Gawker.”

He slid Sam a look. “You were no better.” Until Chris. Sam now wore his ring and his monogamy like

badges of honor. Given that he and Chris had to go to Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage was legal,

Ben understood wearing the ring.

Sam shrugged. “The right one is all it takes.”

Silence. Ben knocked back another slug of beer, then looked around the garage. Old sheetrock lay

stacked in one corner, while rolls of new insulation and coils of wire lay in another. “What’s with the demo

work?”

“We’re rewiring the garage to 220-volt so I can run more stations when the kids come for art therapy.”

“Got a contractor?”

“It’s no big deal,” Sam said. “Take out the old wire, install the new.”

Chris had worked in renovations and contracting before switching to landscape design, but he wasn’t a

licensed electrician. Sam was a psychologist. He’d met Chris on job sites working his way through college,

then grad school. Ben bit back his natural response, which was that every year Galveston EMTs transported

some guy who electrocuted himself trying to save a buck. They were usually DOA.

Sam didn’t even need to look at him to know what he was thinking. “The last time the social worker

was here, she looked at all the exposed wiring in the garage like we were letting Jonathan frolic with knives

and scorpions,” he admitted.

Jonathan. The kid who’d been removed from his meth-addicted mother’s house at one, and shuffled

through several stints in foster homes in the last five years. The kid with attachment issues and behavioral

problems. The kid Sam and Chris had fostered for six months and were determined to adopt. The road still

wasn’t easy for anyone, especially gay couples.

Ben saw the hope in his brother’s eyes, the exhaustion lining his face, and his heart clenched hard. “I get

it,” he said. “Just be careful.”

“Coming over for brunch later?”

Sam and Chris hosted a weekly Sunday brunch attended by a revolving door of people—fellow artists,

neighbors new and old, strays they found God only knew where, including some of the homeless people

Ben picked up in the city parks and drove down to the shelter. He had a standing invitation, but rarely made

it to the potluck madhouse that stretched from just before noon until the sun went down. “Mom and Dad

going to be here?”

His brother’s shoulders stiffened as he carefully laid the nail gun on the bench at the back of the garage.

“Probably,” Sam said. “And Katy, and Alan, and the girls. Our
family
will be there. All of them.”

Their sister, a year younger, had married right out of college, and was now raising two blond little girls

who wore so much pink they looked and smelled like bubble gum. “I’ll probably be sleeping,” he

equivocated.

“Still on Katy’s shit list?”

“Yeah.” His sister lived in a world of sweetness and light, where a steady stream of juice and hair bows,

cookies and cooing smoothed everything over. Ben dealt with black and white. In his world, some things

were unforgivable. Including their father driving Sam out of the house at sixteen when he came out of the

closet. Sam had disappeared onto the streets, and for two years Ben had lived with not knowing where his

brother was. Sam was gone, escaping a father who thought his son’s homosexuality could be cured by a

summer at a gay reeducation camp. When Sam left, their father never mentioned his name again. It was as

if Sam never existed. Which meant Ben didn’t exist, either.

Thanks to a tight twin connection he knew Sam was alive. Sometimes he knew when Sam was in

danger or trouble or pain. When that happened, not being able to help or protect him drove him nearly

insane.

In December of his freshman year at college, Sam had turned up outside Ben’s dorm in Austin. He wore

ripped jeans, a silver-studded belt, a flannel shirt, no-name shoes with holes in the toes, half-empty army

surplus duffel at his feet. He was thirty pounds thinner than when he’d left, with a nervous twitch and a

smoking habit that took him years to quit. They talked about where he’d been, a little. Never what he’d

seen. Never what he’d done. Ben pieced most of that together in high-def nightmares that got worse after he

got through the Academy and started working the street.

No fucking way was he forgiving their father for what he’d done. When he left the house the day they

turned eighteen, he’d sworn he would never go back, not even for the old man’s funeral. “For someone

who thinks I should be more forgiving,” Ben said, “Katy’s got a death grip on a grudge.”

“Withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.”

What a semi-load of bullshit. Sometime later, when Sam was in college or early in grad school, Sam

had reconciled with their father, but he’d always been able to see the good in someone. “You’d think you

were a psychologist or something,” Ben said not-so-lightly.

Sam refused to be drawn into the argument. He lifted the cooler’s top and pulled out a beer, then sat

down across the garage from Ben. “What’ve you been up to?”

Another shrug, another smile. “Went to a bachelor auction last weekend.”

“Be still my beating heart,” Sam drawled. “What the fuck for?”

“I was on the block.”

“Get out.”

“I was,” Ben protested.

“Why?”

“When I got SWAT Rogers moved to my spot in Vice. He had to work the night of the auction, and

since I beat him out for the team, he said it was the least I could do.”

There was a long moment while Sam tipped back his beer, then looked at him. “I hope a skinny blond

chickadee with enormous tits and the sex drive of the Energizer Bunny bought you, because you’re into that

kind of thing.”

“Not exactly,” he said wryly, thinking of Rachel. Barely a handful anywhere, humid electricity on the

outside, razor-sharp and dangerous inside. Shuddering in his arms as she learned what sex was. She’d just

be learning about the ache that came a day or two after a really good fuck, the desire to do it all over again.

Scratch the itch once and it never really went away.

“You can’t catch a break these days,” Sam said.

Ben finished his beer and pondered what he
had
caught, a dark-haired, whiskey-eyed virgin who

abruptly left everything she knew. Decision made and executed. Time to lose her virginity? Man purchased,

decision made and executed. Except . . . she wasn’t cold or unemotional. In the back seat of his truck she’d

felt everything. She’d explore sex with the same single-minded focus.

She came with the intensity of a lightning strike. By now she’d want it again. Bad.

Hot, dirty possibilities bloomed in his mind. He could show her how good sex could be, that

indescribable moment of luscious wet heat when his cock breached her soft opening, teach her to kiss,

covering the nuances from a good-bye peck on the cheek to a mouth-meld that meant
I want to fuck you

now, yes right-goddamn-against-this-wall now
to the heated connection that came from kissing and

fucking until the pleasure melted your brain. He’d imprint himself on her body, in her body, deep in her

mind, teach her how to be female to a male.

He wanted more. He was the only man who knew what she’d been, and he surely knew exactly what

she faced. A native guide, as it were, to the land of disposable.

You’re so civic-minded, Harris.

He picked up his phone and sent her a text. Maybe she’d see it, maybe she wouldn’t, but he wasn’t