“Trying to see the demon.”
Laddin could already tell it wasn’t working. A moment later Bruce flopped backward on the bed with a groan. “We are so totally screwed.”
“You’ve barely started,” Laddin countered. “You can’t give up now.”
“I’ve shot my one wad. I’ve got no other ideas. And if we can’t go snooping around Lake Wacka Wacka right now, then I’ve only got my fallback position, so to speak.”
There was a wryness in his tone that Laddin didn’t understand. He crawled up on the bed to lie next to Bruce. “What position is that?”
Bruce rolled his head to look straight at Laddin. “Whenever I get stuck, whenever I can’t see my way through a problem….”
“Yes? You do what?”
“I find the nearest willing girl and do her. Any way I can. It clears my head and I figure things out.”
“You can’t possibly have been that studly in school.”
Bruce’s mouth curved up into a devastatingly handsome smile.
“Okay, you probably were.”
“A gentleman never tells.”
Laddin snorted. “Something tells me you told everyone in the firehouse.”
Bruce’s expression sobered. “No, I didn’t,” he said softly. “It was bad enough I was using the girls for my own ends. I didn’t need to humiliate them in the process.”
So even in his sexcapade years, Bruce had been a gentleman. “My mistake.”
Then, suddenly, the man’s cocky grin was back. “The girls were the ones who told everyone. I neither confirmed nor denied.”
Laddin snorted to cover the hurt he felt. He didn’t like thinking about Bruce’s playboy ways, especially when it involved him banging every girl he came across. Fortunately, they had a world to save, so he suppressed his personal problems and focused on Bruce’s.
“Not that I object to an orgasm to clear one’s head—hell, it was how I got through French class—but I’m fresh out of horny girls right now and—mmph!”
The kiss was fast and delicious. It had just the right level of need mixed with playfulness. Bruce’s tongue pressed in, danced with Laddin’s, then pulled back.
“Whatever gave you the idea I was talking about girls?”
“The fact that you said ‘girl.’”
“I was talking about my past. This is my right here, right now.”
Laddin frowned, unable to dance away from the question. “So you’ve accepted it? That you’re into men?”
Bruce shrugged. “I’m not a deep thinker. I let Josh do that.” He immediately rolled on top of Laddin and pressed his thick cock against Laddin’s. “I want you. And it’s a bit hard for me to think about demons when we’re in a bed together with the door shut.”
“You do realize everyone will hear us anyway?”
That gave Bruce a moment’s pause; then he shrugged. “We’ll tell them I was doing exactly what Bitter… you know who… told me to do.”
Laddin winced. “He told you to have sex with me?”
Bruce’s grin was wide. “He told me the sex would be fantastic. And since we can’t go to the lake now that slasher kangaroos are running around….”
“You want to clear your mind and experiment with your powers.”
Bruce’s expression took on a serious cast. “You okay with that?”
Laddin’s body was definitely okay with that. He was already thick, and his hips ground upward against Bruce’s. But he didn’t say anything, and when he thought Bruce would simply take the invitation, the man did the exact opposite. He pulled back and looked into Laddin’s eyes.
“You gotta tell me this is okay.”
“Fuck buddies again?”
“It worked last time.”
It had. But…. “I know you better now.”
Bruce’s eyes widened and he nearly leaped off the bed. In the split second before he turned his face away, Laddin saw his expression of hurt, as if he’d taken Laddin’s words completely the wrong way.
“Wait!” Laddin grabbed Bruce but lost hold when the man jerked away.
“It’s okay,” Bruce said, his words rushed. “It’s not the time. If I need to jerk off, I can do it myself in the bathroom or something.”
“Bruce. Damn it, slow down!” The guy was heading out the door to leave, but Laddin didn’t let him. He grabbed hold of Bruce’s chin and jerked him back until they were face-to-face. “You are going to calm down and talk to me. Right now.”
“Good God,” Bruce said with an exaggerated eye roll. “You don’t have to go all Oprah on me. If you don’t want to fuck, we don’t have to—”
This time Laddin was the one cutting off his words with a kiss. Only his kiss was aggressive. He thrust his tongue straight into Bruce’s mouth and made him shut up. He felt the man’s shock in his sudden stillness. And then, when Laddin gripped the back of his head, Bruce pushed him up against a wall and kissed him back.
Their tongues dueled—in his mouth, in Bruce’s mouth, back and forth as they ground together. But this wasn’t a passionate kiss. It was an expression of anger and frustration and need, not passion—and certainly not love, though God knew no one had said that word yet.
When Bruce finally let up, they were forehead to forehead, and their breaths came out in harsh panting, Laddin finally managed to speak.
“I know you better now,” Laddin said. “I like you more. I like you a lot. And the meaningless sex stuff isn’t meaningless to me anymore.”
Bruce took a moment to process that. Then, when he spoke, there was a raspy tone to his voice. “It’s been one day. One fucking day. You don’t know me at all.”
Really? “Seems like longer.”
Bruce grunted in response, so Laddin elaborated.
“It seems like you’ve saved my life twice, been given an impossible task, and spent the whole time trying to do right by your brother.”
Bruce pushed back and ran a hand through his hair. “What do you want from me, Laddin?”
Laddin straightened his shirt and moved away from the wall. He knew Bruce wouldn’t accept any touch right then, but that didn’t stop him from holding out his hand. And when he spoke, he thought about his words and prayed they were the right ones. “I don’t want
