Aidan pressed his hands over his face and took another of those haunted, rattling breaths.
Tango raked his hands through his hair, suddenly aware of their mutual nakedness, and lack of a girl.
He bit at his lip. “I’m sorry, bro. Really. I don’t…” He swallowed. “But what you did to Jazz…”
“I know, I know,” Aidan groaned. “I’m sorry.”
Tango sighed. “She wanted both of us together. Guess that won’t seem so romantic after this.”
“No such thing as romantic,” Aidan mumbled. He pulled his hands away, and his eyes opened unnaturally wide, came to Tango. “Brother.” His voice was strained, lost. “Why do we put up with bitches? You and me – you’re bi. And I could learn.”
Tango sighed. “Aidan–”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re drunk.”
“No. Why…why do we…? Why don’t we just…?”
Tango sighed again and leaned over him, the long hair on top of his head falling down onto Aidan’s forehead. “Because you’re very straight, and I’m very confused, and you can’t be gay in this club.”
He kissed him, his best friend, his surrogate brother. On the lips, his mouth clinging.Yes, a voice in the back of his head said.Give your body to someone you love. And he could almost imagine that Aidan responded, lifted into him. It wouldn’t be the poison of Ian, would be something so whole and pure.
But it could never be.
He pulled back. And Aidan’s gaze was unfocused, blurred-over.
“You need to sleep,” Tango said quietly. “And then I’ll help you figure it out. All of it. I promise.”
~*~
“Here.” Carter handed a cold water bottle from the fridge to Jasmine and she took it with a nod of thanks, still wheezing.
She sucked down half of it in one long gulp. Gasped afterward, coughed a little more.
They both stood naked in the clubhouse kitchen, but they might as well have been fully clothed for all the interest he had in their state of dress.
“Thanks.” Jasmine’s voice was all wrong, scraped-hoarse. She pressed the cold bottle to her forehead, her neck, between her breasts. The smile she sent his way was nothing like the one she’d been giving him before. It was without pretense or sexual innuendo. It was embarrassed, actually. “I’m sorry.”
He folded his arms. “For what?”
She ducked her head and fiddled with the bottle cap in her hand. “I’m a total skank, huh? Sorry.”
His chest tightened. From the moment he’d prospected, he’d been fascinated by the Lean Bitches. It had started as a violent disgust…but the curiosity had been there, lurking beneath. And the longer he’d stayed with the Dogs, the more he’d seen, the more he’d begun to hunger for the nastiness. Why work and struggle and make a fool of himself for a girl out in the real world when there were the club girls wanting to snag a piece of him? There were casual groupies who showed up and then never showed back, but then there were the hardcore few. The ones who’d put themselves in Dogs’ beds every night for years, and seemed to enjoy it. Jasmine was their leader, and she was gorgeous, and he’d fantasized about her while he’d held his cock in his hand.
And now he’d been inside her, and his world was upside down. He wasn’t thinking with his upstairs head; possession roared in his veins.
“Jazz.” He loved the sound of the word on his tongue. The taste of it. Loved the way her head lifted, eyes wide and red-rimmed, helpless and hopeless all at once. “You’re not a skank.”
Her mouth lifted at the corners. “You’re sweet.”
“No. I’m dead serious.”
She blinked.
“And Tango’s not your man if he let that happen just now.” He nodded toward the hall, toward what the three of them had done. “’Cause if you were mine,” he said, feeling bold, feeling ten-feet-tall, “I wouldn’t share you.”
~*~
