“And you both thought it was a great idea to get a puppy, huh?”
“Well—” Paul hadn’t actually endorsed the adoption of Magic, and he wasn’t much help with her even when he was home. But Joshua wasn’t about to admit that right now. He held onto his towel a little bit tighter.
The man raised a brow and went on. “A big, hulking puppy with an appetite for attention and exercise. The education system is abysmal, I know, but you’re a country boy, aren’t you?” He looked Joshua up and down like he could see every single farm-spent hour written into the muscles of his body. He licked his lips, shifted to his other foot, and cleared his throat. “You should have known better.”
Joshua stared at the man. Speechless, and conscious of the way his dick had reacted to the incredibly obvious once-over he’d just received, he shivered. He’d been trying hard not to have those kinds of thoughts about men anymore. He really had. But just one look from this imperious, slightly older man had Joshua’s balls tingling. He bit into his lower lip, trying to tamp down on his reaction before it became horribly obvious.
The man sighed, pinched between his eyebrows, and waved at the door to Joshua’s apartment. “Invite me in?”
“Uh, why?” Images of the man stripping off Joshua’s suddenly much too-small towel and dropping to his knees flashed wildly through his mind. He held back a whimper.
The man’s brows jumped to his hairline, as though Joshua were a total fool. But then he sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “I guess I should introduce myself first. I’m Neil Russell, your next-door neighbor. I’m also the guy currently standing between you staying in this apartment building or getting kicked out for pet violations.” He grimaced. “So, if you’ll let me in, I have some thoughts on your dog situation.”
Joshua’s cock thickened as he gazed at Neil’s mouth—soft, but hard, too, like it bit out every word thoughtfully, precisely, without any mercy or forgiveness. He wondered what a man like that might do in bed. Not that he’d ever had a man in bed before. Not a soft one, or a hard one, or a man his own age. No men ever. Not in his bed, not anywhere. But he wanted to know what this man would be like, tugged close against him, taking him apart precisely as he—
God help him! He needed to get his mind out of the gutter.
Neil sighed again. “Hello? May I come in? Or would you rather I invited you to my place? Or should I just call the apartment manager and have you evicted?”
Joshua gasped.
Neil blinked irritably, which Joshua hadn’t even known was a thing someone could do. He put a thumb to one eye and pressed softly, and then said in a kinder tone, “I thought it might be better to share my ideas with you inside your apartment, where you can put on some clothes. But if you insist on chatting here in the hallway while standing there in nothing but a towel, fine by me.”
“No, no, you’re right. Um, come in.” Joshua turned back to the door, his stomach flipping wildly. “But I can’t promise Magic won’t jump on you again.”
The man rolled his eyes, which Joshua suddenly realized were a bright, piercing blue. “Lead the way.”
May 2018—Scottsville, Kentucky
“So what happenedafter that?” Lee asked, his dark brown eyes dancing with amusement. Joshua hadn’t shared how he’d reacted physically to Neil that first morning in the hallway, but his predicament of being caught in only a towel was still a funny one. Especially the part where he lost it.
“He came in, I got dressed, and then he proceeded to bless me out for a good ten minutes about the idiocy of two students with night jobs adopting a dog like Magic. I had to agree with him.”
“Did he want you to get rid of her?” Lee had long, tapered fingers, some of them also scarred, and he drummed them on the side of his coffee cup as they talked.
“No. Not really.” Joshua laughed under his breath. “As it turned out, he was a massive softy when it came to dogs and, well, animals of all kinds. People irritated him but animals held his heart. He was a vegetarian, even, and refused to perform any of his nanite research on animals—which I’ve continued to insist on to this day.”
“He was a nanite researcher?” Lee’s voice inched up an octave with interest. Joshua knew the news had recently been covering some advances in nanite cellular repair. He’d done some of the interviews about it, even, since Neil’s foundation was funding so much of it. In the upcoming years, nanites might be able to change the surfacing of Lee’s scars.
“He was. One of the best.” Joshua swallowed a lump in his throat and went on. “Anyway, no, he didn’t want to get rid of Magic. Instead, he cozied up to her while I was getting dressed, and by the time I came back into the room, he’d basically taught her to sit. Something I’d failed at for weeks. He was amazing with that kind of thing.”
“Dogs know if someone’s a good person,” Lee said, with a tender smile that grabbed at Joshua like a hook.
“Yeah. And Magic adored him from the start.” He returned Lee’s smile tightly. “In the end, he offered a proposition that I almost refused because I didn’t understand the way his mind worked yet. He was gruff, impatient with me—with all humans, really—and I wondered if he had some nefarious plan for Magic because it was too good to be true.” Joshua let his mind go back to that moment in his old, shared apartment: Neil on the sofa with Magic, surrounded by Paul’s beer bottles and the detritus of two young men living together away from home for the first time. Magic had nuzzled Neil’s hand, and he’d given his first smile to her—bright, sweet, and surprising. Joshua sighed. “But she was snuggled up at his side, and he stroked her with this gentleness that got to me…” He swallowed again, worried that he would cry for sure this time.
“He offered to help with her?”
“Yes. He offered to train her, to take her with him running in the mornings before he left for work, and to keep her at night in his apartment if Paul and I were out. In exchange, Paul and I had to pay for her food and vet bills, and in the end? Magic was Neil’s dog. She basically lived there, and we just took care of her when Neil couldn’t.” He laughed. Then wiped his eyes. “Of course, it was Magic who…” He shook his head violently. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about that.”
Lee’s eyes softened. “How he died?”
Joshua shook his head again. “I can’t.” His voice was gruff.
“No, of course not. I never wanted you to. Thank you for everything you told me today. Do you mind if we just have a coffee together now? Talk about other things?”
Joshua gave a watery, grateful smile, and he noticed again how warm and caring Lee’s eyes were, and he let himself reach out to take hold of Lee’s hand.
Chapter Two
