“Uh, thanks.” I felt a little flash of warmth at his words, even casually meant. “But it’s an identifying mark, right? If I went back undercover in the same field, one slimeball might say to another, ‘We got busted by this cop with a big ugly scar like a Y on his chin,’ and they might say, ‘Hey, doesn’t the new guy have a scar like that?’ It’s a risk.”
“Oh. Sure. Do you think you’ll go undercover again?”
“No. Uh-uh.” I shook my head hard.Never again.Taking care of Josiah gave me a good excuse for something I’d already decided. “But anyhow, almost all those guys have tattoos. I got a couple of nothing ones, and I decided to do one that would make me seem a lot less like a cop.” I didn’t tell him it was after our informant turned up tortured to death. After the captain asked me if I was still up for this assignment and I said yes with ice-water trickling down my spine. Being scared was the source of lots of bad decisions. Peeling back the tape, I showed him the SS lightning bolts in deliberately faded black on the back of my forearm.
He flashed a look up at me. “Oh, yeah. That’d do it. Although I guess there are white supremacist cops too.”
“I guess.” I pressed the tape back into place.
“Are you going to get it removed?”
“That was my plan, but now I think, covered over.” I peered down at the blank white gauze, seeing a small airport in the pouring rain, and the muzzle of a gun. A flash. A fall. “I saw a good man die while I wore this and couldn’t do anything to save him. Maybe I should keep wearing it in his honour, blended into some other design.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t decide to do anything while fucked up about it?” Callum peered at me, his blue eyes looking worried.
“I’m okay.” I was, mostly, except sometimes in the dark of night. “But I’m not going back to the tattoo artist who did this. He said not one word about how I might regret it, just inked away.”
“Maybe he was scared of the kind of guy who would want one.”
“Maybe. Either way, I want someone I trust to make it right.”
“You know, if you want a recommendation, the artist who did mine is awesome. He’s also a flamboyant gay man, though, if that matters.”
“Why would it matter?”
“If you’re not good with a gay man having his hands on you?”
I barked a laugh. “Then I’d never get laid.”
Callum blinked at me for a moment. “Seriously? Good to know. I mean, we have an out gay player, and he gets shit from some of the fans pretty often, so I’m glad you’re not some kind of ’phobe. Anyway, this is River’s work.” He tugged at the hem of his shirt and raised it high, baring his stomach, ribs, and chest.
Hallelujah, those were excellent abs. I stayed in shape for my job, and I’d lifted weights and added fifteen pounds of muscle for the bodyguard role, but I’d never been cut like that.I wouldn’t mind licking those, teasing the crisp red curls of that treasure trail, tracing those ridges and grooves with my tongue.I’d always liked a guy with a little hair.
Not for you.I dragged my eyes up from his six-pack and spotted the tattoo on his left pec above his nipple. A gleaming dolphin leaped from the water while a seagull soared above it. The art was crisp but realistic, the waves almost wet enough to feel. The nipple below it was small and pink—Art. We’re focusing on the art.“That’s great.”
Callum tugged his shirt back down. “My mom loved dolphins. I want to get something for my dad too, but I need the right design, and the cash. Still thinking about it.”
“Your guy’s got talent, all right. Might be the kind of guy who’d see the SS and show me the door, though.” That was another consideration that’d held me back from showing anyone what I wanted done.
“Make your appointment when I can go with you. I’ll vouch for you.”
“You’d do that? You don’t even know me. I might be one of those racist cops, just tired of advertising.”
“And gay?”
I worried about his naiveté. “I might’ve lied about that.”
Callum gave me an odd look, intent, like he was trying to see deep inside me. He scanned the quiet house and the screening hedges, then took a short breath. “One sure way to find out. Kiss me.”
I shivered at the heat that surged in my groin. “You? Here? Now?” Not that I didn’t want to. I’d felt that urge back when I saw his pretty face pouting at his tire in the cemetery parking lot, and every minute talking to him now had set off low-level sparks inside me. And those abs? Callum was totally my type. But nothing in the late-night browsing I’d done suggested he was queer.
“We’re behind the bushes. No one can see us unless they’re on your steps, but yeah. Bad idea.” He turned away.
A wild impulse hit me.Why not? One moment of fun just for me.“Wait. I’m game. Proof of safety, right?” I set a hand against his cheek. I could see his pulse bounding in his throat. Then I leaned in and kissed him.
His response was tentative at first, then wild, zero to sixty in three seconds flat. He ran a hand over my head like he was looking for a purchase in my too-short hair, then cupped my head and deepened the angle. Our tongues met. His taste was somehow familiar and yet exciting, hot and wet and male. The feel of his soft lips, the nip of his teeth, turned my inner sparksinto a bonfire. And then suddenly he was done, pulling back, breathing hard, his pupils dilated in those sky-blue eyes.
I felt him go rigid under my touch. “Uh.” He sat back on his heels so my hand fell away from his cheek, and rubbed his palms on the thighs of his jeans.
