“Gid?”Joey asked hesitantly.“We okay?”
“You know, you and me were both only children.I think Gail and Tal have siblings.As far as I know, Clint sprang up from the earth like a mushroom.But this—this must be what it’s like to worry about one kid—one kid who’s always getting hurt.One kid who’s always about to go tits up.I just… you wouldn’t think it was Crosby, would you?”
And Joey felt it, not for the first time.Gideon’s attachment to the unit.The way he regarded all of them as his people.Like they were the only group he could ever be comfortable with.
And how Joey felt the same way.
“He’s going to be fine,” Joey told him inanely.Nobody knew that for certain.
Gideon turned his head and gave him a tired grin.“Let’s go see how Calix is.I mean, one day and his partner’s shot?Might make him rethink the whole works.”
Calix Garcia was not rethinking anything.In fact he was already ahead of them all.They had another witness in protective custody with his family, and Calix had already made arrangements with Clint to keep the detail until the boys could be debriefed, as much to keep an eye on them as to keep them safe from the guy Crosby had already taken out.He’d already made mental notes of things Crosby knew that he wanted to learn, protocols for making sure witnesses and victims landed, knowing resources to call on so that people who were in a shitty situation didn’t completely lose their footing—or their housing or their family—because a criminal had cut a destructive swath through their lives.
Harding, who had to deal with authorities in Queens and the brand-new gambling commissioner replacing Jay Arnold because their perp was making book on local high school ball clubs and probably sixty-dozen people Joeydidn’tknow about, was happy to turn Garcia over to them while he did his damned job.
One of the first things they did, while escorting Garcia’s witness to the safehouse with the other wit, was stop for food for both of them.Garcia was pale and woozy at that point, and his witness probably wouldn’t turn down a cheeseburger.
Through mouthfuls of burger, Garcia admitted that Crosby had been going to brief everybody on his blood sugar and how it could be a touchy thing.Not diabetes—not yet—but he ate right and tried to keep food on his person at all times.
“No worries,” Joey said through his own mouthfuls of burger.“Harding forgets to fuckin’ eat.Wealwayshave food on us.Protein bars, apples—we’ll treat you right.”
And Garcia, who looked like a tough little bird, much like Joey himself, had grinned at them, all peacock, and Joey felt that particular wrenching again.Sky Woman smiled on the two lovers in the glen, and everywhere they lay, flowers bloomed.
His grandfather’s voice, telling Joey a story that had never been in a book, never told at a campfire, just, well, told because his grandfather liked telling stories.
He could see it so clearly—Calix Garcia, mid-sized, tightly built, cocky as fuck, and their solid, earnest Crosby.Why he’d never really thought Crosby would be bisexual before, he couldn’t say, but Joey suddenly knew, without a doubt, that he and Garcia would fit in all the ways.
“We about done?”Gideon asked, wiping his mouth.“I gotta say, things always look better after food.”
“Soundtrack is mine,” Joey claimed without thought, and Gideon’s private, just-for-them grin locked something in his stomach.
Tonight,he thought.And a logical part of him knew that Gideon would have company that night.He’d been planning sort of a wine-and-cheese thing for the friends he made outside the unit.Part of it was that Gideon was sort of brilliant, and he didn’t get to discuss academics a lot when he was chasing down suspects and dodging bullets, but partly—and Gideon had admitted this—it was so he could remember that there was a way of thinking that didn’t always involve life and death.In his own words, it helped him “human better” when he interacted with humans who didn’t always boil behavior and circumstances down to bare survival.
He doesn’t have to human with me,Joey thought.Tonight it will be animal to animal.
THAT NIGHT,he stood on the street, staring up to the window through which he could see the shadows of Gideon’s bedroom.There was a flickering of lights, the suggestion of chatter, but the October mist oiled his face, his jacket, as he stared up, and he could not feel the heat of the room.
He might not want you.
But Joey remembered that look from four weeks ago when he’d awakened on Gideon’s couch.How it had burned.
You’ll never forgive me if this happens when you’re feeling weak.
But Joeywasn’tfeeling weak.He was feelingravenous.He couldn’t logic his way through him and Gideon Chadwick anymore.What he wanted was beyond words.
With a leap and a grunt, he grabbed the ladder of the fire escape and started to climb.
Devoured
OH GOD,he tasted like prey, like blood, like power and song.
Gideon moaned and pressed forward, expecting fight, resistance.He knew Joey Carlyle inside and out, and his boy didn’t give over easily, and certainly not skin to skin.
But Joey surprised him, going limp, yielding in his arms, falling back against the bed and accepting him greedily as Gideon kept tasting him, their mouths meshing, retreating, their kisses urgent and hard.
Gideon’s hands shook as he shoved them under Joey’s shirt, the fabric still smelling of the leather jacket currently draped on a chair by the bed.The scent triggered something in Gideon.He wanted to smellallof Joey Carlyle—his sweat, his sex—smell and taste andbite.
He licked instead, nibbled along defined abs, sensitive ribs, to cover a dark brown nipple with his mouth and suck.
