He’d absolutely not meant to meet a ridiculous blatant flirtatious bit of sunshine, and tumble into that sunshine’s equally ridiculous expensive bed on the top floor of the Bell Court, where Perry could’ve never afforded a stay in his lifetime of pay.
Patrick yawned and snuggled closer, golden and drowsy and fulfilled. Perry put an arm around him out of pure nameless instinct. This young man. Tucked under his arm. Smiling against his shoulder. He could feel it.
The air held scents of bare skin, sex, the heady sweet-sharp waft of orange groves and citrus fruits. This town grew them, famously so, Perry recalled.
The room’s tall windows stood open. A security risk, a danger. But the breeze fluttered cool through lace-white curtains, diaphanous. Patrick’s grey silk waistcoat, discarded in a rush, swung from the back of a chair. Perry’s own long dark coat had landed on a night-blue brocade sofa. One of his boots had tipped onto its side, across the room.
His hip, his leg, ached a fraction with exertion. But that was pleasant: satisfied, replete.
The afternoon, a whole gilded age in high ceilings and silk hangings and the awareness of pleasure, moved unhurriedly toward evening.
He should get up. He should get dressed. He should get back to his job, and never think about this momentary lapse again. He’d always been circumspect. Restrained. Careful about his inclinations. A safe place, a known friend, no attachments.
Patrick Ellery had smiled at him like the first-ever sunrise had decided to stroll up on human legs and bat big flirtatious eyes his direction, and Perry had crumbled. No two ways about that.
He wasn’t sure he liked it.
Patrick yawned again, relaxed, comfortable with nakedness. Six years younger than Perry in time, and more than that in bruises, bullet-nicks, the shoot-out that’d led to this supposedly easy assignment. Younger, and winsome, unabashed, slender but with a backside that’d make angels and artists turn to sin, and hips that moved like he knew it. Perry slid a hand along the easiest hip to reach. Patrick Ellery. Himself in Patrick Ellery’s bed. Trail-scuffed and lantern-jawed and heavy with scars. Here in this room and these sheets, with Patrick nestled against him. How’d that happened?
“You’re thinking,” Patrick observed, and stretched an arm across Perry’s chest, hugging him. Perry could not recall the last time he’d been hugged. It felt…odd. Maybe nice. “Loudly. Mysterious U.S. Marshal thoughts?”
“Maybe I could arrest you for indecency. Those hips.” The way Patrick had felt, above him, around him, riding him. Wild and joyous, sinking down, taking Perry in. Laughing, sparkling, so that Perry had had to grip the hips in question and thrust hard, until Patrick was gasping and crying out in ecstasy, because the sparkles were under Perry’s skin too and he didn’t know what else to do other than move harder, faster, trying toshow his answer, to make Patrick feel it, yes, yes, God, yes.
He muttered, fingers tracing smooth sunkissed skin, “You’d like that too much.”
Patrick considered the prospect lazily. His voice spoke of that California upbringing: a child of palm trees and Tinseltown, of parents who’d come out West and made money from railroads and hotels. Of course Patrick had his own money and did not rely on his parents; Perry had known his name, once it’d been said aloud. “I might. Not in actual reality—I don’t particularly want to be thrown in jail with outright ruffians—but handcuffs, interrogation…”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I suppose afewhours in a jail might be good research. Can I ask you about arresting gun-runners and bootleggers?”
“It’s not as exciting as your novels and moving pictures make it out to be.”
In answer, Patrick’s fingers touched a rough spot, a scar, a recency; he pushed himself up enough to prop a chin on a hand, on Perry’s chest. His eyes were very blue and very tender.
“Fine,” Perry grumbled, “sometimes it is. Shouldn’t be, though. That means things’ve gone wrong, if we ended up in a real firefight. Bad information, or not enough manpower to make them surrender on the spot.”
“Ah. SoThe Seven Graves of the Phantom Banditwasn’t entirely accurate after all? I’m disappointed.”
“Didn’t you write that?”
“Not the moving-picture scenario. They paid me for the rights to my original story.” Patrick dropped his head to kiss Perry’s collarbone, looked back up. “I’m glad you’re here.” His eyes were limpid pools, all sincerity.
Perry wanted to believe the sincerity, was not used to believing sincerity, and was tempted anyway. He put a large hand into Patrick’s golden hair and tugged. Patrick smiled moresunnily. Perry sighed. “I’ve shot people, you know.”
“Is that meant to scare me?”
“You’re twenty-eight and a writer—”
“A very good writer, thank you.”
“—and I’m older than you and I’ve drawn my gun and shot to kill. And you invited me into your bed.”
“Because I wanted to. And you did your job, because you had to.” Patrick’s gaze was steady; it was the cool analytical look of crime-novelist sensation P.R. Ellery, and also the quiet certainty of someone very skilled indeed at scouring out someone’s character from all their ragged cracks and hauling them up into the light, and also bright and hopeful under that, as if seeing someone heroic and stalwart and good at heart. Perry foolishly ludicrously wanted to be that person, the one that Patrick was seeing, if he could.
He cleared his throat. “I did have to.” True. “I didn’t want to kill anyone. Either time.” Also true.
“It was them or you?”
