Page 32 of A Long Con

After I ordered food, I heard Royal showering, then chatting with someone on a phone in the bedroom. To show respect, I stayed in the living room area scouring O’Bell’s suitcase for a clue to anything. The only slightly bizarre items were a Dan Brown novel, and a stuffed skunk. Yes, a fucking real skunk. I figured maybe he wanted to show it off to someone as something he’d caught and stuffed himself. Or it was an olfactory decoy for the ounce of sinsemilla sativa weed he had stuck in his toiletry bag. The animal did still smell a little, so I took it out for the hotel owners to enjoy, positioning it on a sideboard below a picture window. He regarded me with suspicious side-eye, as though the last thing he saw was my aunt’s butt. Then I went back to rifling through O’Bell’s toiletry bag. We’d left with only the thinnest bare bones of overnight bags, and toothpaste wasn’t our top concern. So now I stole a dead man’s.

“Oh good, you scored some toothpaste.” Royal’s voice made me jump and twist around to face him, as though I held a used condom. He just strode on over and whisked the tube from my hand. I’d never seen him that . . . nude before. The fluffy hotel towel cinched around his waist was slung so low I got a good eyeful of that exquisite sprinkling of silken hair that arrowed down to the steamy lode of his crotch. “Melanie told me she spoke with a gentleman named Rodriguez Jimenez—”

“Jimenez! The asshole who owned the horse ranch!”

“—and he convinced her that he’s the true owner of the painting. Fact, he said he’ll come by this hotel tomorrow to pick it up. Melanie kindly gave him the name of the place where his dead courier was staying.”

A sensation of doom sank into my entrails. At the same time, the outline of Royal’s long, juicy prick was evident through the towel, and my mouth began to water. I stood, waving a toothbrush around. “Great, just great! We’ll be here like sitting ducks because we don’t have any damned painting!”

Royal snatched the toothbrush from me. He had no compunctions about using a dead man’s toothbrush either. “You’re looking at it the wrong way, brah! Look, O’Bell obviously didn’t make the hand-off to Jimenez. He made it to someone else. Jimenez could at the very least assist us in deciphering who this person is.”

“True, true. But won’t he just want his bearer bond back, or take it from us under duress?”

When Royal squeezed my shoulder, I nearly jizzed. I could simply not continue to work with his man if I was going to be getting a stiffy every five minutes. “Brah. He doesn’t know we have the bearer bond.”

We bored holes into each other with our eyes for a good three, maybe ninety-eight seconds before the doorbell rang. Royal must’ve figured I was too mesmerized by his beauty, so he himself went to get the room service.

We inhaled our burgers, leaving no room to talk.

I finally smacked my lips and wiped my mouth with a napkin. “So. We should at least put the bearer bond in a secure place, like our saddlebags if he’s going to be searching this room. And park our rides somewhere else, not out front.”

“Brah,” said Royal with a mouthful of potatoes. “With a piece to your head, you’re going to tell him where the bond is regardless.”

I gulped. “Well. You know, I can always make another painting.”

“As perfect as that one? And how long will it take?”

I slit my eyes at him. “Yes, as perfect as that one! A month maybe?”

He shrugged. “We can try it. If we can’t get it back tomorrow, we’ll go home. You can start making a bunch of fake paintings for me to sell.”

It was weird, but I wasn’t as relieved as you’d think at the idea of going home. Maybe I was getting some kind of adrenaline rush out of this enormous caper. But I was really enjoying the hell out of palling around with Royal. Aside from the nonstop erections he gave me, he was a genuinely fun guy to be with. And all the respectful, jealous, or plain old awestruck looks he drew when we were out in public didn’t hurt. I was falling for Royal Palakiko in the worst way.

I stuttered, “I hope you’re not too disappointed that I . . . was the artist behind that Nude. I mean, you know, that I didn’t tell you to start with that it was a forgery.”

He shrugged and took his last gulp of fries, washing it down with a swig of his Negro Modelo. This dinner was a giant step up from our lunch. “It’s okay, brah,” he said, not entirely convincing. “I understand. You had the feds after you. You were just covering your ass. I’d do the same.”

“Still do have the feds,” I pointed out. “Do you mind calling me Berkeley instead of Sterling McCarthy?”

Royal settled on the couch and ran his long arms along the back of it. His fluffy armpits made my tongue dance. I could barely withstand the urge to snuggle my face in there, to lick. But wait. Was that domineering behavior? Craving to suck him off was more a sub’s job. And when he manspread his thighs like he was doing with just the flimsy gladiator’s shred of fabric over his loins, his cock lolled against his thigh so stiffly the actual shadow of its mushroom head was visible through the towel.

“So they’re out looking for Sterling McCarthy? Is that your birth name?”

“Indeed it is. That’s why you saw TV Guides addressed to Elaine McCarthy in my house.”

“Hm.” Royal assessed me. “I like Berkeley Moynihan better.”

“But Berkeley has even less of an artistic reputation than Sterling does—did—so I’d best stick with making forgeries.”

Royal’s smile seemed genuine. “Rajah dat. Although I’d like a Moynihan for my own wall.”

He stood, not without the towel slipping even farther and giving me a good eyeful of the lovely slope of his lower back, the slight rise of his meaty ass. He just took his toiletries with him and vanished into the bedroom without saying good night.

A front window looked out onto the parking lot, and if I sat on that couch with the curtains opened two inches, I could see anyone approaching. It was best if I kept the lights off around me, so I just fucked around on my phone.

Cloud had texted me:

That Hoghead guy came back. He said his boss wants that painting super-bad and I’m supposed to ask you how far along you are in getting it back.