The Muscle Read online

  “Nice to see you again,” John said, calling back to the night before on the elevator. “Where’s the wife?”

  “Sleeping in before a bit of shopping,” Josh told him. “You might see her out and about today.”

  “Looking forward to it. We’d sit with you, but we need our java before we have our own meeting. You guys enjoy your day. It’s supposed to be fantastic! I understand Grouse Mountain is the place to be today.”

  “We’ll have to check it out,” Josh said with feigned geniality, and the two men disappeared inside the shop, leaving Josh and Hunter to keep their pleasant expressions on their faces and only express their irritation sotto voce.

  “Fuck,” Hunter said, masking his lips with his own coffee. “Stirling, you there?”

  “Yeah—that was quick.”

  “We’ve been made,” Josh said. “Good news is, they’re going back to the hotel to grab the package and make the drop, but we need replacements.”

  “Aw, fuck,” Stirling muttered. “I gotta wake up my sister.”

  “And my mom,” Josh said grimly. “And the rest of us get to entertain Artur today, and probably shop for them.”

  “Aces,” Stirling said. “I’m taking off to go tell them now.”

  “Roger that.” Josh put his coffee cup down and laughed at something Hunter might have said. They heard the earbud click again, and Josh said, “Okay, so about Grace.”

  Hunter’s brain did a switchback and almost came off the rails. “I’m sorry?”

  “He thinks anybody he really gets close to only wants him for how he looks. Either that or they’ll turn him away as soon as they find out who he really is.”

  “Color me fucking surprised.” Hunter rolled his eyes and clutched his chest. “I’m going to have a heart attack and die from that surprise.”

  “If you break my friend’s heart, I’ll make sure of it,” Josh said, and from any other twenty-year-old with no military experience on the planet, Hunter might think he was kidding. But this was Josh, and Josh didn’t fuck around. And Josh knew what Hunter had done in covert ops and knew how hard it would be to kill him, and had just promised to do it anyway.

  He had Hunter’s complete and total attention.

  “What do you need from me?” he asked soberly. Josh had pulled him from a dark place—a really dark place. Eight months after watching Paulie’s car explode, of seeing the person they were guarding go up in flames with him, Hunter had stopped taking jobs. He had money; he had an apartment in Chicago. What he hadn’t had was drive.

  He’d gone back to school in an effort to keep the hours from ticking by, to keep all the should-have-dones and what-if-I’d-dones from taking over his life.

  He’d only been thirty, and that was a hard way to live.

  When Josh had shown up in time to watch Hunter taking out a would-be attacker in a dark parking garage—after setting up the sting to get the guy himself—he’d started out taking Hunter to coffee.

  Then he’d asked Hunter’s opinion on small ops he and his friends were running, “Just to get your perspective.” As in “This guy here is about to evict all of his Black tenants so he can ‘gentrify.’ What can we do to his bank account that would send the right message?”

  They’d ended up doing the simplest thing: broadcasting the guy’s ties to the KKK. All of his tenants of color had moved out en masse, from all of his holdings, and he’d gone broke.

  Hunter hadn’t been needed, but he’d appreciated the discussion.

  That had changed when Felix was under fire. Josh had brought Hunter in no-holds-barred, and Hunter had gotten the feeling that Josh hadn’t been protecting his friends from Hunter, but protecting Hunter from his friends.

  Until now, when it came to Grace. And Hunter was suddenly very much aware of the damage—all the damage—that watching his previous lover die on the job had done to him.

  Josh regarded him levelly. “What are your intentions?” he asked.

  “Intentions? What are anybody’s intentions?”

  “No bullshit, Hunter. We’ve seen it brewing for almost two months, ever since you guys met. But I wasn’t sure what would come of it. Now I know shit goes south, and Grace is a handful, but you could be the only person to take him seriously as a partner since fucking ever. So I’d really love to know what you want from him.”

  Hunter blew out a breath and remembered the feel of Grace, quiet for once, stretched out alongside him. Saw his eyes in the bathroom as Hunter cared for his feet. Heard him talk about himself as though he were expendable.

  “I want him to know he’s important,” Hunter said at last, and was met with an impeccably arched eyebrow.

  “Welcome to the club,” Josh said, and there was pain in his eyes—something unfathomable that Hunter suddenly felt very much like he needed to know.

  “What… what is his deal, anyway?”

  At that moment they heard several clicks in their earbuds and saw Tazo and Verhoeven emerging from the coffee shop.

  “And I told him,” Josh said, in the middle of a conversation they’d never had, “that if you’re going to bet on sports, you at least need to know who’s blowing your bookie, you know what I mean?”

  Hunter grunted and rolled his eyes. “Serves him right. Nobody bets against the home team.”

  “Julia and Molly are en route,” Stirling said in their ears. “And they’re plugged in as well.”

  “Roger that,” Josh said softly, smiling at Tazo and his friend as they walked past, saluting them with what was left of his coffee.

  They waved almost dismissively, probably thinking Josh was a spoiled start-up entrepreneur—he had the rich, slick look and the youthful face.

  They’d be fools, Hunter thought, watching them walk toward their hotel. They could be excused for thinking that, but they’d be fools. Anybody who underestimated Josh Salinger would be in a world of hurt.

  THE WOMEN arrived at different times, Julia first, in her black wig, asking Josh and Hunter politely if she could use their table as they rose.

  “Absolutely,” Josh said dryly. “Enjoy.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait,” Julia gushed. “I just love watching the floatplanes take off from the marina. Enjoy your day!” She gave them a little wave, and Josh sighed. As they walked away, she said into her com, “I left an annotated list, and you need to get everything, because Molly and I are going out with Grace and Artur tonight, and we have to look like spoiled heiresses.”

  “There’s a stretch,” Josh goaded.

  “Be a good boy and mummy will give you a cookie,” his mother sang, and Hunter snickered. Yeah, everybody envied Josh his family, but there was always a price.

  To her credit, they didn’t see Molly, but they heard her setting up on the other side of the hotel.

  “Oh, look. I’ve got a coffee shop here too. Hey, look, a walk-up window. Wow. Cookies. Whatever shall I choose, here, all by myself, because you two yahoos couldn’t be bothered to hide your damned selves.”

  “They literally walked right toward us,” Josh told her. “I told them they might see you out and about today, so be sure to smile if they recognize you.”

  “I’m in costume,” Molly said. “Black wig in a ponytail, boy’s clothes. They might not—”

  “Ditch the wig, forget the clothes, and be prepared to be who they saw last night,” Hunter told her, serious as death. “These guys are pros, Molly. I know you’re good, but you need to be as much you as possible.”

  “Do you want me with you?” Josh asked. “It would be plausible, and we could back up Mom.”

  “Dammit,” Molly muttered. “I forgot they saw us last night. Yeah, Josh—I’m on the other side of the hotel. Seriously, the cookies look fantastic. Buy me one while I’m fixing myself in the bathroom.”

  “Can do. Oh, Hunter called me Jay, so that’s my cover.”

  “That’s original,” she said. “Hurry.”

  Josh looked at Hunter and sighed. “Go as slow as he’ll let you,” he said. “Make it
special. Even if you crash and burn, he needs to know what it’s like when it’s real.”

  Hunter nodded, grateful that everybody was pretending they couldn’t hear that, before he turned around and walked away.

  Not pretending too hard, though. He was almost to his hotel when Julia said, “Perhaps you and Grace can do my shopping, Hunter. Stirling has my list. And maybe we can meet up for lunch if this is resolved. Artur’s going to be doing business online most of the morning. I’m sure Grace won’t mind.”

  Clever, Julia. Clever.

  And very much appreciated.

  “We’d love to,” he said, meaning it. It was an excuse to be with Grace during the day, even if it was on the job. Hunter felt the spring in his step as he hurried down the marina. There were some bennies, perhaps, to working with a crew who knew you.

  Taking Flight

  “DID YOU have a good day?” Artur asked as they were taking a Lyft from the hotel to the restaurant.

  Grace tugged at the cuffs of his silk mandarin-collared black shirt. “Yes, Dance Master,” he said, hating that his eyes darted left and a foolish little smile tugged at his lips. Silly and transparent—two things Grace had never thought he’d be.

  “How was your young man?” Artur asked, keeping his voice proper and polite.

  Grace bit his lip and tried for dignity. “Amusing,” he said, although his brain was screaming things like “kind” and “attentive” and “funny.”

  “Amusing?” Artur gave him a severe look. “He did not appear so amused yesterday when you had injured yourself. How are your feet, by the way?”

  Grace felt the flush creeping up his neck. “Fine, Dance Master,” he muttered.

  Hunter hadn’t let him walk too much. Sprints across the crowded city—which normally Grace would have enjoyed—had been replaced with car rides. They’d gone to the shopping district, replete with high-end stores, to buy Julia and Molly their desired dresses, shoes, and accessories.

  Artur let out a sigh. “What would it harm,” he asked, “if you were to care for this boy?”

  Grace was so surprised he actually looked at Artur’s face, and found the gray eyes fastened on Grace’s reaction.

  “I’m not easy to love,” he said, thinking wistfully about saying outrageous things and hearing Hunter’s dry chuckle. Amusing. Just like he’d tried to dismiss Hunter as being. Grace was… amusing.

  “Bullshit,” Artur replied succinctly, and Grace’s brain did a panicked end run for the stern task master he’d grown up with.

  “I’m… uhm…. Dance Ma—”

  “Dylan Li,” Artur said, his voice a cross between exasperation and affection, “you are so easy to love. I have loved you like my own since you first walked into my conservatory, dancing like an angel prince. But I’m not… demonstrative, and your parents are worse than useless.”

  Grace gasped. Nobody—not even Josh—had ever criticized his parents.

  “This surprises you?” Artur demanded. “They left you on your own to raise yourself! If it hadn’t been for Joshua and his family, you might have died or thrown away your beautiful talent or—or been lost from us forever. Nobody with your brightness does that if their parents didn’t inflict a wound almost too great to bear.”

  Dylan swallowed hard against the knot in his throat. “I… I am stronger than I look,” he said, but it was too late. In one Lyft ride after an extraordinary day, one of the few people he trusted had taken his emotional Kevlar overcoat and shredded it like thin silk.

  “That is a lie,” Artur said kindly. “You look completely self-sufficient. Only those of us who love you best know that your heart is very, very fragile. So tell me, will this young man of yours treat your heart well?”

  Dylan wiped one eye self-consciously with his palm and hated that the other one spilled over.

  “We went shopping for Julia and Molly,” he said. “We finished early and brought their things back to the hotel.” Dylan had expected sex then. He hadn’t done anything overt, simply followed Hunter into the command central room to hang the dresses up and deposit the bags, but when they’d left the room—including Stirling, who was simultaneously monitoring coms and engaging in bloody cyberwarfare and who seemed quite happy to be by himself—Dylan had started to go left, toward his room, and Hunter had snagged his hand and taken him right, back toward the elevators and down.

  Dylan hadn’t said anything, and then they were back on the street, the sharp tang of the air off the marina blowing against their skin, when Hunter had said, “Not yet.”

  “Not what yet?”

  “Not sex yet. Grace, I swear to you, we will have sex, and it will be spectacular.”

  “Then why aren’t we having it now?” he complained. Hunter’s hand, rough and strong on his, tightened. All morning long, Hunter had been more than a warm body, a promise of muscle and stubble and a hard cock in Grace’s needy hole. He’d been kindness and laughter and a refusal to take Grace’s squirrely brain at face value.

  He’d treated Grace like a grown-up, asking his opinion, disagreeing sometimes, and getting excited when, between the two of them, they made a new, better idea. That scarf, yes—that color, no. The pop of red, a little blue—see? No—this one! Purple instead of red. Yes. Perfect!

  They’d watched the floatplanes coming and going from the water, and after Hunter told him which types were cargo and which were passenger planes, and what Alaska was like in the summer and the beauty of this part of the world, Grace told Hunter about the aerodynamic theory that made floatplanes take off and pontoons a thing.

  Hunter had confessed to knowing that—he apparently had his pilot’s license—but he’d looked at Grace, a bemused expression in his gray eyes, and allowed his lean mouth to slant into a smile.

  “What?” Grace had demanded, suddenly self-conscious.

  “You could be anything,” Hunter said in awe. “Theoretical mathematics, English professor, dancer, thief. That’s amazing. I had a football scholarship and an ROTC teacher and just enough smarts to get into special forces. I wasn’t ever going to be anything but muscle. You are really amazing, do you know that?”

  Grace hadn’t been able to answer him, not really. But before he’d turned away, he’d mumbled, “You’re not just muscle,” and then he’d practically run to a kiosk that sold ice cream because it was easier than looking at the awe in Hunter’s eyes.

  Really, sex would have been so much easier, right? Grace wanted to have it, to get it out of the way so he didn’t have to deal with that expression of awe, that expectation that Grace would do something, be something, other than his fidgety, flighty self.

  And Hunter knew it. He maintained his pull on Grace’s hand, tugging him out to explore the city some more. They wandered the rainbow district, with its iconic presentation of flags, and dodged into a few shops, including one that featured everything from exotic scents to bondage gear.

  Grace had fled from that last one—not his scene—and Hunter had followed at a more leisurely pace, saying, “You know, I think someone should tie you down once in a while. You’d probably enjoy it!”

  Grace’s groin had begun to ache almost instantly, but he hadn’t said anything about sex again. Not after that.

  Not when Hunter seemed to know him in ways he didn’t know himself.

  And apparently Artur sensed this. “Was it awful? Not jumping straight into bed with someone so you could run away after?”

  “Dance Master!” Grace squeaked. Augh! Who liked to talk about sex with their elders? It was mortifying.

  “If you didn’t want me to intrude, you shouldn’t have cut such a swath through every dance troupe to enter the state,” Artur replied blandly. “I caught you with your first boy, Dylan, or have you forgotten?”

  “That wasn’t my first!” Grace retorted, memories of being a highly precocious fourteen-year-old caught on his knees in a changing tent backstage with a fifteen-year-old dancer whose girlfriend was right outside.

  Artur looked at him, eyebrows rai
sed, as it slowly dawned on Grace that he wasn’t helping his case.

  “Wasn’t my tenth either,” Grace mumbled.

  “It shouldn’t have been any of them,” Artur said, voice soft. “You were never ready to have lovers, Grace. You were scratching an itch, hoping that when the scratch was over, the hole in your heart left by your parents wouldn’t hurt anymore. You never, not once, gave any boy a chance to fill that hole with something other than his sex.”

  Gah! Grace used his palm again, hating this car ride, hating the rain that had started falling as he and Hunter had rushed back to the hotel so Grace could change, and especially hating the fact that his heart felt as flayed and raw as his feet.

  “Once,” he admitted thickly.

  Artur made as if to spit, and then looked around the small Lyft car as though remembering where he was.

  “Mudak! Gandon!” he swore, and Grace’s eyebrows lifted. He spoke very little Russian, but he had a feeling no one would find those two words on Duolingo anytime soon.

  “I thought I loved him,” Grace mumbled.

  “He was not worth your spit,” Artur said, voice low. “Do you know where he is now?”

  “Rehab?” Grace honestly didn’t know. Gabriel Hu had been older than he was by three years, and following him around as he’d vandalized stores and bullied smaller children hadn’t been fun. But then Gabe would turn those inscrutable green eyes on Grace and say something sweet, and Grace would think, “He’s awful to everyone else. I must be special.”

  Then Gabe had scored some junk and said, “Here, let me show you how it’s done!”

  The next thing Grace remembered was waking up in the hospital, because the only good thing Gabriel had ever done for another soul was call Josh Salinger when Grace had begun to convulse.

  Gabe had disappeared then—he’d been a rich kid, like Grace, and word had gotten around school that his parents had moved and put him in rehab. Grace hadn’t even gotten a text. But he had been moved out of his parents’ house and into the bedroom next to Josh’s even before he’d gotten out of the hospital.