By the Book (11 page)

“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Just, you know. Residual awkwardness. About. Things.”

“I don’t feel awkward at all.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I’m Daniel Fucking Cross.”

I stopped and leaned against a shop front. “Oh. Well.” I drew in a deep breath. “Good. Good.”

“Hey, listen, Reece. Are you okay? You sound a bit jittery.”

If he could tell that much over the phone, there was no point in trying to hide anything from him. “I am a little.”

“Why?”

“Jeez, you’re direct, aren’t you?”

“
I’m
not the one who’s jumpy about what happened.”

“I definitely am,” I blurted out, and breath snagged in my throat. It was the most honest thing I’d said in a long time.

“And that’s why you want to get together? Face your fears?”

I swore there was a distinct element of teasing in his voice, and I’d have laid money on the likelihood that Daniel Fucking Cross had a smirk on him like the cat that got the cream.

Neither of us spoke, and despite the cool evening breeze, a tense silence descended, coiling itself round the conversation like a snake. It constricted the distance between this street corner and wherever Daniel was, bound us, became a thing apart, something tangible.

Gripping the phone so tightly my knuckles probably showed white, I looked heavenward, and my throat tightened around the breath I struggled to draw. No one paid me any attention, too wrapped up in their own lives to realize mine was…

…tilting.

“Something like that.”

“Yes. These things are…I was about to say ‘easier,’ but maybe not. These things are always best done face-to-face. Just to bleach out that awkwardness you’re prone to, Reece.”

“Force the issue.”

“Exactly. Phone calls are a bit stilted. Or can be.” Daniel cleared his throat. “You’re welcome to come round here anytime.”

“What, like now?” I could have kicked myself, but the pause, the heavy pause, the held breath, the freeze-frame between us told me,
Not yet. Don’t panic yet.

“No time like the present.” And he unknowingly echoed Georgia’s words from earlier.

I closed my eyes against the relief or something similar that coiled in my gut. That snake was back.
No
. A serpent.

Or some kind of fallen angel.

“Reece?”

I swallowed back the nerves and the
don’t do this
and the feeling of foreboding disguised as opportunity. “I’m in the city center just now, so”—I took a deep breath—“you said you live on Turner Road, right?”

“Yeah; get the cab driver to pull up outside number twenty-two—”

“I’ll just walk.” I could have taxied over but theorized the ten, fifteen minutes between now and Danielgeddon would give me the opportunity to either man up or chicken out.

“Great.” There was definitely a smile in his voice. Definitely. “I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter Seven

Georgia sent her customary “That’s me home safe” text message, and I nearly turned on my heels and headed straight home. I didn’t know
why
I had such a feeling of
you shouldn’t be doing this
, or at least didn’t want to face up to the reason it existed, but exist it did. The pit of my stomach wouldn’t settle, and a quiet voice in the back of my head whispered, you still have a conscience, then?

I called him. He said to go round there if I wanted.

Hitting Send, I stopped, leaned against a guardrail lining the curb, and tried not to look too suspicious. I clutched my phone, hoped my frown would create a holographic image of Reece Hutton puzzling over a text message to cover whatever was really happening inside me.
Come on, Georgia. Forbid me. Tell me no. Stop this.

Great! Let me know how you get on. Will grab some sleep now. Speak soon. XXX.

“Fuck,” I muttered, slamming the phone shut and tucking it away in my pocket, out of sight. I carried on walking, each step making me more and more nervous because each step brought me closer to Daniel.

And when I reached his apartment block, he must have been looking out the window for my approach because he let me in without a word when I buzzed his intercom.

His front door opened as I reached the top of the stairs, and attitude streamed out of his every pore. He laughed when I faltered.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” He looked down at his bare torso, low-slung jeans resting on his hips. “If I’m working at home, I usually just hang out in shorts or jeans.”

“You couldn’t have pulled a shirt on?”

“You want me to?” Daniel grinned. “It’s nothing you haven’t already seen before. Besides.”—he stood back to let me cross the threshold, and closed the door behind us, not speaking again until he’d stepped ahead of me—“I thought I’d give you another chance to see my ink.”

It was just as well he now walked ahead, padding along the laminate flooring in bare feet, because he wouldn’t see the widening of my eyes.

“Hang your jacket up if you like.” He pointed to the coat hooks on his left and hovered in the kitchen doorway while I struggled with my zip.

“Yeah, well.” After shrugging off my jacket, I hung it up with trembling hands, then wiped my palms on my jeans. “It’s some tattoo.”

“I’m proud of it. Helped design it myself.” He winked before entering the kitchen and asked, looking over his inked shoulder, “Coffee?”

It took a moment for his words to register. As he flicked the kettle on, with his back turned, I saw his ink as if for the first time. Last time he’d been naked and…Christ, he’d been fucking my girlfriend. I hadn’t known who to watch. Her. Or him.

“They’re ready to spring out of your shoulders.”

Daniel looked back at me and grinned. “I chose a good artist. Coffee?” he asked again.

“Oh sorry. Yeah. Milk and one spoon, thanks.”

“Instant all right?”

“Sure. I’m no coffee snob.”

The gray ink looked silver in this light, the yellow, gold. Maybe it wasn’t the light that made the colors appear somehow metallic. It could have been the fact they colored
Daniel’s
skin.

He stood at the kitchen counter, back muscles rippling every so often as he reached for a couple of mugs, unscrewed the coffee jar. This was the perfect opportunity to study him more or less still.

The last time I’d seen his wings, they’d glistened with sweat, Georgia clawing at him as he fucked her into—

“You say something?” Daniel asked.

“Uh no. Just clearing my throat. So…what made you get it done? You never did say.”

“We
were
occupied…” He shrugged. His wings rippled or, as I fancied, fluttered, the feathers inviting my touch. “Just felt like it.”

“You got that much work done on a whim?”

He turned around, and for a moment I was disappointed that I no longer had a view of his wings, but the front wasn’t bad either. Leaning against the kitchen countertop waiting for the kettle to boil, he crossed his arms, biceps curving rather than bulging. “Okay, it wasn’t so much a whim as a…” He grinned, looking perfectly devilish. “An ex of mine used to make a crack about the way I looked.”

“The way you looked? Why, what’s wrong with it?”

“My hair. Because it’s dark, and I wear it tufted up in places. Bed head, I call it. Or just-been-fucked hair.” He laughed, and I joined in halfheartedly. Not because I didn’t think it suited him, but because Daniel Cross saying the F-word in such a context made me picture things… “My hair, the arch of my eyebrows, the fact I wear dark shades, and when I take them off people see my guyliner. There’s that, and the fact I wear black a lot. He said I looked like Lucifer.”

“He? Oh…right.” My cheeks burned. Why I was surprised, I didn’t know. Daniel didn’t wear his bisexuality like a cloak. It wasn’t something he put on and took off. It was as much a part of him as his need to breathe. “Yeah, I thought when you first came into the…” I cleared my throat. “I mean, I thought you looked…”

He raised those perfectly arched eyebrows and stared at me intently. “After all we’ve been through together? You can say anything.”

“The first time you came into the library, I thought you looked like the Angel of Death.”

He burst out laughing, threw his head back, and I remembered watching those teeth nibble at Georgia’s neck before he sucked her earlobe into his mouth and—“Yeah, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that. So I figured…if I’m a fallen angel”—at this he looked directly at me—“I want my wings back.”

I pulled my lips into a smirk. Yes, when he looked at me like that, Daniel Cross
was
the devil, and I’d happily have followed him to hell if he—

“Coffee, then,” he said, spinning round on his heels when the kettle clicked off.

“How long did it take?”

“A few minutes. You’ve been standing there.”

“Ha bloody ha. I meant the
ink
, Cross.”

“Oh, around four or five sessions. Three hours every fortnight. So not that long considering how intricate it is. Hurt like hell while it was a work in progress, but the end result was worth it.”

“Whoever did it is a bloody talented artist.” The detail of the feathers, layer folded on top of layer, astounded me. Each feather, edged with either blue or silver-gray, looked icy cold; the outer plumage with its hint of yellow-gold appeared backlit by a glow from within, like an infernal halo.

“The guy who did it, he’s called Ian Black. I wouldn’t let anyone else touch me.” He paused, and those damn shoulders shook again with repressed laughter. “I mean with a tattooist’s needle. Here.” Daniel handed me a coffee mug and leaned against the counter while sipping from his own. “Cost a fortune but it was worth every penny. And I sat down with Ian for a while, told him what I wanted. We came up with the design between us. I had a few ideas of my own; he incorporated some of his own ideas from some of his other work.”

“You saw it?”

“He has photos all over the shop. Sign of a good tattooist, that. Not afraid to show you what he’s done before. If you ever think about getting inked…”

“I’m not sure about that. I don’t know what I’d get done, and if I’ve got to the age of twenty-eight already without… I don’t have any.”

“Yeah, I know.” Daniel saluted me with his coffee mug, making the gesture look somewhere between conspiratorial and teasing. “I’ve seen you naked, remember?”

I choked on my coffee but managed not to spill any. “Seems a shame though.”

“What?” He eyed me over the rim of his coffee mug, and I could well see why his ex had commented on the diabolical arch of his brows. There was no other word for them but
devilish
. And I never normally noticed these things. But with him I did because something about Daniel Cross demanded I notice him, over and above the fact we’d taken turns fucking the same woman.

“It’s on your back. You can’t see it.”

“Unless I pose naked in front of a mirror. Well, shirtless at least.”

“There is that.”

Daniel’s eyes clouded over then, and I lost him. “Course, there’s also the fact that…” A slow smile. He shook himself back to life. “Nothing, nothing. Never mind. You wanna go through to the living room? It’s more comfortable in there.”

There was still a barrier there, a confusion about that very boundary’s location. We’d shared a lover, been naked in each other’s presence, brought our shared lover to orgasm countless times, seen each other come, and yet there was still this tentative unease arcing between us. Somewhere between dancing and fencing.

“I don’t know if you know anything about the Bible, but…”

“Only the parts about fallen angels,” he threw over his winged shoulders, leading the way into his living room. A battered settee was pushed against one wall, an armchair nestled in the bay of the window, and a rug covered the carpeted floor in the middle of the room.

“I was just thinking about Daniel. The prophet, I mean. He was visited by an angel who called him a ‘very desirable man.’”

A sharp bark of laughter. “
Really
? And tell me, Reece, was it a good angel or a bad angel who visited Daniel?”

I caught his eye, and the sheer
intensity
of his gaze, that switch from hilarity to
look at me; now tell me
sent shivers up my spine. “I don’t recall. Good, I think.”

“How sad.” He took a step closer. “The bad ones are always more fun. Don’t you think?”

Automatically I reared up, my spine rippling. Part of me wanted to go. Part of me wanted to stay.

“It’s definitely more fun being a fallen angel.” Daniel leaned in closer and…

…put his now empty mug on the coffee table.

I exhaled slowly. Relieved. Disappointed.

“Reece? Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Not convinced, I tried again. “Sure. Why d’y’ask?”

“You seem a bit…”

“Well. You know. Residual…” I drained my coffee mug, wishing the caffeine was something a bit stronger. “Something.”
Christ, I need a stiff one.

The thought nearly choked me, and I turned away while composing myself, placing my mug by Daniel’s on the table.

“You wanted to talk about this ‘residual something’?”

“Yeah. Kind of.” I frowned, struggled to find the words. “Georgia.” There, I’d said it. Her name. Brought her presence into the room in a roundabout way.

“What about her?” He crossed his arms, assertive rather than defensive. A challenge in his body language, and I didn’t know what the challenge was. A dare of sorts. He smirked.

“She wanted me to get in touch. About what happened before. With us. The three of us, I mean.”

“Oh?” Daniel’s eyes widened, and enlightenment spread across his face like a sunrise. “I see. She wants to go again?”

“
Oh
yeah.”

“Daniel the Dark Angel strikes again. Well, Hutton. I did think once she had a taste of my sweet lovin’, nothing else would be good enough.”

“Fuck you, Cross.”

“Anytime, Hutton.”

At that throwaway remark, my head jerked up and I met his gaze for only a moment and looked away. “Jesus, Daniel.”

“Just teasing.” Pause. And he leaned a little closer. “Maybe.”

I exhaled slowly, surprised I even had breath left in my body to surrender. “I don’t know what…why I’m here.”