Sullivan (Leopard's Spots 7) (4 page)

“How old are you, Mando? Really?” Sully waited while Mando seemed to mull over answering him. Or maybe he was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.

“I’m seventeen,” Mando admitted, but added quickly, “but I’ll be eighteen in less than two months! And anyway, the legal age of consent in Texas is seventeen, so—” Sully puffed out his chest and shook Mando, just a little. “I don’t care what the legal age of consent is, you’re still a kid. You can’t drink legally—”

“But I can smoke, vote, join the military, and all that crap in a couple of months,” Mando argued.

Sully understood suddenly his parents’ frustration when he or his siblings argued with them. “I don’t care what you can do in a couple of months. You shouldn’t be—” Oh God, he sounded like his parents now, too. Sully grimaced as he tried to find the words to explain what, he wasn’t sure. What came out was, “Why isn’t someone taking care of you?” Mando hitched up a shoulder. “Who? I got a family, sure, but they don’t want me. I do what I have to. Doesn’t make me worthless.” Mando sniffled and Sully decided he’d just have to risk getting robbed. He loosened his hold on Mando’s nape and slipped his arm around Mando’s shoulders.

“Look, kiddo, I can’t leave you out here. I was raised better than to not help someone who should be helped. Or something like that.” He probably should have listened to his folks when they lectured so he’d know how to do this right.

“I’m not a charity case, sweetie,” Mando told him, trying to raise Sully’s arm off his shoulders. “I think it’s clear who has the experience—” Sully interrupted him then. “Anyone can fuck, but caring about people, being a good person yourself and helping out when you can, that takes way more than just rolling over for someone.”

He realised his mistake almost right away, and was prepared for Mando’s attempt to flee. Sully had him by the nape again in a split second, and he spun the younger man around to glare at him. “Quit it! I didn’t mean to insult you for doing what you have to in order to survive, but don’t equate sexual experience with any other kind of experience. That’s just lame.”

“Ugh.” Mando actually leaned into him a little as he grumbled, “You’re not my dad, you know.”

“No, but I wouldn’t mind being your big brother, or, barring that, your friend.” Sully didn’t think he wanted to know where Mando had been staying, but he figured it wasn’t anywhere good. Mando was very thin, and Sully suspected that was due more to hunger than anything else.

“My brothers used to beat me up,” Mando said. “Maybe we could try the friends thing until I’m eighteen—”

“And even then we will remain friends.” Sully wasn’t going to be able to forgive himself for drooling over the kid in the first place. His attraction was well and truly dead now. “I think you need a good friend more than you need a lover, and if you can take a break from, you know, sex, it might do you some good.” And he’d need to talk to the kid about getting tested and…he could use some advice. Sully needed to think about who he could call, who wouldn’t raise a family alarm at Sully bringing home a stranger.

“I guess you’d know about doing without sex,” Mando grumbled, but he winked at Sully. “I don’t know. If…if I have a steady address, I can probably get a job at a fast food place here. They don’t like to hire people without addresses and phone numbers, you know.” No, he didn’t know, but it made a sad sort of sense. A potential employer couldn’t call you or notify you that you had a job if they had no way to reach you, and probably even a fast food place would want time for some kind of background check to be run. Still, he’d have thought there’d be some kind of programme to help—well, maybe not.

“You can stay at my place, but it’s kind of gross,” Sully told him. “I bought cleaning supplies and a boxed bed set from the store, with one of those memory mattresses. Got a flop-out chair thing, too, so you could sleep on that. Do you have clothes and stuff?” God, what was he doing?
Please let it be the right thing. I don’t wanna end up one of those people who
took someone in to help them and got killed for it. Of course, I could shift and eat him, but considering
how long the shifting takes me, I’d still be dead.

Mando didn’t answer him at first. Instead he nibbled on his bottom lip and stared off towards Sully’s car. He grunted finally then looked sideways at Sully. “Okay, well, I don’t have hardly any money, but I have a few clothes I keep hidden in the house I…borrowed.

And I won’t live there for free. I can clean. My mama made sure all her kids knew how to scrub until their fingers bled. And I know some stuff about cars. I can maybe help you with that, too. And I’ll get a job—”

“Okay, okay.”
Just don’t turn out to be an evil kid under that desperate look.
Sully sniffed cautiously and if deceit had an odour, he didn’t smell it. All he caught was mild body odour and the other stale scent of spunk. That made his stomach turn. “Come on, see if you can tell me how to get this car going, then we’ll get your things. No one is gonna try to arrest us or anything, are they?”

Mando snorted and began walking to the car. “Not likely. I camp out a ways away from here, actually. On the south side, past the Toyota plant, there’s these houses that someone started building before the city slapped them down, something about an agreement with the manufacturing company not to have the land around there developed anymore. I don’t know. There’s just these half-built houses sitting there, when they could be made into homeless shelters or something, you know?”

“Seems like a waste,” Sully murmured. He couldn’t imagine the life Mando had lived, but maybe he could help make it better. He hoped so.

“My advice to you, Mr Baker, is to rethink your plans to re-open the club as the same”—the insurance agent curled his lip at Bobby—“type of establishment it had been prior to the fire. Certain types of people will continue to patronise your business and next time you might not be lucky enough to have the fire occur when the place is closed.” Bobby fisted his hands but leaned against the doorframe, keeping the rest of his body and his expression in an almost lazy pose. “Well, now, Mr Bitcher—”

“Bircher,” the agent snapped, “I told you before, it’s Mr Bircher!”

“Right, that’s what I said,” Bobby drawled, enjoying the anger he inspired in bitchy Mr Bircher. “Well, see, here’s the thing. I’m gay, and this is a gay nightclub, ya know? So when we repair the damage from the fire—which was not, by the way, in case you’re thinking it, an act of God. Otherwise it’d surely have wiped out the Republican fundraising office two doors down. Anyway, me being all gay and such, what else kind of business would I run? I can’t rearrange flowers for shit, and shopping makes me wanna slap people. Don’t even get me started on interior design. I can’t tell white from ecru. I think people make that shit up.” Mr Bircher’s mouth was hanging open and his whole face had turned purple as Bobby had spoken. It was great. The guy was a total homophobic asshole. Bobby was tempted to call his insurance company and give them an earful as soon as the jerk left. Whether or not he would depended on Bitchy Bircher’s attitude. Maybe the guy would stop being such a jerk.

“You could open a restaurant—” Bircher started.

Bobby had had enough. He stood up straight and made sure his shoulders were back, his chest out, as he let some of his power roll out from his core. As a wolf shifter, and the next in line to be alpha of his pack, Bobby could really let loose with the supernatural force of his wolf when he wanted to. Even a human could feel it. Usually it manifested itself as that creepy feeling described as having someone walk on your grave, or so Bobby’d been told. He was hoping for something worse than that for Bircher. Bobby growled as he narrowed his eyes at the man, and Bircher stumbled back, sputtering wordlessly.

“I’ve had about enough of your bigoted ass,” Bobby snarled, taking a half-step forward.

“Not every gay man fits your stereotype. I suggest you go running back to your office and think about that.”
And about how this gay man could snap you in two, you twerp.
Bobby hoped the thought somehow filtered through the air and into Bircher’s head. Fear rose off Bircher’s skin in waves, and the odour of it tantalised Bobby’s wolf.

Which was why he forced himself to relax, to slump and stop his intimidation tactics.

Bobby wasn’t a bully and wouldn’t act like one, even if Bircher was a total douche.

“Is your problem with me, specifically, and this place, because I’m gay and running a gay-oriented business?” Bobby asked, wanting the truth out there. “Or do you hate everyone who isn’t straight?”

Mr Bircher narrowed his eyes and Bobby didn’t think he’d get an answer until the claims agent nodded. “It’s a sin—”

Bobby slashed a hand through the air as he snorted in disgust. “Not that argument again. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some variation of it, and it doesn’t work.

You want to quote things from The Bible to me, fix yourself first. Isn’t that in there, something about removing a beam from your eye before pointing out I have a splinter in mine?”

“How dare you even mention The Bible,” Mr Bircher snapped, face going redder than should have been possible. He pointed at Bobby. “It’s people like you who are ruining this country. When we protested out here last month, I saw all the…the whores that came into this Sodom and Gomorrha! It’s no wonder God tried to burn it down.” Bobby growled and barely managed to keep himself from decking the prick in front of him. “You were with that bunch of religious psychos the cops chased off? Throwing shit at my customers and calling them names—and you claim that’s what Jesus would do?” He threw his hands in the air and cursed. “I will never fucking understand your type. Y’all don’t make a lick of sense and are too busy being hypocrites to be logical.” Bobby pointed at Bircher. “And I would think that if God can build the whole Earth and Universe in a week, He could successfully burn down my club and the whole damned city if He wanted. You don’t make Him sound very intimidating.”

“It was a warning from God,” Mr Bircher gritted out between teeth clenched so tight Bobby could hear them grinding. “Next time He might not be so merciful.” Bobby was done listening to the crazy talk. Letting Bircher have the last word wasn’t going to happen, though. “You’d better watch the bigotry, because I’m sure your employer wouldn’t tolerate it any more than you tolerate people you deem ungodly.” He wouldn’t snitch about Bircher’s hatred, but it’d come out eventually. That kind of poison never could stay buried, and Bircher would end up fired and even angrier at the world.

Bircher went from flushed to pale and sweaty in a heartbeat. “You have no proof I said anything.”

Bobby hitched a shoulder up in a shrug. “You don’t know what I’ve got, do ya? Bet the cops have reports on your merry band of loonies you were here with before, and we did actually have several patrons who filmed y’all out there. You should look on YouTube under religious nut-jobs spreading hate.”

“No,” Bircher rasped, pressing a hand to his chest. Bobby was afraid, kind of, that he might have spurred a heart attack in the man. Until Bircher pointed at him, hatred brewing even stronger in his beady eyes. “I don’t believe you. You would already be on the phone complaining about me. Your type—”

“My type is about ready to whoop your ass if you keep on with this bullshit,” Bobby interrupted. “We are done with this discussion. Oh. The next time y’all want to protest out here, we’ll be putting up a website with the pictures of the, er, friends of yours, who have been visitors to the bar here. You know,” Bobby smiled, knowing it was a rather evil one he gave Bircher, “that whole protesting too much shit really is true.” He’d bet Bircher had probably been a customer more than once, although Bobby had no proof. He looked close to terrified now. Kicking a dog wasn’t Bobby’s thing, so he dropped the threatening tone and tried for civil but firm. “I’ll want the damage repaired immediately,” he told the insurance agent, who still looked like he was about to piss himself. “I want it done right, too, and believe me, Mr Bircher, I’m not a stupid man. I will be checking everything you do, and everything the people fixin’ the damage do.”

With that, he turned and walked back inside before locking the front door of the club.

Bobby sighed and leaned against the door, his arms behind him as he rolled his shoulders.

He closed his eyes and the scent of smoke permeated his entire being, throwing him back a few months to a time when he’d been trekking through the remains of a Colorado forest that had been devastated by a wildfire. The destruction had seemed so utter, so complete. Bobby had showed up to help out his brother Josiah, who was the mate of a snow leopard shifter, Oscar. There’d been some family drama there—not with Bobby, who didn’t believe in drama…much.

No, it’d been Oscar’s family, sort of, although that included Josiah now too and therefore it included Bobby, so whatever. He’d been trying to help find one of Josiah’s brother-in-law’s half-brothers. Bobby snorted, shaking his head. Yeah, it was a confusing mess in his head, too, but it’d all turned out well. And he’d kind of spied on a couple of hot guys going at it, because hey, they were fucking right out in the open, and how could he not look at that? Jesus, that’d been about the hottest thing ever, and he’d felt like he’d carried some of that fire home with him, burning him into a restlessness ever since he’d got back. It was annoying, and messing with his usual snarkiness. Bobby didn’t care for the feeling that something big was missing in his life.

He had his club, and his family, and he could get laid any time he wanted to. He was destined to be alpha of the pack when his father stepped down. Really, what was his problem?

Bobby snorted and opened his eyes, pushing himself away from the door at the same time. He strolled through the club to the storage room where the damage was. They really were lucky the place had been closed down early. The electricity had gone out during a rough storm, and Bobby’d had no choice but to close up. Without the AC, the club had been dangerously hot. Add in the lack of lights, and it’d been bad. Fortunately he had other shifters working for him, and they’d rounded up everyone, humans and shifters alike, to get the place evacuated before anyone had a heat stroke.