“What’s to worry? Dance, dance, dance—it’s two weeks before showtime. Whatever.”
Funny, how he was the male lead in the show, and he practiced for probably fifty hours a week, but he could blow it off as “whatever.”
“But there may be bad guys around.” He felt like an idiot saying “bad guys,” but he wasn’t sure how much Grace had been paying attention. He’d noticed that sometimes Grace tended to dance to his own music—literally—and Hunter had gathered that the motion helped Grace focus. But they’d briefed for hours, doing things like asking Stirling or Danny to look things up, sending Felix out to make calls, and even, at one point, having Julia ask Phyllis, the housekeeper, if she knew some of the caterers who would be working the gala at the museum.
“That’s not really what you want to know,” Grace said wisely. “What you really wanted to know is if I’m going to be okay the day after tomorrow.”
Hunter let out a breath. Yup. That’s what he really wanted to know. He should have known better than to underestimate a man named Grace.
“Yeah, so. Are you?”
Grace grunted. “I’ll be way better if we have sex tonight.”
Hunter buried his nose against the soft, fine hair at the nape of Grace’s neck. “If I suck you off, can you not make too much noise?”
Grace made a decidedly evil sound. “Nope. My turn!”
And with that, he turned around in Hunter’s arms and scooched down, taking Hunter’s boxers as he went. His mouth on Hunter’s cock was heaven, and the distraction worked. Hunter would wager neither of them were thinking about the next step in their grand plan—having to go visit Laslo and Gabriel Hu the day after tomorrow.
Which was good, because Hunter wasn’t sure the newfound mature Grace, who wanted to be solid in a relationship, could have dealt with that at the moment.
The Devil in the Dilemma
“HOW FAR do we have?” Grace asked, and even though he knew it was for the umpteenth time, neither Hunter at the wheel, nor Josh and Chuck, sitting behind them, got impatient.
“That depends,” Josh said mildly. “Do we need to stop for another milkshake?”
“Yes,” said Chuck and Grace, and Grace turned expectantly to Hunter.
“Please?” he added.
“Sure,” Hunter said. “Let me find a place at the next off-ramp.”
The map said it took three and a half hours to get from the suburbs of Chicago to Springfield, Illinois, but that’s because the map didn’t need milkshakes to keep up its moral courage.
“Maybe we should have brought Tabby and Molly,” Grace said. “They’re girls. They’re merciless. They’d lay waste to Gabriel Hu before he could be all voodoo daddy and fuck me up.”
“Gabriel Hu is not a big enough threat to need Tabby and Molly,” Josh said seriously. “You don’t need them to fuck him up for you. You can out-Grace him. It’ll be fine. You have us to make sure he doesn’t have security guards who think with their balls. Besides, Tabby would have gone after Hu with guns blazing. That girl’s got a show to do with you in two weeks. You don’t want her to have bruises or a strained knee or something from stomping his face in.”
Grace thought of Tabby set loose on Gabriel’s handsome face and chuckled. “Damned shame,” he said, and the rest of the men in the car agreed.
“That’d be something,” Chuck concurred from the back. “So, guys… how amoral are you? If, say, I had a chance to blow this guy and rip his dick off, would that be okay?”
“Yes,” Grace said, at the same time Josh and Hunter snapped, “No!”
“Oh my God,” Josh muttered. “You guys! As far as we know, he’s not a serial killer. Everybody sit back, let me talk to Laslo about the damned gems and where he gets his information sources, and we’ll see how this plays out. There will be no homicidal blowjobs, and no violence unless someone offers it to us first, do we understand? At this point nobody knows we’re a crew. Nobody cares about Felix Salinger’s son—or Gideon Li’s! And Hunter and Chuck? You are off the radar. Let’s keep it that way. Jesus Christ. All I need is a top hat and a red coattail.”
“And what?” Grace asked. He knew, but listening to Josh bitch was one of his favorite hobbies.
“He’d be the ringmaster, and we’d be his monkeys,” Hunter said. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes!” Grace cackled, and he ignored the haters in the back who said things like “Oh my God,” and “Are you kidding me?” “There! There! Do you see that? It’s a Wendy’s. We can get Frosties!”
“And that’s what I’m talking about,” Chuck muttered. “Although a strawberry shake—”
“There we go,” Josh said, sounding tired, which was funny because he wasn’t the one going to see his ex-boyfriend. “Look, a Steak ’n Shake. Everybody’s happy.”
“Do you want a milkshake?” Grace asked. Josh hadn’t gotten one at the last stop either.
“No, Grace.” Josh sighed. “I’m actually up for a part after your show opens. I can’t have baby fat.”
Grace scowled. Josh was too thin. He’d had a borderline eating disorder in high school, and Grace knew it surfaced whenever he put too much pressure on himself.
“Bullshit,” Hunter muttered, heading off the freeway. “If I have to stop, you have to get a shake. I’m getting cookies and cream.”
“Me too! And fried zucchini.”
Josh made gagging motions. “I’ll take a chicken sandwich and a plain Coke,” he said.
“Killjoy,” Hunter muttered. “It will make Grace feel better if you order fat on the hoof.”
“Fine! Banana!” Josh snarled, and Grace smiled over his shoulder.
“And a chicken sandwich,” he said, pleased with himself. Then he looked at Hunter, who was driving with the same calm efficiency he showed in everything else he attempted. Hunter’s hair was pulled back into a queue, and he was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, looking professional and tough. But Grace was remembering the gentleness of Hunter’s hands in his hair when Grace went down on him, and the slow, sure way Hunter mastered his body when they were making love.
Making love was a thing Grace had never done before Hunter, and now that he knew what it was supposed to be, he wasn’t going to mistake what two people did naked when they gave zero shits with making love ever again for as long as he lived.
“What are you so pleased about?” Hunter asked him as Josh answered a call on Bluetooth, earbuds firmly on.
“You’re taking care of Josh too. That’s good. He needs us.”
Hunter nodded. “Well, he’s the smartest boss I’ve ever had.”
“I thought Felix and Danny were our bosses?” Chuck asked from the back.
“They are, for now,” Hunter said. “But can’t you tell by the way they keep pulling Josh aside? They’re trying to train him.”
“They wanted to keep him out of it,” Grace said, remembering their flustered admonitions when Josh and Grace were kids. “But Josh was good at knowing where to draw the line, and he kept me out of trouble. But when Felix got in trouble, it’s like they decided to go all in.”