And the little sound Michael made as he surrendered completely, put himself at Carl’s mercy, gave Carl leave to plunder some more. It made Carl feel like the A-guy, the central player, the guy who ran the show, and he wanted to run it until they were both naked and panting and sated, and then he wanted to run it some more.
A sharp rap on the passenger window broke them apart. As Carl’s heart thundered in his ears, he turned to see Hunter, smiling evilly and gesturing to the entrance of the house.
“We got work to do!” he called out, and Carl nodded and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Work,” he croaked, and Hunter just stayed there, like a complete asshole, waiting for Carl to open his door.
“Friends are a blessing,” he muttered, not meaning it. He had not been aware, until this moment, how little he knew of the bonding patterns of American males, but he was pretty sure he’d never had a friend who’d been as comfortable as Hunter and Chuck seemed to be about butting their heads into his life.
“They really are,” Michael said sincerely, and Carl was going to give him an evil look, but he couldn’t. God, those enormous black/brown eyes. And more than that—the sweet twist to his mouth when he smiled.
Instead, he sighed and threw open the door, gratified when Hunter hopped back before he got smacked with it.
Carl shut the door and glowered at him, and Hunter smiled with all his teeth.
“Have a good night?” he asked sweetly.
“Fell asleep in front of the television,” Carl replied. Then, unable to sustain snark for long, he sighed. “And sadly that’s the truth.”
Hunter slow-blinked. “I am… disappointed,” he said. Then Michael rounded the corner, and he gave a smile that even Carl had to say was sincere before leading them to the house.
The kitchen sat to the left of the foyer, but that was not the heart of the house. Hunter led the way through it anyway so they could all pay their respects to Phyllis, the housekeeper, a tart-tongued woman in her fifties who was grateful for her position as the Salingers’ housekeeper because it meant she could pursue her passion for academics as the mood struck her and yet still be surrounded by people who cared about her and appreciated her for keeping their lives organized.
The men walked through the kitchen, waiting until Phyllis came to the other side of the kitchen counter to kiss her on the cheek. Gray corkscrew curls bobbing, she shooed them through to the dining room, which was the heart of the house, before going back to her two trainees, both of whom, she cheerfully admitted, could cook way better than she could.
Carl paused before going in. “Is Josh here?” he asked, the question weighted.
Phyllis nodded, the strain on her face doing the unforgivable and making her look her age.
“Still has his hair,” she said, her voice cracking with the effort of keeping it light.
“It would be a shame if he didn’t,” Carl said diplomatically.
“You boys did good,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”
Carl shrugged. “I just brought the legal papers,” he said, but she shook her head and then turned away, obviously overcome.
He left, out of respect, and braced himself for what would meet him in the dining room.
The room itself was dominated by a giant carved maple-wood banquet table set up against the wall. The seats on the wall were bench style, so Danny, Felix, and Julia usually presided there. Danny and Felix were, of course, very comfortable with each other’s personal space, but Julia had been in their lives for twenty years as a sister and friend. They had no compunction about climbing over each other to get out from behind the banquet table when the occasion called for it.
But by now, none of the people at the table had reservations about personal space.
“Stirling, if you pull my hair one more time, I’ll wrap it around your throat and choke you with it,” Molly said conversationally. In person, she was even more stunning than over the phone, her mass of curly red hair highlighted with neon dyed streaks, twirling their way through the mass. Buxom, with sassy hips, she had high cheekbones and milk-pale skin with unapologetic freckles that she only tried to hide when she was working a role.
Her brother—foster brother, although they squabbled like they’d shared a womb—was a little younger. Carl thought they may have graduated from high school at the same time because Stirling was that level of genius. He had the pale brown skin of mixed-race heritage, with eyes as liquid and brown as Michael’s, but much, much warier. His tightly curled hair was cut short, although Carl had seen him go weeks without trying to tame it, and his face, when relaxed enough to smile, had a sharp-cut handsomeness that took the breath away.
“You wouldn’t color it if you didn’t want the attention,” Stirling said, and while he wasn’t laughing or smiling, there was a tilt to his lips that indicated he was teasing her on purpose, probably to keep the atmosphere around the table light.
“I agree,” Dylan “Grace” Li said from Molly’s other side. “But if you pull my hair, I will steal all the mother thingies from your computers, and I may not know what they do, but I know you’ll be very upset.”
Stirling gave Grace a look of fear that may have been genuine, and Grace—Asian American with a pointed chin, tawny eyes, and showy, exquisite male beauty—smiled with pointy teeth.
“Don’t worry,” Grace said, sounding magnanimous. “I’ll only do it if you pull my hair.”
Stirling relaxed a little. “I will never, ever touch you if I can possibly help it,” he said, nodding sincerely, and Grace turned to Molly as though making conversation.
“You need to be a better thief,” he said. “It gives you better things to threaten with.”
Carl could see it because Molly had once lifted his wallet, and he knew what to watch for as she smoothly passed Grace’s billfold to Stirling, whose eyes grew overlarge as it landed in his lap.
Carl bent down and put a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “If you didn’t tease him unmercifully, he wouldn’t pull your hair,” he said patiently, as though talking to a child. While he spoke he pulled the wallet from Stirling’s fingers and held it behind his back while Hunter grabbed it.
Carl straightened and turned to Michael, who was watching the entire enterprise with big eyes until Carl put his hand in the small of Michael’s back and steered him to the end of the table, where he could sit at the head with Chuck and Lucius on one side and Carl on the other.
“Hey!” Grace said as they sat. “Who gave you permission to be the thief?”
Carl looked up quickly to see Hunter grinning like the cat who had stolen the wallet.
“Not my fault you’re off your game,” he said, going in for a kiss.
Grace was still working on an expression between outrage and hurt before the kiss landed, but as soon as Hunter touched him, he seemed to melt, the agitation, which colored the space around his body like an aura, calming down.
“He was off his game,” Chuck murmured, his casual sprawl belied by the quietness in his green eyes.
Lucius gave an imperceptible nod toward the opposite end of the table, where Josh Salinger sat, wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt with CSU on the front. The hoodie now hung off his shoulders like they were coat hangers. His dark-brown eyes were enormous in a sheet-white face that was all points and angles, and Carl had an aching moment to wonder if they’d ever be treated to his dimples again.