Dirty Secret (5 page)

“Because mistresses… even male ones… are not invited to
chaebol
weddings.” Scarlet paused near the front door, sliding her flats onto her tiny feet. “But I’ll be fine,
musang
, so long as your Cole finds out what happened to Dae-Hoon.”

T
HE
bedroom curtains did their best to keep out the morning sun, but they failed miserably. I was too tired to care, and besides, the light made the room bright enough for me to watch Jae as he got ready for bed. We were both exhausted. I’d barely gotten my jeans off and brushed my teeth before falling onto the mattress wearing only my boxers. For all my dick’s willingness to give it a good try, I knew I wouldn’t get much more than a bit of foreplay before I passed out. The puffiness under Jae’s eyes reassured me he was feeling the same.

Still, it was a damned pretty sight to watch him shed the pants and tank top, to crawl into bed next to me. I liked the boxer briefs he liked to wear. They molded the fullness of his ass and left his belly button bare. He’d talked about piercing the skin above his navel, a plan I oddly endorsed.

It felt good when he slid up against my side and traced the alarmingly increasing scar patterns on the left side of my chest. They ached beneath the surface, the nerves being pulled by the puckered skin as I moved. His touch soothed away the tingles, and I grunted when he pinched my side.

“Stop getting shot,” he murmured, kissing the newest and smallest of my scars.

His cousin Grace’s gun had been a small one, nothing like the police issue cannon Ben used to shoot me, and it left a much tinier imprint on my body. As gunshots went, it didn’t do a lot of damage, and I’d recovered from it quickly. Jae and Claudia hovered constantly while I went about trying to regain the strength in my shoulder, so it would take some time for them to break that habit.

From the looks of things, neither one of them were making any progress in that regard.

“I might have to talk to Seong, but I don’t want to.” I let my fingers trail down Jae’s spine. “Especially if I can’t find any place else to start. It’ll make trouble between them.”

He felt warm. Good. His skin heated up under my touch, and I caught a whiff of the green tea soap he used. My body warmed up too. I had to remind it I was too tired to do anything more than talk and cuddle.

“I know,” he murmured. His breath ghosted over my nipple, and I had another talk with my dick. “
Nuna
knows too.”

“Keep doing that, and we’re not going to get any sleep,” I warned him. “And I’m too tired to give you a good time. It’ll look bad on my report card.”

“I’ll leave good marks,” Jae teased. He lightly bit at the nipple he’d hardened, then pulled back, resting his head on my arm. “Your Korean is bad. It’s like your tongue doesn’t work. You keep saying who-young.”

“You of all people know that my tongue works fine.” When he remained silent, I nudged him with my fingers. “Seong Min-Ho. How’s that? Am I going to embarrass you if I talk to him?”

“No, you did fine. Scarlet left you his business card. It’s got English on the back you can read.” He yawned, his jaw cracking slightly. I winced and rubbed at the spot near his chin. “Do you want me to call him for you? He loves
nuna
. He’ll help you if he can.”

I was debating the stickiness of calling up Scarlet’s lover to grill him about a possible murder when a perky pop tune jiggled Jae’s phone. It vibrated across the end table, and he sat up quickly to grab it. The bedsheets slithered down around his hips, a soft emerald green framing his back. The frown on his face was thunderous, and his body went taut. There was a brittle, hard set to his shoulders that worried me, and I reached over to touch his back, hoping to reassure him.

“
Aniyo
.” He shook his head at me and pulled away, nearly recoiling from my hand. “
Umma
.”

I knew the first word,
no
, and the second one only vaguely. It hovered in my mind for a moment then clicked into place.
His mother
.

It was hard seeing him curled up onto himself. His shoulder blades jutted out from his back, framing the line of his spine. The sheets were tented from his knees being pulled up against his chest, and his free hand gripped the linens, kneading them between his fingers as he spoke. I had no way to understand what he was saying, but the thin tightness in his voice hurt me deep. His body was screaming at me, his pain leaking out of every rigid line of his limbs and torso.

Everything inside of me wanted to touch him, to reassure him.

Everything I knew about him told me not to.

I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Two months of drive-by Korean wasn’t going to give me any understanding of what his mother was pulling out of him. Every time he stopped to listen, he flinched. Her words stabbed him, sharp barbs hooking into his heart and pulling out chunks of his soul. Jae became smaller with each moment, the sheet winding about his fingers and wrist until his knuckles were white and bloodless.

Nearly as bloodless as his face.

He stared through me, his cheek on his sheet-covered knees and his hand nearly invisible as he cradled it against his face. The full mouth I loved to kiss was a flat line, pressed tight against words he didn’t want to say… words he couldn’t say. His eyes were stones, hard and glittering, with all of the honey gold leeched from them.

It was over before I could think of anything to say or do. One moment he was a porcelain statue and the next a crumbling, fragmented thing full of fury and loathing.

Putting my arms around Jae was like trying to hold a hurricane. He was off the bed, fighting to loosen his legs from the sheets. Clutching the phone, he turned and shook, gulping in large mouthfuls of air to calm himself down. I waited. I had to wait. I’d been with him for two months, and he always needed time to work through his emotions, to find something to grab onto to drag him out of the panic and anger built up inside of him.

“Fuck. Someone told her something… about me… about us,” Jae said. The phone flew onto the bed, and he began carding his hands through his hair, pacing alongside of the bed. “My aunt. She speaks to my aunt… maybe….”

“Jae, take a breath.” I came up behind him, catching him before he made another circuit of the room. He fought me. I didn’t expect him to come to me easily. He never did. I was stronger and calmer, wrapping my arms around his shoulders to pull him tight against my bare chest. “What did she say? What did she want?”

“She needs more money,” Jae mumbled. His fingers were cold, nerveless, and still on my skin. “I told her I would try to get her some, and she said… I should ask my rich friend for it. My
hyung
.”

Other than Scarlet’s lover, I was probably the only one of Jae’s friends that could be considered rich. My wealth was hard-won: a city payout for the murder-suicide of my lover, Rick, and my partner, Ben. Six months ago, I’d have said I’d trade the money to have them back alive. Now, I would trade the money to give Jae a little bit of peace.

“She knows about Scarlet. She could have been talking about Scarlet or… shit, Seong.” I leaned back and drew my hands up to cup his face. My thumbs smeared the trace of wetness over his lower lashes. He sniffled, but he tilted his chin up. “What about your brother? Can he help?”

I mentioned his brother as a diversion. It didn’t work out so well.

“Jae-Su? My brother?” Jae spat. His soft accent grew with his anger and fear, rounding out his words. “If he knew I… how I was, he’d use it to get money out of
me
. Right now, he takes from her. My
hyung
… takes from our mother like he’s still a little boy. And she gives it to him. She’d starve my sisters so he can have something new to play with.”

“How much does she need? I can….”

“No.” It was firm, both his pride and his refusal to let me help him. I understood it. I didn’t like it, but understood it. His hands clenched, becoming fists on my chest. The anger inside him begged to be unleashed. I expected him to punch me when he gritted his teeth and shook his head. Jae pulled back, shoving me away with a single push. “No. I don’t want your money. This isn’t your problem. My family isn’t your problem.”

I took a breath, a hissing pull to chill my lungs. Jae stalked to the bathroom, his shoulders shaking as he turned the water on. He cupped his hands under the flow and bent forward, but merely stared down into the sink. His hair hid most of his face, but I could still see his mouth, his pink lips trembling with anger and fear. I couldn’t understand what he was feeling. I’d made my own choices, walking away when my father decided I wasn’t good enough to be his son anymore. Jae didn’t need me pushing him.

So of course, that’s exactly what I did.

I didn’t say anything. I kept silent as I walked over to the open bathroom door and leaned against the door frame. The twisting in my chest bloomed into a fear he’d walk out the door. It was too soon for me to lose him. I hadn’t had enough time, not nearly enough time to persuade him that I would catch him if he fell from his family’s grace. It hadn’t been enough time for me to accept that he might never be mine… not openly… perhaps not even behind closed doors.

Jae shut the water off and rested his palms on the marble counter. Lifting his head, his eyes flicked toward the mirror, momentarily meeting my gaze before dropping back down to study the dark speckles in the stone. The tension bled slightly from his spine, and his hips moved forward, relaxing the line of his body.

We hadn’t reached forever then. Not the forever of him walking out of my front door or the forever of our last kiss. My heart lurched and began beating again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. His face was shadowed, shuttered off, and closed. “I’m… tired. I just…
fuck
.”

He let me hold him this time, sliding into my embrace with his usual liquid grace. We’d met halfway. The cold bathroom floor was a shock to my bare feet, but his too warm body more than made up for it. He didn’t cry, but I could feel him struggling to keep himself together. I cupped the back of his head and slid my other hand across his shoulders then down his back, stroking away the tension in his body.

“It’s okay, baby.” When he looked up at me, the pain deepening his eyes broke my heart. Kissing the top of his head, I murmured and stroked him again, “It’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”

“I hate wanting you,” he said. “I hate wanting…
this
.”

This
could have meant a lot of things. I knew Jae well enough to know he meant being happy… being gay… being with me, someone who struggled daily to understand him. I couldn’t talk. My nights were still filled with memories of blood, gunpowder, and sightless green eyes going dim. We both had our albatrosses. I had Rick’s ghost shoveling guilt into my soul like it was feeding a coal furnace, and Jae dragged his family behind him, their claws stuck deep under his skin. He was unable to loosen their grip any more than I could loosen Ben’s and Rick’s.

It was unfair of me to think that.

I knew that.

Didn’t make me hate our baggage any less.

I wanted my fucking forever.
My
forever. Not the one that seemed laid out for me. Certainly not the one laid out for Jae. I just had to have the patience and the strength to fight for him, even if he was the one I was fighting with.

“How about if we get some sleep and talk about this shit later?” I rocked him gently, more of a swaying motion than anything else. “About the money… about
this
.”

“The money thing… it’s not going to change,” Jae warned me, but let me guide him back to bed. He dragged his feet, exhaustion drawing purple shadows under his eyes. The bed dipped when he climbed onto it, and again when I dragged myself up against him.

“Well,
this
isn’t going to change either.” I covered us, letting him get settled onto his stomach. One of his legs crept over mine, and his arm slid over my chest, his hand resting lightly on my ribs. His breathing slowed, and he shuddered, letting go more of the tension racking his body. “It will just get better, Jae. We’ll get better. I promise. We will work this out.”

“Getting better is still change,” he mumbled into my chest.

I contemplated an argument or two, then went with my gut response. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

Chapter Four

H
ITTING
the bag felt good. The slim gloves were new, a present from Bobby. More like an incentive to get my ass back into the gym. I needed to work out the muscles injured in the shooting, strengthen my arm back up some. It also helped me forget I’d woken up to an empty bed and even emptier house.

The gym was a bare-bones hole-in-the-wall run by Floyd “JoJo” Monroe, an ex-boxer who’d had the bad luck of being a black gay man in the ’80s. His career was brilliant… and cut short when, after a match, he’d been discovered in the locker room, getting a blow job from one of the referees, a white man. A few days later, the guy giving the blow job was found floating off the Santa Monica Pier. JoJo didn’t fare as well. There wasn’t much left of the man who’d pummeled his opponents to the mat. His legs shook as he walked, and his remaining eye was milky from age, but his voice was strong as he yelled at the men in the ring.