Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City) (13 page)

What they’d done, it was strictly physical. At least it was for Vaughn. He could take it or leave it. It was hot, but to end it eventually would be a relief, in a way.

Mica, however, wanted more from Vaughn, maybe more than he wanted from anyone else. Vaughn didn’t think Mica was in love with him, but he wanted things he’d been denied by all his guardians—loyalty and patience and empathy. Plus the sex. Whatever that added up to, Vaughn couldn’t say. But it intimidated him.

Mica also wanted more than he could give. Vaughn valued the friendship, and he succumbed to the sex when the opportunity arose, but they’d never be partners, nor did he wish they could be. In that regard, Vaughn could walk away. Mica surely found that infuriating. Vaughn had power over him. Mica wasn’t used to that.

So how come I feel so helpless around him half the time?
It was all so fucking confusing.

“I might go to my dad’s,” Vaughn said, checking his pockets for his keys. “Leave you two alone.”

Mica looked up from his laundry at that, his smile dry. “You know she wants us both. She told me as much.”

“That was a one-time deal for me. You’re the freaky one.”

“Tell me that wasn’t the hottest night of your life, you fucking Boy Scout.”

“It was hot, I’m not denying that. But I’ve felt more,” he fibbed. “When you love somebody, it’s different. A different kind of intense. You ought to try it sometime.” That was all true, and yet . . . that night
had
been fucking insane.

“Maybe I have,” Mica said vaguely, stacking his folded clothes in the basket.

“What do you mean by that?” Vaughn asked.

Mica stood and headed for the kitchen. “You think I’ve never fucked someone I care about?” he seemed to ask the fridge before disappearing down the hall.

What in the fuck does that mean?
If Mica had ever been in love with a woman, that was news.
Or does he mean me?

If it was the latter, was that a confession, a proclamation? A statement of fact, or a jab, perhaps?

“You are one goddamn squirrelly motherfucker, you know that?” Vaughn called.

Down the hall, he heard a door shut.

Conversation over.

W
hen you love somebody, it’s different. You ought to try it sometime.

“Fuck you, too,” Mica muttered, hanging up the last of his shirts and leaving the empty basket on the closet floor.

He wasn’t mad, though. Not really. Anger wasn’t what he was feeling.

He had to work hard at pinpointing his emotions. A counselor back in his UE days had taught him that about himself, had told him how to scan his body and notice which parts hurt, and use that information to pinpoint what emotion he was feeling.

It sounded stupid as hell, a person not knowing what they were feeling, but all Mica registered in the heat of a given moment were impulses—varying manifestations of what he’d always taken to be anger. As a kid he’d lash out or run or say something nasty in response, but behind those reactions hid a dozen different feelings, it turned out. If he scanned himself, he could usually figure out which ones. When his throat felt tight, it meant his feelings were hurt, or he felt like he wasn’t being heard or understood. If his head
got hot and foggy, it was pure rage. If his whole body went muggy and flushed, he was frustrated.

The counselor had told him all that, and he’d pretended to not listen, but more than a decade later, and he still used that shit. Daily. It had helped a lot, he could admit that. In the few seconds it took to diagnose what breed of angry or hurt he was feeling, he could get enough of a grip on himself not to react. He’d gone from a hothead to an iceberg in the course of that one summer.

Iceberg on the outside, volcano on the inside.
But it was an improvement. Nobody deserved the power to make him lose his cool. Not anymore. He stuffed all that shit down and focused on the feelings he enjoyed—the rush of adrenaline; the calm of a lazy, squandered afternoon; the tension and then relief of sex. The thrill of not-yet-satisfied lust, maybe more than anything.

He liked thrills, liked that edge. Liked the high he got when he sensed that someone wanted him, and the anticipation of unwrapping an encounter. He liked figuring out where a person’s boundaries were, then leading them just beyond them. After all, there was nothing in life quite so suffocating as the familiar.

Vaughn’s familiar.

The man was one of a very few people Mica kept in touch with, year after year. And why, he couldn’t say. Normally, the better someone knew him, the harder he pushed them away.

Could it be that you don’t like yourself? That you’re worried that if you let anyone get to know you too well, they won’t like what they find? That they’ll leave you first?

Fuck you, Dr. Schelling.

She was the shrink Mica had been forced to see when he’d been in high school, in exchange for getting a juvenile offense dismissed. Six sessions he’d sat through. Six hours of being lectured about self-esteem and abandonment issues by someone who knew him from a
folder full of social workers’ notes. Like he was too stupid to know what his fucking problems were.

Why do you think it is that you’re so disposed to taking risks, Mica?

He hadn’t said,
Because when I was three my foster parents tied me to a high chair for hours at a time while they went to work.
So he wouldn’t get hurt or break anything.

Because sitting in a wet diaper all morning, with dry cereal for food and a view of the peeling wallpaper for entertainment didn’t fucking
hurt.
Because being
just
old enough to know your real parents were out there but didn’t want you, wouldn’t come and rescue you, didn’t
hurt.

Try that. Try being tied to a chair or locked in a closet and see how eager you are to sit still and behave. See if you don’t try to punch a teacher for holding you by both your arms. See if you don’t want to run every fucking chance you get.

But that was all just boo-hoo bullshit sad-sack crap, so he’d never said those things. He’d shrugged and told the doctor,
I’m bored.

Bored, sure.
Bored
just happened to snap him right back to those ugly, tedious, neglectful years, had him feeling tied up and locked away and forgotten, so yeah, he’d do just about anything to escape that sensation. Run when you feel trapped, turn away when a friend or a job or a lover began to feel too familiar, like that wallpaper. Get the hell out of there, go see something you’ve never seen. Move your body up a cliff face or fuck somebody new. Do anything but sit still, see anything you haven’t seen before. Taste anything other than the same stale Cheerios and warm water from yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Taste everything. Drink it down. Drown in it.

A shrink’s couch was just another chair they roped you to for an hour at a time. Her face had been just another patch of peeling wallpaper, her voice the din of passing cars and arguing people out on Somerset Drive. Fuck her, thinking he didn’t know what his own goddamn issues were—

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he checked the screen, expecting Clare. Nope—different girl. Amanda. He’d met her at the café the day before.

I’m down for that drink tonight if you are
, she’d written.

Too easy. She was cute, and if he didn’t already have plans, he’d have said sure, met her at a bar, taken her home, had some fun. But nothing was trumping round two with Clare and Vaughn.

Not tonight
, he wrote,
maybe this weekend. I’ll call you.

Or perhaps he wouldn’t. It depended on what came his way in the meantime, and indeed if he’d even remember he’d said that tomorrow.

He turned his phone off and hit the shower, changed into clean clothes. Clare would be here in twenty minutes or so. She still felt new, even after two encounters. She still wanted him, and still hadn’t figured him out. She looked at him with wonder and lust and just a little misgiving, and she didn’t know him, not really. He liked being looked at but not seen.

Vaughn sees me.
And yet Mica kept him close. Why? Who the fuck could say? Because he trusted the guy, maybe. With his life on those trips. And he trusted Vaughn to know him without trying to change him, fix him.

Mica had known he was bi for about as long as he’d known what sex was. He’d wanted guys the way he’d wanted girls, but also not. He might not be the most romantically available person, but what he felt for women was still deeper than with men. With women, there was a connection he wanted, albeit briefly, that he didn’t want from men. Men were easy. Men were filthy, and he liked filthy. You want to get laid, just find a guy and you were there. Girls required more effort, and if you needed that softer presence, the effort was worth it. But if all you wanted on a given night was to get off, men were the way to go.

Mica had never hooked up with the same man more than twice,
with the exception of Vaughn. None had ever held his attention, sexually, as his friend did, either. Maybe it was the fact that, like a woman, Vaughn wasn’t easy. Hell, he was straight. He was a challenge, and Mica did love a challenge, after all.

He’d also never had anyone be so many things to him, the way Vaughn was. No one had ever made him
feel
so many ways, not any other man or woman. Mica envied his friend. Envied his family and his childhood, how together he was. Sure, the man’s mom was dead, but at least she’d been good to him for as long as she’d been there. At least she’d left him with memories, not a load of question marks, a half ton of tiresome baggage. He also envied Vaughn’s ability to settle in one place and make a home of it, not to panic and bolt the second the walls felt too familiar. Mica wanted his best friend, as much as he’d ever wanted any other man or woman, way down in his guts and bones and blood.

He admired Vaughn even as he occasionally resented him. The guy could do things so effortlessly, things that struck Mica as all but impossible. Make promises, keep dates, get to work on time, focus for longer than ten fucking minutes when he needed to.

Mica hated his own head. The thing was full of chaos, too many voices, too much music, so much static. His skull felt like a massive subway platform on a bad day, all noise and momentum, everything . . . scattered. Sometimes he broke dates because he was a shit, sure, but more often than that he broke dates because he just fucking
forgot
. Some days his brain felt more like a junk drawer than a subway station—good luck finding anything in there. Vaughn’s brain must look like a toolbox, with all the different parts in the right compartments. Promises in this slot, schedules in that one; ethics in this tray, emotions over in this one.

But I can make a mess of him.

Maybe that was the crux of it. When things turned dirty between
them—out in the desert or just down the hall, the other night—Mica could take the most together man of his peer group and leave him uncertain, confused, wanting things he normally wouldn’t, questioning himself.

Vaughn had already been a man when they’d met. He’d been one of those rare teenagers who looked older, talked older, knew better. But Mica could change all that, leave him panting; pleading with his body, if not his words. For those brief, fiery minutes, he was the cool, controlled one, and Vaughn the one drowning in scary emotions.
That
kept him wanting his friend. That power, coupled with the history and the trust. Something a little dark and fucked was always at play when Mica and sex overlapped, but it was the healthiest relationship in his life.

He knows me,
Mica thought, snapping his leather cuff at his wrist, toweling his damp dreads before the closet’s full-length mirror.
But I know him right back.

He knew what Vaughn thought he wanted, and also what he
actually
wanted, deep down beyond his identity let him peer. Vaughn was in the kitchen or the living room right now, telling himself he was deciding where to go once Clare got here. Where to vacate to, because he wasn’t joining them again. But Mica knew him better than he knew himself.

“He’ll stay,” he told his reflection. He knew that, sure as he’d known Clare would say yes when he’d called. He knew what he did to people. Knew that where sex was involved, he pulled all the strings.

And Vaughn wasn’t going anyplace tonight, aside from down the hall with the two of them.

C
lare blew out a long breath in the little foyer, smoothed her hair back, and rang Mica and Vaughn’s bell. She knew better now than to wait for the intercom. She held the door handle and hauled it open when the lock buzzed.

She looked cute—a short green cotton dress cinched with a thin leather belt, her Toms again, a cardigan to combat the night’s mild chill. She’d come prepared, as well, with a toothbrush and a few toiletries in her bag, makeup, and a change of clothes for work the next morning.

Would she ever get to a point with Mica where she held a spot in the toothbrush caddy at their place? A little sliver of real estate in his dresser? Unlikely, she thought as she hiked up the stairs to their floor. That was boyfriend-girlfriend territory, and even if he wasn’t as flighty as he appeared to be, he was gone by the close of summer.

The door was ajar and she let herself in, finding Mica at the counter, his back to her. A gorgeous back, she thought anew—long and lean, his shoulder blades and elegant muscles hugged by a sage-colored T-shirt.

“Hey,” she said, shutting the door.

He turned, a bottle of wine and corkscrew in his hands. “Hey, yourself.” His smile was warm and mischievous, and those qualities blossomed in her body in response.

No Vaughn?
she wanted to ask. Except just then, a door opened down the hall, emitting the whir of the bathroom fan, then the man himself. He disappeared into his room.

He just showered,
she thought. Was it narcissistic—or perhaps merely hopeful—to wonder if it was for her benefit?

When Clare looked back to Mica, that smile seemed sharper. He’d watched her watching Vaughn. God knew what her expression had been saying. Had she looked nervous? Curious? Downright hungry?

“Red?” she asked, turning her attention to the bottle.

“That okay? You said you’ll drink either.”

“Perfect.” And if she’d soon be tasting merlot or cabernet on Mica’s tongue as they kissed, it’d likely change her preference for good.

“How was your day?” she asked.

Mica shrugged. “Nothing to write home about.” He filled two glasses and lifted one. “Here’s hoping the night’ll make up for it.”

She claimed the other glass and drank when he did. A nice wine. Warm, dark. Dry and earthy.

“Only the two glasses?” she asked, keeping her voice low and glancing in the direction of Vaughn’s room.

“He doesn’t drink wine.”

“Ah.”

“He also doesn’t think he’s sticking around tonight.”

She frowned, surprised to discover it was disappointment she felt at that, not the relief she might have expected. It was the edge Mica brought to things that she wanted, the adventure another night with
him promised, and another threesome was nothing if not adventurous. She’d be happy enough if it was just the two of them, but she couldn’t deny that yes, she did want them again, together. “Shame.”

He held her stare with a pointed look, eyebrows rising. “Maybe the invitation would be more enticing coming from you.”

“Oh. Well, what did you say to him, exactly?”

“That you were coming over. That he ought to join us.”

“And he said . . . ?”

“That it was a one-time deal, for him.”

“If that’s true, we ought to respect it.”

“He wants what we do. Trust me, I know him. I can read him. He just needs to hear it from you.”

Which would require her to speak the truth aloud, tell a near stranger that, yes, she did want to be with both him and his best friend, again. It was so much easier when Mica stole the reins, steered everyone directly where he wanted them all. But for the sake of another night like that first one . . . ?

“I’ll try,” she said. And if she failed, she got Mica all to herself. Not exactly a tragedy.

Mica took her glass, smiling. “Good girl.”

She went warm at those familiar words, like she’d gulped an extra dose of wine. Some liquid courage wouldn’t go astray, in fact, but she mustered the balls to walk down the hall and knock on Vaughn’s door.

“Yeah,” came his reply, and Clare pushed the door in. He was stuffing jeans into a laundry bag by his closet.

“It’s me,” she said.

That got his attention. He stood up and turned straight to face her. “Clare. Hey. Mica said you were coming over.”

“And he said you’re heading out someplace . . . ?”

“I thought I might swing by the bar, see who’s around, or maybe see what my dad’s up to. Give you guys some space.” He regarded her subtly, just for a moment.

She leaned against the doorjamb and replied quietly, “That’s too bad.”

Vaughn swallowed. “I figured last time was . . . you know. Just a one-time thing. A crazy, drunken . . .”

When no words came to him, she hazarded one, smirking. “Mistake?”

His parted lips closed, then opened again. He shook his head. “No, not quite. But not anything any of us planned.”

Any of us except perhaps Mica.

“Not planned, no,” she agreed. “But kind of awesome.”

His gaze darted between her mouth and eyes, unsure. “Glad you think so.”

“Don’t you? Or are you regretting it, now?”

“Not regretting it. Just . . .” He sighed. “I dunno. It’s not the kind of thing I ever imagined myself doing.”

“Me neither.” Though now that she had, she wanted to go there again. Tonight. Tomorrow. Again and again and again. “But I also haven’t stopped thinking about it since that night.”

He regarded her with a steady stare, his shoulders dropping, relaxing. “I haven’t, either.”

“Stay,” she said softly. “Tonight.”

Again, those full lips parted.

“I want you to,” she told him, straight up.

“Do you?” What was that she saw in his eyes now? Heat, but exactly what sort . . .

She nodded. When Vaughn didn’t reply, she took a chance. Crossed the room and took his hand. She led him slowly down the hall to the
den, where Mica was waiting, sitting in the easy chair. The bottle sat on the coffee table by their two glasses, plus a tumbler he’d clearly prepared for Vaughn, half-filled with whiskey.

“I used my womanly powers of persuasion,” she said to Mica, letting go of Vaughn’s hand, “and he’s decided to join us.”

Mica leaned forward, slid their glasses over when they sat on the couch. “As if any man could resist you.”

She rolled her eyes at his sweet-talking and took a sip.

Music was playing on the stereo, old R&B. Make-out music, though it sounded strangely innocent, given the things Clare suspected would shortly go down between the three of them.

“Small talk seems silly now,” Vaughn said mildly.

Mica smiled. “Let’s play a game.” Oh, that gleam in his eye. A shiver moved through her, chased by a blush.

Vaughn tasted his whiskey and set it down, then leaned back, seeming to ease into the scene. “What sort of game?”

“A drinking game,” Mica said. “We take turns guessing things about each other. You guess wrong, you drink. You guess right, they drink, and you get to dare someone to do something.” A little bit Truth or Dare, a little bit Never Have I Ever.

“Okay,” Clare said. “Though I may skip the drinking bit after the first few rounds. No sense getting drunk enough to blur my recollection of whatever’s going down tonight.” Plus, it wasn’t as though she needed the alcohol to find herself following whatever Mica had planned like a lemming. “Who’s first?”

“I’ll start,” Mica said, and looked to Vaughn, thinking a moment. “I bet the other night was your first three-way.”

“You bet right. So I drink?”

“Drink, and take whatever dare I give you.”

“Which would be . . . ?”

His eyes narrowed as he glanced between Vaughn and Clare. “We’ll start off easy. Kiss. Don’t stop until I say.”

Clare met Vaughn’s gaze and shrugged gamely, smiling. He took a sip of his whiskey and she scooted over to make space on the couch, patting the cushion. He looked stoic as he joined her, but didn’t hesitate—he held her jaw and brought his mouth down to hers. Damn, those lips. It felt nearly romantic for a moment, then hot. Hot as fuck, deep and dirty and wet. Like they’d just had a perfect date and couldn’t wait to find themselves naked in a bed together. The hand on her face dipped lower to cup her neck, the other feeling possessive on her arm. She touched him in turn, rubbing his chest through his soft tee. All the while, she sensed Mica’s attention on them, as erotic as Vaughn’s fingers or heat or tongue. It dovetailed with the way he’d issued this supposed dare.
Don’t stop until I say.
Less a dare than a directive.

Her body wound up tighter with every second they kissed, peaking when she felt another touch—Mica’s hand, on the back of her neck. It was so like that first time, she broke out in goose bumps. She’d been naive that time, nearly innocent. Tonight she knew exactly what was in store for her, and she wanted it just as badly with her eyes wide-open—

“That’ll do.” Mica’s voice was warm and mischievous. She and Vaughn separated after a final deep sweep of his tongue, and they swallowed in unison.

“Happy?” she asked, turning to smile at Mica. Her lips felt swollen, her face hot. She wondered if he could tell. She wondered if Vaughn felt the same.

“Very.”

“Who’s next?”

“Vaughn.”

She looked to the man at her right, then bumped his shoulder playfully with hers. “You heard him.”

“I’ll ask you, then. Um . . .”

“Make it specific,” Mica urged, then added, “And make it nasty.”

“Fine.” He looked between them, then focused on Clare. “I’ll ask you the same. Was Wednesday your first threesome?”

She nodded and took a drink. “Do I have to take a dare now? Or can I ask a question?”

Mica shrugged.

“In that case . . .” She looked between the men. “Vaughn,” she said, contemplating as she spoke. “You seem like an upstanding, old-school kind of guy . . . I bet you’ve never sent a dick pic. Or made any kind of sex tape, for that matter.”

He leaned forward and grabbed his glass, tipped it to his lips.

She clapped, pumped a fist. “I knew it.”

He smiled dryly. “That shit is so tacky. Though it probably helps that I’m not usually much of a drinker.”

“Likely.”

“So now you dare him,” Mica said. “Or me. Or both of us.”

“These rules are pretty squirrelly,” Vaughn said.

“We’re just making this shit up as we go along.” He looked to Clare. “So what’s the dare?”

Kiss,
she wanted to say, but it was still only a hunch—her feeling that they had a sexual history beyond Wednesday’s debauchery. “Come over here,” she told Vaughn instead. As he got to his feet, she informed the men, “It’s not a dare, exactly. Just an order.”

“I like orders,” Mica said, smiling, lounging back along the couch.

Vaughn said nothing, just rounded the table to stand before her.

“Lift your shirt,” she said, grinning like a dope.

Vaughn eased up his hem, exposing that gorgeous set of abs.
Standing above her this way, he gave her shivers, and she ran her palms up and down his hard flesh, shameless. She did it for Mica as much as for herself. He’d orchestrated all this, and something about sharing her with his friend got him off. Anything she did to Vaughn, she did to him.

Once she’d had her fill, she patted Vaughn’s firm belly. “That’s all I wanted. Thanks.”

He nodded once, and there was no mistaking her touch had excited him. Those sweats kept no secrets. “You got it.” He went back to his seat.

“Your turn,” Mica told him.

Vaughn’s eyes had glazed some, but he managed to focus enough to ask Clare, “Have you ever slept with a woman?”

“Slept with, no.”

“Kissed?”

“Hey, now, you get only one question.”

Mica sat forward, smiling and looking curious. “Rules were made to be broken. Answer him.”

She rolled her eyes in defeat and took a drink. “It happened in college, during a game not unlike this one,” she told them. “She really wasn’t my type.”

“What’s the dare?” Mica prompted Vaughn.

Vaughn looked between them. “Give him a dance. Like, a lap dance.”

“All right,” she said, feeling electric now, from the wine and the music and the mystery of where this game would lead.

Mica smiled, spreading his legs and scooting forward on the cushions. She rose and got settled, straddling his thighs. His hands held her waist as she began to move, flexing her hips, brushing their middles together, holding his shoulders. Those dark eyes burned up
at her. His palms slipped lower, holding her hips, then easing her skirt up, up, up, high enough for Vaughn to see what color her panties were, then the way her flesh must be dimpling when Mica held and squeezed her ass. That zapped something in her own erotic wiring and she swallowed, body flashing hot.

She looped her arms around his neck, finding that without any effort, she was into this. One man’s hands on her body, the other’s eyes watching every gyration.

“You’re good at this,” Mica murmured, gaze catching hers before dropping to her breasts once more.

“Thank you.” She rubbed a little closer, a little tighter against his waist. He took it even further, grasping her hips and tugging her hard against him, so close she felt his excitement. Her fingers sought his hair, gripping, promising that whatever he wanted tonight, she was up for it. All those wishes for one-on-one time with this man . . . Fuck it. She wanted Wednesday all over again, and more. Anything. Everything.