Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty by Rhys Ford Read Free Book Online

at the back of his neck. “We also need a new hanging thing in there—the shampoo bottle thing. I think I dented the other one we had with my head.”
    Lacking the words in Korean, Ichi switched back to English. “Did you tell my brother you were almost arrested?”
    “What Cole doesn’t know, he doesn’t worry about,” Jae grumbled back.
    “It’s supposed to be what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” he corrected.
    “He banged his back against the hot-water knob because he didn’t know about it. It still hurt him.”
    “Very American 1950s of you. Distracting my brother with sex.” A flash of red caught his eye, and he turned to watch a young woman toss a Frisbee over to a bearded man wearing a porkpie hat. “Do you have two twin beds in the room too? Sleep with one foot on the floor? Isn’t that how it was back then in old television shows?”
    Angled toward the table, Ichiro found Bobby’s attention wandering away from Cole and focusing on him. As the man’s eyes narrowed they raked over Ichi’s body, and something hot and wild burned in their brown depths. A part of him wanted to go over to the older man, shove him up against the picnic table, and use Jae’s method of distraction to get rid of the hot itch growing between them.
    A very vocal part.
    There was something undeniably sexy about Bobby Dawson, a something-bad-to-tangle-with sexy that set warnings off in Ichiro’s common sense each time the man was near, but with every brush of their hands or the rough scrape of Bobby’s voice over his skin, Ichiro knew he was going to end up in deep trouble.
    Bobby Dawson was built raw and handsome, definitely a man raised up among the stone and blood of a violent environment. He’d come out of it with a twist of sardonic humor and an iron will with a thread of unshakeable authority, which probably served him well when he wore a badge and a gun.
    Yes, Bobby Dawson definitely looked like someone who was born to hold a piece of hot steel in his hand and to part a crowd with a single booming-bass shout.
    And it certainly didn’t hurt that the man was sculpted from stone, his broad hands scored with rough breaks of skin and blunt fingernails, and had a lived-in face with open promises of hard, fast sex dirtied by filthy words and sloppy kisses.
    Ichiro’d definitely done stupider things. In fact, that very afternoon’s run from the cops after breaking and entering into a historic building wasn’t even at the top of his list of insane things he’d done in the past year alone.
    Tangling with Bobby Dawson suddenly didn’t seem as far-fetched as it was a few seconds ago.
    “Don’t.” Jae leaned in close and whispered.
    “You don’t know what I’m—”
    “I know that look. I had that look when I thought about getting together with Cole-ah in the beginning. Don’t tell me I don’t know.”
    “You and Cole didn’t do too badly.” He smirked at Jae, nodding toward the house. “Can’t say the same for your bathroom accessories, but you two? Seem to be fine.”
    “Cole’s… he goes into things with his full heart—full soul. I knew even then it wasn’t—he wasn’t looking for a few months of fun and games. Your brother doesn’t chase after things—or people—he doesn’t intend to catch.” Jae looked away, his gaze finding his lover amid the small crowd of people behind the Craftsman he now called home. “I didn’t want to get caught. It would change things—change my life. And it did.”
    “Do you regret any of it?” Ichi probed. “Okay, maybe not the gunshot, but the rest of it? Wasn’t it worth the risk? You and Cole?”
    “Me and Cole? Yes, he was worth the risk, but I was right. Your brother pursued me to the end until my entire world was empty without him. He made it worth even the loss of my family, but Bobby? He’s not going to give you anything other than complications. You’re too much like your brother, Ichiro. You’re not someone who’s happy with an empty bed in