Making Promises by Amy Lane Read Free Book Online Page A

sent the only flowers in the damned room. It’s all good. Now can I go try this shit on? I want to find the place that sells leather!” Making Promises

    “Yeah, fine,” Kimmy sniffed, looking over her shoulder. She wanted out of this scene, too, it was clear as day. “Here—let me go find some girl shit for you—some of that stuff on your list was here.”
    “I like leather,” Mikhail said when she was gone. He had a sly little smile on his sulky mouth, and now Shane blushed.
    “Chafes,” he muttered, remembering an experience with an old girlfriend.
    “Not if you don’t wear it for long,” Mikhail said gaily, and Shane had to laugh.
    “Try on that shirt,” he said earnestly, and Mikhail looked at it judiciously.
    “It is a small—I know it will fit,” he said with confidence. “But I have no money.”
    “Do you at least like the color?” Shane asked with some exasperation.
    “It matches my jerkin and trousers very well,” he conceded, and Shane rolled his eyes. Geez… try to do something nice for someone.
    Okay—that wasn’t entirely true. The truth was Shane really wanted to see him in the shirt. He looked at Mikhail awkwardly for a moment and flushed. Not that seeing him without it wasn’t a treat too.
    Mikhail caught that look and the blush, too, and smiled, arching his eyebrows and looking very gamine. “If you would like to see it on me, I will try it on.”
    “Thank you,” Shane muttered, and then he disappeared into his dressing room. The dressing rooms were hardly more than curtained cubicles, and he knew he could hardly keep his big, awkward body from challenging the edges of his space. When he and Mikhail bumped bottoms through the curtain, and his body—so long denied any contact at all—
    began to wake up and show a little interest, Shane knew he had to make some conversation.
    “Uhm, this Kurt that Kimmy keeps mentioning—is he a nice guy?”
    “No,” said Mikhail shortly. “He hasn’t stopped using for one thing, and he treats your sister like shit for another. Did you really get shot?”
    “He what?” Shane whirled around and pulled the curtain aside, and then slammed it shut again. “You didn’t tell me you were going to try on 34

    pants too,” he mumbled, backing up against the plywood partition that marked the solid side of the cubicle. The guy had also not mentioned that he was going commando.
    “You didn’t ask,” came the mild reply. “You act as though you have not seen another man naked. I take it that’s not true?”
    “One,” Shane blurted, looking fiercely at the curtain and wishing he could get rid of the mental image of Mikhail—all smooth, tanned skin and pale blond hair at his groin and the center of his chest. That picture in his head was making him stupid. “And that’s not the point. My sister—you’re saying this thing with Kurt isn’t a good idea?”
    “He also shortchanges me on the tips,” Mikhail muttered, and then, more brightly, “but that’s okay—I flushed half his stash and replaced it with baking soda. Jerkoff.”
    “Jesus,” Shane mumbled. “She was so proud she had it all together.”
    “And she did not visit you in the hospital.” Mikhail was still talking—almost to himself, it sounded like. “Why was it your fault you got shot?”
    “It wasn’t.” Shane had a sudden understanding. Talking to this man was like following a kitten with a ball of yarn. That thing was going to take him a lot of different, tangled places before he unraveled it and put it in order. “Stop chasing worsted,” he muttered, “and let’s keep talking about Kimmy.”
    “Your sister loves you,” Mikhail said, and there was some shifting as he moved out of the dressing room. “Now I am not naked—would you care to see me?”
    “I’m not even dressed yet! Gimme a moment!” Shane shut up for a moment—Mikhail was distracting him entirely—and worked at getting his trousers and tunic on. He came out of the dressing room and