Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty by Rhys Ford Page A

probably lost his one chance to find out.
    But then again, maybe he had used it, and it was drowned under the sea of tequila he’d tried to suck into his body.
    “Thanks for… well, letting me get puking drunk the other night. I needed it.” Ichi dragged a high-back chair over to the back of the couch, then handed Bobby a wet washcloth he’d rinsed in ice water. “Here, put that on your forehead. I’ll sit behind you and massage your scalp.”
    “Dude—you sure you know what you’re doing there?”
    “Now you sound like Cole. Why the hell are you guys so suspicious?” he teased. “Trust me. I learned how to do this when I worked at the hair salon. Part of shampooing. Bonus points if you can get the client to fall asleep so the stylist can finish who they’re working on without someone bitching.”
    “Really? A hairdresser? Was there a gay-boy checklist you were marking off?”
    “Yep. Your asshole status is secure. And no, interning at a tattoo shop doesn’t pay the bills, so I needed a job. If you want to learn how to ink, you pretty much volunteer to get abused.” Ichi settled into the chair. “I’d cut ties with my father, and I didn’t want to touch the money my grandfather left me in case I really needed it later. So sweeping floors and washing hair wasn’t too bad of a job, and the salon’s owner was my teacher’s wife, so she rode his ass to be nice to me. Win-win in my book.”
    Bobby’s hair was coarse silk under his fingers, with unyielding tight skin and bunched cranial muscles lying beneath his scalp. Starting at the connective points, Ichiro stroked back and forth, easing the tension along the stretch of knotted fibers.
    “Okay, I don’t give a shit if you drank all my tequila and peed on the hallway plant,” Bobby moaned. “Just… don’t stop.”
    “I peed on a plant? Really?” He looked around the loft, wondering if Bobby’d tossed his unfortunate victim. “I didn’t even think you had a plant in here.”
    “I was joking,” he muttered. “I’d have liked to see the look on your face when you heard that, but fuck it, this is too good. Shit, I didn’t even think I had muscles there.”
    “Yeah, everyone’s got connective tissue and muscles up until… well kind of like if your bone had male pattern baldness.”
    “I’m scared to ask you how you know that.”
    “Artist, remember? Can’t draw something if you don’t understand how it works.” Bobby’s skin tightened as he frowned, and Ichiro tugged at his hair. “Stop doing that.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Making faces. Am I hurting you?”
    “No.” The denial was tentative, a low, growling tumble of sound and inflection. “Just trying to get… comfortable.”
    “Huh.” He went back to work on Bobby’s scalp, rubbing outward spirals from the center of his forehead and back down to his neck. As the tension eased slowly out of Bobby’s body, Ichi teased lightly, “So this thing—the one you and I have—what exactly is it?”
    “You want me to be honest?” Bobby’s voice dropped to a husky rasp, and Ichi slowed his fingers in response.
    There was something about the man’s voice—something hard and steely he hadn’t tripped on in another man before. There’d been others he’d sniffed at—leather jacket, hard-core bad boys who were more puff-of-air bravado than gritty integrity. Bobby Dawson didn’t fit in that niche. He worked to keep his body brawling fit and his demeanor slightly prickly, sharp enough to ward off anyone soft from coming too close, even as his off-kilter, come-bend-over smile lured them in.
    His hands and smile promised a hard, rough ride, even when he was rescuing princes in distress as they drank themselves into a stupor over lost somethings they couldn’t name. The touch of silver in his brown hair and the slight burr to his face from hard-won years drew Ichiro in.
    And as he caressed the man’s strong neck muscles, Ichi began to wonder if Bobby tasted as molten hot as his