Burning Bright: A Spicy M/M Weretiger Heist Romance Read online

  “Ryan? Ry?”

  The clink and creak of chains straining, several thumps, and then another shout from Ryan — a yell of pure panic. Then the thud-thud-thud-thud of footsteps running up a flight of stairs, and more terrified gasping for air. The gasps gave way to more even breaths as Lucas’ own breath stayed stopped in his throat.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay,” Ryan gulped out finally.

  Lucas went limp with relief, feeling lightheaded from lack of oxygen as he let out the breath he’d been holding. “What the hell was that?”

  “They had one of those fucking exotic pets. A fucking tiger in a goddamn townhouse. Should call animal control on these motherfuckers.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Only just. Christ.” Ryan’s breath was almost back to normal. “It waited until I got in range of its chain before pouncing. I didn’t have any idea it was there. If I’d been another five inches closer, it would have ripped my throat out. It got me on the arm with its fucking teeth. Ripped right through the jacket and shirt, and the bleeding is kind of crazy now. I’m going to use that belt I got at the other job as a tourniquet, and head home now. I wonder if this tux is a write-off. Man, I hope not.”

  “Did you leave anything behind in the house?” Lucas hated having to be so practical and pragmatic, so soon after Ryan had gone through such a terrible scare, but he’d be doing them both a disservice if he didn’t consider details.

  “No, no, we’re fine. I didn’t touch anything, or leave anything. They won’t even know I was there, except that their fucking tiger is going to be in a shitty mood because it missed its midnight snack. Shit, this is so gory. I hope I don’t need stitches.”

  Ryan

  Between the sharp medicinal smell of the antiseptic that Lucas applied to the wound, the cloying metallic scent of the blood itself, the faint but fear-rancid stench of cold fear-sweat, and the last lingering traces of the cheesy waft of pizza in the apartment, it took Ryan a serious level of concentration to stop from barfing even with his eyes shut.

  Thank goodness he never wore cologne on a job. Any more layers in the mix of smells and he’d be done for.

  “It doesn’t look like it needs stitches. I can get away with butterfly tape,” Lucas told him after inspecting the wound.

  “You sure? If I end up with bigger, grosser scars than I would’ve had, just because you don’t wanna fuck with a needle...”

  “No, I’m serious. If you’d stop being such a baby and look at it, you’d see what I mean. I’ll tape it up, wrap it with a dressing for tonight, and we’ll see how it looks in the morning.”

  Sleep came to Ryan surprisingly easily, considered how jangled his nerves felt, but his dreams were strange and unsettling. He woke up right around dawn, clammy with cold sweat, head still full of the impression-images his unconscious mind had offered him of tigers, starving and prowling, huge and powerful and unstoppable by anything that another animal might do to hold it back. Nothing would ever hold him, especially not some stupid chain in a basement. It had no chance in hell.

  It felt more like a hallucination, rather than a dream, afterward. Ryan was no stranger to nightmares, so all he did after he woke up from this one was have a shower and a smoke and go to bed.

  Sometimes he thought his real underlying state of being was ‘too exhausted to give a shit’. Underneath everything, no matter how much superficial charm or daring (or straight up fleeing for his life from an enormous goddamn tiger trying to eat his arm) he might have visible at any given moment, underneath Ryan was nothing but blank and tried.

  He knew he shouldn’t smoke — aside from the obvious health reasons, it aged people faster, and Ryan’s looks were the ace in his deck. So he didn’t do it regularly or socially. Just very occasionally, when it was him and the early morning light and nothing else, and he needed to feel like he was in control of himself and his fate — that he could fuck up his lungs if he wanted, because that choice was his and nobody else’s.

  Lucas was the only other person he knew who seemed to get that, the feeling that having agency over your own self-destruction was sometimes the only way to feel powerful, because success was too reliant on the cooperation of others. That was probably why the two of them were such a good team; they had the same kind of reckless nihilism under their reckless ambition. A total lack of self-preservation, all the way down.

  As he finished the last of his cigarette, Ryan checked his email on his phone. There was a new one from his sister, sent just a half-hour earlier. Jennifer was no stranger to nightmares, either, though she let the world see even less of her pain than Ryan did.

  The message was a quick one, saying that the three should meet up and go out for lunch sometime soon. Ryan tapped back a quick reply of agreement. Then he stubbed out the remainder of his cigarette, leaving what was left in the ashtray to scrounge at later if he needed a smoke desperately in the future, and went back inside.

  He’d try to sleep a while longer before facing the day. He just hoped nothing too out-there would happen, and make his current mood even worse.

  Lucas

  Even sleep-deprived and under the weather, Ryan’s polished charm was still evident enough the next morning that it was obvious why he was the one who did the location work. He had a natural talent for blending in with the rich and beautiful, speaking their language.

  Not only was Lucas too rough-edged, he also lapsed into being a smarmy asshole almost immediately if he felt the slightest bit self-conscious.

  “I feel fucking lousy, man,” Ryan grumbled. “What was the name of that lady, the one with, with… the hot tub, and those thighs?”

  Lucas rolled his eyes, not answering until he’d had another mouthful of coffee. “How is a description like that going to-”

  “Cheryl! That was it! She was a doctor. I should see if she can get me some quality pain killers. She loved me. I made her come about forty times.” Ryan started unwinding the bandage holding the dressing in place, obviously keen to see the damage by the light of day.

  Lucas was torn between telling Ryan that 11:30am was way too early in the morning for that much information about Ryan’s sexual escapades, or suggesting that hitting up an old one-night stand for drugs wasn’t exactly the height of classiness.

  In the end, Lucas decided on reassurance, instead. “What you’re feeling is probably just adrenaline. Too much of it in your system makes you feel like absolute shit the day after. It won’t last long, so don’t worry about taking anything for it. And it looks like the bite has started healing really well, at least.”

  Ryan held up his arm, turning it from side to side as he inspected the injury. “Huh. I guess you’re right. It must’ve just looked so gory last night because it was bleeding. I still want to call animal control on those assholes. I’m a naturally lucky guy, but what if it had been someone else who went down there? They’d be a wet smear on a basement floor now.”

  “Charming. Really. Exactly the sort of mental image I want at breakfast,” Lucas said, pretending to push away what remained of his toast in disgust. In truth, Lucas was basically impossible to gross out, but that was no reason not to get a jab in at Ryan when he could. “And how would that conversation go, anyway? ‘Oh, hi officer. Yeah, I was robbing this house and I found a tiger, could you help me out?’.”

  “Pfft, it’d be fine. I can talk my way through any door,” Ryan replied, waving a hand dismissively. “Is there any coffee left in the pot? Oh, also I was talking to Jen and she wants to meet for lunch sometime soon. I said that was cool with me.”

  “Why not today?” Lucas suggested. “No time like the present, as they say.”

  “It’s twenty to twelve already. I don’t think we’ll be able to arrange it in time,” Ryan pointed out.

  “Whatever, we can have a fashionably late lunch. Afternoon tea, only not called that because it sounds lame,” Lucas suggested. “Is there an equivalent of brunch, but for between lunch and dinner?”

  “Or we could stop making
shit needlessly complicated and ask if she wants to do dinner tonight, instead.”

  Lucas made a face. “You know I hate it when you have logical and elegant solutions.”

  Ryan’s only reply was a loud slurp of coffee.

  Jennifer agreed to dinner, which didn’t surprise Lucas. Jennifer was a basically agreeable person, unless it was something that she had a strong moral stance about. Everything else wasn’t worth getting worked up about, as far as Jennifer was concerned.

  She was as good-looking as her older brother, but with a fresher and more honest cast to the similar features that they shared. Jennifer lacked Ryan’s calculating eye and too-clever expression, instead offering the world a guileless gaze and no-bullshit manner.

  She’d never had much tolerance for the stuff that Ryan and Lucas got up to together, even back when it hadn’t been anything bigger than sneaking Monty Python quotes onto the official websites of obnoxious local politicians.

  These days, for the sake of a) her mental well-being, b) plausible deniability, and c) her continued positive relationship with the pair, she simply ignored everything they got up to for their line of work.

  Lucas missed her arrival at the apartment that evening, because he was going over all the information he’d accessed just prior to sending Ryan to the house where he’d been hurt.

  Lucas knew how to spot a house with a significant pet presence; even just a couple of rottweilers or pitbulls would be more than enough to pose a threat to Ryan if he went into a place they guarded. Lucas was diligent about protecting Ryan from that, and yet somehow he’d missed a tiger.

  So he went over the information, skimming his gaze over bank accounts associated with the address to look for big purchases of pet-appropriate food and related items. He checked water and power consumption, and vet records. Nothing, nothing, nothing. As far as the information grid was concerned, the tiger in the townhouse hadn’t existed at all prior to last night.

  Feeling vaguely relieved that he hadn’t been the one to almost cost Ryan an arm, but more than slightly frustrated at the near-fatal void in their intel, Lucas left his bank of computer screens and went in to see what Jennifer and Ryan were up to.

  “I’m just impressed that you could find someone as fucked up as you are as a BFF,” Jennifer was saying. “Oh, hey, speak of the devil. Hi Lucas.”

  “Heya, Jen.” He didn’t bother to protest the ‘fucked up’ comment. It was a fair cop, after all.

  Ryan was raising an eyebrow at her. “Did you just use the term ‘BFF’? In this day and age?”

  “I was using it ironically!”

  “That’s what I mean. A meme cannot be used ironically when it’s almost a decade old. Irony has a very short window of opportunity.”

  Lucas tried hard not to groan aloud. Once Ryan and Jennifer got into dumb banter like this, they could sustain it for literally hours.

  “Okay, I was using it unironically. But sort of ironically. Meta,” Jennifer said.

  Ryan opened his mouth to retort, but Lucas knew that it was now or never — if he didn’t stop this, they’d never make it as far as dinner.

  “Now you’re just saying words, Jen,” he interrupted cheerfully. “Come on, I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”

  “Still can’t believe you used BFF,” Ryan muttered. Jennifer poked her tongue out at him. Lucas studiously ignored them both.

  Dinner was good, because Ryan had eaten at every great restaurant in the greater metropolitan area, and knew which ones to recommend.

  “This one has slutty waiters,” he explained cheerfully to Lucas and Jennifer. “I get someone’s number almost every time I eat here.”

  “You’re such a good role model,” Jennifer said in a dry voice, more than used to Ryan’s ways.

  “Look, at least one of us has to have stories like that, or else we’ll all wither into dessicated husks of our former lively selves due to an absolute lack of romance.”

  Jennifer snorted. “Yeah, getting digits from a waiter is really romantic.”

  Ryan did kind of have a point, though. It was a long — embarrassingly long — time since Lucas had engaged in sex with anybody other than himself. Since before his injury.

  He felt pretty matter-of-fact about his scars, and how the leg wasn’t all that strong or reliable in general anymore. It was what it was: not the worst thing that had ever happened in his life, but not exactly in the top ten most awesome moments either.

  He would have hated it, if there had been any point to hating it. But there wasn’t any point, so he didn’t bother.

  He always pushed through the ever-present discomfort, and occasional outright pain, in order to walk as evenly as he could. It would have been much easier to favor his good leg, but that would have meant walking with a limp. Lucas just couldn’t bring himself to give in and do that. He’d rather endure the pain. Agony was a lighter burden than pity would have been.

  That was why he hadn’t had sex with anyone. He couldn’t stand the thought of being looked at with pity by a lover. The hiss of breath that the sight of his scars would generate, the “that must have hurt” remarks. No fucking shit it hurt. It would hurt forever.

  So Lucas chose the road of loneliness. It wasn’t so bad. At least he always had the internet and its eternal font of new pornography.

  For all his talk, Ryan didn’t bring anyone home, either, though the reasons he’d given for this were far more prosaic than the motivations Lucas had. Ryan’s explanation was that trying to pick up one night stands, or set up a friends-with-benefits arrangement with anyone, was “Too much hassle. And whenever I wind up hooking up with someone like us, I feel like I’m selling myself short by giving it away free. I could be getting caviar and cigars for that hookup, and I’m settling for ‘good company’ and ‘compatibility’ instead? No thanks.”

  Lucas had laughed. “Healthy, man. Real healthy.”

  He didn’t know if Ryan had a deeper, darker reason, more similar to Lucas’ own, or if he genuinely was a gold digger at heart. Maybe it didn’t matter. Either way, Ryan’s choices were Ryan’s to make, just like Lucas’ choices were his own.

  Another decision that Ryan made was that he wanted to get straight back into the swing of work the night after the near-miss with the tiger. On one hand, Lucas could see the wisdom in wanting to get back on the horse as immediately as possible, but on another he couldn’t help but wonder if it might be better to have at least one night’s worth of rest after something like what had happened.

  But, well. Ryan’s choices were Ryan’s own to make, and who was Lucas to act like he knew better?

  So after they finished their awesome dinner and then said good night to Jennifer, they returned to the apartment and Ryan dressed for a night’s work.

  He was going mid-range this time, because they tried to make a point of never hitting the same section of society twice in a short amount of time. Even if the previous night’s tuxedo hadn’t been chewed on by a tiger, it would have been put aside for a few weeks before its next turn as a disguise.

  The upper-middle-class dressy-casual outfit Ryan went for this time (that was how he explained it to Lucas; Lucas had learned long ago to let the intricacies of such things remain Ryan’s area of expertise. Being able to tell a t-shirt from a pair of pants was about as far as Lucas’ own abilities extended) was designed for a trip to the casino. Not to game the tables — trying to do that would be absolute idiocy, because nobody kept a closer eye on their operation than casinos did, and trying to run a scam on them was like… well, like waltzing straight into a tiger’s line of sight, really.

  No, Ryan went to the casino to play the people. To make friends with the medium-rollers who thought they were high rollers, the trout who considered themselves marlin.

  It was easy work, and the job went off smoothly… which meant it was boring as hell for Lucas to listen to. Ryan flirted and drank and gambled the hours away, in a way that looked reckless but was deeply controlled. People were drawn to him, naturally, since f
or all intents and purposes he was a slightly stupid, friendly, eager rich kid with a lot of cash to splash around.

  Ryan could spot the ones he needed to reel in easily. Hell, even Lucas could spot them, and all he had to work off was audio. They were the kind of people who would remember Ryan’s false name and genuine phone number down the line, when they would call him up and offer all kinds of investment opportunities. Just the kind of thing that Lucas and Ryan loved to hear about, all kinds of slightly shady wealth transfers right there for the taking.

  It was entertaining to listen to how well Ryan could make the people around him think that he liked them, but as usual Lucas was left with the vague fear that the Ryan he knew was no more genuine or sincere than the Ryan that the patrons of the casino were meeting.

  As dawn drew closer, Ryan finally made his way home, shedding his persona like a costume as he stepped inside the apartment. Lucas did his best to shove those old, familiar fears into the back of his head. For now, they were okay, so for now that would be enough.

  “I felt really fucked up out there,” Ryan admitted, drinking orange juice straight out of the bottle.

  “You sounded fine,” Lucas said. “Fucked up how?”

  “Like… predatory? Aggressive. But not in a way I’d ever felt. It was like I was only partly myself.” Ryan shook his head. “It was weird, man. I don’t know how to describe it. And on my way home I was jonesing hard for a steak sandwich. I nearly stopped and got one! I haven’t eaten red meat in eight years!”

  “Anyone who went through a thing like what happened to you would find that it was messing with their head a bit. Like in that movie with the plane crash that was on TV a while back, where the guy who survives got all convinced that he could eat strawberries, even though he was allergic, because he’s sure he’s invincible now? It’s probably that you’re just feeling a bit of that same thing. Your brain and your body are super excited to be alive all of a sudden, so they give you weird suggestions.”