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

  “Please,” he heard himself beg. “Just let me forget about everything. Just for a while.”

  Lucas’s lips parted, flushing pink, and his pupils dilated. Ryan wanted to ravage him.

  “I want to make you come until you scream.” Ryan felt himself sway slightly on his feet with the force it took to keep from pinning Lucas right there on the kitchen floor. “Please, I… it hurts not to touch you right now. I want you so bad it’s like fire.” His breathing was ragged, making the words come out like gasps. “Please, Lucas, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

  “Shhhh,” Lucas said again, enveloping Ryan in his arms. “Okay. C’mon, it’s okay.” Ryan realised they were both shaking, hard. “Let’s get into my room, at least. I’ll take care of you. It’s going to be okay.”

  They’d chosen this apartment as their home because the bright neon of the sign next door stopped it ever getting completely dark in their rooms. Now that glow painted their skin like watercolor rain through the glass. They shed their clothes carefully, Ryan helping Lucas shrug his shirt off over the new purple-green bruises beneath — another layer of color in the dim room.

  Lucas’ unmarked skin had a warm flush of arousal to it, his chest rising and falling as his breathing grew heavier. Ryan could see his erection outlined against the fabric of his boxers, and it made Ryan’s mouth water, even if the boxers themselves were decorated with a faded pattern of ninja turtles.

  “Are these your date night set?” he asked, unable to resist raising his eyebrows at the sight. “Hot.”

  Lucas’ posture relaxed, like it had finally gotten through to him that it was Ryan he was about to have sex with, that things were only weird because the two of them were idiots who had made it weird.

  Well, it was also weird because of the weretiger thing, but that could wait.

  They moved to the bed and sat down. Ryan ran his hand over the texture of Lucas’ crumpled bedclothes. “And this is a low thread count cotton, I can tell. You really pulled out all the stops to seduce me here, didn’t you?”

  Lucas stood up again, pushing down his boxers and standing in front of Ryan, completely naked now. Ryan’s tongue felt thick and heavy.

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Lucas managed to say, teasing weakly as he stood there. In other circumstances, Ryan would have felt protective towards him, standing there with his hidden scars exposed and no way to hide them. As things were, though, Ryan felt only desire.

  He reached out and caressed Lucas’ erection, his own desire spiking hard at the sensation of the throbbing of the hard-on in his hand, a heartbeat in counterpoint to his own.

  As incredibly tempting as Lucas’ cock was to Ryan, he had an even better idea. “Come here, lie on the bed. On your stomach, here, like this.”

  “What’re you… are you seriously gonna—”

  “Just get on the bed,” Ryan demanded, practically shoving Lucas into place and sitting next to him on the mattress.

  He kneaded the globes of Lucas’ ass, wishing he could suck and bite and leave a constellation of hickeys. But no matter how much he didn’t want to think about all the dumb weretiger shit right now, Ryan knew he had to keep it in mind enough to remember to be careful with his teeth. It was a pain, but he accommodated it as best he could, the same way that he tried not to let his hands accidentally brush Lucas’ scars too much.

  Instead of indulging in hickeys, Ryan parted Lucas’ cheeks with his thumbs and licked over the puckered entrance there. His mouth watered with desire, his own erection straining as he tasted Lucas.

  Lucas gave a sharp inhale of breath, squirming. Ryan pinned him in place, putting weight on Lucas’ good leg to keep him from moving too much, and pushed the point of his tongue against Lucas’ flexing hole.

  Ryan felt like he could have stayed there forever, methodically lapping broad strokes with the flat of his tongue and probing, relentless working with the point of it, opening Lucas’ body wider and wider as Lucas went from quiet gasps to moans to incoherent pleading.

  “Fuck, Ryan, I’m gonna come. Fuck me, please, holy shit, I can’t, I’m gonna come, you have to, please, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, please.”

  Ryan lifted his head from Lucas’ ass. “Only since you were polite enough to use the magic word.”

  It was a little awkward getting in a good position, one that meant Lucas didn’t have to put weight on his leg. But the throb of need was strong enough in both of them that the mood sustained itself through their awkward fumbling.

  Ryan groaned as he pushed inside, the hot tight heat of Lucas almost more than he could stand without coming immediately. Luckily, it seemed like he’d given Lucas such a thorough and lengthy eating out that Lucas wasn’t going to last all that much longer, either.

  Even thrusting hard and fast, the pleasure so good his eyes were practically rolling back, Ryan still couldn’t stop himself from snickering.

  “We’ve been holding ourselves back from doing this since we were teenagers, and now we’re gonna end up lasting about as long as a pair of barely legal twinks with a box of Kleenex.”

  Lucas gave a snort of laughter, his face braced on his arms as Ryan pounded into him. “Asshole.”

  “No, you’ve got it backwards. You, asshole. Me, penis.”

  “That is the fucking worst sexy talk I have ever… oh, fuck, fuck, Ryan, I’m gonna, fuck…”

  Ryan felt Lucas clench and shudder around him, a long broken moan cutting off his words.

  “Ha! My bad sexy talk made you come! Score one to Ryan!”

  Lucas got his revenge several seconds later, however, when he shifted slightly and clenched again and managed to wring a completely undignified shout out of Ryan as Ryan’s climax hit like a lightning bolt.

  They lay together, sweaty and tangled and gross, in the afterglow.

  “I can’t decide if we suck at sex, or if we’re awesome at it,” Lucas declared.

  “Both. We encompass both,” Ryan decided. He felt like he should thank Lucas, for letting him have this, but he couldn’t think of a way to thank someone for sharing orgasms with him.

  “If I had to go through all this bullshit, I’m glad you’re the one who has my back,” he said finally, hoping Lucas would understand just how many things Ryan wanted those words to cover.

  Lucas squeezed his hand, nodding, so Ryan figured that at least most of the message had been conveyed, if not all of it.

  Lucas

  A week and a half later they visited Lucas’ mom again, which delighted her and Roscoe both. While Ryan was being noisily and joyfully greeted by the cat, Catherine took Lucas aside with concern in her expression.

  “Is Ryan all right? He doesn’t look all that well.”

  Lucas glanced over. She was perceptive, that was for sure. Most people looking at Ryan right now would consider him to be in the absolute prime of health. His hair was glossy and thick, his eyes lively and bright. He exuded sexuality and charm.

  It actually frightened Lucas how good Ryan seemed. At Ryan’s insistence, they were still doing heist jobs, and when Ryan was out there these days he was better than ever at it, scarily better. Each night, Lucas listened as Ryan became more and more instinctual, more and more seductive. The loot they were regularly getting now was as interesting and valuable as the stuff they’d get on their best, luckiest jobs before.

  Lucas would have given it all up without hesitation to have Ryan back to normal. Even if it meant going back to how they’d been before, giving up the new intimacy — and fantastic sex — of their friendship, Lucas would do it.

  “He’ll be okay,” Lucas told Catherine, but she didn’t look all that mollified by the answer. Lucas didn’t blame her.

  They watched even more shitty cable than last time, both of them in need of some mindlessness as a break from the increasing tension of their lives. There was a marathon of Hannibal on, which was only about half a season away from the end when they turned it on, so they decided to settle in for that.

  Lucas was conflicted about Hann
ibal. ‘Red Dragon’ was one of his favorite novels of all time, and so he’d seen all the different adaptations. The one from the eighties, Manhunter, was the best one, and a pretty good movie in general. The remake from later on, Red Dragon, and the Hannibal episodes that covered the book, those were about equal to one another in their ability to completely suck at adapting the story.

  All three of the adaptations had featured the scene with an anesthetized tiger in it, which Lucas had never actually paid all that much attention to in the book, let alone in any of the filmed versions. Now, as the TV version played on the screen, he gave it a damn sight more consideration than he had before.

  “It’s probably because William Blake, the guy who painted the Red Dragon picture that the murderer guy eats, wrote that tiger poem everyone knows,” Ryan said as the episode played on. “You know, ‘Tyger, tyger, burning bright’, that one.”

  “You’re probably right,” Lucas agreed. It seemed the perfect metaphor for describing the change in Ryan: he burned bright now, like a candle flame illuminating a whole room.

  Ryan got his phone out and tapped at the screen for half a minute, before laughing out loud.

  “Hmm?”

  “I was looking up William Blake references, to see if that’s what was going on with the tiger scene, and I found this side by side comparison of a painting he did of Lucifer and this artwork from a Sailor Moon book. You know, that magical girl cartoon show. Look!”

  He held his phone out for Lucas to see and, sure enough, when the two pictures were placed side by side it was obvious how much influence one had been on the other.

  “I guess cartoons really are the Devil, after all,” Ryan cackled.

  Lucas’ heart lurched with affection. This stupid weird guy, who could sell a fridge to a penguin and then steal it when the bird’s back was turned, who laughed at his own idiot jokes and playfully argued with his sister about meaningless garbage, who could reduce Lucas to a sobbing mess of lust and need, who wound up looking at old cartoon artwork on the internet while trying to check a literary allusion in a show about a serial killer, and then had to share the joke with Lucas…

  Lucas couldn’t lose him. He couldn’t. It was as simple as that. Ryan had somehow managed to infiltrate all the careful ramparts and walls that Lucas had built inside himself, slipping inside as easily as if it were just another swanky penthouse. He’d gotten into Lucas’ heart, where nobody had managed to get since Lucas was a kid.

  No matter what, Lucas was not going to lose the guy he cared about — the guy he loved — to something that shouldn’t even exist in a rational universe.

  It was obvious what he needed to do. Their only clue was the source of the condition, and so the only way for Lucas to help Ryan was to go back to the house that Ryan had robbed.

  He waited until that night, until Ryan’s restless tossing and turning finally gave way to an even slumber sometime in the very early morning. Even though it was well past midnight, it actually counted as something of an early night for the pair of them.

  Lucas got dressed and left the apartment as quietly as he could. He knew he was being irresponsible, going out alone like this — at the very least he should have told Ryan where he was going, and let Ryan track him via GPS and stay in contact via the ear piece and microphone set up. But Lucas knew that if he involved Ryan, then Ryan would want to go himself, and might even demand that Lucas stay away. So Lucas went to the house alone, heart hammering in his chest.

  The woman who answered the door was white-haired and small, a black lacquered cane in one hand. Lucas didn’t know men’s fashion, let alone women’s, but he could recognize the basic elements of her outfit well enough: lots of fur and tasteful black and heavy gold rings and long red fingernails.

  “Oh, hello.” Her voice had a thick French accent and a minty freshness, thick as well, like she took great pains to disguise any less pleasant scents her words might carry otherwise. “Come in.”

  The charisma she exuded reminded Lucas of Ryan: bright and slightly feral. It was hard not to be drawn to her, and she had an air about her that made it clear that she considered being the center of attention to be her due.

  “Uh, I’m—” Lucas started to say, suddenly unsure of how exactly he should go about beginning the conversation he needed to have with her.

  “I know who you are. I can smell you,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Or, more to the point, I can smell him. The one who has claimed you. You’re marked all over with his possession of you. You reek of it.”

  Before Lucas could do more than blink at her declaration, the woman turned and began to make her way back into the house. “Come in, I said. I’ll put on coffee.”

  Bewildered, Lucas followed her through the house into the kitchen at the back, the room where Ryan had first broken in.

  “You don’t have to hide your limp, you know,” she said as she turned on the coffee machine. She gave him a sharp, not entirely kind smile. “People like me can tell how vulnerable you are regardless, you see. So. Your lover was the one who broke into my house, then.”

  Lucas swallowed, trying to remind his terrified primate-brain that the reason he was here was more important than his own safety. “Ma’am—”

  “Call me Sadie. Everyone does.” She carried the two cups of coffee over to the table, gesturing for him to sit opposite her. She pushed one of the mugs across the table. “You haven’t told him that you’re here, have you?”

  Lucas shook his head.

  “So you’ve come to the dragon’s den alone, seeking answers. That’s sweet. Foolish, but sweet, which I suppose is the prerogative of young love.”

  The coffee in the cups was bitter and pitch-black and steaming hot. Lucas sipped it nervously.

  “I’m not going to do anything to you, for the record,” Sadie said, with another unnerving smile. “I know that’s what you’re frightened of. Even if you were trying to rob me.”

  “I’m sorr—”

  “You’re only sorry that it went so badly for you, so don’t bother.” She waved one ring-laden hand, as if to brush off the apology. “And it’s nothing I didn’t do myself, in my younger days. There’s something so fitting about cat burglars becoming weretigers, don’t you think? When I realized that someone had been in the house while I’d been transformed, I laughed and laughed.”

  Lucas gaped at her, too surprised to speak. He wished he’d brought Ryan with him after all. Ryan would know the right things to say. Lucas could barely say anything at all.

  “Really, I’d be within my rights to force both of you to become my servants,” Sadie went on. “But you seem like you’d be a lot more trouble than you’d be worth, in the long run. I’ve always found that keeping men around was always too much hassle, especially if it meant they were getting for free what I could be using to earn myself gourmet dinners.”

  “Oh God, you’re two of a kind,” Lucas blurted out before he could stop himself. “Ryan’s going to love you.”

  That got a genuine, not-terrifying smile out of her. “I’m glad it went to someone worthy of it, then. Now, you’re here about the full moon, correct? You’re scared of what’s going to happen.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sadie’s demeanor turned businesslike. “I have a spare chain and collar that should hold him in the second section of the basement. I always like to keep a spare; you never know when someone’s going to drop by and need a room to stay in. You can keep an eye on him via CCTV if you must, if you install the camera before the date. Bring him here in the morning before the night of the full moon — we tend to not be very pleasant to be around by the afternoon.”

  Her last words were coupled with her most frightening smile yet, one that made Lucas want to run away and hide up a tree somewhere.

  “All right, run along home now,” she ordered him. “I’m bored of you.”

  With another nod, and a damped-down desire to apologize more for the attempted robbery, Lucas left as quickly as he could. Things might stil
l be insane — if anything, they’d just gotten significantly more insane — but when he got home he was going to be able to wake Ryan up with some good, comforting news, and that made Lucas’ heart soar.

  Ryan

  Having confirmation of exactly what the fuck was going on, and a plan in place for how to deal with it, should have put Ryan’s mind at ease. It barely helped at all, though, because no amount of explaining or planning could alter the fact that Ryan could feel himself changing, the tiger under his skin consuming the version of himself that had existed before.

  As the full moon drew closer, Ryan found himself waiting until Lucas was asleep and then going out on the prowl alone, doing small easy theft jobs and then returning before dawn.

  They didn’t need the money — they each had multiple bank accounts across multiple countries, each of them ridiculously well-stocked — but it had never been about the money in the first place, and now it was even less so. The thrill of the hunt was addictive, and Ryan was hooked.

  Of course, eventually Lucas woke up before Ryan got back once night, and all hell broke loose.

  “What the hell, Ry? You can’t just go do jobs without telling me! Especially not now, when…” Lucas’ face was thunderous with anger.

  “When I’m an unpredictable psycho?” Ryan sneered. “Worried I’m gonna go out and eat someone?”

  Lucas looked shocked. “When you’re volatile, you jackass. I’m worried about you. I know you well enough to know you aren’t going to eat anyone, no matter what, but you-”

  “Do you, though?” Ryan asked stepping further into Lucas’ personal space. “Do you really know me well enough?”

  Lucas didn’t budge an inch. “Yes. You wouldn’t hurt someone like that. You aren’t a bad guy, Ryan.”

  Ryan could hear the unspoken and I’ve known bad guys on the end of the sentence. The faith and trust in Lucas’ expression made Ryan feel like the bottom of his stomach had dropped out.

  He sat down on the tiled floor of the kitchen, his head in his hands. “I can’t tell what’s the tiger and what’s me anymore. It’s eating me from the inside. I’m not going to have any of my old self left. I feel like I’m fucking possessed.”