Like a kid with a crush.

  He was halfway through heating up leftover soup on the stove when the bathroom door opened. A square of bright light spilled into the apartment, outlining a long, thin silhouette. The light flicked off almost immediately, and Jonas crossed into the room on arrhythmic feet.

  Danny glanced over his shoulder.

  Swallowed his tongue.

  Dark eyes behind glinting glass met his, and Jonas froze.

  “You’re up.” That beautiful tenor was hoarse.

  Danny swallowed hard. Very firmly forced himself to look away from the bare skin of his chest, the way the single lamp painted his half-naked body in golden luminosity. “Yeah. Want some soup?” Shoulders tight, he stared at the small, dented pot and blindly stirred its contents.

  Nothing moved behind him.

  Get dressed, Danny thought, panic clawing in his throat.

  No, that wasn’t right. Not panic. Want.

  Because every inch of his body was viscerally aware of Jonas behind him, wearing only a pair of loose jeans low on his thin hips, his bare feet peeking out from the long hems. A towel draped over his still-damp shoulders, catching droplets of water from his slicked-back hair. Even still, he’d seen the rivulets sliding down his pale chest.

  Catching in the rippled, discolored scars curving over one hip.

  Heat simmered low in his gut. Sympathy—curiosity—struggled to take shape in his brain. He bit down on the urge to ask.

  Not again.

  Eventually—finally!—clothing rustled behind him. “Sorry for the noise,” came the muffled words. Through a shirt, maybe. “I thought you were still asleep.”

  “Woke up about five minutes ago.” He stirred the soup as if his life depended on it. His heart thudded painfully in his chest. In his dick.

  Go easy on him.

  Oh, Jesus. Someone needed to tell Jonas to go easy, too.

  “How are you feeling, kid?” A light flicked on, turning the too-intimate apartment into something brighter. Less cozy.

  Danny flinched, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted and concentrated on getting the soup off the stove. Pouring the remnants into two mismatched mugs. No drops spilled. A small victory. “Good. Surprisingly good, actually.” He caught himself about to blow on the mug not his. “Soup’s on. Careful, it’s hot.”

  An off-kilter step was all the warning Danny received before he was there, reaching for the mug in Danny’s hand. Jonas’s body heat pushed through the thin barrier of Danny’s sweatshirt, soaked into his skin, his senses. Soap and toothpaste. Sexiest thing he’d ever smelled. And this from simply standing behind him.

  Eyes almost crossing at the other man’s nearness, Danny pushed the mug into his hands and turned away. The apartment didn’t offer much safety. Small as it was, he’d be lucky if he walked out of here without a permanent hard-on.

  “Ribs okay?” Jonas asked lightly, apparently unaware of the blood surging in Danny’s veins. He cradled his mug in one hand, hobbling to the couch with practiced care.

  When he sank into the far cushion, away from the blanket nest Danny had made while he slept, Danny’s mind detonated. Images assailed him. Jonas bent over that couch, the skin of his back warm and damp after his shower.

  His cheek pressed to the cushion, fingers tight in the fabric as Danny licked a path down his spine.

  That sweet, angelic voice moaning his name.

  His body clenched, cheeks heating so fast, he half expected to see steam rising from his own skin. Clearing his throat, Danny leaned against the only available counter. He could stay right here. Forever, if he had to. “Good,” he managed. “Thanks. I should be ready to go anytime.”

  Jonas’s lips curved into an apologetic smile. “Sorry, but you’re stuck here until the furor dies down.”

  “Furor?”

  “Your loss won’t go unnoticed. As the only link to the ghost and her rebellion, you’re too important to just let vanish.” He raised the mug to his lips, pursed them and blew.

  A groan fisted in Danny’s chest.

  “Just stay here and get lots of rest. I’ll keep in touch with the right people.” Jonas’s eyes flicked to his. “Relax, kid. You’ll be back to your old life in no time.”

  But as Danny stared into those mottled green eyes, his pulse loud and too fast in his veins, he read the truth. Knew it as obviously as if God himself had sent down a neon sign.

  His old life would never be the same. Not now that he’d met Jonas.

  Son of a bitch.

  JONAS WAS GOING crazy.

  The safe house was too damned small for the both of them. Everywhere he turned, there was Danny. Four hours of avoiding him wasn’t working. Four hours of concentrating on what minimal information the feeds gave him, four hours of flipping through entertainment garbage, four hours of what scrap amounts of work he could do on his portable—none of it helped.

  He couldn’t avoid the kid any more than he could avoid breathing.

  For the third time in fifteen minutes, Danny sat up, elbowed his pillow to within an inch of submission, and flopped back.

  Jonas glanced over his shoulder, his fingers pausing on the small keyboard in front of him. “You should be sleeping.”

  “I’m beyond ever wanting to sleep again.” Practically a growl.

  Because his eyes were tightly closed, Jonas allowed the helpless smile to pull at his mouth. There was something insidiously charming about Danny Granger. Something that made Jonas want to get up, scoot over, and lean against that couch to stare at the individual lashes fanning his cheeks.

  And that was the dumbest thing he’d ever thought.

  Jerking back around, flinching as the motion twisted pain up his spine, he glared at the monitor and couldn’t remember what he’d been doing. The cursor blinked at him, taunting from the end of a line of code.

  Another frustrated sound, the now-familiar rustle of a pillow shoved into place, and he sighed. It took some effort to get to his feet, but with the help of the small, scarred wood coffee table, he managed. “Okay,” he said, forcing himself to sound as good-natured as he didn’t actually feel. “I’ll make you something to drink.”

  “I don’t want something to drink.” Danny’s eyes opened as Jonas limped by. Pinned on him with bad-tempered annoyance clear in their near-black depths. “I’m going crazy over here.”

  Jonas’s heart leapt into his mouth. Stumbling over nothing on the carpet, his adrenaline levels shot through the roof as his body jerked itself into an awkward kind of balance.

  “Jonas?”

  His head snapped around. Danny hesitated at the end of the couch, his dark eyebrows knotted. Concern?

  Pity.

  He swallowed, teeth gritted, and forced a smile. “Don’t sweat it, kid. You need to stay hydrated.” No problems here. Everything was exactly what it needed to be. In a day, two at the most, Danny wouldn’t need a touchstone anymore.

  And Jonas could be free.

  “Fine.” Not the most gracious of capitulations, but he’d take it. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” He bent, gripping the refrigerator door handle, and fished out one of the energy boosters he’d picked up at the corner store two blocks away. He set it on the counter, grabbed the carton of protein mix he’d included for his reluctant patient, nudged the door closed with a hip. He reached into the single, chipped cabinet for two glasses.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Jonas didn’t even see him move, didn’t realize he’d gotten off his sick-couch. Suddenly, Danny was in his space, reaching over his shoulder and plucking the can from the counter. The line of his chest pressed against Jonas’s upper arm, seared through cloth and skin and bone.

  The wild rush of adrenaline foiled once, surged back into his heart. His veins.

  Stupid.

  “You need real food,” Danny told him, tucking the energy booster out of reach behind him. Jonas whirled, mouth open, then found every muscle locked into place as Danny’s eyes sparkled inches from his. “I’ve been watching you not eat. You can’t survive off soup and this crap.”

  He had no idea what Jonas could survive on. And what his body demanded of him.

  It wasn’t worth the risk. Jonas stepped aside, peeled himself from the wild energy of Danny’s physique. The kid was intense.

  And so not a kid.

  “Thanks, mom,” he replied lightly. “Go sit down, Danny, I mean it.”

  “Or what?”

  Or . . .

  Not a single thought in his head seemed appropriate.

  Danny wasn’t his kind of guy. Period. Wasn’t going to happen. Jonas didn’t play with the nice ones, and damn it, Danny was a nice one. He deserved hand-holding and shared smiles and hi, how was your day?, not the hard, quick fuck of a man who didn’t deal with morning-afters. Jonas didn’t play well with others.

  He’d never known how.

  And he was too young for Jonas’s brand of interest.

  He shoved a hand through his hair.

  Flinched when Danny caught his wrist in his larger hand. Those dark eyebrows knotted again as he turned Jonas’s hand palm down. Unlike Danny’s, Jonas’s fingers splayed crookedly at his ring- and smallest fingers, broken too badly all those years ago.

  The scars over his knuckles weren’t nearly as intense as they used to be. Time and therapy had faded them to smooth discolorations rippled out from each point of trauma. Fire, shrapnel.

  They were worse on his legs. His waist, even low on his back.

  “What happened?”

  He pulled his hand away. “None of your business.” The words fell out before Jonas could stop them; the same words he gave every one-night-stand he’d ever had. My history doesn’t concern you except to note I’m clean.

  Jonas’s fingers curled into his palms as he hobbled stiffly across the apartment. Halting at the couch, he jerked the abused pillow into his hands and tossed it on the other side. It bounced once, a deflated cushion. As he reached for the first of two tangled blankets, intent on straightening up, Danny watched him. He could feel his gaze on him, practically sense where those damnably intense eyes landed. On his shoulders, his back. His

  No way.

  He turned, but too late.

  Strong hands thudded against his shoulders. Snapping off a sharp cry of surprise, Jonas’s knees buckled, sent him down onto the couch as Danny bent, braced both hands against the back of the couch and hemmed Jonas in between them.

  Jonas’s hands flattened into the cushions by his legs. Even as his cock pulsed in record time awareness. Readiness. “Stop it, Danny.”

  “You stop it.” There was nothing amused in his eyes now. Nothing nice. Even, steady, they met his with a challenge Jonas would have to be dead not to understand.

  He’d settle for dead.

  Because this close to Danny’s mouth, sculpted and so very masculine in a too-charming face, Jonas was having a hard time remembering exactly why he wanted to put on the brakes.

  “I’m not playing with you,” he managed, summoning up a stern facade from somewhere. Hell if he knew where. He didn’t have the energy to fight this. To fight him.

  Danny didn’t push away. Didn’t even soften his posture, which had to be awkward as hell. Instead, jaw hardening, he said, “So you say. Did you mean anything you said back there?”

  Shit! There it was. The blowback. Jonas’s fingers curled into fists against his thighs. I’ll follow you to hell itself. He wanted to close his eyes, but didn’t dare. Forcing his lips to curve up into a smile, he deliberately filled his face with sympathy. “I see,” he said gently, itching to brush away the fall of dark brown hair from Danny’s forehead. Bad. His fingers cracked, muffled in the cushions. “Danny, I’m a troubleshooter.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I know.”

  No, he didn’t. “It means,” Jonas explained patiently, “that when I go in somewhere, I do whatever needs to be done to get someone like you out of a jam. People need to trust me in there. If it means I flirt with an agent to put her at ease, or joke with a guy, or even listen to a feed full of threats and vitriol, I do it.”

  The muscles in Danny’s arms clenched. Tightened, until he could all but feel them vibrating as Danny stared at him. “Did you mean any of it?”

  Yes. But Jonas would never admit it. “No,” he said, lifting his chin. Forcing himself to go stern, unyielding. The kid had to learn. “Not even the part when I said I couldn’t see you in that cell.”

  The skin over Danny’s cheekbones went taut. A ruddy flush climbed his cheeks and dulled his throat. Something dark and hurting flashed in his eyes, and Jonas steeled himself. Pushed every word past the ache in his chest.

  “I watched them beat you for three days, Danny.”

  “That won’t work.” Quiet words. Nearly a whisper.

  Jonas shook his head. “So you can be damn sure I’d do anything to get you out.”

  “Sorry.” Those dimples flashed, even if the smile didn’t quite burn off the shame in Danny’s eyes. “You’re going to have to do better than that.” He leaned in, arms bending in a surprising show of strength, until Jonas inhaled the same air. Smelled the mint of his toothpaste, the subtly musky fragrance of his skin and the cheap soap Jonas had picked up at the market.

  The dull thud in his heart dropped to echo painfully in an erection he couldn’t fight.

  “You’re just feeling grateful,” Jonas whispered.

  But his eyes dropped to the other man’s mouth.

  Want. Like a fist to his chest. Around his cock.

  How long since he’d wanted so badly?

  “Did you flirt with the male agents on your teams, Jonas?”

  Never. Never had he wanted like this.

  “Are you gay?”

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  IT WASN’T A taunt, but it may as well have been. The words jerked something raw and wounded inside him. Something Jonas didn’t ever want to reveal, not to him. Not to this aggravating, pushy, fucking amazing kid.

  “Are you interested in men at all?” Danny’s breath was a warm caress across Jonas’s lips. “In me?”

  Jonas sucked in air to say something, anything. Too late. Too slow.

  Danny let his arms slide, caught his weight on his forearms. Suddenly, Jonas’s world was filled with hot male skin, the solid weight of a man over him.

  Danny’s mouth, touching his.

  Turning his world upside down.

  Any other time, any other man, and Jonas would have called it sweet. Danny’s lips were soft, his mouth relaxed—a kiss as beautifully exploratory as it was a knife of pleasure slicing all the way to Jonas’s soul.

  His hand rose without permission.

  His fingers locked in the back of Danny’s sweatshirt.

  Pull him away, he thought wildly, don’t do this, don’t—Oh, God. The sound Danny made as his tongue stroked Jonas’s bottom lip slammed into him like a fist. Stripped him of everything he was until the rush of sexual anticipation filled the void.

  Danny licked his way into Jonas’s mouth, balanced all his weight on one forearm to slide his hand into his hair, and Jonas’s fingers loosened. Splayed.

  They flattened low on Danny’s back and pulled him closer on a shuddering moan.

  Just a little bit more. And then he’d say no. He had to say no.

  The kid was . . . hell, he was just a kid. “No,” he rasped as Danny’s lips skimmed the edge of Jonas’s jaw and lowered to nuzzle the sensitive skin beneath his ear. Every brush of skin on skin, every breath, tugged like fingers around his erection. Hard and sharp and so good. So wrong.

  Danny’s teeth scored over the side of Jonas’s neck.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he whispered, half a guttural groan. The muscles of Jonas’s arms locked. One straight at his side, the other still buried in the other man’s sweatshirt. “Danny, stop.”

  Dark head lifting, Danny studied his face, eyes bright. Fever bright, but it wasn’t illness riding him now; Jonas could all but taste it between them. Knew how good it could be. Lose themselves for an hour or two, indulge in sweat and skin and nothing until the hurt, the memories, washed away.

  He knew that road. Danny was too good for it.

  “You’re telling me no,” Danny said huskily, one thumb tracing Jonas’s cheekbone. A knee hit the sofa, and Jonas’s breath shuddered as the warmth of Danny’s leg cradled his hip. So close. “But you’re the one pulling me in, Jonas.”

  “Oh, God.” He was. The hand at Danny’s back strained, not to push him away but to bring him closer. Harder. Keep him trapped, his weight solid and real and everything Jonas wanted.

  This kid. This man.

  Eyes gone bottomless, knowing, strong, Danny reached back, captured Jonas’s fist in his. A tug, a gentle twist, and Jonas’s fingers twined with his. Palm to palm. “I’m not complaining,” he whispered. “Kiss me, angel.”

  “I’m not—I can’t be—”

  Danny’s laughter undid him. Throaty and sexy, wickedly sharp. He bent his head, slid his lips against Jonas’s again. Slow, lingering. The flesh of his bottom lip caught against Danny’s, elicited a ragged groan that might have been his own. Jonas couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he was breathing, if his heart still beat.

  All he knew was—

  Now.

  Jonas found himself reaching out with his one free hand, hooking his fingers into Danny’s collar. Twisting them as Danny’s tongue slid between his lips, stroked against his. Warm, wet. A sweet appetizer to the fire in his gut, and suddenly, Jonas couldn’t wait. Didn’t want to wait.

  Burned out of excuses.

  His back strained as he straightened, struggled to meet Danny’s mouth with his, to push into him. His hips tilted against the cushions, unconscious demand, and Danny sank to his knees on either side of them. The weight of his body, firm but not crushing, registered on every level.

  “No,” he rasped as Danny licked the underside of his jaw. “No promises. No—God, yes.” Fingers tight in Jonas’s hair, Danny’s mouth descended on the ragged pulse at his neck. Teeth closed over the muscle, tongue swirling over the tender flesh, and Jonas groaned as every nerve from forehead to dick to heels lit up like a bonfire.