Life dealt Mack Penchant a raw deal. He's hidden his sexuality, the secret he's carried since he was a teen, through the Marine Corps, and now as an undercover cop. The only relationship he believes possible for himself is the furry kind, with his dog Kiki. One young cop, though, drives him to a frenzy, and he fights his passions and needs every step of the way. Woody Kane's gaydar spots Mack the moment they meet. And even though Mack rejects him, Woody lusts after the perfect masculine body and wants him in his bed. Woody believes in commitment. Mack makes it clear he does not. Can Woody prove to Mack that he's worthy of love? After all, he adopted a rescue dog. Isn't that a start?
What peril will it take for Mack to accept Woody's love and join him in a committed relationship?
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~Excerpt~
“Your partner…”
Mack sat back down with a thump. His eyes shifted from side to side, searching for a way out. “You don’t know—” But he must know something, or he couldn’t have brought it up. Just give the kid what he wants and get out of here. Panicked, he responded in a rusty, harsh voice, “Okay, here it is. I’m saying it just once and never again. Do you understand?” Narrowing his gaze, he tried to bore a hole through Woody in a mixture of agony for his former partner and himself and lewd desires about the kid, acts he had no business wanting.
“We were ambushed.” Mack felt his face freeze into the most cold-blooded, do-not-ask expression he could muster. He didn’t want to talk about this, but if it got Woody off his back, he’d give him an abbreviated version of that day. The kid’s waiting gaze frightened him. He never opened himself up to anything this personal. Why he was willing to do it now, with this guy, he wasn’t sure. Oh. Yeah. To shut him up.
Woody’s eyes softened, just a little. It wasn’t pity. The kid was young but still a cop. He would understand.
Mack tightened his jaw and, through clenched teeth, began. “Serving a warrant. I motioned my partner, Mitch—” His voice caught on the name. “I pointed to the rear of the house, thinking it would be safer.” Then his gaze was lost in the past, directed at the bottle of beer gripped tightly in his fist.
“Fuck it,” he snarled. “All it boils down to is that he stood right in front of the back door and took a round that nicked his spinal cord.”
“Nothing he could blame you for,” was Woody’s calm reply.
“But he did.” Mack made the mistake of glancing at Woody. Those dark eyes, sparkling in the dim lights of the bar, offering—offering what? Whatever it was, he didn’t want it. He’d been stupid enough to think he could work with another young guy, and look what had happened. “It was my responsibility to train him. My decision got him shot. Don’t look at me with pity.”
“I’m not,” Woody denied. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Mitch didn’t see it that way.”
“He doesn’t any longer.”
“How do you know so much about this, kid?” Mack snapped. “You been checking up on me?” His heart hurt. His stomach roiled with the familiar guilt. He couldn’t meet Woody’s eyes and turned his gaze toward the bar, at all the hazy dim reflections in the mirror behind the display bottles.
“I asked Fred.”
“I don’t like your going behind my back.”
“I had to ask someone why you seemed so hostile toward me. Fred gave me a very sketchy story. He said IAD cleared you, and that your partner doesn’t blame you any longer. He never should have in the first place.”
“I should have watched out better for him.” Mack’s voice dropped to a tormented whisper.
“Mack, this job is dangerous. Every day is a risk. We have the public to feel responsible for.”
“Don’t give me any lectures. You wanted to know what happened, and now you do. So just drop it.” Mack couldn’t meet Woody’s eyes.
“Okay, but don’t mistrust me because of what happened with someone else. I can take care of myself. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Yeah.”
“Mack, I can take care of myself,” Woody repeated. “I’m not a rookie like your partner.”
The next thing Mack knew was the heaviness of Woody’s hand around his wrist, the one still holding the bottle. He looked down. Jesus, the kid has big hands. The jukebox had been on since he’d walked into the bar, and the song playing at that moment was “Need You Now.” Lady Antebellum really knew how to grab a guy by the guts and shake him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t remove his hand from Woody’s, couldn’t get any spit in his mouth to say one more word. At that moment, he wanted things he shouldn’t.
He froze. Shit. His hand. On me. What the hell is he doing? Thoughts pinged madly around in his brain. His wrist, his forearm tingled, his face heated, sweat formed on his upper lip.
An unbearably painful desire forced him to look up. An electric charge flashed between them. There was an instinctive recognition of like sexualities. The possibility of hot, luscious sex, of lying replete with limbs entwined. All this in the seconds of silence.
God knew he was weary of hiding. He’d been doing it so long that sometimes he didn’t know who he was anymore. What if he just turned his hand over and met Woody’s, palm to palm? What if he allowed himself to accept what was being offered?
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