Fit to be Tied (Marshals 2)

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“But you don’t know for certain.”

He stopped walking to look at me. “I want to go home. I want to go back to bed. I want a long shower with you like we took before I left.”

Ian Doyle absolutely loved me on my knees with his dick shoved down my throat. He was addicted to seeing me submit to him. I would have thought the desire would translate to him wanting to top, but so far in our relationship, he enjoyed me holding him down.

“All that is yours the second this is done,” I promised, lifting my hand to his cheek and running my thumb gently over the stubble-covered skin. “You look so tired. You should just go home and take a nap. I’ll bring you back some dinner.”

He shook his head, leaning away from my hand. “Not without you. All I’ve been thinkin’ about for three weeks is lying on the couch, watching TV with my head in your lap and listening to Chickie snore.”

“He farts too,” I reminded him, throwing an arm around his shoulder and dragging him close to me.

“If you ate that much, you would too.”

The way he said it, so matter-of-fact, made me laugh.

“What?” he asked, gifting me with a lazy grin that tightened things low in my body.

“You’re funny.”

“Only to you,” he sighed.

“Maybe,” I agreed as we closed in on our destination.

Exchequer looked lifeless from the outside, even with the jaunty canopy over the entrance, but once inside, the place was huge. And yes, there were names carved into some of the tables, but supposedly Al Capone himself had eaten there a million years ago, they served great pizza, and it was one of the places I could get deep dish and Ian thin crust so we didn’t have to rock-paper-scissors for who would be disappointed.

We asked to be seated in Cabot’s section, and when he saw us, he jogged over to the table and planted a big wet kiss on Drake before turning to us with a big smile. I was on the outside of the booth, so he toppled into me, head down on my shoulder, hugging me tight.

The pointed look I gave Drake made him grimace as Ian ordered us beers and Drake a giant Coke.

“I can’t bring the beers, guys,” Cabot said, straightening up, hand brushing the hair back out of Drake’s eyes, “but I’ll have Terry bring ’em right out.”

He knew what pizza we’d order—it was always the same—and when he bolted away, Ian leaned forward and smacked Drake on the side of the head.

“Fuck, Ian, what was that for?”

“For this, you stupid sonofabitch!” he grouched. “He loves you. He’s into you, and you need to pull your head out of your ass and stop worrying about what he’s doing and focus on you.”

Drake nodded, slowly looking up at us. “I just—the other day he introduced me to some of his friends from school, and when I told them I go to the University of Chicago, they were like ‘Really? You go there? How did you get in?’ I was freaking out. I had no idea getting in was like getting into Harvard or Yale or something. Everyone wants to know how I swung it.”

“Tell them grades, test scores, and extracurriculars,” Ian replied quickly.

“Why couldn’t you guys have enrolled me at Loyola or UIC or DePaul or—”

“You need to slow your roll,” I cautioned him. “Where is all this coming from?”

He shook his head.

“You feel like you don’t belong there?”

His eyes met mine. “I feel like Cabot would have fit in better there.”

“I went there,” I told him. “And it’s a big place, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, just crossing the Quad for the first time is like, where the fuck am I going.”

He made a noise of agreement.

“But pretty soon you’ll know Cobb Hall like the back of your hand, and everything else, going to The Reg is—”

“The what?”

“The Regenstein Library,” I teased. I knew he’d been there because I met him in front of it the last time I picked him up to take him over to The Medici to eat. “You’ll know all the ins and outs pretty soon, just give yourself some damn time.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Good,” I said, smiling at him as Cabot returned with Drake’s pop and Terry, Cabot’s coworker, put down two bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, one for me and one for Ian.

“If we were home, we could have the beer I like,” Ian muttered.

I leaned sideways, bumping his shoulder with mine. “We’ll be home soon, I swear.”

His grunt was grouchy, but the hand on my thigh under the table, possessive and firm, told me what I needed to know. The promise of home meant the world to him.

As I took a sip of my beer, I noticed Cabot in the kitchen, caught up against a wall by the same guy who had delivered our beers. He had his hand on Terry’s chest, and it looked uncomfortable. Cabot was clearly distressed, and the thought of that made my stomach roll even as I saw the older man walk away from him.