He mouths my cock over my slacks, his warm breath heating the already scorching skin as his fingers work open my zipper.
Like I had to do the last time, I swing my eyes to the ceiling. Watching him suck my cock would have me blowing in fucking seconds. As much as I teased him, I teased my damn self.
He spent an hour talking to Dr. Kent, and I spent it on the couch twenty feet away, thinking of all the things I could do to the man once we got back here.
“Archer,” I moan, the condoms falling out of my hand and sliding across the marble floor as I grip a hand full of his hair.
Movement catches my eye and in the next second, I shove Archer behind me, pointing a gun at the man slowly walking down the stairs.
“Isn’t this fucking cozy,” he spits.
I’d shoot him right on the spot if he had something in his hands, but they’re just hanging loosely at his sides. He’s familiar, and I know I should automatically know who he is, but my brain is refusing to get on track.
His eyes drop to my dick, which is hanging out for all to see, but I’m not stupid enough to take the time it would require to zip them up.
“Who the fuck are you?” I snap, repositioning my gun as he gets closer.
“Fucking Fletcher,” Archer grumbles, standing from the floor.
He presses down on the top of my arm, but I keep my gun trained on Fletcher. I don’t care if he’s the drummer for Lucid Unrest. I still haven’t determined that the man isn’t a threat.
“Archer,” I hiss, trying to move in front of him.
He’s having none of it. “What are you doing here, Fletch?”
“I could ask you the same thing, lover. Didn’t take you long to swing that closet door open, did it?”
My jaw clenches with the pet name, and I have thoughts of shooting him for simply that reason.
“Put the gun away, Brooks,” Archer says, his voice filled with exhaustion more than anything else.
“What are you doing here?” Archer asks again.
“I have to say, I’m surprised to see you on your knees for him,” Fletcher says.
At least the man is keeping about ten feet of distance between us. I lower my gun, but I don’t put it away.
“I’m no longer your concern.”
“But you never really were, right?” the man says, his tone bored yet tinged with the hint of anger he’s trying to contain. “I was just the plaything—the man in the dark, good enough to fuck but not good enough to love.”
Archer tenses further beside me.
“I really thought this was all a publicity stunt. I was the man who came home to you for years. You move on quickly.”
That surprised the fuck out of me. I never had a conversation about specifics with Archer, but I had presumed they had a wild fling, and it was over about as quickly as it started when everything was made public.
Fletcher turns his attention to me. “I guess this is just what he does. He uses them up, and then he’s done with them. People aren’t important in his life unless they can do something for him. I was no different. It didn’t matter that we’ve been friends since his family moved to the States. He didn’t care that I was a bandmate. It probably doesn’t bother him that Lucid Unrest is destroyed because he just chews people up and spits them out before moving on to the next person he can manipulate.”
“You need to leave,” Archer says, his voice shaky and uneven.
“I just came to say goodbye,” Fletcher says, his throat working on a swallow.
I consider myself an expert on being able to read people, and Fletcher’s words do not add up.
He misses the man standing beside him. He may be pissed now, but that’s because of what he just saw, not because he felt that way when he arrived. I’d bet that he came here to rekindle what they had, and it makes me wonder if I’m standing in the middle, blocking Archer from the man he’s destined to be with.
“I was offered a job with Beyond the Lies,” Fletcher says. “I took it.”
“You fucking hate Beyond the Lies,” Archer says.
“And I’ll never let my guard down around them. They won’t be able to stab me in the back.”
The implication is there. He feels as if Archer did that to him. I pull Archer to the side when Fletcher advances, but the man walks past us, stopping with his hand on the front doorknob.
“Do you have any idea how fucked up this is? I thought you were scared to tell everyone about us. It’s pretty fucked up to see that the only issue you had was me.”
Archer doesn’t reach for him when he walks out the door.