Page 54 of Gunpowder

Wren turned from the desk as Blair entered, and his expression shifted to something that made Blair’s heart beat a little faster. He curled one long finger at him. “Come here.”

Blair wondered what it said about him that he complied without even questioning him. He crossed the living room and stopped in front of Wren, who simply curled his finger again. Blair swallowed. He lowered himself onto Wren’s lap, sliding a leg under each arm of the chair so his feet skimmed the floor.

Wren hummed and ran his hands from the high collar of Blair’s shirt down his bare arms. “I like this.”

Blair kissed him before he could say anything else. He smoothed his hands over Wren’s white dress shirt, down to where it was untucked from his tight black jeans, then back up before Blair could decide to wander any lower. Wren’s arms snaked around him, wrapping around his back. The memory of Wren being inside him played in full color across the back of his eyelids. More than that, though, the feeling of closeness had imprinted itself on Blair’s skin, and he ached to feel it again, that level of connection they found when their bodies joined together.

“I don’t think my favorite part about sex is supposed to be my favorite part of sex,” Blair said against Wren’s mouth, halfway muffling the words. He didn’t really mean to say them out loud but now they hung in the air and the rest of his thoughts spilled out to join them. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“There’s a lot of things wrong with you, Blair,” Wren said with obvious amusement. Blair frowned and tried to get up but Wren turned the chair and kept Blair from getting to his feet. He started to speak but Wren’s thumb settled on his lower lip to silence him, then he continued, “The way you feel about sex isn’t one of them.”

Warmth rushed into Blair’s face. Wren said it the same way he talked about his medical stuff, like he was stating a fact—and a rather uninteresting one at that—but something about the soft pressure of his thumb on Blair’s mouth and the way his eyes looked in the dark room made Blair’s stomach feel lighter.

Blair smiled. He couldn’t help it. “Let’s go.”

“If you’re that determined for me to celebrate, I would much rather—”

“Come on.”

On the way downstairs, and as they walked to the car, Blair’s mind started to wander again. Straight to a place that drained all the lightness out of Blair’s body and replaced it with lead.

An assassin by trade.

The words came back to mind unbidden and, while he usually waited for a cue from Wren since he knew he wasn’t comfortable with much affection that wasn’t sexual, Blair found himself reaching for Wren’s hand once the Audi was in gear. He didn’t know if Wren gave him a weird look for it, because he fixed his gaze outside the window, not wanting to explain himself. He just wanted the feeling of Wren’s fingers in between his to get the threat of Jinx out of his head.

Blair had to talk Wren out of leaving the minute they pulled up to the restaurant. After some coaxing, he got Wren to go inside with him. It was a nice place, modern and sleek with a lounge area that Wren’s classmates had overtaken. The flamboyant redhead—Andy, if Blair remembered correctly—waved excitedly when he saw them and scooted over to make room.

Hanging out with them wasn’t so bad, but then again Blair was used to being in large groups. Wren let Blair talk enough for both of them, drawing a little closer to Blair when he started feeling crowded, and Blair didn’t think Wren even realized he was doing it but it was fucking adorable. No feelings, my ass.

Wren endured until the other students started getting progressively more drunk and loud, and knocked his foot against Blair’s to get his attention. Blair glanced over and Wren gave him the closest thing to a pleading look his face was probably capable of (which meant it looked just slightly less annoyed by Blair’s existence than usual). Blair figured Wren would just leave when it got to be too much, no more than he cared about the opinions of these people, but he’d underestimated just how bad Wren’s social anxiety was.

He could see the relief in Wren’s eyes when he took the hint and made an excuse for them to leave. Andy wailed his sorrows about it but yelled after them to have a good night as they slipped away. Blair kept a hand on Wren’s back as they wove between tables and eventually out into the fresh air. Well—it was Manhattan, so somewhat fresh air.

Wren relaxed once they were out of the restaurant, but Blair did the opposite. He felt too exposed.

Blair checked up and down the street as they crossed it to the parking garage. There was no logical reason for Phantom to be there or to have found out the dinner was even happening, but too many injuries were piling up to underestimate them.

“You’re paranoid,” Wren said as they rode the elevator to the floor they parked on.

“I’ve got a reason to be.”

Wren hummed, and when Blair looked up at him his eyes seemed far away, like his body was present but his mind had gone somewhere else. “My father was paranoid.”

“Is he better now?”

“I don’t know,” Wren said, taking out his keys. “I try not to listen to him.”

Headlights flashed down the row as Wren unlocked the Audi remotely. Blair didn’t like the way Wren seemed to detach at the mention of his dad, so Blair didn’t ask anything else. He had never pegged Wren’s father as a strictly bad guy after he went to the expense of putting Wren through medical school—and Blair could think of worse offenses than pressuring your kid into such a lucrative career—but he was also beginning to think the man wasn’t all there, judging from the way Wren talked about him.

They pulled out of the parking garage and onto the main road. Blair watched the cars pass by on the opposite side of the street. The worst of evening traffic was over but there were enough dinnertime stragglers left that no one was moving especially fast. He felt like there were as many taxis on the road as regular cars, if not more. He was even more surprised to see a motorcycle fly up the center of the lane, narrowly avoiding the sideview mirrors of the cars on either side. He chuckled; he had done that a time or two in heavy traffic. It was a nice bike, too, black with metallic green flames running down—

Wait.

He’d heard someone describe a paint job like that.

He snatched his phone up and it took three tries to unlock it with his shaking fingers. Wren was talking, probably asking what his malfunction was, but it took every bit of his focus to scroll through his contacts and goddammit had the green button to call someone with always been that small? He finally managed to press it and put the phone to his ear. In the rearview mirror he saw the bike straddling the two lanes opposite them, stopped by a red light at the intersection they had just passed through.

Spencer answered on the second ring. “What’s up, Kennedy?”

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