Page 14 of Never Enough

Where Nemo was always on the move, Midas was most often found at his chair behind his computer banks.

Probably the biggest difference, however, was that Nemo was a playboy with a near-daily one-night-stand habit of high-maintenance women in designer clothes and exhibitionist tendencies. Midas lived like a monk.

“As a matter of fact, they are. You have a problem with that?”

Midas probed further. “I thought you were taking Scheherazade out to the dog park.”

“I was. I did.”

“Awful long trip to the dog park. It was seven thirty last night when you left.”

“So? We were there an hour or so, and then we decided to go on an adventure. Didn’t we, girl?” Nemo gave the dog’s ears a vigorous scratch, which brought forth another happy yip from Scheherazade. She promptly threw herself on the floor, belly up. Her owner wasted no time getting on the floor with her, scratching her belly, and crooning. “Who was a good girl? Who was so pretty? Who deserved a treat?” And other dog-lover nonsense.

“You didn’t.”

“I didn’t what?” Nemo asked, not looking up. He was now in the stage of play where Scheherazade was rolling ecstatically on the floor and trying to wash his face while Nemo tried to avoid her puppy breath and slobber.

“You did.” His brother expelled a puff of exasperated air through his lips as he ran a hand over his closely shaved dark hair. “You met a girl at the dog park.”

“I met a lot of girls at the dog park,” he corrected.

“Yeah, but you fucked one, and I’m guessing you fucked her at the dog park. Dude, why can’t you go to a club and hook up with a girl in the bathroom, at least?”

“Gotta live in the moment, bro.” Nemo managed to extract himself from Scheherazade, stand, and key in his lock’s code.

Midas made an ick face. “Make sure you burn those clothes. God only knows what you were rolling around in all night.”

Nemo’s door opened, and Scheherazade bounded inside. Within two seconds, both men heard a thunk, a yip, and a squeaky toy being mauled to death. “We didn’t stay there all night. We took our dogs to the beach afterward.”

“Great. So, instead, you’re dragging sand in and leaving it everywhere. Fantastic.”

An impish grin appeared on Nemo’s face. “Worth every scratchy moment.” He disappeared inside his apartment and shut the door, and his grin disappeared instantly.

No sooner had he toed off his sneakers when a brisk double knock came at the door.

Grin back on his face, blue eyes met a set of brown eyes when Nemo opened the door. “Knew you’d wanna hear about it. Okay, so, the tide was coming in?—”

“We’ve got a conference call at the top of the hour. Loki, Gilgamesh, and Medusa. Don’t be late, or Waters will have a shit hemorrhage.” Midas turned and headed back to the elevator.

The door closed. Again, the grin disappeared. Nemo stripped as he walked, dropping clothing and creating a trail back toward his bathroom and the huge glassed-in shower. He turned on the water. While he waited for the water to warm up, he brushed his teeth. His eyes perused his body or what he could see of it in the mirror. Over the years, Nemo had treated his body like an art canvas. His left arm was tatted from under his ear down to his knuckles. The tattoos wrapped around his throat and chest, and they started to track down his abdomen. He’d recently begun the sleeve on the underside of his right arm. Lost in thought, finger tracing the date over his heart, he made a mental note to find time to go and have his sleeve worked on. He had a sun image he wanted to add and build around.

He’d made other changes during that time, too. His hair was still in the fake military haircut, the top glued with enough product to make it stand up despite its length, but in the last few months, he’d grown a beard that he kept close-cropped to his face, which aged him beyond his thirty years. He’d also gauged his ears and pierced his nipples, tongue, and cock. Thepain of piercings and the tattoo gun assuaged other past pains he refused to think about.

Finished with his inventory, he moved to open the shower door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Bracing his hands on the glass wall on one side and the ceramic tile wall on the other, he hung his head and let the water cascade over the top of him. He hissed when the sting of hot water washed away the sand from the multitude of shallow wounds on his ass, back, and shoulders caused by the girl’s nails. What was her name? Olivia. She said she was an actress. He gave a single bark of laughter. Every girl in Los Angeles was an actress. Always on the cusp of that big break, just waiting for the next call from their agent about the audition they recently nailed.

Whatever. Dime a dozen. Who are you kidding? Penny a dozen out here.

When the stinging ended, Nemo soaped up to clean himself from his and Octavia’s dog park and beach adventures.

No. Olivia! Christ! You’re a fucking mess. Who lives like this?

An image from the past popped into his head. One that made his chest hurt, and again, he rubbed at the numbers over his heart. Blonde mop of curls. Big blue eyes. Tight, tiny body. A smile that lit her face like it was the goddamn sun. Short, blunt nails sinking into his skin. Ink crawling up her body, particularly the art surrounding her belly button.

His skin felt itchy as he remembered the last time he’d seen her, and saliva exploded in his mouth, the faint taste memory of sugar. The same scent coming from her body. The velvet of her skin. The sound of her sighs and whimpers.

Nemo let out a roar of rage, and his fists pounded against the walls. A cracking noise sounded over the falling water of the shower, and he looked to his left. The glass shower wall was spiderwebbed with cracks where his fist had hit it. He duckedhis head under the water and let it wash away the sand, sweat, and shame of tonight.

By the time he had stepped out of the shower, the water was cold. He marshaled his emotions; any question of who he was and how he lived his life thoroughly shoved into a drawer in the filing cabinets of his brain, and the drawer mentally slammed shut with violence. Hopefully, this time, the drawer stayed shut.

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