Dirty Secret Read Free Page A

one.” Neko ignored my greeting and dashed off, a furious ebony streak bent on hell and the destruction of the upstairs bedrooms.
    Most of the downstairs was wainscoted, with cherrywood paneling and cream plastered walls. I’d stripped the wood, sanded it smooth, and restained it. She couldn’t do much damage there, other than the occasional eyeing of the massive comfortable couches spread about the living room that took up much of the first floor.
    Upstairs was a different matter.
    I’d papered the smaller bedroom with a silk damask print the cat loved to strip off the walls. I’d bought her a gigantic scratching post with enough holes and levels to house most of the city’s homeless. The wallpaper continued to suffer until Jae fitted her claws with something he called nail caps. They worked, so she couldn’t claw out anything, and looked pretty against her thick black fur. They also pissed her off something fierce.
    Now I had a small black furry pissed off cat with glittering gold claws staying with me four days out of the week when Jae slept over. I feared she’d move on from clawing up my wallpaper to chewing off my testicles as I slept.
    “Hello, hyung .” The locker of doors and owner of demonic black cats padded into the foyer from the living room, and my heart skipped. I didn’t blame it. My brain seemed to have taken its own vacation, because words failed me.
    My dick, however, knew exactly what it wanted to say, and was as pissed off as Jae’s cat that we had company.
    Kim Jae-Min was nothing I ever wanted in my life, nothing I ever expected. He was beautiful and enigmatic, a gorgeous Korean man trapped between his sexuality and his family’s traditional expectations. He shouldn’t have caught my attention. I’d never looked at an Asian man. Never imagined sharing a bed with one, much less having another man after Rick died. Once I’d found him, I didn’t want anything… anyone else.
    Jae was a loose-hipped, sensual creature, a little shorter than me, but with long, lean legs I couldn’t get enough of. His mouth was kissably full, and his dark-brown eyes were hard to see through the fall of black hair framing his face, but I knew there were light honey specks in them that caught gold when he was out in the sun. He dressed with little care to how he looked, preferring low-slung threadbare jeans or drawstring cotton pants that hung low on his narrow hips. His feet were always bare when he was home, long toes that bore more than a few scratches from his cat’s vicious playing. He preferred T-shirts, usually mine when he slept over, and tank tops that left his muscular arms free. They were nice arms. They went with his broad shoulders, built up from lugging photography equipment around.
    It was a shame we had issues. I was having a hard time getting over my dead lover, and he wrestled with being gay and coming from a culture where being homosexual would get a man excised from his family. I was never certain if he understood his beauty, or even was aware of the attention he attracted when he came into a room. It was a pity he couldn’t stay mine.
    I was working on that.
    “ Nuna is here.” The kiss he gave me was light, a brushing of our mouths, but it was enough to short circuit my brain the rest of the way.
    I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. Not when his arms slid around my waist and his body fit up into mine. I slid my hands down, cupped his ass, and ran my fingers along the rise of his rear, filling my palms with the feel of him. Since there was company in the living room, the couches were off-limits. Heading upstairs was also out. She’d hear our feet on the steps and would wonder why we’d left her alone downstairs. The laundry room was looking good. I could see Jae balanced on the washer, his pants pulled down just enough for me to spread him apart and work myself into his warmth.
    “Cole-ah, listen,” Jae said, flicking me on the end of my nose with his fingers. The - ah