If I Must Lane Read Free Page A

pad?”
    Joel flushed. “Like I said, …um, anything with a pulse.”
    Melody turned to him in titillation, her well-crafted eyebrows reaching her hairline and her mouth making a little moue. “ Really. An equal opportunity kind of guy?”
    Joel’s blush intensified. “Yeah, um, I can’t say much for his taste, though.”
     
    The boy with the unbuttoned jeans and bare chest was pretty, Joel would give him that. The kid’s hair was tousled, carefully streaked, and his little heart-shaped face and brown eyes were truly charming.
    Joel would have been more impressed if he hadn’t found the boy rifling through Ian’s pants and palming his credit card.
    Christo! Joel had to shake his head. On the nights that Joel worked late, he would sometimes find Ian gone when he got home. In the morning there would be a stranger doing a red-faced walk of shame out of Ian’s room. Usually the stranger was female, but not today.
    “Hey, you, what the fuck you think you doing, punto ? You get the hell away from shit that don’t belong to you!” Joel’s accent—the product of being brought up in a mostly Spanish-speaking home—only came out when he was back at home or really, really pissed off.
    The kid started guiltily and dropped the jeans and wallet, scattering the credit cards on the (clean!) floor. “Hey, baby, don’t get mad at me because your boy got takeout last night!”
    It was probably the ingratiating smile on the kid’s face, but in about two seconds, Joel had him pinned to the pretty purple wall with his forearm at a slender, corded throat. “I could give a shit what he sleeps with, as long as it doesn’t take him on the twinkie express when it’s done.”
    “Yeah?” the kid hissed. “What’re you gonna do? For all you know he liked what he got!”
    Joel rolled his eyes. “Yeah? For all you know, he thinks you someone dead who was doing some sexy math in his dreams.”
    In less than a minute Joel had hustled the kid out onto the landing and slammed the door in his face, ignoring his cry of, “But I don’t even have my shoes!” Then, in as quiet a huff as he could manage, he tiptoed into Ian’s room. He tried to ignore Ian’s sprawled, naked body on top of the covers as he began to quietly pick up the clothes on the floor he knew for certain weren’t Ee’s.
    “Mmmmm,” Ian groaned, just as Joel was about to close the door and let him sleep, “Joel? S’that you?”
    “Yeah, popp, uh, Ee. What you… what do you want?”
    “What’re you doing?”
    “Saturday chores?” Joel tried, and Ian sat up sleepily. God, his chest and abs really were cut! And his… never mind. Joel wasn’t going to look at that. It was huge, but he wasn’t gonna look.
    “Saturday?” Ian murmured. “Don’t we usually get breakfast on Saturdays?”
    Joel resisted the temptation to say something catty, like Well, yeah, did you want to take your Friday Night Special too? And instead concentrated on the fact that Ian seemed to have forgotten about Twink Lightfingers who was standing half-naked on the landing.
     “Yeah, Ee,” he said with a sigh, “but first I’ve got to take out the trash.”
    Later, over pancakes at IHOP (because it was Ian’s favorite, that’s why) Joel read him the riot act.
    “For Christ’s sake, Ian, he was stealing your cash ! I hope you at least wore a raincoat, you feel me?”
    Ian blinked. “Why would I want a raincoat, Joel? I was having sex.”
    Joel put his face in his hands, closed his eyes tight, and prayed that when he looked up and opened them Ian would be kidding.
    He wasn’t.
    “A condom, Ian, I hope you used a condom!” Oh God, he was not having this conversation with a twenty-something bisexual college professor. It was not possible.
    “Why would I?” Ian asked seriously. He looked anxious. It was as though he understood he’d done something wrong, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. “It’s not like either one of us can get pregnant,