Page 1

One

“Wanna see a guy with two dicks jerk off?” came a voice with the most barely there English accent.

It wasn’t the first time that day Skye wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard someone correctly. But that was typically his life as it was. His declining hearing came with the really fun side effect of his brain trying to fill in the staticky gaps of words he missed when people spoke in tones too low for his ears or his hearing aids to pick up.

And considering the work he did, he wouldn’t be surprised if his brain decided to fill in “two dicks” for some other phrase Avan was trying to use.

He dropped the weight he was using and turned his head to see Avan leaning over the arm of the treadmill, grinning at him.

“Did you say two dicks?”

‘Two dicks,’ Avan confirmed in sign.

Avan was the most proficient at ASL since he was the only one doing classes regularly, along with Skye. And it wasn’t like Skye blamed the other Sins for not being consistent with it. Their lives were hectic at best and chaos at worst. It was a damn miracle he found the time in his schedule to attend his own class twice a week.

But it was nice to have someone who was at the same level as him on his journey.

He took a beat, then sighed. ‘Show me,’ he signed back. Standing up from the weight bench, he crossed over to the treadmill Avan had been running on and stood up on the belt that was no longer moving.

Avan brandished his phone, and on the screen was a naked torso, two arms, and, sure enough, two dicks—one in each hand. The person’s skin was rich olive-brown, arms muscular, and Skye could only just make out a tattoo on the guy’s hip of what he was pretty sure was Medusa’s head.

“Is the sound on?”

Avan shook his head. “Nah. He doesn’t speak in his videos, and I’m not a huge fan of that fapping noise.”

“Is it AI?”

Avan snorted. “I thought it might be, but no, it’s a real dude. Stone asked me to investigate after he got several calls from potential clients insisting that this guy works for us. He was worried the guy was advertising himself as a Sin, but there was nothing I could find. I think people were just assuming.”

Avan was the tech guy—he was the one Stone relied on to make sure no one was hacking into their system and that their online security was running smoothly. He was also the guy who was best at dark secrets in their clients’ backgrounds, which had come in handy over the years when people had tried to pull one over on the Sins.

It had saved the guys from potential violence and assault time and time again.

Skye turned his gaze back to the video. “Is this live?” he asked when he realized the guy was following instructions from the chat.

“Yeah. It’s FanCore,” Avan said, fingerspelling the name as he said it so Skye didn’t miss it.

He was familiar with the site in a vague sense. Several of his clients over the years had asked him if he had his own, but that was one of the terms of their contracts. No outside livestreaming, not that any of the guys needed the extra cash, considering what they made working at the Tower.

But for all that Skye made a living off sex, he wasn’t an overtly sexual guy. He could get hard on command and perform when he needed to for any of his clients, but sex for him too often felt like a job. He hadn’t been excited about a partner since his ex years back—and that had burned bright and faded quickly.

He was fine with his life as it was, but if he was going to date again, he wanted that big, romantic spark. He wanted to feel something—not just get off. Porn just didn’t do it for him. Although watching a guy with two functioning dicks was definitely interesting.

“What’s his deal?” he asked after a beat.

Avan shrugged. “He jerks off, and people donate, and sometimes he puts sex acts on auction—like last week, he let someone pick a sleeve for him to fuck. His whole thing is that he’s a virgin.”

Skye scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

Avan laughed. “Hey, even if it’s bollocks, it sells. I’m not judging the guy for it, even though he’s probably full of shit. A virgin camboy is definitely a hook.”

Skye watched a few more seconds, then looked away before the guy came. “Is there a reason you’re showing me this?”

Avan sighed. “Nah, man. Just trying to cheer you up. You haven’t been yourself the last little while.”

Skye’s irritation immediately dissipated. He hadn’t meant to be an ass. He was just having an off day. Or an off month, really. Hell, an off year. He knew what the problem was, of course. He was thrilled for his friends who were finding the loves of their lives around every corner, but his own remained full of dark shadows.

He could be happy on his own, but he was starting to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with him. Something fundamentally unlovable.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Skye shook his head. “I think I’m gonna go for a run, actually.”

Avan eyed him carefully. “Alone?”

Skye didn’t want to be annoyed, but he couldn’t help it. Avan was right to be concerned. Skye’s Ménière’s disease had sent him toppling down the stairs from vertigo eight months before, and he’d suffered a pretty nasty concussion from it. He walked around with a goose egg for a week and then two delightful black eyes for a few weeks after that.

Only a few of his clients weren’t put off by the look, which meant postponing eighty percent of his schedule, and while money wasn’t tight, he was the kind of person who panicked when things weren’t going his way.

Luckily, one doctor’s appointment later, with a big needle and a medication injected directly into his eardrum, and the vertigo eased. It came at a cost, of course. He lost almost all of his hearing on the right side. His follow-up audiogram showed he’d gone from hard of hearing to medically deaf—moderate on his right side, profound on his left.

But it was worth the price. It meant he could go running again. It meant he didn’t have to walk with his cane everywhere. Vertigo still swept his legs out from under him from time to time, but the spells were fewer and further between. And they weren’t as obnoxiously intense as they had been.

No more vomiting into his bedside wastebasket once a week and lying in bed for hours at a time with a warm cloth over his eyes to stop the spinning. It allowed him to feel more human again, and honestly, he’d come to terms with the fact that he was going to end up deaf at the end of his road anyway.

He’d sped up that timeline with his newest treatment, but he was fine with it.

He just wanted the people he loved—and really, he did love them—to quit being up his ass every time he wanted to be on his own.

“I’m going to be fine. I haven’t had a spell in two months.”

Avan eyed him, but Skye took comfort in the fact that he didn’t argue. He just shrugged and signed, ‘Text me if anything comes up.’

If you fall on your ass. Or if you fall on your head. Or if your legs go jelly and your eyes go wobbly and you can’t get home.

It was an annoying request, but it was one he could live with, so he lifted his hands. ‘Sure. See you later.’

He made his way up the stairs and into the lobby, waving at Hen, who was fixated on his phone. Hen didn’t notice him, and Skye wasn’t in a hurry to change that. He didn’t want to have another conversation filled with well-meaning warnings. He just wanted some space.

No. He wanted to go for a run. A nice, long run without eagle eyes watching him so he could finally clear his head and feel like he was himself again.

Slipping out the side door, he darted across the lawn and made his way to his little cottage and grabbed his running shoes. He ordered a ride on his app to take him to the beach because running on the coastal highway brought him a lot more peace than running through their uptight, boujee neighborhood where all the residents looked at him like he was the Devil incarnate.

Which wasn’t far off the mark, considering what he did. At least in their eyes.

But by the ocean, he had peace. He couldn’t really hear the waves anymore, not without his hearing aids and only when he was right at the shore, but the ocean spray and the gentle breeze were enough for him.

His life was lonely. And it was quiet in more ways than one. It wasn’t the worst way he’d ever lived, but he was starting to wonder if maybe this was all he was going to get. He wasn’t sure how to make peace with that yet, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try.

The spot Skye liked to run most was called Artist’s Hill. Back in the fifties and sixties, a bunch of artists owned vacation homes on the coastal road, and they’d show up for the summer to get inspiration from the ocean. He wasn’t really sure what became of the artists, but he knew young money and coastal real estate clout were responsible for internet celebrities buying up the spaces.

It was a relic of what it once was, but one of the homes still bore the mark of the previous owner. The architecture was unique, and it had a bunch of sculptures behind the wrought iron gates. He liked to stop and imagine what it was like inside whenever he passed by, and something about the place gave him a swooping sensation in his gut.

Maybe he’d retire on a street like this someday—a far cry from the life he was living now and a far cry from the life he might have lived if he’d never met the Sins. He didn’t like to think about that though. Even if he and the Sins stayed close, retirement sounded…lonely. And he was tired of being lonely.

His feet hit the pavement, and the thud of his shoes on the jogging path rippled up his spine. He kept his feet moving in an almost melodic rhythm, music playing in his hearing aids—instrumental cello renditions of heavy metal songs because he’d long since lost the ability to understand lyrics. He had a playlist of his favorite songs that his brain could connect to and fill in the gaps where his failing ears lost the words, but he got tired of it pretty quickly.

And besides, he did enjoy being able to picture the cellist who was absurdly good-looking with his black-framed glasses and his nerdy bow tie. It was nice mental eye candy for his run when he lost sight of the ocean.

He was halfway through a rendition of “Fade to Black” when suddenly, the world turned upside down. Or, more importantly, he turned upside down. He felt the pain a good ten seconds after he hit the ground, and it took him even longer than that to realize that he’d damn near somersaulted into the grassy front yard of the very home he’d been thinking about.

He’d squeezed his eyes as he tried to catch his breath, and when he opened them, the sky was spinning in sharp circles, and his ears were ringing so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else.

“Fuck,” he gasped. His voice was barely audible over the raging tinnitus.

“…okay? You…the…almost…someone.”

Skye took a deep breath as the sharp ringing started to fade, and then he opened one eye and turned his head to see a man kneeling in the grass beside him. He was very, very pale—no, wait. He wasn’t pale. His arms were covered in some sort of paint or plaster.

Skye blinked as the world began to right itself and his vertigo took a step back. His eyes stopped shaking as he breathed deeply. The man was still crouched beside him, hands hovering in the air like he was afraid to touch.

“Okay, I’m gonna call 9-1—” Skye could only just hear him over the sound of his tinnitus.

“No,” Skye managed. He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and did a quick mental assessment. His head didn’t hurt, but his elbow was stinging, and he was pretty sure he could feel blood dripping down the outside of his knee.

There was also definitely some road rash, and maybe a bruised shoulder, but nothing that needed a hospital.

“I really don’t want the ambulance bill.” He blinked both eyes open and studied the man beside him. He looked young, with thick, very dark black curls in tight ringlets tied at the nape of his neck in a messy bun, amber-brown eyes, olive-brown skin beneath the thick layer of plaster-paint, and full lips that stretched into a nervous smile.

He was wearing a tattered T-shirt and grey sweats, and he was kneeling beside Skye, which stretched the fabric and showed off a sizable bulge.

Fuck, why was he noticing that?

Skye cut his gaze away as he pushed himself up to sit, rolling his shoulders. The pain was a lot, but it was already starting to ease up. The cuts were the worst, and he hissed as he tried to bend his knee.

“You’re bleeding,” the man said.

Skye wanted to snap at him, thank him for being fucking obvious, but that wasn’t fair. Instead, he nodded and stretched his leg out. Now that the pain was starting to recede, embarrassment was trickling in. The man was objectively and absurdly good-looking, and Skye had just eaten a massive pile of shit in front of him.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Do you fall a lot?”

Skye grimaced. “Why? Do I look like the kind of guy who does?”

The man cocked his head to the side, then said, “You look like you’ve done this before.”

Skye couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter, covering his face with both hands. “Yeah. That about sums it up.” He took a breath, then dropped his hands and said, “Hi. I’m Skye, and I get vertigo attacks, which is how I ended up covered in cuts and embarrassed as fuck on your really nice lawn.”

The man’s eyes brightened. “I’m Rami.” He rolled the R just slightly. Skye couldn’t hear it, but he caught a glimpse of Rami’s tongue touching his front teeth as he pronounced it.

“Rami,” Skye tried.

Rami’s eyes crinkled in the corners. “You say that nice. Most white people make a mess of my name.”

Skye had no idea how to answer that. He glanced around him, then realized his jog back to the parking lot where he was going to call his ride was a good mile, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to make it on foot.

“Do you mind if I sit here and wait for my ride?”

Rami’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have a car?”

Skye shook his head and tapped his temple. “Not safe.”

Rami reared back a little. “My brother’s Deaf, and he drives.”

It was in that moment Skye realized one of his hearing aids was askew, and he’d tapped just above it. “No,” he said, fixing it. “My vertigo, not my hearing loss.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Rami didn’t actually look sorry, but Skye didn’t mind. “You can wait with me out here if you want. I’m just working.” He hopped up and offered a hand. They were calloused and felt strange with all the plaster stuck to them. It was thick on his skin, and Skye knew that sensation would have driven him up the wall. “Do you like sign language?”

“Like as a concept or a preference?” Skye asked.

Rami’s smile got wider. “Both?”

Skye laughed. He wasn’t expecting that. “Great concept, and it’s great for communication on bad hearing days. But I’m still kind of a beginner.”

“I learned with my brother when we were kids,” Rami said, jerking his head toward the driveway. There was a little path that curved around bushes and then an archway that opened up to a courtyard. Scattered across the grass were several sculptures that looked half-finished. “I’m not fluent, but I’m pretty good.”

“I’m in my fourth year,” Skye confessed, looking around in some wonder. The house was gorgeous but in need of some very obvious repair. There was wood rot and rust from being so close to the ocean, and it looked like the lawn hadn’t been maintained other than a very choppy mowing job where Rami was working.

He loved it immediately. It was old and wild and as far from modern as Skye had seen in a long while.

“That’s nice,” Rami said. He took a seat in one of the three chairs on the lawn. Two were sunning chairs that had seen better days, but since Skye didn’t have any other options, he dropped his ass to the edge, hoping the wood frame wouldn’t give him splinters. “Do you have a phone? You can borrow mine if you need to call for your car.”

Skye reached into his pocket and waved the device before pulling up his app and ordering the ride. His location pinged, and he glanced at the address before looking back over at Rami.

The man had immediately gotten back to work. He wasn’t actually working with plaster, Skye realized. It was clay. He was dipping both arms to the elbow in a bucket of cloudy water, then using the tips of his fingers to make dips and grooves in what he was working on.

“What is it?”

Rami looked at him with a frown.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. I just?—”

“No,” Rami said quickly. “I like talking about it. I just don’t know yet. Usually I mess around with the clay until something pops out at me, but I haven’t been able to get this one to talk to me.”

Skye smiled. He liked the way Rami talked about the clay like it was sentient and he was just waiting for a story. “Is this what you do?”

“Do? I mean, I’m sculpting, so?—”

“I meant for work,” Skye clarified with a small grin.

Rami snorted. “Oh. Yeah, this is what I do for work. The great family disappointment.”

“Ah. One of those?”

Rami bit his lip and looked almost upset. Before Skye could retract the question, he answered, but Skye couldn’t catch any of the words. He had his face tipped down so he couldn’t see his lips, so he had no hope of understanding.

Part of him wasn’t sure if he should ask Rami to repeat himself. But he also wanted to know. “Sorry. I can’t hear you. Do you mind looking up at me when you speak?”

Rami looked up, his cheeks flushing. “Oh!” He lifted his hands, switching to ASL. ‘Sorry.’

“Hey, if it’s too much for you, you don’t have to tell me.”

Rami shook his head. “No, it was my fault. Sometimes I get really overwhelmed, but it’s not because you asked.”

Skye’s brow furrowed. “Listen, we’re basically strangers. I’m sitting here bleeding on your lawn after?—”

“You’re bleeding!” Rami jumped up like he just realized Skye was injured and turned on his heel, darting up the drive and disappearing through the front door.

Skye sat stunned, wondering what the fuck just happened. Was the guy scared of blood? Skye had a few clients with different phobias, but none of them had ever run out on him like that. His stomach sank in disappointment. He was enjoying Rami’s company, and he hated that he’d sent him running.

His phone buzzed with a ride update. Twenty-five minutes. Fuck. Maybe he should go wait out on the curb. He wouldn’t be comfortable there, but it wasn’t like he was comfortable perched at the edge of a very old, sun-damaged lounge chair in the yard of a man who didn’t want him there.

God, this day had gone from worse to weird as fuck.

Just as he was climbing to his feet, Rami was suddenly there again, hurrying back toward him. He motioned with his hands quickly for Skye to sit, and out of shock, he did. His ass hit the lounger just as Rami stepped within touching distance and dropped to his knees.

He couldn’t hear a thud or anything, but from the way Rami winced, it had to have hurt.

“What,” he started, but then Rami brandished a red bag with a white cross on it.

“First aid.”

“Oh. No, it’s—” He couldn’t get the sentence out. Rami took him by the calf and stretched his leg out, frowning at the huge scrape across his knee.

“Did you know that you can get tetanus without rust? The rust thing is a myth. It’s actually a bacteria you can get in any open wound.” With surprisingly tender fingers, Rami began to clean the scrape with a wet gauze. It stung, but not as bad as Skye was expecting. “Also, you should never blow on open cuts. I don’t know why moms always do that. It’s a good way to get the cut dirty again.”

“So…was med school your thing?” Skye asked with a slight laugh.

Rami looked up, his face serious. “I have really terrible situational awareness. I had to learn first aid so I didn’t get infections. My sister went to med school. And my brother thought about it, but they gave him a lot of shit about being a Deaf doctor, so he ended up becoming an audiologist.”

“Is that what you meant about being the family disappointment? The artist amongst medical professionals?”

Rami swallowed heavily as he used a cotton swab to smear what Skye could only assume was antibacterial cream over the skin. “When you’re an artist that only sells three pieces a year, it doesn’t really hold up to doctors, does it?”

Something about the way he spoke made Skye want to pull him close and hold him. Which was a wild goddamn reaction, considering Rami was a total stranger. So he bit his tongue and said nothing as Rami finished dressing the two small wounds he had on his body.

Before his ride arrived, he was sporting two gauze patches and way too much medical tape. But Rami looked pleased with his work, which was enough for Skye.

“No one’s taken care of me like this in…” Skye hesitated. “Ever?” The Sins were there for him emotionally, and physically if he ever asked for it, but this felt different.

Rami ducked his head as he set the first aid kit aside and then stood up, offering Skye a hand. He took it, holding on a little too long as he climbed to his feet. His phone buzzed again, and he knew that was the five-minute warning.

“Do you like lunch?” Rami asked.

Skye blinked. “I don’t have strong feelings for or against lunch.”

“Is it hard for you to eat out? Because it’s hard to hear,” Rami clarified.

Skye felt a little off-kilter. For a second, he thought Rami was maybe asking him out. Now, he was starting to think the guy was just overly curious about everything. “Sometimes. There are a few restaurants in town that are decent and have quiet dining rooms.”

Rami nodded, then said, “Okay. You can take me out to lunch to say thank you.”

Skye burst into laughter. What the fuck ? Who even was this guy, and why was that so goddamn endearing? “Is that what I’m supposed to do?”

Rami shrugged. “No, not really. I don’t think there’s some social contract we entered because I helped keep you from dying of tetanus. Or getting lockjaw, which would also be pretty bad. Though you sign, so you’d just have to deal with the pain, I suppose.”

“Okay,” Skye said slowly. He took a breath, then took a leap. “I’d really like to take you to lunch to say thanks.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. Let me give you my number.” He snatched the phone from Skye before he could offer it out, and Skye watched as his fingers flew over the pad, typing in his name and then his number. “You can text me whenever.”

“I will,” Skye said. There was movement to his right, and he glanced over to see a car approaching. “My ride.”

“Make plans soon?” Rami pressed.

“Tonight,” Skye said. He didn’t have clients. He wanted a meal, a hot shower, and comfy clothes. And then maybe to spend the evening texting with this oddly charming man. “Thank you for preventing an untimely death. Or lockjaw.”

“You’re welcome. You’re very pretty—sorry, is pretty bad for a man?”

Skye stopped midway through his turn toward the car. “Maybe for some. I like it.”

“Okay. Because you are,” Rami said.

Skye looked at him, and his grin widened. “So are you?”

Rami laughed softly and shook his head. “I like that. Tell your driver to be safe.”

Skye nodded, knowing damn well he wasn’t going to speak more than a few words to the driver, but it didn’t feel quite like a lie, so guilt didn’t chase him.

He took one lingering, gluttonous look at Rami before getting in the car, and he kept his gaze on him until they were well on the road. When he was out of sight, Skye felt a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach. It was new and alien and a little terrifying.

But it was also so good he couldn’t wait to text the man and see if the feeling lasted. He wanted to hold it close, hoard it for himself, and share it with no one at all. And in spite of loving his friends and not wanting to ever keep secrets, this one felt important.

This one felt like life or death.