BOTTLES CLANKED softly as I rearranged them for about the fortieth time. I couldn’t get it right. I don’t know why. Normally I didn’t have this problem, but today I just couldn’t seem to get my eyes on straight. Everything looked cocked up to me. The liquid didn’t look like liquor under the stage lights, and the stemware had spots even though I’d had one of my hands polish them. Twice.
The low voice rolled over me, raising goose bumps along my arms and setting other body parts twitching. The little hairs at the back of my neck tickled up, and I turned. “You a set dresser now, David?”
The man who’d spoken smiled at me, and I barely managed to stifle a moan as he stuffed a hand into the front pockets of a very short pair of denim cutoffs. His Northern Ireland accent wasn’t like everyone else’s around there, and it crawled over my skin like a lover’s teasing touch. It drove me crazy.
I leaned so my arse rested on the edge of the wobbly counter I had been trying to make look like something of an Irish pub from the fifties. The position let me disguise the growing bulge in my pants, at least.
“Just a bored hanger-on,” David said. “Want some help?”
“This is a union job.”
He nodded and climbed up onto the sound stage. Those short shorts hiked up his muscled thigh, revealing a mottled patch of skin, maybe a leftover from one of his rugby matches. The fringes of the cutoff denim mingled with his own dark hair.
I swallowed. Hard.
“Everything’s a union job,” he said, beginning to rearrange my bottles. To do that, he had to go up on tiptoe—he was almost a full head shorter than I was—and lean close because the space behind the fake bar was tight. He blocked my exit from the corner with his wiry, stretched-out self. “Everything is also behind schedule,” he went on, “and Ricky’s freakin’ out a bit. And when he freaks out, me arse gets more of a workout than it needs, ye ken?”
“Ricky.” Ricky was always freaking out about something or other. He was the station manager, and way too high-strung for the job if you asked me. But I was a set designer, and very little of what went on around there was subject to my approval. However, the reminder that this very hot, flirty guy was fucking my boss—or more likely, knowing Richard Cornwall, being fucked by him—settled my erection in a hurry.
“Did he send you to check up on me?” I wouldn’t put it past the weasel to send his boy toy to report back on things. Richard was not a nice man to work for. I couldn’t imagine what made him worth David’s attention.
“No. He sent me to find something.” David gave a half shrug that hiked his tank top up and bared a sleek hip bone—and another, fresher bruise.
I was sorely tempted to reach over and brush my fingers over the mark, as if I could soothe it somehow.
“And likely,” David was saying, “he wanted me out of his way.” A slight frown marred his expression as he settled back on both feet and turned to face me. It curled his full lips down into a pout I felt the sudden urge to suck away. His body heat clung to me, along with the scent of sex mingled with sawdust and set paint. The smell of another man on him shouldn’t have been a turn on. I was just that far gone and sure if I held my breath any longer, I’d pass out.
“’Scuse me.” I squirmed past him, rubbing against him in such a way that he’d know beyond doubt—if he’d ever had any—that I was completely without shame. I jumped from the stage, not looking back when I heard his chuckle.
I hurried toward Richard’s office. Maybe if I knew what David was supposed to be looking for, I could help him find it. Some twisted logic told me that would get him far away from me and my weak ability to resist temptation. And at the same time I hoped it would keep him close by while we searched. Normally I didn’t let my cock do my thinking for me. Normally I wasn’t confronted with eager, completely fuckable men with bodies like David’s just looking for an excuse to piss off their current, cranky lovers. I wasn’t under any delusion he wanted me specifically. I was just open, gay, and single. That made me convenient.
I rapped on Richard’s door and walked in. “Hey.”
“Did you find it?” Richard didn’t turn around. He was rifling his own office, obviously frantically searching for something, and I crossed my arms over my chest.
“No.”
“Go look in the dressing room. We used it there. You said you were going to clean it before you brought it back. I swear, David, if someone else finds it, you had better keep your slutty mouth shut.”
I grunted, trying to keep my opinion of that comment to myself. This prick had less than no appreciation for what he had.
“I know. I know. It’s just a dildo. But it could get my ass fired if anyone knew about it and what we do. Besides, the shamrocks are just humiliating. No idea why you would want something that gaudy inside you.” He had moved on to the storage seat under the window and was practically half inside it. I didn’t want to know what kind of paraphernalia he might pull out of there. Nor did I want to risk the temptation to shove him the rest of the way in and close the damn lid. His contempt for the man he was supposedly in a relationship with made my stomach churn.
I turned to leave without speaking. That’s when I spotted it. Right there in plain sight on a bookshelf behind the door. A long, flexible rubber dildo with green glitter and shamrocks embedded in it. Unbelievable. I palmed it and left.
A short detour to the lunchroom where I kept my messenger bag let me deposit the toy where it couldn’t do anyone any harm. I made my way back to what I was supposed to be doing then, mostly in control of my temper over Richard’s complete disregard for his lover. I’m sure none of that anger stemmed from the certainty I’d treat David the way he deserved to be treated. No part of that treatment would have anything to do with calling him a slut.
David was still on the set pulling things out of boxes and dressing the shelves behind the fake bar with stacks of cardboard coasters and shiny silver drink mixers. I rejoined him and proceeded to slide wine glasses into the slots above the bar as he polished them.
“They were a might spotty, I think.”
I chuckled, grateful it wasn’t just me. “You know you don’t have to do this,” I told him.
“I know.” He smiled, showing perfect teeth. “It’s more fun to let Ricky think I’m doing what I’m told than actually doing it.”
“Do you even like him?”
David shrugged. “Rugby’s a good game. Doesn’t last forever.”
“And bruises you all to hell,” I muttered, brushing my fingertips over yet another blotch on his upper arm.
He winked at me. “That it does.” That wink clearly hinted that maybe rugby playing wasn’t to blame for all those bruises. “Doesn’t pay a lot o’ bills, though.”
“And ‘Ricky’ does?”
“Indirectly.” He set the last glass on the bar and turned to face me. “Does it chafe ya? Knowing I let him fuck me and buy me fancy dinners?”
“Not my ass he’s plowing,” I said, trying to be diplomatic.
I’d been wrestling with that very question for months. Ever since he first came mincing out of Richard’s office one night after everyone should have been long gone. I’d been putting final touches on one of the apartment sets, and I’d seen him scurry out of the office and down the hall to the men’s room, shorts in hand, looking like he’d been well used.
But he had a grin on his face then, and the banter he tossed over his shoulder as he went gave me hope, at the time, that maybe here at last was someone who might soften a few of Richard’s jagged edges.
More fool both of us for thinking that. I was beginning to see the tears where Richard’s edges were snagging at David, and I didn’t like it.
David nodded. “Sure, and that’s truth.” He went back to work, stacking plates and mugs in an artful approximation of an actual pub. I had to admire his eye for detail. And his ass. And wonder why it didn’t bother me more that he used it to pay his rent. Maybe because he wasn’t ashamed of himself for it. He didn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was, and that attitude was attractive, even if his employment was not.
“And so you must think I’m—”
“Shit.”
“What?” David’s brow furrowed.
I pointed across the room to where Richard was emerging from his office. “Richard. He’s the wrong color. Red. Not such a good look for him.”
David watched him storm across the room. “He’s pissed, sure.”
“You know why?”
I figured he’d mention the missing dildo, but he swiveled away and offered a negligent shrug instead. “Because I’m talkin’ to another man?”
“You’re not sure…? That you’re talking to me, or that he’d care?”
He grimaced. False brightness split his face into a wide grin as he turned back to face me, but didn’t reach his lovely blue eyes or stop him from tugging on the pale-blue tank, which set them off so beautifully as it stretched across his abdomen. He followed Richard’s progress like he was waiting to be spotted. I couldn’t tell if he wanted Richard to look up and see him with me, or not.
It was painful to watch him. He wanted his lover’s anger to be about him. It was clear he knew it wasn’t, and I made another mental tick under the heading reasons Richard doesn’t deserve him.
“So, what next?” He snapped himself out of the moment and focused back on me.
Apparently we were going to ignore Richard until we couldn’t anymore. “Here.” I handed him a gaudy plaque with a clay leprechaun grinning at his pot of gold. “Up there, I think.” I pointed to the post above our heads. “You were going to ask me something?”
He climbed up on the rickety counter and looked down. “This is sure wobbly.”
I reached up to his waist to steady him, and he grinned.
“Better, Ian. T’anks.”
“Just on that post. Think there’s a nail there already.”
“There is.” He took his sweet time hanging the thing, though, and my lip was almost bit through with holding it between my teeth in an attempt to keep myself focused and my hand where it was, safely on his hipbone.
“Not mine,” I muttered to my dick. “Not touching. Shut the fuck up.”
“Sorry?” He crouched and put both hands on my shoulders to steady himself to hop down. For an instant, I had the best and worst view on earth. His very short shorts scrunched in his crotch, lots of thick thigh and hairy legs, and all right there for me to ogle. And that was terrible because looking was soon not going to be enough, and I had no right to touch. He was taken. Very, very taken.
“Did I say something to annoy you?” He leaned on me, jumped, and his hiking boots hit the stage with a reverberating thud. Then he stood in front of me, just stood with both hands on my shoulders and his breath warming my face. The scent of sweat and sex folded around us.
“No,” I croaked, and he—bastard—grinned.
He grinned! Crooked and lazy, his lips twisted up and he shifted his weight so his hips canted toward me. “And then what are ye not to touch, I wonder?”
Oh fuck me.
“N-nothing.”
“Sure, and don’t forget it. Rules are made to be broken, yeah?”
I nodded. “You break a lot of them, I think.”
His grin slipped minutely, but his hands stayed.
“We should finish.”
I swear I thought he was going to touch my face. He leaned a fraction of an inch closer, but glanced over my shoulder and abruptly backed off. “Hey, Ricky!” He waved past me. “Find it?” His grin stretched a little bit past real.
Richard merely snarled and walked on, no doubt to scowl and bitch at wardrobe, since that’s the direction he headed.
My annoyance with Richard, who still held the attention of this man I was not-so-secretly in deep lust for, allowed me to calm my physical reaction. I moved over so David could reach the bottles I’d been trying to arrange. “You don’t have practice today?” I asked.
He glanced over, almost catching me eyeing his ass, and the false smile wavered into one more genuine. “Nope. Rugby season’s over. I am exclusively fuckable twink for now.”
“Jesus.” I backed off, stumbled over a box of set decoration, and landed on my ass on the other side. I might have gone right over the edge and off the stage if he hadn’t moved fast, grabbed my arm, and held on.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
He hauled me up with such strength I landed practically in his arms. Fuck, but he smelled good….
And twink he was not. Despite that he was probably a good five years younger than me—and a head shorter—nothing about his physical appearance said twink. He was too broad shouldered, too muscled for that label to fit. Too hairy. I suspected the self-labeling was due more to a perception of promiscuity and lack of means than to any physical image he had of himself.
“Ian!” Richard’s voice echoed through the huge vault of the building.
“Shit.” I almost tripped over the box again scrambling away from David as I answered. “Yes, sir?”
“I need this set finished before lunch, Ian.”
“Yes, sir.” I glanced at my watch. Less than an hour. Normally it would be a challenge, but one I would be able to meet. I was so far off my game now, I doubted the results would pass inspection.
“David.”
The object of my lust turned his forced brightness on Richard. “Yes?”
“Come on. I have something for you to do.”
Did he sigh? Oh, let him have sighed in resignation. Please God.
“Sure thing.” He jumped down and hurried over, falling in beside Richard. Even he had to hold his sure strides in check so his shrimpy lover wouldn’t have difficulty keeping up.
“Where have you been?” Richard’s voice dropped. I didn’t think I was meant to hear him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Didn’t I tell you to look in the dressing room?”
“I got bored.”
“Well.” Richard put a hand on David’s broad back and pushed him forward slightly, guiding him toward the narrow hallway to his office. “You can entertain me for a while. Ought to keep you out of trouble.”
David glanced back, looked right at me just before he disappeared down the passage. I didn’t imagine the resigned look on his face that time.
“Sure, an’ I could do that,” I heard him say in a falsely bright, overloud voice as the dimness of the hallway swallowed them up.
“Oh, and I could do him.”
For the second time, an unexpected voice made me jump. I turned to find Penny, my assistant, grinning up at me.
“I suspect he wouldn’t be interested in li’l ol’ me, though.” A devil light came into her eyes. “You, on the other hand….”
“Shut it.” I glared at her and she laughed.
“Lunch, boss?”
“Nope. Git your bum up here and help me. This has to be done by noon.”
She mocked me as she went round to the steps, but she pitched in after flipping on the stereo to play some rocking modern Celtic music. It helped the flow, and after a few minutes, I was back in my vision of what I wanted the set to look like. Around twelve forty-five, we stepped back to the last camera angle to admire our work.
“We done good, boss.”
“Cornwall hears you call me that, he’ll fire both our asses, Penny. Just be careful.”
“Cornwall’s a blowhard.” Penny was never one to mince words.
One of the cameramen snickered and glanced up from inspecting his equipment. He bobbed his head at the hallway to Cornwall’s office. David was just emerging. From across the room, I could see reddened skin on his bare knees and his overplump lips. “Don’t think Cornie’s the one doing the blowin’, you ask me.”
“Arsehole,” Penny spat in a stage whisper.
“You watch your mouth,” I growled, turning on the man. Jim, I thought his name was. “You don’t get an opinion.”
Penny took my fisted hand in hers and hauled me off toward the green room. “Who has to be careful now, Ian?” she asked as we entered. “Cornie sees you go ballistic on the help, he’ll wonder why. Sure an’ I don’t want to be the one to tell him you’re sweet on his fella.”
“Shut it.”
She rolled her eyes and went to the buffet to snatch up the last of the fruit and cheese, which she took to one of the small tables near the door.
The lunch table had been picked pretty clean. Only tuna salad and limp Caesar salad remained. I grabbed half a sandwich and sat down across from Penny. “You’d think they’d treat the techies with a little more respect,” I said, turning my nose up at the smell of the tuna. “Maybe leave us a few crumbs, you know?”
Like always, she had her attention buried in the Daily Mirror. After a minute she snorted and slapped the table.
“Some people really have too much time on their hands.” She flipped the rag around and pointed to a picture. “Apparently this looks like Bono.”
“It’s a potato.”
“Yup.” She chortled gleefully. “County fair in Donegal. Wanna go?”
“To look at a potato?”
“A potato that looks like Bono,” she corrected, pulling the paper back around to continue reading. “I hear David Kelly is from there.” She glanced up through her lashes with a wicked grin.
And damn it if I didn’t take the bait. “I’m guessing he doesn’t go home on weekends.”
“What would he tell his Ma?” she agreed, going back to her paper. “It’s just a day job, Ma. He keeps me in short shorts, and all I have to do is—”
I kicked her under the table. In the doorway behind her, David stood, staring right at me.
“Me Ma’s dead,” he said, his voice thin.
“Oh, Jesus. David, I’m sorry.” She turned to face him, horrified, turning white, then layer after layer of red.
For a minute he stared at her, his expression completely open and shocked. Then he grinned, wide, bright, and just as open. “Nah.” He waved a hand at her. “Live and well in Ballyshannon. I tell her I don’t let him fuck me without a condom, which is the truth.” He dug in his tight back pocket and pulled out a foil packet. “Don’t leave home without it.” He winked.
Penny lowered her head onto the table. “Arsehole.”
“A very tight one,” he agreed, and turned his devastating smile and wink on me. “And very much in demand, I hear.”
My turn to turn red, though it didn’t stop my cock jumping at the invitation in his eyes.
“I’ve got… shit.” My brain went offline as he whirled and swung his ass on swivel hips out the door, leaving me staring and drooling after him.
“You got shit?” Penny giggled from her flattened position on the table.
“Shut it.”
“You gotta hit that, I’m sure is what you meant.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“Don’t deny it.”
“I am not in lust with him.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” She reached under the table and squeezed my hard-on. “Literally.” She wiggled her chair closer around the circular table and licked her lips. “I can… if you like.”
I squirmed and stuck my tongue out at her, afraid if I actually spoke, I might take her up on it. I wasn’t wearing my loose jeans.
“Ummm, guys?”
We turned to the door to find Richard’s personal assistant, Beth, shifting from foot to foot in the entrance.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“You mean Richard has a problem,” Penny muttered.
We both got up, though, and followed Beth out to the set. It was destroyed.
“What the hell?”
“Richard.” Beth looked like she might be on the verge of tears, poor thing. If I worked that closely with the enormous ego that was Richard Cornwall, I might shed a few myself. I glanced around to see if I could find him, but he was nowhere in sight. David was off in a corner, leaning on a stage monitor with his arms crossed over his chest and an unreadable look on his face. I thought he glanced away in hurry when I looked over, but he didn’t move a muscle, so maybe not. Maybe he hadn’t been watching for me in the first place. He pushed himself to his feet after a minute and headed down to Cornwall’s office.
“All right. Penny, hon, get started on this, please. I’ll go see what’s up with his assness.”
I stormed off toward the office, furious, unsure I would be able to keep my temper in check this time. Cornwall was getting on my very last Irish-American nerve. I heard the yelling long before I reached the room at the end of the hall.
“So find it!”
“Or what?” David’s voice remained placid, but Richard’s rose like banshee wail.
“Or everyone will know what you do in here. You think if someone finds it, they won’t speculate?”
“Seriously?” David chuckled. The low rumble rippled over me as I stood outside the doorway. “What d’ye suppose people t’ink now? I’m a rugby player, for pity’s sake. Ye didn’t hire me t’act.” I peered through the window just as David swung one hip out to the side. “I’m a slut. I know it, you know it, and they all know it.” His voice had gone from dulcet soft to gravelly hard. “They know what we get up to in here. They don’t care.”
I did. And I didn’t like the way his voice had changed from lazy, casual derision, to cutting sarcasm when he talked about himself.
“You shove yer sparkly green dildo up me arse because ye t’ink you have some power over me? You do it because I let you. Ye can’t keep track of yer toys, too fucking bad. It donna give ye the right t’undo all Ian’s hard work out of spite.” He pulled his hip back in, spun, and sauntered out of the room. He didn’t falter when he saw me standing there, but swept past without a glance or a word.
“If you would have found the damn thing like I told you, David, I wouldn’t have had to!”
The door was wide open and Richard stood facing it, fists clenched at his side, face livid. “What the hell do you want?”
No point mentioning the overheard argument. Just get on with business. “Someone trashed the set.”
“I was looking for something.”
Of course, I couldn’t really say anything to that. I couldn’t call him on it, and now he’d gone and trashed it to make David feel like shit for not doing what he’d been told. And I was party to it because I’d taken the damn thing. “You could have asked,” I said finally, stiffly, because what else could I be expected to say under the circumstances?
He grunted, picked a pen up off his desk, and tossed it back. “I suppose I could have.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
Of course it didn’t, because he was a manipulative bastard and I didn’t have a leg to stand on. And no way could I admit that to him. Admitting I’d taken his toy would only fuel his ego and his temper.
“Go fix it.” He turned to his desk and yanked out a file folder. I doubt he even knew what was in it. “I have work to do. Go fix it.”
“Jackass.” I turned, walked out, and closed the door behind me. If Richard got this bent over a lost toy, it was time to fix a few things besides the ruined set.
I headed back down the hallway to find David, Beth, and Penny industriously cleaning up glass and gathering bits of set dressing in preparation for reassembling what was left of the set. I joined them, whistling a little tune between my teeth and with a bit of a gig in my step.
After only a half hour, David snapped. “Ah, would ye cut it out already, mate! Ya sound like a drunken leprechaun!”
I grinned at him. “Richard hates Irish music.” And I whistled louder. Penny started to hum along, and before long, the set rang with rounds of Irish drinking songs, hammers, and electric drills.
Fuck Richard if his ridiculous tantrum was going to ruin our day.
We were on round three of “Whiskey in the Jar” when Richard finally came out of his office, waving his arms, his face purple with rage. One of our longtime carpenters leaned heavily on the fake bar, wheezing out the chorus, and Richard yanked the stool he was sitting on out from under him to toss it off the stage. The guy must have been about sixty, and his legs nearly buckled under him.
“Is he having a heart attack?” Penny rushed over to the old guy, fumbling at her cell.
“Asthma,” Beth muttered. “He’s fine.” She went over and helped the old man find his puffer and straighten up, flinging a glare at Richard as she did. He ignored her.
“Did you find it?” Cornwall snarled at David, who glared, tight lipped, down on him.
“Didn’t look for it, did I? I told ye, I don’t care.”
“You will.”
“That a threat? Ye goin’ to tear the set apart again?”
And didn’t that make me feel like a complete heel, because he might have snarled out the question, but his eyes didn’t flash like they should.
“You have more to lose than I do, boy,” Cornie replied.
David tilted his head. “What’re ye gonny to do? Tell them all ye fuck me daily?” He flung an arm out at the assembled work crew. “They know!”
“You really are a little slut, aren’t you?” Richard muttered, the vicious words cutting into the silence.
“I’m not interested in hiding who I am, Ricky.” David ran a hand down the side of Richard’s face. “I like having a cock rammed up me arse. You don’t want to acknowledge you like doing it, not me problem.” He turned away, swaying his ass in a way that spoke volumes about who was never getting a piece of it again.
Was I the only one who noticed the stiffness in his gait, though? He put on a really good show. Maybe I’d just spent so much time watching him over the past few months that I recognized when it was a show.
Richard rushed after him, trying to force him to stop, to turn around. He only succeeded in stumbling into a painter’s ladder, bringing painter, paint, and ladder down with a crash. The only thing that saved the poor slob on the ladder from a cracked skull was David, who gracelessly tumbled down under him and the bright-green spill of paint.
“David!” I raced over, but he was already squirming out from under the painter. I knelt beside him, and a flash of white teeth burned through the green covering just about every part of him. “You okay?”
“Is that all it takes, then?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“A—” He glanced at the painter stumbling to his feet. “—largish set painter tumblin’ down on me ’ead to get yer attention.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked again, to cover my confusion.
“Nah.” He held out a hand and I helped him up to find Richard standing there glaring at us both.
“Go get cleaned up,” he snarled, jerking a hand toward the men’s dressing room and curling his lip at David. “You look ridiculous.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” David lifted his chin. “I think green’s a good color for me.”
“I agree.” I had no idea what prompted me to speak up. David glanced my way and grinned. “This was your doing, Richard. You should be apologizing to them.” I waved my hand to where the cleanup crew approached with mops and buckets to clean up the paint. Beth brought the painter a stool and cup of water and he smiled gratefully at her.
“You.” Cornwall planted a finger against my chest. “Are fired.” He turned to David. Fierce, dangerous anger at having been made to look like a fool harshed all his soft, pudgy lines. It didn’t matter he’d done it to himself and everyone knew it. Or maybe that made it all the more dire. “Where the hell did you put it?” Richard’s voice carried through the hush.
David gritted his teeth. “You know, I don’t think I like it after all. So what does it matter if it’s gone missin’?”
“You came to me, remember?” Cornie gripped David’s arm and began to walk him off toward his office. “You wanted this. Now you’ll follow through.”
“Fuck you!” David pulled free of his grip and turned to face Richard, forcing him to stop. “Ye don’t get to tell me what to do, Cornie.” That was bad. Richard hated that nickname. But David’s voice rose with each word, and his eyes flashed. “So go fuck yerself. With yer own goddamn green fuckin’ glitter dildo.” He swiveled on his heel and stomped off across the room, stopping at the far side. Everyone had slowed to watch and listen. “If ye can bloody well find it with yer head so far up yer arse!”
I felt like applauding. Lord, but if the man was gorgeous strutting around in those fantastically ridiculous shorts, he was a force of nature with his Irish temper out. Even covered in green paint. I grinned and jogged after him.
“Hey!”
He didn’t stop.
“David!”
“What!” He whirled, and for
COLLAPSE 
