Truthful Change Read online

  Truthful Change

  Copyright © June 2010 by Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  eISBN 978-1-60737-597-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  www.loose-id.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

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  ~ * ~

  …my doubts are dead,

  My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,

  This truthful change in thee has killed it.

  —The Princess by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Prologue

  Aiden heard a shriek from the bathroom down the hall—which, if asked, he would have more politely referred to as a shout—and then cursing. Loud cursing. Loud, colorful cursing.

  Luckily, Scott’s house, though small, had thick walls.

  At times like this, Aiden was glad that he’d accepted Scott’s offer to move in a few months after they’d begun dating because he knew from experience that the neighbors in his previous apartment wouldn’t have appreciated the swearing. In fact, he could have expected either annoyed banging on the wall shared by the two apartments or a nasty note slipped under his door. Maybe both. Now, though, he was the only person to hear Scott’s protest, and they could make all the noise they wanted to while they were working things out, which it seemed like they were having to do more and more often these days.

  “I’m sorry!” Aiden called when there was a pause.

  The shower stopped running, and half a minute later Scott came storming out, hair soaking, towel barely wrapped around his waist. As far as methods of convincing Aiden not to use all the hot water in the tank went, it fell pretty short. “Six minutes,” Scott reminded him. “And then I get six, and neither one of us has to take a fucking freezing shower.”

  “I thought you liked showers that included fucking,” Aiden said, blinking innocently at Scott and then watching, less innocently, as drops of water ran down over Scott’s chest.

  “I like hot water even better,” Scott said with a shiver that sent the towel sliding down his legs to the floor. He didn’t bother trying to stop its descent, which made Aiden feel certain that forgiveness was his for the asking. Scott’s cock was twitching, hardening just from the appreciative look it was getting.

  Aiden took a step forward, already smiling. “So let me warm you up.”

  “No,” Scott said with a firmness that managed to be completely unconvincing. “We’re not doing this now. I’m on early duty at the hospital. I’ve got to be dry, dressed, and out of here in, uh, eight minutes, or I’ll be late.”

  “Drive faster,” Aiden suggested, and closed the gap between them. “If you get a ticket, I promise I’ll take care of it.”

  “I thought you said agents who did favors for friends were walking a fine line.”

  Aiden slid a hand around the small of Scott’s back—for all that he’d complained about his shower water turning cold, the man’s skin was warm enough—and grinned. “I didn’t say how I’d take care of it. I could always pay it. Come on; just a couple of minutes?” With Scott standing naked in front of him, smelling like shampoo, Aiden’s interest in his breakfast had waned considerably.

  Scott caught his bottom lip between his teeth and frowned thoughtfully as if Aiden were one of his patients with something really interesting wrong with him, like a mutated Black Death virus or something. Okay, he knew that look drove Aiden crazy, setting off all sorts of fantasies, like the one where a routine physical turned into hot and steamy sex on the examination table. The kind of fantasy that Scott would never go along with because he said it was against the Hippocratic oath, which was just bullshit. The truth was, Scott couldn’t keep a straight face or stay in character as a lecherous doctor—not that it was much of a stretch—and nothing killed a scene like the giggles. Scott held the pose and then sighed, all faux reluctance. “I might let you blow me.”

  “Oh yeah? Don’t do me any favors,” Aiden murmured, leaning in and biting Scott’s shoulder hard enough to make Scott squeak in protest, though gently enough that the mark it made wouldn’t last for more than a couple of minutes. “You want that? My mouth on your cock?” He didn’t wait for Scott’s answer, because he already knew it; instead, he dropped gracefully to his knees and rubbed his freshly shaved jaw against Scott’s dick.

  Scott groaned, his hands already busy in Aiden’s hair, ruffling it up into even wilder spikes than normal. Aiden combed it often, but whenever he walked past something that threw his reflection back at him, it always looked the same; a feathery, tousled dark blond mess. Scott’s hair fell into shape at a look, dark brown and glossy. Tidy hair. Even down here, the wiry cloud of dark hair surrounding his cock looked orderly. Aiden squinted at it absently as he applied his tongue to all that squeaky-clean skin stretched tightly over whatever the hell kept an erection up. Blood, sure, but blood was liquid and this was solid, hot and hard, and it was going to taste way better than the protein shakes Scott kept trying to make him drink.

  “Did you actually trim this?” he asked incredulously, tugging at a tuft of hair. “When I wanted you to shave it off, you said no way in hell.”

  “Shut up and get back to sucking me,” Scott said, his voice gratifyingly breathless. Aiden had been working longer hours than usual since an outbreak of summer flu had left his office operating with several agents down, and Scott had been equally busy dealing with the sick and sneezing. Sex had become a luxury, sleep a matter of a few hours snatched whenever possible. This was the first time that they’d been awake and horny at the same time in what felt like weeks. Scott worked a hand free of Aiden’s hair and traced around Aiden’s lips with a fingertip. “God, you’ve got a pretty fucking mouth, you know that?”

  It wasn’t the first time Scott had told him so, though that didn’t make it any less nice to hear it. Aiden let his eyes close as he leaned forward and shaped his lips around the tip of Scott’s cock, concentrating on the feel of it pressing over his tongue. He breathed through his nose and shoved the heel of his left hand against his own erection through his pants—he loved sucking cock, and he loved it even more when he was turned on. Swirling his tongue around to spread moisture, he moaned softly, knowing that Scott liked how it felt when he did.

  “Such a pretty mouth,” Scott said again.

  Aiden, of course, couldn’t talk around the cock in his mouth, so he didn’t try. He sucked a little harder and then dragged his l
ower lip up the length of Scott’s cock, pausing at the ridge just below the head, teasing.

  “God, I can’t—” Scott said. Aiden felt the tremor that ran through Scott’s legs and the way Scott had to lock his muscles to keep upright. Oh, yeah, he was good at this. “I need you…need you to—”

  “Hmm?” Aiden hummed around the cock shaping his mouth, prepared to indulge Scott in just about any request. He rubbed at his own erection a little harder, not caring if this ended with him coming in his pants. He could get washed up and changed in a minute or two, easy.

  “Hurry,” Scott finished, taking the edge off Aiden’s arousal. He liked the idea of a wham-bam quickie as much as the next guy; however, Scott sounded more impatient than desperate. “I really, really need to get to the hospital on time and—oh yeah. Like that, just like… God, you’re killing me here.”

  Aiden redoubled his efforts, determined to make Scott scream like a girl again as payback for the insult. Hurrying one of his blowjobs was like asking Rembrandt to paint faster. Some things shouldn't be rushed and this was one of them. He flickered his tongue across the head of Scott’s cock every chance he got, rolling Scott’s tight, still-damp balls in the palm of his hand, his fingers pressing into the smooth skin behind them in all the right places. One bonus of dating a doctor: Scott had given him a guided tour of his erogenous zones and in return introduced Aiden to some he didn’t know he had.

  “Oh fuck,” Scott muttered, not tugging hard on Aiden’s hair that way Aiden always wished he would. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  This last was delivered in the most heartfelt tone imaginable, and it took Aiden a second to realize that it wasn’t in reaction to the spectacular blowjob he was performing but, instead, to the trilling of Scott’s cell phone.

  “Sorry,” Scott gasped, and groaned in disappointment and frustration as he pulled away. “Sorry. Fuck.” Still naked, he stumbled toward the bedroom, and a moment later Aiden, the floor of the kitchen suddenly feeling incredibly hard against his knees, heard him bark, “Yes, what?”

  Sighing, Aiden got up, left knee cracking, and adjusted his dick, which hadn’t yet gotten the message that its hot date with his boyfriend had been canceled. If he wanted any action before he left for work, he’d obviously have to settle for his own hand as a partner, something he’d been doing way too often lately.

  Chapter One

  Karl Blake wouldn’t have described himself as a perfectionist. If someone working for him got the job done efficiently and effectively—not quite the same thing—he was willing to forgive or overlook the occasional slip in a minor detail. Once. Possibly twice, if he liked the person.

  He never liked anyone enough for there to be a third time.

  Nature was allowed a certain latitude, which was one of the reasons why the land around his newly acquired house wasn’t ruthlessly manicured and managed like most of his neighbors’ grounds were. If grass grew green and lush, trees spread shade, and flower beds blossomed with color, Karl wasn’t troubled by stray leaves falling or a faded petal or two.

  Dandelions, on the other hand…

  He walked over to the patch of yellow that had attracted his attention from the shaded patio where he’d been enjoying a solitary breakfast. Each step cost him a twinge from his left leg, but the pain was bearable these days, a dull throb if he did too much, a quiet ache in the night when his thigh muscles stiffened. It was healing. The doctors had told him that his leg would never be as strong as it had been, but they’d told him a lot of things that he’d ignored. He’d stopped using the cane the hospital had given him weeks before the date they’d told him he could abandon it.

  The dandelions were a vigorous clump of dark green and gold, a fresh bud about to uncurl as the morning sunlight coaxed it open. Karl frowned at it, memories of his grandfather rooting them up with a long, wickedly sharp knife surfacing. The thick roots on a dandelion went down forever, white and tapering to points, winding through the soil.

  The whirring sound of a mower broke into his thoughts, and he glanced up, shading his eyes. A young man dressed in jeans and with a white T-shirt knotted around his waist was pushing a mower, engine already running, over to the rose garden, where the paths were too narrow for the ride-on mower to be used. He was also ruining the careful stripes of dark and light green that the ride-on had left. Karl sucked in an exasperated breath and whistled long and sharp, the sound carrying, accompanying it with a curt beckoning wave of his hand when the whistle had no noticeable effect. The man turned the mower engine off and began to walk over to Karl, breaking into a loping run when Karl gestured to him impatiently.

  He ran well, Karl noted, assessing the long legs and muscled chest with an idle interest. Fit without being bulked up, the exposed skin lightly tanned and sheened with sweat, and a face saved from being too handsome by angular cheekbones and a strong jaw. Older than the usual teenagers who seemed to work on his neighbors’ yards—mid to late twenties, maybe.

  Without greeting him, Karl pointed at the weed. “Get rid of this.”

  The man inhaled sharply through his nose and looked away. Actually, come to think of it, it was possible he hadn’t even looked directly at Karl’s face yet, which made Karl study him all the more carefully. His cheeks were flushed underneath a few days’ worth of stubble—probably designed to make him appear older than he was—and his eyes, trained on something over Karl’s shoulder, were a shade of blue that a more romantic man might have thought of as warm.

  “The weed,” Karl said, exasperated that this idiot was too slow to even grasp what he was asking.

  “Yessir,” the man muttered. Despite the low tone, it was said politely enough, and he pulled a hand tool out of his back pocket and knelt on the fresh-cut lawn to dig up the dandelion. At least he knew to get the root, Karl thought. The man stood again, shoving the dandelion plant, root, dirt and all into the front pocket of his slightly-too-baggy pants, which now sported grass stains at the knees.

  Karl couldn’t help but eye the gardener with a flicker of cautious, automatic suspicion. Karl had broken through too many security systems and the layers of protection scared men surrounded themselves with not to be aware of prime areas of vulnerability, and staff, temporary or permanent, were always a risk and a target. Most people’s loyalty could be bought or compromised.

  When he’d made the decision to buy this estate, he’d known it would mean ripping out the old pool—strangely shaped and totally impractical, like the previous owners had let their nine-year-old daughter design it—and replacing it with a geometric one, since his doctors recommended swimming as a form of physical therapy. Building the new pool had been fairly straightforward; however, as a result the yard had been torn up in that whole area, requiring some pretty hefty landscaping work to bring it back up to par. Luckily, moving into an exclusive gated community like this one meant having access to the management company’s list of vetted contractors.

  Sophie, Karl’s imperturbable, efficient secretary, had made the arrangements for the landscaping, which included a low retaining wall being built around the south end of the pool. The job had started while Karl was out of the country, tying up some loose ends, and this was the first time he’d seen the man the landscaping company had sent to apply the final touches.

  “Adam, right?” He snapped his fingers, searching his memory for a last name, annoyed that it took him a moment to find it. Thirty-seven was too young to be fumbling for facts, even if he was still dealing with jet lag—and he hadn’t finished his first cup of coffee because of that damned weed. “Adam Marshall.”

  “That’s me.” Adam trained his gaze toward Karl, yet didn’t seem capable of looking him in the eye for more than a fraction of an instant. Instead, he stared at Karl’s chest. “Is there—is there anything else you want me to do?”

  “Other than your job, you mean?” Karl found himself somewhat amused.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No. Though that includes the weeds, so make sure you don’t miss an
y.”

  Adam blinked and nodded. “I will. I mean, I won’t. Miss any. Sorry.” And he beat a hasty retreat without waiting to be dismissed, returning to the mower and starting it up again.

  Karl made a more leisurely retreat to the patio and sat down, glad for the thick padding on the chair beneath him and the awning above. He ate some of his toast, now gone cold, and drank his coffee while reading the latest issue of the political magazine he favored. Later, he'd move on to iced coffee to keep cool, but no matter how sultry the day, he liked to start it with hot coffee. He’d just finished his breakfast and was brushing off his fingers when he heard a muttered curse from the side lawn, where the new landscaper was trying to start the lawnmower again, this time without success.

  Sighing, Karl got up and went over to the machine and the young man. He watched as Adam tried again to start the mower. Observing the sharp tang of gasoline in the air, he said, “You flooded it.”

  Adam glanced at him. “I did?”

  “Give it a minute or three before you try again,” Karl advised.

  “Okay. Um, I mean. Thanks. Sorry. I’m kind of new at this.” Adam stepped back and removed the T-shirt from around his waist, and then turned the material in his hands. For a moment Karl thought it was some nervous habit, but Adam, finding a clean spot on the shirt, used it to wipe his forehead. “I’m sorry. I’ll—You don’t have to—”

  “Help you?” Karl suggested, amused by the effect he was having when he wasn’t trying to be intimidating. Not that he ever did try; it seemed to come naturally. He wasn’t given to introspection, but he’d decided that it was based in his own belief that threats were worthless unless you were planning to carry them through. He’d never gone in for the theatrical, over-the-top posturing about ripping off body parts and stuffing them into various orifices. Too messy and impractical. It was just as effective to tell a man that Karl would break every bone in his hand unless he spilled the code needed to access a secure building filled with hostages. There was always something you could use as a hammer. “It’s in my interests to be kind. It’s my grass, and I want it trimmed before it’s higher than the roses.”