Rory Ni Coileain

Here’s an excerpt from Blowing Smoke, the first book in the Broken Pattern cycle of the SoulShares. (I’m sitting at my desk, looking out my back window at the sight of snow melting, hearing a chorus of angels singing “Hallelujah,” and I’m just so happy I need to spread a little joy around!) This bit is part of Chapter 7, and it doesn’t actually involve the main characters, Lasair Faol and Bryce Newhouse (ducks objects thrown by those who have read the first four books and think I’ve lost my mind). This chapter lets us catch up with Lochlann and Garrett, the Fae healer and the pole dancer from Deep Plunge. Enjoy!

Garrett slid a hand down Lochlann’s side, along the curve of his ass to his thigh where it rested over his own. At the same time, he leaned in, catching the dark Fae’s startled breath with a kiss, and a soft laugh.
Lochlann relaxed into him, deepening the kiss, and using his leg to draw him closer. Garrett’s hips tilted, without him telling them to, getting the most out of the sweet friction.
“My morning wood thanks you.” He didn’t feel like pulling back from the kiss, so his lips rasped against Lochlann’s heavy stubble. One more reason to regret all the years he hadn’t been waking up with his SoulShare. Or anyone. “Though it’s almost my afternoon wood.”
“Noon?” Lochlann worked his hand between the two of them and wrapped it around Garrett’s erection, his thumb immediately going to the heavy ring piercing the head. “You’re up early. In several senses of the word.”
“Noon isn’t early.” Garrett groaned as Lochlann toyed with his PA. “You realize, I’m supposed to be using that to drive you insane.”
“It is when you got in so late.” Lochlann’s smile was pure wickedness. “And life’s unfair, grafain. Get used to it.”
“That wasn’t a complaint, exactly.” Garrett bit his lip, closing his eyes to focus on Lochlann’s touch. It was still new, this thing of having someone else focused on his pleasure. Hell, someone else focused on blowing his mind with every touch, every kiss, every word out of his mouth.
After almost ten years of renting his ass out to pay the rent and keep the lights on, and almost nine of being HIV-positive, Garrett had become an expert at sex without intimacy. Expert even for a rent-boy. Whore. Fracun, the Marfach had called him. A thing, an object, only valued for how it was used, not for what it was. Lochlann had been furious, but Garrett had just shrugged. That was what he’d been, before Lochlann.
And to hear Lochlann tell it, Fae never got close either, and for some of the same reasons. The only way to be sure you couldn’t be broken was to be damn sure no one ever touched you.
The tip of Lochlann’s tongue traced over his closed eyelids, breaking off Garrett’s thoughts. He was glad. That train of thought never took him anywhere he wanted to go.
“I worried about you. Last night.” He could almost feel Lochlann’s voice, like silk on his skin. Rough silk.
“I’m sorry.” He flushed, opening his eyes. “I actually meant to tell you what happened, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.” He hadn’t made it back to the hotel until just after sunrise, and the decadently soft bed had been way more temptation than he could handle.
Lochlann laughed softly, rolled Garrett onto his back, and pinned the lower half of his naked body to the bed with his own hips. “So tell me now.”
“Vice showed up, about an hour before closing.” Garrett felt his erection softening, and sighed. What happened to Purgatory affected all the Fae, though, and all their human partners. Report first, afternoon delight later. “They sent an undercover cop in first, but Lucien spotted him right away. He always does, I don’t think  Vice has ever gotten anyone past him.”
“What did Tiernan do before he hired Lucien?” Lochlann propped himself up on his elbows, his black hair tumbling down around his face as he studied Garrett. Apparently his lover wasn’t giving up on afternoon delight entirely.
“Nearly got busted a couple of times, I think. Kevin’s a fast talker, though, and it didn’t hurt that he’s a partner at a big-name law firm with some real clout. Fabian, the guy who owned the club before Tiernan, just bought off the cops. Probably put a dozen of their kids through college, just in the years I worked there. But Tiernan refused to work that way.” The new owner had started putting the protection money into improvements in the club. And in the salaries of the dancers.
“So Lucien called in Conall.” Lochlann worked the fingers of one hand into Garrett’s curls and tipped his head back, eyeing his throat speculatively.
“Yeah.” Garrett sucked in a breath between clenched teeth as Lochlann’s hot, soft lips caressed his throat. He’d compared notes with Kevin and Josh, and the humans were all in agreement that Fae never let any business, other than the most serious, interrupt amorous play. They were also all in agreement that that tendency was one of their more attractive features, and one of their most frustrating. “He doesn’t know that’s who he’s calling when he trips the alarm, he thinks it only goes to Tiernan’s office. But Conall showed up right away, down in the cock pit where no one would pay any attention to one more naked guy, and glamoured the cop.” According to Conall, an undercover officer with a see-no-evil channeling on him could stand on the edge of the cock pit and look down, and be convinced he was seeing a dimly lit, semi-private lounging area, with tables set up for drinks and maybe a few guys getting hot and heavy outside the clothes. He could even walk down into the pit, but the channeling didn’t work against physical objects, and things could get interesting if a cop ever tripped over a twink giving a BJ or a writhing mass of leather boys spilling off a sofa. So far, that hadn’t happened.
“So then what happened?” Lochlann started nuzzling right below Garrett’s left ear, his breath warm, his tongue gentle and insistent.
Then I had to stop for a mind-blowing orgasm. Jesus Christ in a rickshaw. Garrett had to pause for a couple of deep breaths before he could go on. “About half an hour before closing, Detective Harding came in.” Purgatory was part of Russ Harding’s bailiwick, had been since just after Tiernan bought the place. and while the Man from V.I.C.E. gave Tiernan props for running what he’d been heard to call a ‘remarkably clean place, considering,’ he was convinced Purgatory was crossing a line somewhere, and that it was his mission to find the line.
Things would be slightly less awkward if he were wrong. Between the “official” goings-on in the cock pit, the occasional freelance ass-rental a few of the dancers still kept up in the dressing room, and the tendency of some of their wealthier and better-connected customers to tip the dancers in designer drugs, there was probably enough action on any given night to keep butch cop Russ Harding busy for a week.
“And Conall took care of him, too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Well… kind of.”
That, unfortunately, brought Lochlann’s head up. “What do you mean, ‘kind of’?”
“When Detective Harding strolled over to the cock pit, he saw Conall. And he saw all of Conall, if you take my meaning.”
“The illusion didn’t work?”
“Apparently not. Conall thinks he just got careless. As soon as Harding said something, Tiernan came up with a distraction, and held his attention long enough to let Conall conjure some clothes, but even that glimpse was enough to put a bug up the cop’s ass. “ Garrett grinned as one of Lochlann’s fingers slipped briefly past his tight entrance. “Brat. Anyway, he went on the prowl, and it became my job to get everyone in the cock pit disentangled, dressed, and on their way out the door before he started to look too closely. Not that he ever actually goes into the pit.”
“And that was your job why?” A frown line appeared between Lochlann’s dark brows.
Garrett nipped his Fae lover’s chin. “Because Tiernan was escorting Harding around and trying to distract him from what he wasn’t supposed to see without looking like he was distracting him, and Conall had his hands full keeping the channeling up given that Harding was acting especially snoopy. I could have used Mac’s help, at least with getting guys out the door without it looking like a scene from fucking Exodus, but his prosthesis was giving him grief early on and Tiernan sent him home.”