The Deal

  The Deal

  Zach Jenkins

  The Deal

  Zach Jenkins

  Copyright © 2018 Zach Jenkins

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the copyright holder. This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature adults.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Icarus

  2. Harley

  3. Icarus

  4. Harley

  5. Icarus

  6. Harley

  7. Icarus

  8. Harley

  9. Icarus

  10. Harley

  11. Icarus

  12. Icarus

  13. Harley

  14. Icarus

  15. Harley

  16. Harley

  17. Icarus

  18. Harley

  19. Icarus

  20. Harley

  21. Icarus

  22. Icarus

  Epilogue

  Also by Zach Jenkins

  About the Author

  If you enjoyed this book…

  Prologue

  Icarus

  Dropping my chest to the couch cushion, I reached behind my back to spread myself, and was rewarded immediately by the penetration I craved.

  It had been so long since I’d last had sex that I nearly cried.

  Dave smacked my ass and said, “Take that cock.”

  “Shh,” I hissed. “Umm, the walls are thin and the neighbors will call the cops.”

  “Fuck ’em.”

  Dave started pumping himself into my ass.

  The sensation made me forget what I’d been worried about.

  “Did you hear that?” Dave asked, slowing his thrusts, but not quite stopping.

  “No. Come on. Give it to me.”

  Apparently Dave didn’t hear any further noises. “So tight, man. That’s nice.”

  I nodded and bit my lip to keep from crying out.

  Staying quiet seemed important…for some reason.

  “I wish I had some rope. I’d hogtie you and fuck you like you deserve to be fucked.”

  I shivered at the thought, but not the good kind of shiver. I had no interest in bondage. That would have made me draw the line. Probably.

  I really needed to be fucked, and didn’t have much luck finding partners.

  “Let’s go to the bedroom. I can probably do something with my shirt and the headboard.”

  I froze.

  I didn’t have a headboard.

  Or a room of my own.

  The only reason I could afford to live in the little tourist town was because my sister let me sleep on her couch while I tried to get my life in order.

  She was also the reason I needed us to be quiet. The heavy drinking had made me forget that she was sleeping just a few feet away.

  “No, Dave. I want you to take me here. It, umm, feels more wild. And, try to stay quiet, too. Oh, and if you can finish quick, that would be best. Hard and fast, right?”

  “What’s going on?” Dave asked, slowly fucking my ass again, waiting for me to explain.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Are you married?” Dave asked.

  The toilet flushed before I could answer.

  “Fuck. You didn’t tell me you were married, asshole. I’m not getting shot at again.”

  Dave pulled out of me in a flash, and, still wearing the condom, pulled his pants back on. He stepped into his shoes and was out the front door before I could stop him to explain.

  “Shit,” my sister, Echo, said from the hall. “I shouldn’t have flushed, huh? You should have called to tell me you were bringing someone home, though. I could have stayed overnight with a friend.”

  Being interrupted by my sister was embarrassing, but it hadn’t hurt anything important with Dave. He would have found some excuse to leave once he’d shot his wad. Besides, I was pretty sure I had never seen him around, which meant he was just another tourist who wouldn’t have been in town much longer anyway.

  At least he thought he’d escaped getting his ass kicked by my husband, and would never learn that I was a twenty-three-year-old, single loser with a failing business, and lived on my sister’s couch. I hadn’t had much luck with men, but things always got awkward when we got to the morning after and had to talk about my life.

  Small victories.

  “It’s okay. It wouldn’t have worked out anyway. They never do.”

  “Pull yourself together. I’ll go get you some water and aspirin so we can try to fend off tomorrow’s hangover.”

  One

  Icarus

  I blew on my hands and shifted from foot to foot to keep myself warm. It was May 1st, but still chilly in Challenge, Colorado. The city was nestled at the base of Mount Wylde.

  My ghost tour was supposed to start in two minutes, but no one had arrived yet. Not that the no-shows surprised me at all, since no one had made a reservation. Still, I’d hoped that the handmade flyers posted up on bulletin boards everywhere in town would lead someone to want to take the tour.

  “Don’t worry, Icarus. There’s still a few minutes left. Someone is bound to show up.”

  Echo always came along for the tour when she knew no one else had reserved one. During the twenty-five weeks I had scheduled tours last year, she had come to fifteen of them. Usually at least one other person would show, but not always.

  She always tried to pay, but I stopped letting her after the first few weeks.

  The business would succeed or flop based on what I did, and I couldn’t let her finance the whole thing.

  I stared down at the sidewalk in front of the pub that had burned down eighty years ago and never been replaced, or even knocked down.

  The pub had been famous for the artists and writers who had frequented it back when Challenge was a mining town. It was a historic site, and the city continuously argued over what to do about it.

  While the debate raged on, as long as the old pub stood in its present form, it was a perfect place to begin my ghost tours. There were three ghosts who were alleged to haunt the site.

  I didn’t believe in ghosts completely, but I did love the history surrounding them. It was fun to tell the old stories and keep them alive for another generation.

  Which would have been a lot easier if people actually came out for my tours.

  When the alarm on my phone went off to announce the tour was supposed to start and still no one had arrived, I swiped the screen to turn it off, and nodded down the street. “Have you been to that new brewery, Hops To It, yet?” I asked Echo.

  “You know I have to wake up too early to go out drinking anymore.”

  My sister ran a bakery in town. Because she lived about twenty minutes away, she had to wake up at four o’clock so she could have the place ready in time for the morning crowd.

  “What do you say instead of offering me money for the ticket, we go over there and you buy me a drink instead?”

  “I don’t know. If we do the tour walk, you’ll get a chance to practice your script again.”

  My eyes opened wide. “Two things. First, I’ve given this tour to you enough times that you could probably do it in your sleep.”

  She opened her mouth to object, but I held out my hand to silence her.

  “Second, the crowd won’t get bigger as the year goes on. Face it. This was a dumb idea for a business and I just need to move on to something else.”

  Echo wrapped her
arm around me and started leading me toward the pub. “It’s not a dumb idea. We just need to figure out how to get the right people to know about it. We’ll think of something. Let’s brainstorm at the pub. If we have a few beers, we’re bound to think of something spectacular.”

  I loved that about Echo.

  She refused to give up on me no matter how desperate the situation looked. Even though she was two years younger, she had been the rock that I leaned on when we both moved away from Tennessee to pursue a very different life in Challenge.

  The fireplace in the bar started warming us almost immediately as we made our way to a table in the corner.

  “What a nice place,” Echo said, looking around the room. “Hopefully their beer is as good as the decorations.”

  I glanced at the walls, trying to notice whatever Echo was seeing. “What are you talking about? They don’t have any decorations.”

  Echo nodded firmly. “Exactly. I hate those places that are so busy with their items of flare littering every square inch of wall space. Give me a nice clean space and a good cold drink and you’ll get my business.”

  I glanced around again and thought she might be in the minority with that opinion, based on how empty the place was.

  For her sake, though, I made myself notice the thick wooden beams in the ceiling and the couple of paintings hung on each side of the bar that looked like they might be original works of a local artist. “You might be onto something there, sis. It is relaxing. Let’s just hope the beer actually tastes good and the lack of decoration isn’t an indication that they skimp on the ingredients and just dilute it all with more water.”

  When the waiter brought the beer, my first sip pushed aside any doubts about the owner’s commitment to quality.

  “Damn,” Echo said. “This place is going to be huge.”

  “You say that about everything,” I said. “I’m starting to suspect that you don’t really mean it about my ghost tours.”

  She didn’t hear me, though. She was already typing a message to her friends on Facebook.

  I leaned back in the booth with a sigh, and stifled a yawn with my hand.

  When she looked back across the table, Echo was staring at me and not bothering to hide the concern on her face. “What are you going to do? For money, I mean. I could hire you at the bakery, but I can’t really give you more than two or three hours a week without firing Niko. And I can’t fire Niko, because he needs the money, too. He might even need it a little more than you do, honestly. Dammit. I wish life was easier.”

  Echo’s concern for both Niko and me made me smile. She was such a mother hen for a woman who was only twenty-one years old.

  By almost all measures, her bakery was a success. Everyone in town loved it. She was able to stay on top of all the bakery’s expenses, her own bills and still had enough to keep Niko employed.

  She had nothing to be ashamed of, unlike me.

  “Don’t worry about it, Echo. I’m not your problem. I’ll just have to go settle for a desk job or something until I find a way to make it work.”

  We both turned to look when the door opened and did a double-take when we saw the gorgeous man walking into the bar alone.

  From the distance, even hidden in shadows, he was stunning: broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs. If he had been wearing a cowboy hat and boots, he would have been perfect on the cover of one of those Western romance novels.

  I made myself look away before the stranger caught me staring at his bulge.

  Echo sprang out of the booth before I could come back to my senses. “Dibs.”

  As she rushed over to introduce herself to him, I slouched deeper into my seat and took a long chug of my beer.

  It made more sense for her to greet him.

  Odds were that Echo had a better chance of hooking up with the stranger than I did. Even if the guy was gay, guys like him never wanted someone like me.

  Dating would be even worse since my business was falling apart. What was I supposed to say when people asked me what I did for a living? Sexy hunks like the man across the bar never took an interest in a guy who slept on his sister’s couch.

  And I’d been sleeping there since we moved to Colorado.

  It was probably time for me to grow up and face reality. I needed to get a boring job that paid the bills and give up on the pipe dream of a fun exotic business of my own.

  I looked back their way to see how my sister was faring.

  His lips were moving, but they were too far away for me to hear anything.

  My sister’s shoulders slouched, though, telling me that she had struck out.

  I felt bad for her for a second. Just because I was miserable didn’t mean that I wanted anything but happiness for her.

  When she turned and pointed at me, I forgot to sympathize, though.

  I was too busy adjusting my hair and shirt and making sure I didn’t have anything stuck between my teeth as she led the dreamboat through the bar to meet me.

  Why the hell did he want to meet me? Do I owe him money?

  “Here he is,” Echo said. “My brother, Icarus. He gives the best ghost tours on either side of the mountain, and you’re in luck because he still has time for you.”

  I raised my eyebrows at my sister to remind her that she hadn’t told me his name while I reached my hand out to shake his.

  “Harley, Harley Winfield. Pleased to meet you.” He had a deep voice that warmed my soul and made me think of leather and whiskey.

  I rarely let myself think of what kind of man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but Harley would have definitely made a good prototype.

  Too bad he was only there for business.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Icarus Jones. The original tour tonight ended up running short,” I said, stretching the truth as much as I dared. I didn’t want to scare away a paying customer by having him think the tour was so bad that nobody was interested in it.

  I knew the tour was good.

  Everyone who did try it always had a great time.

  The problem was just getting enough people to tell their friends and get the word-of-mouth advertising going. “If we leave right now, we will have time to get through the whole tour as long as you don’t mind running a little late.”

  “That would be great. I ended up on the wrong corner and it took me a while to get here once I realized my mistake. I greatly appreciate you making the time.”

  As I stood up, Echo said, “I’ll leave you two alone. I’ve got to get to bed so I can wake up in time for work tomorrow.” Turning her attention to Harley, she added, “I’m the owner of Cupcake Kisses. If you ever need a cake or pie or basically anything with flour and sugar, I’m your gal.”

  Echo picked up her glass and chugged the entire drink, spun on her heels and marched to the door.

  “That’s some sister,” Harley said.

  My gaydar had not been able to make a guess on Harley’s sexuality until that moment.

  Suppressing a groan at the thought that Harley would definitely be making a visit to my sister’s bakery as soon as possible, I led him out the door into the cool night air.

  The weather after the long cold winter was perfect for a romantic stroll around the town pointing out all the historical haunts, and cuddling together to keep each other warm. And he wouldn’t even have had a chance to learn that I was a failure if I could have swept him off his feet and back to his place before he learned any more about me.

  I had no intentions of taking anyone back to Echo’s ever again.

  Oh well. Thirty bucks is thirty bucks.

  “This way. The tour starts down at the end of the block.”

  Two

  Harley

  The ghost tour had been a blast. The stories were interesting, but Icarus, my guide, was even more entertaining. He was a natural storyteller and had mesmerized me from the get-go. I was disappointed when we reached the last house, and even more so as he got to the end of its ghost tale.

  “A
nd when they found Manuel in the kitchen the next morning, stabbed with a butcher knife and surrounded by a pool of his own blood, the town gossip quickly latched on to the story that Manuel had been married to Juliet, but had also been having a not-so-secret affair with François.

  “The townspeople of the day used to joke that Manuel would have been better off marrying his gay lover and screwing Juliet on the side. But none of them knew the full truth of the story. Doing some of my own research I learned that there’s more to the tale than meets the eye.”

  He paused and left me hanging until I said, “What happened?”

  He looked back at the house.

  When he spoke, his voice was quiet. I half expected him to aim a flashlight at his face like we used to do as kids when camping and telling ghost stories.

  “The police report mentioned that Manuel had been stabbed by not one, but two butcher knives. That in and of itself is not too shocking since Manuel was a professional chef. There were knives all over that kitchen. What is shocking, however, was that three months later a certain François Dubois married a Juliet Henderson in a small town just outside of Mexico City. It seems that they had both planned the scam from the start. Which person Manuel had gone public with and which one he had dated on the side would have been irrelevant. Either way, he would’ve been stabbed by François and Juliet and they would have ran off with the gold stash Manuel had inherited and kept in the basement ever since his parents had died.”

  “No way. That’s all true?” I asked, hearing the surprise in my own voice.