Up to Trouble Book Two
An FBI agent stuck behind a desk.
A man in a new city, living with his new boyfriend.
A plot to quietly steal government data.
FBI Special Agent Aaron Pearce is running data searches and doing paperwork for agents in the field, where he should be himself. He is bored and on edge and takes his frustration out on everyone around him, including Mark, his new boyfriend who’s just moved in with him.
Mark Beecher left his family and friends to move to Washington, D.C. to try and make things work with Pearce. It’s a big city and everyone seems to either be in politics or law enforcement, except for him. It’s isolating and emotional, and he’s wondering if he made the right decision. When he notices a red car following him to and from work, it worries him that the driver might be connected to the case in Detroit that brought him and Pearce together. He has no one but Pearce to depend on in this city, and Mark feels more distant from him than ever before.
Pearce is drawn into another agent’s case involving missing government data discs, which leads him to one common factor: the catering company where Mark is employed. With a big political party on the company’s schedule, Pearce realizes it is the perfect setup for an undercover operation, and a way for he and Mark to feel closer. He doesn't think twice about disobeying orders to stay out of the field, and risks not only his career, but his life as well, to join Mark in an undercover operation that will change their lives forever.
Mark woke up to the smell of bacon and eggs. He sighed and rolled over in bed, pressing his hard-on into the mattress and his face into Pearce’s pillow. The sheets on Pearce’s side of the bed were still a little warm against his bare skin, and he breathed in the man’s scent from the pillowcase. It was the same scent he had first noticed back in January, when Pearce had pushed him into a freight elevator in the FBI’s Detroit office. At that moment, Mark had simultaneously hated and wanted Pearce, and now, just a few months later, here he was, living with the man.
Life was strange.
READ MOREMark rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Pearce’s ceiling. Pearce’s bed. Pearce’s apartment. Mark’s belongings still sat in boxes stacked in the spare room. Some weekend soon, when Mark wasn’t working a party, he planned to sort through his things. Maybe grab some CDs for his car. If he was lucky, maybe Pearce would invite him to unpack some stuff, add a few items to the apartment. Hell, Pearce might even suggest Mark add his CDs to the collection in the living room. Not mix them together—nothing that crazy—but maybe get a shelf or two of his own.
He had found it was tricky to know where he could place things in the apartment. Pearce was a territorial animal; Mark had seen that when he had added his toiletries to the bathroom. Pearce had come along after him and rearranged things in the medicine cabinet and on the countertop. The man seemed to have his apartment ordered just as he liked, and Mark couldn’t help feeling like an intruder. If only Pearce would help him figure out where he could put some things, maybe clear off more than one or two shelves for him. But each time Mark asked, Pearce would make noncommittal sounds of agreement and never follow through.
Pearce had been nodding off on the sofa when Mark had gotten home last night just after eleven. The drive home had been uneventful; Mark hadn’t noticed anyone following him, and he was exhausted from working the dinner party with Audra and Brenda. Darlene had had to go home and take care of her daughter.
Mark had touched Pearce’s shoulder to wake him, and the man got to his feet, eyes still glassy with sleep. They hugged, shared a quick kiss, and went to bed together. No mention of the red Escort or the daily frustrations at the job. Just two exhausted people living together and trying to make it work.
Now Mark’s cock pulsed, and before he could reach down to take hold of himself, the bedroom door eased open. Mark raised his head and squinted in that direction, smiling at the blurry vision of Pearce peering in at him around the door.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Pearce said and stepped into the room. “Well, I see not all of you is a sleepyhead.”
Mark chuckled and stretched, arching his back and pushing his hard-on up against the thin sheet. He could feel the damp spot of precum soaking into the material. After the stretch, he turned his head to smile up at Pearce, who had moved around to stand over him on his side of the bed. Pearce wore a pair of thin cotton sleep pants, the front now tented out with his interest. Mark looked up along Pearce’s bare torso and ran his hand through the dark, trimmed hair that covered Pearce’s flat belly. “Hi, there.”
“Need some help with that?” Pearce asked, his gaze locked on the bulge of Mark’s erection beneath the sheet.
“You know, I could use some help with this.” Mark pulled the sheet away. “It’s so big and awkward, it’s too much for me to handle all on my own.”
Pearce knelt beside the bed and, grinning, leaned in to give Mark a soft kiss on the lips. After backing off a few inches, Pearce smiled at him, then moved down to suck Mark’s nipple, making Mark pull in a quick breath through his teeth. Pearce swirled his tongue around the hardened nub, then drifted lower and parted the dark blond hair on Mark’s chest and belly with his tongue. The whiskers along Pearce’s jaw brushed against Mark’s cock, and he groaned at the sensation. A moment later, the hot width of Pearce’s tongue painted the shaft with saliva from the tip to the root and back again.
When the sudden, wet heat of Pearce’s mouth closed around his cock, Mark gasped and raised his arms over his head to clutch the rails of the headboard.
“Oh God,” Mark groaned. “Now this is a wake-up call.”
COLLAPSE