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Chapter 1
The only warning had been a millisecond of ominous crunching before the kitchen floor collapsed beneath Dylan Gallagher’s feet. He clawed against slippery linoleum, a muffled yelp erupting below.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” There was nothing to grip. His legs bicycled in open air as he tried to keep his body in the flooded kitchen. Rushing water funneled around him, and another section crumbled. Dylan’s climber instincts kicked in. He covered his head and bent his knees, bracing against the coming impact.
He landed in darkness with a painful, lung-rattling thump. Dazed and choking on dusty oxygen, he tested his arms and legs. Everything could move, thankfully. But everything hurt. Jesus Christ, everything really hurt. But it should hurt worse…
A softer than expected surface cushioned his spine. Something even softer was under his neck. Underneath the rubble it felt like a mattress? And a pillow?
Oh god. This meant…
Dylan had fallen through the apartment floor directly into Derek Chang’s bed.
The realization sent him flailing toward a seated position until a slimy wet something dragged over his cheek.
“Gah.” He tried to scoot away, but his head slammed into the wall. A heavy weight pressed down on his chest, squelching his back into soaked fabric beneath him. He wiped drywall sludge from his face and blinked twice, vision still blurred from the eye-watering pain of his landing. A dog the size of a goddamn dire wolf was on top of him. Not good.
Another round of blinking cleared Dylan’s vision enough for a quick scan of the room. It was dim, but not dim enough to prevent Dylan from seeing every exposed and rigid plane of his shocked neighbor’s body. Dylan gave the animal a gentle nudge because the ribs beneath its giant paw were aching.
As the dog turned back to look at Derek, Derek seemed to unfreeze from his panic. He rushed to the hellhound that may have been assessing whether Dylan would make a tasty meal and lifted it off Dylan with almost preternatural strength. He set the dog in the slightly illuminated corner, away from the debris. “Oh my god. Are you okay, buddy?” Derek checked and rechecked the animal’s limbs and joints, running his hands over the black-and-white fur while muttering. Dylan couldn’t make out most of the words, but there was an unexpected catch in Derek’s voice as he uttered each pained “fuck.”
The creature itself appeared unconcerned with having just survived catastrophe. It sauntered away from Derek’s evaluation and again approached the pile of rubble Dylan was still sprawled on top of.
“You’re okay. Thank god.” Again, Derek was speaking to the dog.
Water glistened over Derek. The leak must have happened first, waking Derek up and giving him enough time to get out of the way. Shit. Derek really was lucky he wasn’t underneath when the ceiling collapsed. There wasn’t any dust on his… oh fuck… Derek was only wearing tight black boxer briefs that showed… stuff. Stuff that Dylan, who had just fallen through a ceiling, should absolutely not be noticing. But nobody could completely ignore the outline of a dick when it was right in front of him, even if said dick also belonged to a complete dick. At least Dylan had fallen asleep in his jeans at his computer. He might not be wearing a shirt, but in the shadowy room, it wouldn’t be noticeable that those jeans were suddenly tighter.
No, Dylan, remember this man is not for you.
Dylan had only been staying in the upstairs apartment for a few months, but the several mortifying run-ins he’d already had with Derek Chang had settled Dylan’s opinion of him. And based on the parade of men who had been exiting Derek’s apartment on a regular basis, even a version of Dylan not coated with demolished drywall muck was not Derek’s type.
Whatever muscle responsible for cringing felt as sore and sprained as the rest of Dylan’s body.
Running a hand over his slimy hair, Dylan forced his attention from the man in the corner and up to the gaping ceiling hole.
The lingering shock and exhaustion must have fried his brain because Dylan said the first (and absolutely most asinine) sentence he could have thought to say: “I think there’s an ‘It’s Raining Men’ joke in here somewhere.”
The sound of dripping counted the silent beats passing between them.
A hoarse huff came out of Derek. Wait… was that… a laugh?
But with just the best timing ever, another small section of ceiling collapsed, sending yet another plume of dust into the space between the two men, prompting Derek to shield the dog with his broad torso.
The huff, or almost laugh, or whatever Dylan’s overly optimistic brain had thought it was shifted to become a growl worthy of a morally gray hero in a fantasy novel. Derek straightened, and the small pillar of light from the hallway illuminated an infuriatingly attractive scowl so stormy Dylan was even more sure he’d imagined that initial laugh.
“Dad jokes? Really, dude?” Derek scratched behind his dog’s floppy black ears. “He’s traumatized now. Poor fella.” Derek kneeled beside the beast, mumbling again in the tone an elderly auntie uses on a toddler before booping said toddler’s button nose.
“Traumatized? His monster tail just whacked me in the face because he was wagging it.” Dylan ducked away.
“He’s frail.” Derek slid his hand over the dog’s spine. “Arthritis. And he’s probably just happy he didn’t get crushed to death.”
“That Dalmatian crossed with a polar bear could probably withstand an entire iceberg.”
Scathing. That was the word for the look Derek was giving Dylan.
“He’s a harlequin Great Dane American Bulldog mix.” Derek waited an inscrutable beat before frowning. “And he’s old. And why the hell are we arguing about whether or not my poor, sleeping, elderly dog could have been hurt by half a ceiling and a whole-ass human man falling on top of him?” Derek’s words were more bewildered than furious. “And the ceiling… shit.” His hand kept petting the fur, but he was focused on the tableau of destruction. Every muscle in Derek’s body tensed again.
Damn. How often did this guy go to the gym?