Chapter 1

There are roommates from hell, and then, there’s Ludwig Dreck, the blight of my existence, and the rancid, oozing cherry on top of a pile of refuse.

Lud was a nice enough guy, but damn. He took a dump with the door wide open most days, and refused to use the ventilation fan for some reason. At least there were two bathrooms, though one was only a powder room—no shower, and it didn’t have anything to help with the funk. No potpourri on Earth could fix that.

He chewed with his mouth open, slurped anything liquid, walked around in the buff, which would be a total turn-on if he showered more than once a week, as he was most definitely worth a second or third look. And he liked to jack off all loud and shit—yes, I could hear him through the walls

He had his own TV. I didn’t own one, and I was frankly too busy, anyway, to keep up with shows and movies. It was better this way, because otherwise, I’d think of the past, and the pain of my lover’s death still lingered. When Lud was home, I heard him laughing or swearing at whatever he was watching, even though his door was closed.

Our paths typically crossed in the mornings when I got off my shift. I had a day off every once in a while, but I preferred to work a lot—kept the demons at bay. Lud traveled a lot, which gave me time to clean up after him and air out the place. Even in winter, I had the windows open to keep things as fresh as possible.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I needed a roommate to help pay the bills, I would have kicked him out years ago. Yes, years. I had been desperate—and now I just didn’t have the heart to do it. I was used to his ways, sad as that sounded. Though, aside from Lud’s ghastly habits, he had never been late on rent. He always paid his share of utilities and groceries, and chipped in with emergencies, like the time the power went out for days in our suburb because of a really bad ice storm, and he bought a generator to tide us over. He wouldn’t let me pay for any of that, and had been unlike his usually careless, pain-in-the-ass self. He’d been a whole other person.

Lud could be clean, at least for going to work. He practically lived in jeans and T-shirts or shorts, when he could be bothered to dress, and shaved when he left on business, sometimes not. As for his love life, my roommate had never brought anyone to the apartment for a quickie that I knew of. Not that I cared, but I had no idea which way he swung—aside from his dick, which was huge—but I hadn’t noticed that either. Or his cement-block abdominal muscles, thick and toned hairy legs, the tramp stamp right above his ass of a really cool dragon…No, sir. The only thing I cared about—tried to, anyway—was his reliability income-wise. Hygiene would be great, too, but I knew all about beggars…

Sure, his natural, clean scent was…arousing. But the usual for Lud was not having washed in days after coming back from his trips. It was as if he had to be as disgusting as possible. I wondered sometimes if he was putting something out of his head, a bad experience maybe. Or he was just being an ass, testing me at every turn.

When I had asked my then-prospective co-habitant—a thirty-nine-year-old, six-foot-three, light brown-haired, gray-eyed hunk of a man—what he did for a living during the interview I’d held for potential roommates, Lud had grinned broadly, his dimples cutting deep in his barely shaved cheeks, and said, “Traveling Consultant, of sorts.”

I had speculated since then who on Earth would “consult” with someone like he had turned out to be, but what did I know? My life experience was pretty narrow in some areas.

All the same, the fact that my life revolved around complaints about Lud—at least in my head—was a reflection of a really sad and lonely existence.

At forty-one, I was the night manager of a twenty-four-hour family-owned diner that had been around for over a century. No one else wanted to manage that shift, or deal with the riff-raff that turned up at the out-of-the-way restaurant late at night, half an hour from my apartment.

I was a big guy and not easily intimidated, however. I’d been the night cook for a long time before being promoted. As the diner served alcohol, I sometimes acted as a bouncer, and was used to wielding a baseball bat when necessary, and giving a punch or two. Maybe a kick.