In Other Words...Murder

by In Other Words. . . Murder [MM] (retail) (epub)

  Harold brushed this aside as sheer nonsense, gave his nose a couple of squeezes, which caused it to honk loudly, and waddled away down the cement ramp leading to the street.

  We watched until his baggy figure vanished into the night.

  When we got home, I poured J.X. a couple of fingers of his favorite Jack Daniels and patched up his scraped hand in the master bathroom.

  “I know you feel terrible about assaulting—” J.X. flinched, whether from the antiseptic or the word assault. “Happy Harold, but honestly, that was one of the bravest things I ever saw.”

  J.X. glowered. “Go ahead and laugh.”

  “I’m not laughing. I mean it. I know how you feel about clowns, and you didn’t even hesitate. You just went for him.”

  J.X. groaned. “God. Don’t remind me. It’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t sue me.”

  “I don’t think he’ll sue you. He seems like a-a kindhearted clown. The kind of person who goes into clowning to help people.”

  J.X. rolled his eyes. I can’t say I didn’t find the situation a little comical, but J.X. really had shown courage. Also, an unexpected impulsive streak. But then again, looking back, he’d tackled me once too. And with even less provocation.

  When I had taped his hand to my satisfaction—and his bemusement—we retired to our chamber and undressed for bed.

  I was just punching the pillows behind my back into a comfortable nest and reaching for the remote control, when he asked, “What did David have to say that was so urgent?”

  “Something useful for a change. He remembered a couple of things about Dicky’s sister that might make it possible to track her down.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to get involved in looking for Dicky.”

  “I thought I wasn’t either. But.”

  “But what? This is not a good use of your time, Kit.”

  “What is a good use of my time? Sitting around waiting for Jerry to kill me?”

  He didn’t say the obvious thing: shouldn’t you be starting those book proposals? Instead, after a reflective moment, he asked, “Do you feel responsible somehow?”

  “For Dicky? Hell no. I just…” This was kind of awkward. “I’m curious, I guess. It’s probably all those years of writing mysteries.”

  J.X. said grimly, “Don’t forget. Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not Mr. Pinkerton.”

  “You’re not Inspector Appleby either.”

  “No. True.” I turned that over for a moment or two, said thoughtfully, “I wonder if I should try spinning off Inspector Appleby?”

  “You mean give him a series of his own?”

  I nodded. “There really isn’t a mainstream cozy series with a gay protagonist.”

  J.X. laughed. “I thought Inspector Appleby wasn’t gay?”

  “Ah.” I smiled at him. “Things change.”

  He slipped his arm around my shoulder, tugged me over, and kissed me. I kissed him back and rested my head against him. It was nice like this. Being tender, romantic together even without having sex. I wondered if a time would come I would take having this for granted. I hoped not. That I would ever take it for granted, that is.

  After a time, J.X. reached over and picked up one of the travel brochures on the nightstand. “You never said about Italy.”

  “I never said what about Italy?”

  “About making the trip a honeymoon.”

  “I…”

  I’d known this was coming. I just hadn’t expected it to come so quickly. Wasn’t it awfully soon to be planning another wedding? We’d only been living together a couple of months. It had only been a year since my relationship with David had ended.

  I tried to think of something to say to play for time, but for once nothing came to me.

  As J.X. studied my face, his own changed. His eyes darkened. His smile twisted. “No?”

  I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take the idea of hurting him. I mean, what the hell. I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone in my entire life. Couldn’t imagine my life without him now. Or rather, I could imagine and only too well what life without him would be like, and the pain of it was horrific. I’d known David for three years before we tied the knot, and it had still been a disaster. Could J.X. and I do any worse?

  I sat up, dislodging his arm. “Yes,” I said. “Of course yes.”

  It was a relief to see the light come back into his face. His smile was incandescent. He reached for me again, and I said quickly, “But Italy, no. I mean, yes. Italy itself, yes. Getting married, yes. Big fancy wedding trip to Italy with the families, no.”

  He looked confused. “No? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t fair, but David and I did the big commitment ceremony thing, and I just don’t want that again. I never did want it. He did.”

  Comprehension came into J.X.’s face. “I see.”

  “I wanted something small and private and meaningful. Instead, I got something big and showy and superficial, which pretty much defined our relationship. This time—if it’s okay with you—I’d like to keep things real.”

  “Either way it would be real, Kit. The way I feel about you is as real as it gets.”

  “My feelings for you are real too. In fact…well.”

  J.X. said ruefully, “Come on. Throw me a bone. My ego could use some stroking about now.”

  I made a face. “I’m not good at saying these things, but I didn’t even know I had it in me to care this much.”

  He beamed.

  “Which probably sounds—”

  “It sounds pretty nice to me,” J.X. said.

  “It’s the truth. I never thought of myself as a romantic guy—I’m not a romantic guy.”

  “Well…”

  “But the way I feel about you…” I cleared my throat. “If I was another kind of man, a romantic man, I’d be…doing romantic things for you.”

  His smile widened. “Would you? Like what?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. I’d send you flowers, or one of those oversize embossed cards, or maybe write you a poem or something.”

  J.X. grinned. “Roses are red, blood is too, I like to solve mysteries—sometimes with you.”

  I laughed. “Something like that, yes. Which is why I leave these things to you. You’re the romantic in this family.”

  His smile faded. He said, “I am a romantic. And I want us to really be a family. I want to marry you, Christopher. I want to love, honor, cherish, and protect you—and take you to Italy on our honeymoon. Will you marry me?”

  Somehow we had gone from laughter to solemnity.

  I swallowed. A tiny little gulp of a sound I hoped he didn’t hear.

  “Yes,” I said. “I will marry you.”

  Sex is rarely just sex.

  When we’d first moved in together, it felt like every time I rolled over, J.X. wanted sex. Not just sex—penetrative sex, preferably with me being the one penetrated. According to J.X., that was how I preferred it, even needed it.

  Which, as I pointed out to him in one of our occasional spats, was certainly opportune for him.

  That hurt him. Quite a bit. So much so, that for a couple of weeks we had barely gone beyond a bit of frottage and petting. We had moved past the initial harm, but he’d still made no move to penetrate me during sex. He had offered himself to me, but to my horror—and for one of the few times in my life—I’d been unable to perform.

  That had been a black night of the soul. Not to mention the penis.

  Nor did my condition spontaneously clear up, no matter how much loving attention J.X. lavished on that area of my anatomy.

  Finally, I got desperate enough to go to the doctor, who reassured me there was nothing physically wrong with the plumbing. It seemed it was all in my head.

  In my other head.

  A week of soul-searching had followed, and then J.X. and I had finally talked.

  It had been painful but also freeing to admit he had been right about thin
gs I was still uncomfortable with, uneasy with. And harder still to confess I had trouble asking for those things even though I had been craving them since the initial argument.

  He’d been solemn and serious. “You have to be able to say it, Kit. I don’t ever want to feel like I’ve forced you into something you didn’t want. I don’t want to be that man.”

  “I know. And I don’t want to be a man too afraid to ask for what he needs because I’m afraid of what people will think.”

  His bewilderment was genuine. “How the hell would anyone know? But more importantly, since when do you care what anyone thinks?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose it’s some weird, lingering adolescent insecurity.” I groaned. “Which doesn’t mean it isn’t actual.”

  “I’ll say. You’ve actually second-guessed yourself right into impotency,” he said bluntly. “And me into being afraid to touch you.”

  I winced. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

  He was quiet, thinking it over. “Let’s take it slowly. Let’s just try being together without having sex. And let’s promise to both share what we’re feeling.”

  “That’s it?” I was dismayed. “Your solution is no sex?”

  He smiled reluctantly. “Just until we’re both comfortable again.”

  “Okay. But…”

  “What about this? Why don’t I give you a full-body massage? With oil?”

  I had immediately brightened. “That might work.”

  Yeah, that had worked all right. Long before the end of the massage, I was humping the mattress and begging J.X. to fuck me. Which he did with a gentle but inexorable dominance that left no room for doubt.

  It had taken me forty years to figure it out. But there was no going back from the knowledge.

  Nor did I want to go back from it.

  I also didn’t want it to define our relationship. As much as I loved sex—and finally having the kind of sex I craved—our life was about a lot more than sex. Nor did I want rules and rituals. Fetish was never going to be my thing—or his—and pain was a nonstarter for both of us.

  Now our sex life was relaxed and happy, sometimes serious, sometimes silly, but always satisfying. So when J.X. pounced after I accepted his proposal, I had no compunction planting my hand in his chest and saying, “Not so much of the caveman stuff, if you please!”

  He grinned, his smile white, eyes shining. “You kind of like the caveman stuff, though, don’t you, Mr. Holmes?”

  I sniffed in disapproval and then burst out laughing as he pretended to savage me, growling ferociously and covering my neck and shoulders with kisses and little bites. “Who are you supposed to be? The Werewolf of Lombard?”

  J.X. knelt between my thighs, grinning. “Mm, mm, good. Christopher Holmes. The other white meat.”

  I laughed unsteadily, sucked in a couple of deep breaths of anticipation, and reached for a pillow to prop my head so I could watch everything he did. To me. Yeah, that too was a turn-on, once I’d learned to focus on what I was looking at versus what I looked like. His gaze rose to meet mine, and his eyes were so warm, they looked almost golden.

  “You’re beautiful, Kit.”

  I snorted. “Go on which ya!”

  “I’m serious. You’re beautiful.”

  “Maybe to you.”

  “Definitely to me. I love every single solitary inch of you…” He proceeded to demonstrate, wrapping his lips around the head of my cock and drawing me into the exquisite wet heat of his mouth, farther, farther.

  I moaned, tried not to thrust, but it was like trying not to breathe. Your lungs start to burn, and you have to inhale or die. I grabbed a couple of fistfuls of the raw-silk comforter and rocked my hips up as pleasure kindled, caught light, and blazed into life. “Oh God. Oh God. That. Do that.”

  J.X. answered my shuddering moan, his hands closing around my ass, pulling me in deeper still.

  I could see the silky, black shine of his hair falling over his eyes, the convulsive jerks of his throat muscles, little tremors shooting through my own thighs, and the root of my cock, nested in curling blond hair, thick and pounding with preorgasmic blood-surge, pulsing to the beat of this incredible deep-throat suck. The thunder in my ears drowned out all other sound, made this moment so intensely, fiercely isolated from the rest of the world. I forgot there was a rest of the world.

  Pressure in my chest, a crowding tightness—the first couple of times this had happened I wondered if I was having a heart attack, my body succumbing to overwhelming sensation; now I knew to throw my head back and let orgasm roll through me.

  But no. Not yet. J.X. drew back, withdrawing that delicious, wet wrapping of tongue, throat, lips.

  He asked huskily, “You want me inside you, Kit?”

  “Yes,” I panted. “God, yes.”

  “How bad do you want it?”

  Instinctively I raised my legs, giving J.X. entrance. “Bad. I want it so bad.” I mean, to hell with grammar when you’re on fire with desire and longing.

  “Me too. God. And you think you’re not beautiful…”

  I gave another of those guttural, shattered moans as J.X. impaled me, shoving in, slick-hot inch by slick-hot inch, until I could feel the press of his balls against my backside. We shifted again, instinctively, practiced at this now, making room for each other, accommodating each other.

  J.X. thrust cautiously a couple of times, making sure all was well, and I let him know with little cries and moans and writhing that all was very well indeed. He began to move more urgently. The bedsprings squeaked, the floorboards creaked, and I was distantly reminded of the first time we had done this, after a decade apart. I laughed, and he covered my mouth, wanting my full attention.

  No worry there.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist as J.X. increased the pace, shortening his strokes to quick, frantic slices that finally freed orgasm, that rich, rolling flood of pleasure like no other. I yelled, sinking my fingers in his shoulders, gasping as semen shot from me in hot spurts, spattering his chest and chin. Unsurprised when only a few strokes later, J.X. came too with a shout he turned into a prolonged wolf howl.

  We finished with kisses and laughter.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I wasn’t kidding. I am not a romantic.

  But on Friday morning I woke with the unfamiliar and uncomfortable desire to do something romantic for my soft and sentimental soon-to-be husband.

  Besides me, J.X. has one other weakness. Cake. He’s a fiend for cake. And because he’s also a fiend for fitness, we never have any on the premises. He finds the combination of flour and frosting too tempting for anything but the most special of special occasions.

  So after he left to go running, I hied myself to our favorite local bakery to pick up a cake for a nice celebratory engagement dinner.

  As usual the place was packed, but the line moved quickly and before I knew it, I was at the counter trying to choose from a selection of Halloween-themed pastries. That was something I hadn’t figured on. I had the option of an orange Jack-o’-lantern cake, a purple cake with a giant black spider on top, an eyeball cake, and an elegant white cake with a haunted house on top.

  I explained my dilemma to the girl behind the counter. “Can you scrape Happy Halloween off that and change it to Happy Ever After?” I pointed to the haunted-house cake.

  She raised her brows, studying the drafty-looking chocolate mansion. “We could,” she said doubtfully. “It’ll take about half an hour to make the change. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to special order a regular cake?”

  “How long would that take?”

  “Forty-eight hours.”

  I shook my head. “I need it for this evening.”

  “Okaaay, well… If you want to sit down and wait?”

  I paid for the cake, ordered a coffee and something called a “mummy brownie,” which was an ordinary, delicious brownie wrapped in ribbons of white icing with a couple of candy eyes, and sat down to wait.

  I had ju
st bitten the head off my brownie when the chair across from me was pulled out from the table with a jarring scrape and Jerry sat down.

  Jerry. In the flesh. Looking unnervingly unchanged by four months of incarceration.

  “Christopher, we need to talk.” His blue gaze was wounded. “How could you think such terrible things about me?”

  I closed my mouth in time to keep the brownie from falling out, chewed rapidly, swallowed, and said, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m picking up cupcakes for Violet’s Halloween party.”

  “You’re not supposed to come within a hundred yards of me.”

  “Christopher,” he chided. “It’s a bakery. I have a right to buy cupcakes.”

  “No, you don’t. Not while I’m in the shop. And you sure as hell don’t have a right to sit down at my table.”

  He chuckled at my naïveté. “That stupid restraining order is being challenged right now. It’s already been dismissed, if I know Violet.” He sighed appreciatively. “She’s a go-getter. I wish you could meet her.”

  I opened my mouth, but in the Twilight Zone no one can hear you scream.

  “I love her,” he added. “I didn’t know how lonely I was until Violet.” He seemed dead serious, like he really wanted me to know.

  “I… Great,” I managed. “I’m glad. But that doesn’t change—”

  “I knew you would be happy for me because deep down inside you’re a good person. I know you’re doing all these terrible things to me to earn points with your cop boyfriend. But I believe you’re better than that. I know we can work this out like grown-ups.”

  “What is it you think we can work out? You tried to kill me.”

  “I didn’t,” he said indignantly. A few people in line glanced over at us and then away. “I keep telling you, I was trying to protect you.”

  Jerry and I had not spoken since the night he’d tried to smash my head in with a meat hammer, so right there I took this insistence as proof he was either a pathological liar or nuts or both. He believed his own lies. I had no doubt of that. I also had no doubt he’d tried to kill me the night in question.