by Amy Lane
“Overwhelmed?” he asked perceptively, and was rewarded by Jackson’s quiet smile and a finger touching his nose.
“Got it in one.”
“It’s good that you made an appointment with the rabbi again.”
Jackson nodded. “I meant it about recovery.”
Ellery nodded. “I know you did. Just… just remember. Even if you fuck up again, don’t… don’t hide it. Not out of shame or a misguided sense of trying to protect me. I can’t do this if I’m afraid you’re not being honest with me.”
Jackson nodded soberly. “Understood.” Someone outside their door laughed loudly, and he grimaced. “All those people,” he said, sounding like a child. “I can’t believe you know all those people!”
“Uh, no.” Ellery smirked. “The only people I knew were at our old firm, or at the courthouse. And truthfully, Carlyle Langdon did call me this week, but it wasn’t to socialize.”
“Uh, what’d he want?” Jackson asked, curious. His hand stilled in Billy Bob’s fur, and Billy Bob swatted at him so he’d resume the petting.
“He wanted to tell me he was defending Robert Sampson and wondered if there was anything he should know.”
Jackson’s eyes got really big. “Oh my God, really? When was that?”
“Thursday. You were at the doctor’s, and when you came out, well, your news was all I wanted to hear.”
Same prognosis—surgery in two weeks. But Ellery had still needed to know.
“What did you say?”
Ellery couldn’t help his grin. “I told him he’d need a scuba suit to swim through the slime. Then I told him everything Sampson had done, including the stuff the police haven’t been able to prove yet.” Proving the sexual abuse had been the hardest. Nobody wanted to come forward, and Martin and Ash Carver’s son were both dead.
“What did he say?” Jackson asked curiously.
Ellery’s grin of satisfaction went nuclear. “He said he’d plead for twenty-five years and get the life sentence off the table, but that was as low as he’d go.”
Jackson nodded. “Not perfect. I’d love to see him locked up for life. But twenty-five years ain’t bad.”
Ellery grinned. “I thought so. I’m sure Siren Herrera will be pleased. Not a bad week’s work, Detective.”
“You too, Counselor.”
They sat in the quiet for a moment, and Ellery said, “They’re all your friends, you know.”
Jackson shook his head. “No, no, they’re your people too—”
“No. They’re yours. Because I didn’t feel like I needed people before you came into my life.”
Jackson blinked. “Because your life was perfect before I showed up.”
Ellery snorted. “Maybe. But it was lonely. And it was cold. Besides, listen to all those people outside, happy to be here. That’s what you did.”
“That’s what we did,” Jackson said softly.
Ellery leaned forward and brushed their lips together. “That’s what we did.” He pulled back and smiled. “And we need to go back out there and take care of them.”
Jackson nodded and gave Billy Bob one final pet before hefting his buddy onto the bed, where he curled up for a solitary snooze.
He stood and stretched. “Come on, Counselor. Time to move.”
“I know it,” Ellery said, taking his offered hand and leveraging off the bed. They would be okay. Jackson would be okay. Recovery was nothing more or less than changing, every day, to adapt to your life without the bad things and embracing the good. “Come on,” he said, tugging gently. “We’ve got a lot to do.”
MoonFish—A Surprise Visit
BONUS READ!
Remember Ellery and Jackson talking about the time Ellery’s mother came to visit?
This is what really happened….
Holy Fucknuggets
BURTON LOOKED at the information on his screen and blinked. He knew that name.
“Uh, Jase?”
Jason Constance looked harried, his appealing square-jawed features pale and haggard under his neatly trimmed goatee. Tracking down the trained mercenaries who’d been “modified” into psychopaths had taken a toll on them all these past months. Constance needed to get the hell away from headquarters, even if it was just to get laid and have drinks on the beach.
“Who is that?” he asked, blinking hard.
“Man, you are looking like shit. Can you get away from here for a minute?”
“Depends on who that is.”
“Remember Rivers and Cramer?”
“Taylor Cramer, Esquire—his father?”
Burton stared at him. “His mother. Man, I told you about meeting her two months ago. Look where she popped up.”
Jason sat up as though stung. “Holy fucknuggets!”
“Yes, sir, that is mercenary chatter, and yes, she does seem to have a hit out on her. Why do you ask?”
“Who’s taking the contract? One of Lacey’s guys?”
Burton frowned as he tried to interpret the chatter on his screen. “Looks like one of the guys working for Corduroy. It says something about Mrs. Cramer putting pressure on the military to investigate the organization and see if any of the branches are utilizing them as a resource.”
Jason’s quiet snort told Burton that yes, a number of high-ranking military intelligence officers were not looking forward to having Ellery’s mother shove a magnifying glass up their sphincters.
“Only one?” he asked.
“Mm… nope. Two. But they’re under strict orders to make it look like an accident, and to have no witnesses and no other casualties. Anything looking like a hit that takes out civilians or other members of the family negates the contract.”
Jason looked thoughtful. “So, uh, Rivers and Cramer. Think they can handle themselves?”
“Rivers, absolutely. Cramer follows Jackson’s lead and tries to stay out of the way.” Unless he lost his temper, but Burton kept that to himself.
“Okay, do you have a relationship with Mrs. Cramer?”
Burton’s eyebrows did something complicated that made his face feel scrunched. “Define relationship.”
“Does. She. Know. You? Oh my God, Burton—Ernie would skin you alive!”
They were alone in the room or he wouldn’t have said that, but Burton smiled. His face went soft when he thought about Ernie—he couldn’t help it. He’d trusted Jason with that info too. He and Ernie had had Jase out to dinner once or twice, always under the strictest of secrecy, and Ernie had been as gentle with Constance as he had been with the feral kittens he cared for on a regular basis. You’d think Burton’s CO, hard-bitten, tough as nails, as cold a killer as Lee had ever seen, wouldn’t need to be treated with kid gloves, but Burton could see it too.
Constance was getting frayed at the edges and thin in spots. The trained-serial-killer thing had taken it out of all of them.
“She’s met me before, sir. She wasn’t at her best, but she’d remember me.” You didn’t forget the people you met in the waiting room when you were hoping to hear your son would live. Particularly when your son’s lover was hanging on by a thread, as well.
“Good. I need you to make contact and get her to the West Coast. Ask her if she wouldn’t like to visit her favorite kid. I want her in their company at all times—and you and me, we’re going to be their shadows.”
Burton blinked. “Are we taking out the targets, sir?”
“They’re Corduroy, right?”
“Yessir.”
“Then we capture and question and see if we can negate the contract. Unless their targets are in imminent danger, understood?”
“Understood.”
“But first….”
Burton sighed. Even upset and holding Jackson Rivers together by force of will, Taylor Cramer was a formidable woman.
“YOU’RE GOING where?” Ernie was pretty psychic, but he didn’t always know the details of Burton’s little trips.
“Sacramento.” Burton ran his palm from Ernie’s shoulder blades to
the hollow above his round bottom. “Tomorrow morning. Me and Jason.”
Ernie relaxed into the caress. “Well, if Jason’s going with you, that’s okay.” He looked up from the vat of boiling oil he was cooking pastries in. “And the apple fritters will still be fresh. You can take them with you!”
Burton blinked slowly. “Uh, why would I—”
“They’re Lucy Satan’s favorite,” Ernie said. “If I make them and ice them tonight, they’ll be ready tomorrow, but you’ll probably have to wait until the next day to deliver them. You’ll be talking to the bad guys. Anyway, here!” Ernie took one of the cooled, iced fritters off the drying rack and pulled a piece from it. “Want a bite?”
Burton took the pastry from Ernie’s fingers, completely entranced. The fritter was amazing—because Ernie could cook desserts and donuts like nobody’s business—but it was Ernie himself who he found mesmerizing.
Ernie caught the look and popped a piece of fritter in his mouth, blushing. “Uhm, Cruller?”
Burton moved behind him and started to kiss his neck. “Mm?”
“Do you want to do this before or after I finish with the fritters?”
“Before.”
“Okay. I’ll turn off the heat.” He reached out and did that, and put a lid on the deep fryer, as Burton kissed down his spine, rucking up his shirt when it got in the way. Ernie’s body, lean, pale, with a few freckles dotting his shoulders from recent forays into the Southern California sun, was still as tender and delicious as the day Burton had first devoured him, back in October. Ernie dropped his chin to his chest and leaned into Burton’s hard embrace. “Mmm… do you have plans for us to get more naked?”
“Oh yes.”
“Do you want to sit in the hot tub first?”
“Nope.”
“Shower? I’m all sweaty from cooking.”
“Sure.”
They’d purchased the house built in the middle of Victoriana for a song. The suburb had been meant to grow out in this direction, but businesses had failed, and people decided that the desert was just not that exciting a place to live in. As a result, Burton had about an hour’s commute to the secret military base in Barstow where he and Constance were not stationed.
Also, he and Ernie had a home, one with a really awesome hot tub and a shower built for four. But those days were over for Ernie, and all Burton had ever wanted was the one.
The one lover—Ernie, as it turned out—who knew who and what he was and what he did for a living and saw the warm beating heart under Burton’s badass exterior. And who melted in Burton’s hands like Burton was made to wear him like a second skin.
Burton soaped Ernie’s body thoroughly in the shower, all his crevices, cleaning him, teasing him, chafing his nipples and slowly jacking his cock with a soapy washcloth. “Is that all you want clean?” Ernie taunted, spreading his legs and planting his hands against the wall. Burton took the washcloth and parted his cheeks, cleaning and then poking and then stretching with soap and three fingers, while Ernie urged him on.
Finally, Burton pulled out his fingers and rinsed them both, and then, when he would have toweled them both off and taken him to the bedroom to make slow love to him, Ernie leaped into his arms instead.
The temperature in the shower jacked up to about a thousand degrees, and Ernie clung to Burton’s body while Burton positioned his cock at Ernie’s cleaned and stretched entrance. Ernie slid down ecstatically. Burton’s knees trembled, and he shoved Ernie’s back against the shower wall and held him in place while he undulated his hips, slowly, slowly, until Ernie reached between them and grabbed his own cock, squeezing hard enough to come.
The ejaculate fountained up to hit Ernie on the chin, but Ernie’s head was back against the wall and his limbs were going slack around Burton’s body. Burton had no choice but to rocket his hips and rut into Ernie’s ass until he came too, his knees going out and both of them sliding to the floor in a not-so-clean heap of repletion.
“Burton?”
“Ung?”
“Water’s going cold.”
“You wreck me, kid. You wreck me every fucking time.”
“Good. You’re leaving me for a week, and I hate that.”
“I’m sorry.” And he was. Ernie had known this would be their lives—and for the most part, their lives were pretty good. There was a surprising amount of time to have sex in the shower and other unusual places in their spacious ranch-style house in the middle of the fucking desert.
But leaving him was never easy.
“I know, baby,” Ernie consoled him. “Let’s get out and go enjoy round two in the bedroom. I want to rim you until you cry.”
Burton’s cock started to grow hard just thinking about it. He struggled to stand up without slipping and knocking his head and fucking up the op before he had a chance to leave for it.
They made it to the bedroom, and Ernie made good on his promise. And this time he topped, and Burton gave himself over—the few moments of his life not in control—and Ernie saw him to the finish, as he always did.
They ate dinner then—soup Ernie had made earlier—and ate some more of Ernie’s donuts while the apple fritters were cooking. It wasn’t until they were eating the donuts, big glasses of milk next to them on the table, that it hit Burton.
“Hey, did you know I was going?”
Ernie took a nibble of crispy outside with icing. “No. But I knew I had to make apple fritters.”
Burton took his own bite, going for the tender apple filling inside. “Because they’re Ellery’s mother’s favorite?”
“Oddly enough, I didn’t know that until you said you were going to Sacramento. It’s an imperfect system, Cruller. I’ll let you know when I fine-tune it enough to be useful.”
Burton grinned at him. “You’re pretty useful without the woo-woo stuff, Ernie. I’d rather have you fuck me like the god you are than tell me what my next op is.”
Ernie grinned back. “Yeah? Good, because I always thought sex was way more fun than woo-woo shit.” He took another bite of his fritter. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t clue you in if I get a flash on your next op, okay?”
“Deal.”
After one more sleepy bout of lovemaking for the road, they fell asleep early so Burton could get up two hours before dawn. Ernie must have gotten up sometime in the night, because he’d taken a pink pastry box from the stacks he’d ordered and filled it with fritters. He’d filled another one with crullers and written For Jason and Lee on top of it, which was nice. The one with the fritters said, Don’t throw away, I’ll know.
Which was a nice way of telling Jackson and Ellery who sent the donuts without writing his name.
Burton sighed and put both boxes on the seat of his truck before starting off into the blackness of morning. Ernie had looked so sweet as he’d left—asleep, his black lashes fanning his cheeks. Like an angel.
Devious little shit. He’d managed to convince Burton to make a six-hundred-mile donut delivery while Burton was running an op.
But then, anything Burton could do that would let Ernie keep thinking he was a hero was okay with Burton.
Woo-Woo Shit
AFTER BURTON left, Ernie wandered around disconsolately, fed the cats, cleaned up after baking, and then, as always happened when Burton left on business, his feet led him back to Ace and Sonny’s.
“How long’s he been gone?” Ace asked good-naturedly, feeding Ernie the last of the tamale pie Ace had made on his night to cook. Ace had muscles like cannon shot and a handsome good-ol’-boy face with a dent in his chin. He didn’t look like he’d even admit to having a boyfriend, much less cook for the one he had, but Ace was surprising that way.
“He left this morning,” Ernie said, huffing out a sigh. “Ellery Cramer’s mother is in danger. He convinced her to go to Sacramento so he can watch all three of them.”
“Jesus,” Sonny muttered. “Are we even supposed to know shit like this?”
“’Course we are.” Ace sat down and sipped
his after-dinner coffee slowly. “We’re invisible. Like, nobody even knows we’re here.”
“How do you even say that?” Sonny demanded. “We make more noise than a sonic fucking boom. We blew up an Army base, Ace. How does nobody know who we are?”
Ernie snickered. “Because me and Burton and Jackson and Ellery and even Ellery’s mother, I think, have worked very hard to make it that way,” he said, surprised that Sonny hadn’t realized this.
Judging by the blank look on Sonny’s face, he really hadn’t. “Why would they do that?” he said in a small voice.
Jai—who was there because it was Tuesday night and apparently Jai appreciated Ace’s cooking too—smiled softly at Sonny, but Ernie wasn’t fooled. Jai was a ginormous ex-mob enforcer who had been “loaned” to Ace after Ace had risked his life to save Jai’s boss’s niece. Ace and Sonny had kept him, and Jai’s loyalty to the two of them transcended life. For a while, he’d mooned over Sonny Daye in an unsubtle, painful way. But in the last few months, his tightly held torch for Sonny Daye had changed to an out-and-out fondness, a soft spot that would never heal, but that didn’t pain him anymore.
Two months ago, he’d lied to Ernie about having a booty call that he met camping. Oh yeah, he had the booty call, all right, but the guy wasn’t married, and Jai did like him, and even though Ernie knew the truth, he was highly curious as to what had caused the lie.
“Because they see your value when you’re free to work on cars and not locked in a cage,” Jai said, and Sonny looked at Ace with troubled eyes.
“That sounds like charity,” he muttered stubbornly.
“It’s more like love,” Ace said bluntly. “And it keeps my criminal ass in the free and clear, so I’m really fucking grateful. Do you know how long Burton will be gone?” Ace asked, obviously to change the subject, but also because he wanted to know if he should prep Burton’s old room so Ernie could stay there.
