I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  Rainer moaned and kissed him back, initial confusion washed away in understanding as Ezekiel dragged his open shirt off and pulled him away from the doorway to back him into the kitchen and over to the big round table. His urgency was infectious and the demand in his rough touches left no room for Rainer to either refuse or consent. Ezekiel picked him up and carried him the last couple of feet to the table.

  “Wait,” Rainer managed around kisses. Ezekiel didn’t listen. He didn’t even pause. “Ezekiel—” He shoved him and he had to do it hard to move him at all, but it was enough to get Ezekiel’s attention for a second. “Grab that bottle,” Rainer said, pointing to the walnut oil on the counter.

  Ezekiel reached over and snatched it up and removed the pouring spout with his teeth. Rainer tried to stand away from the table and take it from him, but Ezekiel crowded him back against it until the edge of the table bit into Rainer’s lower back. He leaned over and kissed him again, deep and demanding with a feral growl humming on their tongues and lips. His teeth split Rainer’s bottom lip and he tasted blood, but Ezekiel didn’t stop or gentle the kiss, it only aroused him more.

  He grabbed Rainer’s hip and turned him, tearing their mouths apart as he forced him around. Rainer braced his hands on the tabletop, gasping and panting as his heartbeat filled his ears with thunder and drumbeats, adrenaline spiking through his blood so that the rush of it made him violently shiver. Ezekiel’s rasping tongue scraped over the back of his neck, his sharp teeth pinched his shoulder and somewhere beneath the rumble of an inhuman growl there rose burbling laughter.

  There on Rainer’s back was a tattoo, an unsolved and thought to be unsolvable cipher. It started at his shoulders and spread all the way to the base of his spine where the gun site shaped signature of the Zodiac killer sat like a tramp stamp. Rainer once again itching to tell his secret by painting it on his body.

  Ezekiel sucked a kiss into the back of Rainer’s left shoulder over symbols that looked like “HER”. He drew Rainer’s sweatpants down his hips until they slipped from his fingers and fell to puddle on the floor and licked his right shoulder where those symbols read “GOD”.

  The thick scent of walnuts filled the air around them when Ezekiel poured the oil into his hand. The oil dripped down Rainer’s spine and he tensed and trembled every time a drop hit his skin. Then Ezekiel pushed his fingers inside him and Rainer caught his breath. As Ezekiel thrust his fingers, worked them in and out of his body, Rainer moaned and began to push back to meet him.

  Ezekiel watched him as he opened him up with his fingers, watched his pale skin slide over muscle and bone, felt those muscles bunch beneath his mouth as he kissed his back. Rainer moaned and let his head fall forward and Ezekiel hooked his fingers, pressed them down and thrust them deep. Rainer’s body tightened around them and he cried out.

  “Spread your legs,” Ezekiel told him.

  Rainer did and Ezekiel upended the bottle of oil over him. It splattered on his back and slid down his spine as Ezekiel withdrew his fingers from him and opened his belt. Rainer turned his head to watch Ezekiel over his shoulder and their eyes met. In the dim light, Ezekiel’s dark eyes flashed like gold coins.

  Ezekiel ran his hand through the oil on Rainer’s back and used it to slick his cock. Then he pushed inside him with one hard, deep thrust that made Rainer cry out and his back bow. It hurt a little, there had been no foreplay at all and Ezekiel’s cock more than his fingers stretched him open, but Rainer was ready for it. He gripped the edge of the table and rolled his hips back as Ezekiel leaned over him and fucked him hard and fast.

  The fabric of Ezekiel’s jacket stuck to the oil and sweat on Rainer’s back and he threw it off. He held Rainer’s hip in one hand and ran the palm of the other up between his shoulders, over his neck and through his hair. Rainer’s breath hitched in time to their thrusts, the table bit painfully into his stomach and he cried out and moaned as pleasure sank its talons into him like the flexing of cat fingers. He tossed his head to throw his hair out of his face and Ezekiel’s fingers closed in it and he yanked Rainer’s head back. Rainer’s fingers squeaked on the polished wood table as he was pulled up from it. Ezekiel breathed against the side of his neck then ran his tongue up Rainer’s smooth throat to his ear. He was purring. He bit at the curve of Rainer’s jaw with animal possessiveness and gripped his hips tight, fingers pressing bruises into his flesh as he pulled him into every inward thrust. Pleasure wound through them both like a poison vine, linking them together, give and take with every pounding motion of their joined bodies.

  Rainer came first, his orgasm so intense that he screamed and let go of the table to reach back and grab Ezekiel. His fingers, coated in walnut oil, slipped and snagged on the material of Ezekiel’s shirt, but he took hold of it and gripped it tightly. Without his hands holding him up, he was pushed down on the table, his hot cheek on the cold top as Ezekiel fucked him through it, fucked him faster until his oversensitive body felt battered and he could hardly catch his breath around the whimpering, moaning sounds escaping him.

  Ezekiel loomed over him, leaned down to nuzzle him and set his teeth against Rainer’s shoulder, holding it in his mouth as he came inside of him with a deep moan. It was long and lasting and Ezekiel closed his eyes, savored the creeping pleasure of it and the sound of Rainer’s heavy panting breath, the smell of him and the heat all around him. The deep satisfaction of finally having Rainer right where he had wanted him for so long.

  The sweat on his body cooling made Rainer shiver some minutes later and he shifted beneath Ezekiel. He drew in a deep breath and swallowed, felt a dry click in his throat. “Ezekiel,” he said.

  Ezekiel groaned and picked his head up off of Rainer’s shoulder. He pulled out of him then had to catch him when Rainer tried to stand and began to collapse. Rainer sat in one of the straight-backed chairs near the table, wincing. There wasn’t a lot of pain, but he was sore and physically exhausted enough that his muscles burned. He waited for Ezekiel to zip up his pants and took that time to brace himself. Then he stood up again and made his wobbly way out of the kitchen.

  Ezekiel watched him for a moment before he shook he head and walked over to him, picked him up and carried him down the hallway. “Bathroom?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Rainer sighed and rested his head on Ezekiel’s shoulder. “This is so undignified.”

  “Be a lot more undignified if I just let you crawl down here yourself, covered in oil and leaking come in your wake,” Ezekiel said.

  “It’s your fault,” Rainer said.

  Ezekiel pushed the bathroom door open with his foot. “I accept total responsibility,” he said.

  “Okay,” Rainer said. He looked around. “You can put me down now. I think I can stand.”

  “Are you sure?” Ezekiel asked.

  “No, maybe you should get naked with me and help me stand up in the shower,” Rainer said.

  He did not need help standing in the shower and Ezekiel knew that. He was a little shaky when he put him down, but he was all right. Still, Ezekiel kicked off his shoes and started to undress.

  “This suit is ruined,” he said, shucking the pants.

  Rainer watched him, intrigued by all the tattooed skin Ezekiel had hidden beneath his clothes. “I don’t have anything that fits you,” he said. “I can get something later though. Unless you’re not staying?”

  “I’m staying,” Ezekiel said. He took his tie off, rolled it up and tossed it on the counter by the sink. He noticed Rainer staring at him. “What?”

  Rainer gestured at him, at the tattoos covering most of his body right down to the tops of his feet. “You don’t like tattoos, huh?”

  Ezekiel grinned. “Yeah. They’re awful. A hideous way to mutilate the human body.”

  “Right,” Rainer said, amused.

  He turned on the water and set the temperature while Ezekiel finished undressing. In the shower, he let Ezekiel wash his hair, surprised that he wanted to. Feeling like he should repay the favor, he washed hi
s hair for him, too. Rainer more than Ezekiel was covered in sticky, greasy walnut oil, so his hair had to be washed twice before he was sure it was clean.

  “You know that bottle of oil was a gift. It cost ninety-five dollars,” Rainer told Ezekiel. “You put ninety-five dollars worth of gourmet walnut oil up my ass.”

  Ezekiel laughed. “It didn’t all go up your ass,” he said. “I’ll replace it.”

  When they got out of the shower, Rainer put on clean pants to sleep in then remembered Thomas had left some things there and found Ezekiel a clean pair of sweats. Thomas wouldn’t like it if he knew, but there was no reason why he should ever find out as far as Rainer was concerned. If he asked, Rainer wouldn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t do much in the line of clothes for Ezekiel to wear home, but he didn’t have to sleep naked if he didn’t want to.

  Rainer left Ezekiel to get comfortable in the bedroom and returned to the kitchen to assess the mess and get the dinner he had been about to eat when Ezekiel banged on his door. He decided to leave the mess where it was and clean it up later. Pogo wandered into the kitchen while Rainer was pouring the vinaigrette on his salad, meowed pitifully and twined around his feet. Rainer ignored him and he followed him back down the hallway to his bedroom, certain that there had to be something on that dinner plate for him.

  “Did you eat anything before you came over here?” Rainer asked.

  Ezekiel had stretched out on the bed on his back, shirtless, wearing Thomas’s sweats. He glanced over at him when Rainer climbed up on the bed with is food and sat there, legs crossed Indian fashion and began to eat.

  “I left work kind of late,” Ezekiel said. “Then I left home in a hurry. I didn’t have any time.”

  Rainer ate some of his salad and held out the fork, offering it to Ezekiel. “Here. It’s oysters in wasabi sauce. I don’t know if you like—” Ezekiel sat up, took the fork, speared a large oyster on it and ate it. “—like that sort of thing,” Rainer finished. He smiled. “Thomas hates them, so I get them when I know he won’t be around.”

  He ate an oyster himself, ate some more of his salad and gave Ezekiel the fork again. “So, what happened?” he asked. “I mean this was pretty unexpected and you looked really angry when I opened the door.”

  “I would rather not talk about it,” Ezekiel said.

  Rainer shrugged. He was interested to know what had caused Ezekiel’s abrupt change of heart, mostly because he knew that he had nothing to do with it himself, but if Ezekiel didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to nag him about it. Or complain.

  They finished off his dinner between them and Rainer let Ezekiel use his toothbrush. Then they closed the cat out of the bedroom and lay down. In the faint light from the bedside lamp, Rainer studied Ezekiel’s tattoos. The sleeve on his right arm was elaborate and colorful and Rainer lay on his side beside him and touched them, waiting for Ezekiel to tell him to stop, but he never did. It started at his wrist with flowers—deadly nightshade, poppies and purple wolfsbane moved up his arm to other creatures—poison dart frogs in many colors, jackals, moths, butterflies, crows and owls and all their falling feathers—and winding down his arm from shoulder to wrist like the River Styx was a blessing.

  “May you be in Heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you’re dead,” Rainer read. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the inked skin and Ezekiel reached over and rested his hand on the back of his head lightly. Rainer moved down on the bed, reading him. The most amusing one to him was “Such a nice man” tattooed on his ribs, underscored by a scar. “You are quite the illustrated man,” Rainer murmured against Ezekiel’s hip.

  Ezekiel made a sound of agreement in his throat. He put his hand down and took Rainer’s chin between his finger and thumb, making him lift his head and stop his oral exploration of his body. “Come here,” he said.

  Rainer went and Ezekiel kissed him, slow and deep. He would feel guilty about it all later, but not yet. He would brood about it and curse himself, but he knew he wouldn’t stop either. He still loved Jacob, would never stop loving Jacob and wouldn’t leave him, not ever, not for anyone or anything, but he wanted this. More than that, he was beginning to suspect he badly needed it. Rainer had broken him and he would be sorry, but he couldn’t take it back. He didn’t even want to.

  Chapter 39

  Ezekiel slept hard and dreamlessly that night like he hadn’t slept in more years than he could recall. Rainer woke him once just before dawn to give him his cell phone because it was ringing, but Ezekiel turned it off again, dropped it on the nightstand and went instantly back to sleep. He didn’t wake again until the sun was up and the slats of light through the blinds in the window cut across his eyes.

  Rainer was gone, but he had left Ezekiel a note by the bed:

  Went to work. Stay as long as you want. Be back early afternoon. Mind Pogo, he’ll knock you down.

  —Rainer

  Ezekiel smiled at the last line and looked down at the little grey cat that was sitting at his feet staring up at him with vacant blue eyes. “Guess it’s just you and me,” he said.

  He called in to work and let his team know that he would be working from home. They could reach him by email or on his phone. He gave instructions that his calls should be forwarded to his cell phone.

  When he turned on his cell phone, he found seven missed calls from Jacob. He still didn’t want to hear from Jacob, so he ignored them and got to work.

  The guilt hit him shortly after he woke up and didn’t really let up. He loved Jacob, had always loved Jacob before anyone or anything. Everything he was he had evolved into so that he could better defend and protect and take care of Jacob. Ezekiel had turned himself inside out until he was barely the same man who had first loved him for Jacob’s sake. He had been angry and justified in his anger though he didn’t lie to himself that what he had done—what he had been doing—with Rainer was anything less than utter betrayal.

  That Jacob could think such low things of him after everything hurt more than if he had cut him clean through with a knife. Every time he thought about him standing there with his chin lifted, tears running down his face, shouting, I don’t believe you, Ezekiel felt his stomach lurch. So there was a lot of guilt. A hundred and forty years of love and desperation plated in the guilt of his one betrayal, which he had committed because he had wanted to do it as much as because Jacob believed it had already happened. It was low and he acknowledged that and mourned, but he also remained so furious that all of the guilt was muted beneath the weight of his anger and that soothed his conscience somewhat.

  Because he was working out of Rainer’s place and had no intention of telling anyone where he was or seeing them that day, Ezekiel didn’t bother to get dressed. He worked until noon, made a sandwich for lunch and intended to go back to work after a brief break. Instead, he walked through Rainer’s apartment and looked around. The apartment was where Rainer’s true self resided and he had left Ezekiel alone there. He had to know Ezekiel would investigate.

  Rainer had expensive taste. The clothes in his closet and folded up in his dresser were expensive designer suits, ties, jeans and shirts. Most of his suits were better than Ezekiel’s, but Ezekiel had the wealth of several lifetimes to account for his own spending. Rainer, though from a wealthy family, lived entirely off his own salary as a teacher. While investigating him, Ezekiel hadn’t discovered much in the way of other income. Then he remembered Rainer’s dumpster-diving a few months earlier and the subsequent fit he had thrown afterward. Elijah and Erzsé had apparently not stopped their makeover project with Rainer’s furniture and flooring.

  In the back of the closet on the floor he found a small canvas duffel bag and two bottles of unscented lamp oil. In the bag he found Rainer’s tools: scalpels, a hunting knife with a gut hook, unused syringes, tiny bottles of synthetic adrenaline and ketamine tranquilizer, a roll of duct tape, a roll of nylon rope, a roll of heavy steel wire, latex gloves, kid gloves, a neatly folded towel, a book of m
atches taken from a bar called The Spare Room and another bottle of lamp oil, mostly empty.

  Ezekiel knelt in front of the open bag and felt his heart racing with the familiar thrill of discovery as he looked at its contents. He had known it was him, but now he knew. In the lab, the scalpels and knife would surely test for blood residue, no matter how well they had been cleaned. So would the gloves. Hair might be found on the tape or in the bag itself. There could be fingerprints on the opened bottle of oil or the blade or handle of the knife. There would be something because Rainer was good, but he was also arrogant.

  Everything he would ever need to catch him and put him away was right there. Rainer Bryssengur: The Lamplighter.

  Rainer had left him alone in his apartment knowing it was all there for him to find, knowing that Ezekiel would look because he was the curious type. Ezekiel hadn’t followed Rainer for months, dissected every aspect of his life and gotten much, much too close to him because he had nothing better to do. He was a cat; he was curious by nature. He could not make the mistake of assuming that Rainer was any less observant than he was himself. If he knew how Rainer liked his coffee, Rainer knew the same of Ezekiel. Rainer had trusted him in his home, inside of his territory, with his things. He had deliberately made himself vulnerable to Ezekiel; not a very psychopathic thing to do.

  Why? What was Rainer’s game now?

  Tell me the truth, Ezekiel, aren’t you bored? Rainer whispered from his memory.

  He was. Much of the time, he was bored with his life. He had been doing it all for a very long time. While he had been building up stronger and stronger barriers of control against the monster deep inside him, the monster had been growing and becoming restless. Rainer had agitated it to a ferocious state and now it howled and clawed to be free.