by L. A. Witt
“I’m almost sure of it. The guns used in both shootings had had their serial numbers filed off. I’m willing to bet that they were stolen. Perhaps from one of your evidence lockers,” she added. “It probably wouldn’t be too difficult for him, or someone else on Crawford’s payroll, to ‘misplace’ a weapon or two. Perhaps mark them as destroyed when they really weren’t.” She sipped at her tea. “It’s a starting place, at least.”
I finally found my voice. “Why are you telling us all this? Why speak now, when it’s too late for it to do you much good?”
“How could I speak out before, when in all likelihood I’d just end up like my husband? I may not have much of a life, Detective Corliss, but that doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry for it to be over. I’ve been waiting for a bloodhound to come around asking the right questions.” For the first time, her smile looked real. “And now there’s a pair of you.”
The arrival of the waitress was so jarring I actually jumped. “Two chicken salad sandwiches and two coffees!” she announced, setting down the plates. She’d used the same fine china as the pastry dish, and prettied them up with a sprig of parsley and a radish cut in the shape of a rose.
Mrs. Kramer was still smiling as she toasted us with her teacup. “Bon appétit, gentlemen.”
Hours after we’d left the pretentious tea party, and after we’d paid a brief visit to Trent’s brother, Trent’s father, and Trent’s ex-roommate, Darren dropped onto his sofa and handed me a beer. In theory, we should’ve been back at the station, but after everything Mayor Kramer’s widow had said to us, I wasn’t so sure that was the safest place. The walls there had ears. I just didn’t know where or how many. My apartment was still on too many radars, so we’d come back here instead. Didn’t mean we hadn’t checked the place over just to be on the safe side, though.
“Well, that was a, uh, productive afternoon,” he said as we clinked the bottles together. “Still not quite sure what the point of all that was.”
I chuckled as I brought the ice-cold bottle up to my lips. “I don’t know. I thought it was pretty clear.”
He eyed me. “But we didn’t get anything useful out of any of them. You just asked them a few questions that were benign even by my standards, and then we left.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So . . .” His eyebrows rose.
I took another drink. “And what do you think every single one of them did as soon as we left?”
“Called Trent and asked him why the hell a couple of detectives were sniffing around.”
I grinned.
Darren’s eyebrows climbed even higher. Then he rolled his eyes and laughed into his beer bottle. “So we were just antagonizing Trent.”
“I don’t know if that’s the word I’d use.”
“What word would you use?”
I considered it for a moment, then shrugged again. “Fine. Antagonizing.”
Sighing, Darren lowered his beer. “Okay, but fill me in here. What exactly was that supposed to accomplish?”
“Here’s the thing. Trent’s involved in something shady. He’s connected to Crawford and this entire scandal. And I want him to know that we know that. Or, at least, that we know something.”
Darren tilted his head. “Isn’t that something we don’t want him to know? He can cover his tracks if he knows.”
“In theory, yes. But we’re tipping our hand just far enough that he doesn’t know what we know. He’ll get nervous. Start watching his back. Quite possibly try to cover his tracks. All we have to do is keep him twitchy, and then keep an eye on him until he makes a mistake.” I idly rubbed an ache out of my throbbing wrist. “And even if he doesn’t slip up, when we start making noise about going to see his dear old aunt Judge Harrison to ask a few questions, I have a hunch he won’t be able to keep his poker face.”
Darren regarded me silently for a moment before laughing. “Wow. If that’s not the most Ruffner-esque form of detective work I’ve ever heard of . . .”
I laughed too, and took another drink. “You’ll see. He’ll tip his hand.”
“Is it wrong that I’m looking forward to seeing it?”
“Not at all.”
We exchanged glances, chuckled, and sipped our beers.
And then . . . silence fell. Awkward silence. The kind of silence that reminded me of the drive home last night after Darren had followed me. How weird things had been when I’d walked into that conference room this morning.
My stomach tightened. We hadn’t really put that whole thing to bed, had we? Yeah, he’d apologized, and yeah, I’d agreed to share more information, but last night had been following us around all day long. Now that we had some downtime, there was no avoiding everything that had been semi-patiently waiting for attention.
“Listen, um . . .” Darren stared into his beer bottle, tapping his fingers rapidly on the side of it. “About the tracker. I really am—”
“Darren. We’ve been over this.”
“I know, but it’s killing me. I’m sorry. It . . .” He sighed. “Just . . . I’m sorry. The captain and IA—they just want me to keep an eye on you. Report back anything that’s not a hundred percent by the book.”
“So, basically everything I do.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Basically.”
“Have you told them anything?”
Darren shook his head. He cleared his throat, and goddamn if he didn’t break out the puppy-dog eyes. “I’m sorry, though. I do want you to trust me. The tracker in your car . . . It won’t happen again.”
“I know it won’t. I do trust you.”
“Even after that?”
“Yeah.”
Darren’s eyes shifted away, then back to me, and he squirmed on the cushion. “I guess I’m just really freaked out about things getting weird between us.”
“They’ve kind of been weird from the start, haven’t they?”
“Yeah, but . . .” He paused and locked eyes with me. Barely whispering, he said, “It hasn’t always been weird in a bad way.”
Oh, wasn’t that the truth. In fact, now that he’d mentioned it, I liked the way things had been weird-but-not-bad between us, and that had a hell of a lot more appeal than this weirdness.
Heart thumping, I slid closer to him. Darren sat straighter, but he didn’t recoil away, and he didn’t stop me when I took the bottle from his hand and set it on the table.
Facing him again, I slid my arm around him.
Drew him in.
And kissed him.
Oh God, yes. This kind of weird, I could live with. He was my partner, and I’d wanted to wring his neck last night, and now he was kissing me back. Pulling me closer. Taking over. He pushed my lips apart with his tongue in the same moment he shifted around to straddle me, and we were back to the very first time we’d made out on his couch. I was just distracted enough that I kept pressing the sore spot on my arm against him. Oh well. I could live with it. Some pain was well worth having my hands on Darren.
Abruptly, he broke the kiss and murmured, “Turn off your phone.”
“Huh?”
“Your phone. Turn it off.” He shifted a bit and took out his own cell phone. “Off. Now.”
“What are—”
“I am not getting cockblocked by the fucking captain again. Turn. It. Off.”
“Yes, sir.” I pulled it out of my pocket, put it on airplane mode, and tossed it on the table. Darren’s clattered on top of mine a second later, and he hauled me into an even deeper, hungrier kiss.
When he met my gaze again, his eyes were absolutely on fire. I’d seen him turned on before, but not like this.
He swept his tongue across his lips. “We should really move this into the bedroom.”
“Yeah?” I grinned up at him. “Why’s that?”
“Because that’s where I keep the condoms and lube.”
My whole body broke out in goose bumps. Yes, please.
I couldn’t speak, though, so I just nodded. We got up and headed for the bedroom
, but we hadn’t even made it out of the living room before Darren grabbed me, pinned me against the wall, and claimed another demanding kiss. This side of him blew my mind—I’d never imagined him being this aggressive.
As he kissed my neck, I panted, “Didn’t . . . didn’t think you had it in you. To be this . . .” Words. What were words?
“I can be,” he said against my throat. “When I want something.”
Before I could come up with a playful retort, his hand slid over the front of my pants, and my vocabulary disintegrated to “Fuck . . .”
“We will.” Teeth grazed my neck. “Don’t worry, we will.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tilted my head, completely overwhelmed by his mouth and his body and his presence. Was this real? Was I fucking hallucinating?
And did he really just drop to his knees in front of me?
I stared down at him. Oh yes. God yes. He was kneeling, and he was unzipping my fly, and if his fingers brushed my cock one more time, I was going to lose my mind.
Then . . . holy shit. He closed his fingers around my cock. Skin on skin. Stroking. Fuck.
Our eyes met, and he grinned. As he leaned forward, he licked his lips. I knew exactly what he had in mind, and God, I wanted it, but I nudged him back. “We can’t. Remember, I’m—”
“I know you are.” He stood and kissed me again. “I know, and I haven’t forgotten, and I still have every intention of seeing how much of your dick I can take down my throat.”
I shivered hard. This crass, brazen side of him was so . . . new. And hot. Christ, it was hot. “But we should—”
He silenced me with a deep, non-negotiable kiss, melting every bone in my body and making my cock impossibly harder in his hand. “It’s safe.”
I shook my head. “Not completely, and I—”
“Andreas, I’ve been on PrEP for months.” Another kiss, gentler this time. “Just relax and enjoy it.”
He knelt again, and I didn’t stop him. If he wasn’t worried, then I wasn’t. Everything I’d read had said oral sex was extremely low risk even without PrEP, and I shouldn’t have been surprised he was taking that pill. He had his head screwed on way too straight to not take advantage of that kind of preemptive protection against HIV, even if he wasn’t sleeping with someone he knew was positive.
And now here he was, knowing damn well I was positive, and he wasn’t joking about seeing how far he could take me into his mouth. It had been years since anyone had gone down on me, but I was pretty fucking sure none of them had been as skilled or enthusiastic as Darren. Just the way he swirled his tongue around the head of my cock almost sent me through the roof. And, Jesus, did he even have a gag reflex?
I combed my fingers through his hair, alternately watching him and letting my eyelids slide shut. As he stroked my cock and teased all over with his lips and tongue, he moaned like he was the one on the receiving end. I couldn’t fucking believe it—all this time spent being certain no one would ever want to touch me again, and now this.
“Oh God.” I shivered, arching off the wall. “F-fuck, you’re gonna make me come.”
Abruptly, Darren stopped. “Can’t have that.”
My heart sank. Right. He was probably willing to suck my dick, but asking him to finish a blowjob was too much. Understandable. Still . . .
He stood, pressed me against the wall just like he had before, and kissed me again. “Much as I want to make you come,” he murmured between kisses, “I don’t want this to be over yet. Not till I get to fuck you.”
It took my brain a few seconds to catch up. Wait, that was why he’d stopped? Not . . . Really?
Darren drew back and met my gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“What?”
“You tensed up.” His eyebrows pulled together. “Maybe I should’ve asked—do you bottom? Or—”
“It’s been fucking years since I’ve been touched.” I cradled his face and kissed him. “Turned on as I am right now, there is literally nothing I can imagine saying no to.”
He grinned against my lips. “Good. Because I’m a top. And I really, really want—”
The kiss happened. I wasn’t sure if he moved in or if I did, but somehow he was speaking, and then we were kissing, and he didn’t need to finish the thought because we both got the message. I wanted him. Right fucking now. If his dick was as thick as it felt through his pants, then I definitely wanted—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Darren and I jumped like it was gunfire, not someone pounding on the front door.
“Open up, Darren!” an all too familiar voice boomed from outside. Bang! Bang! Bang! “I know you’re home!”
We both froze.
“Is that—” I looked at Darren, whose gaze was fixed on the door. “Is that Trent?”
His Adam’s apple jumped. He nodded, then shifted his attention back to me. “Yeah. That’s Trent.”
“You have got to be shitting me.”
“Open up, asshole!” Trent shouted.
I glanced at the door. “How the hell does he know where you live?”
“Uh. Well.” Darren’s cheeks colored. “He’s . . . spent a night or two here.”
“Spent—” I blinked. “Like . . .”
“Yeah.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Come on, Darren!”
Darren’s face darkened even more, and he started to pull away, but I wrapped my arms around him and drew him back in. Chuckling, I said, “You have terrible taste in men, you know that?” Then I kissed his throat, and he relaxed a little.
He leaned into me, sucking in a sharp breath. “So I guess a threesome is out of the question?”
“With him? Absolutely.”
“Fair enough.” He lifted my chin and claimed a kiss.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Don’t fucking ignore me!”
Darren scowled at the door. Then he met my eyes. “We should go in the bedroom. There’s way too much noise out here.”
The last time Andreas had been in my apartment, I’d been worried about what he thought of the place. This time, I made sure he was too fucking desperate to notice the pile of clothes he almost tripped over as I shoved him toward my room. It wasn’t hard. Andreas barely took the time to breathe, trailing his hungry mouth over every inch he could reach of my skin as we stumbled through the door and toward my bed.
We both stopped long enough to take off our holsters. With those out of the way, he dropped onto his back, and I followed, pinning him against my rumpled sheets with my body and finally getting my hands beneath his shirt. He moved his own up to my back, bare now that I’d abandoned my button-down somewhere on the floor, and pulled me tighter to him. I felt more than heard the grunt of discomfort in his throat. “Don’t hurt yourself,” I mumbled against his lips.
He gripped me even harder. “Don’t care if it hurts.”
“You’ll care if it affects your grip tomorrow.”
“Jesus fuck, don’t―don’t go easy on me.” That was the closest thing to begging I’d ever heard from Andreas, and it made my dick throb inside my slacks. “I don’t need that, I don’t want it, just . . . don’t stop―”
I leaned back and laughed. “You think I’m going to stop?” He was splayed out and flushed against the blue cotton of my bedspread, nothing but his rigid cock exposed. He looked like a fucking gift. “You think you could do anything that would make me want to stop now?” I brushed his red, wet mouth with my own, catching his lower lip between my teeth and pulling until he groaned, then released him and licked the tender skin. “You aren’t going anywhere until I’ve come inside of you.”
Andreas’s cock actually jerked against my leg when I said that, and he had to shut his eyes and breathe through his nose for a moment. I bit my own lip to regain a little control. It had been a long time for him, four fucking years since Andreas had been touched like this. It would be easy for me to push him over the edge, but I didn’t want things to end before I’d reminded him of how it felt to be wanted
like I wanted him right now. Having him in my bed, under my control . . . if I bit my lip any harder, I’d draw blood, because I was worried I was in a fucking dream. That wouldn’t do, though. I didn’t want to make Andreas any more nervous about having sex than he already was.
I slid back so I rested on his thighs, then tugged at the edge of his shirt. “Get this off.”
He took a few more deep breaths, then opened his eyes. They devoured me as I stood up, coming to rest on my bulge as he complied.
Holy shit. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had someone so gorgeous in my bed. It had been nothing but club hookups for months before I buckled down to study for my exam, and before that . . . well. I’d been with guys my age, guys who had youth and good looks on their side, but none of the sheer magnetism that had captivated me the first time I saw Andreas. There was nothing yielding about this man, nothing soft, but here he was, naked and wanting, all for me.
I was so goddamn spoiled.
I knelt, not to go down on him again, although his breath hitched hopefully. I got him out of his socks and pants instead, making sure his briefs came away as well. His thighs were heavily muscled, and I wanted to bite down and leave my marks all over them. I needed to be careful with my teeth, though. Instead, I raked my nails from the bend of his hips down to his knees, leaving bright-red lines behind. Andreas groaned again, his quads jumping. Good. I hoped they throbbed.
“Shit,” he muttered. “You look . . .”
I grinned. “Yeah?”
“Dangerous.”
The breathiness in his voice let me know he wasn’t exactly bothered. “It figures you’d find that hot. Sit up.” He leaned forward off his hands, and I stood up and finally, finally got my pants out of the way. I ran my hands through Andreas’s thick hair, dark strands clinging to my fingers as I tilted his head back. “How long has it been since you sucked a guy off?”
Andreas licked his lips. The blue of his irises was almost completely gone. “A long time,” he said. His voice was hoarse.
“Well. Let’s hope it’s like riding a bike.”
