After that, we walked on the beach, and on the boardwalk.
He took me to the downtown mall of Santa Cruz next, then to a coffee shop I’d last gone to with Nick. It had been one of Nick’s favorite hangouts here, mostly for their coffee when he came in the morning after surfing around dawn, but I’d been here with him at night a few times, too, after early evening sessions on the water.
We didn’t usually get coffee at night, but they served craft beer, and made a lemon tart Nick had a weakness for, and really amazing hot chocolate.
Black told me to grab a seat outside, and went in to order without me.
Without thinking about it much, I ended up sitting in more or less the same place I sat whenever I’d come here with Nick, on the lower deck right by the corner, where you had the best view of the shop itself, as well as the two streets of the corner it sat on. It was an old, giant, Victorian house that someone converted into the sprawling coffee shop, and it was really pretty when it was all lit up at night.
Black came out a few minutes later.
He carried a tray with two hot chocolates and two slices of lemon tart. He walked right up to the table I’d found and plunked the tray down on the salt-warped wood.
“How the fuck did you know?” I said, staring down at the tray.
Black shrugged.
I couldn’t decide if I was glad he’d done it, or if I wanted to hit him.
“You can hit me later, doc,” Black said, taking a seat across from me with a faint smirk. “We’ll have privacy tonight. You can hit me as much as you want once we get there.”
Picking up a fork, he dug into the nearest of the two lemon tarts.
Taking a bite, he smirked, raising an eyebrow at me across the table.
“Nick had good taste,” he grunted. “I should have brought him to Cal’s.”
I stared at him, caught between frustration and a tightening in my chest.
In the end, I just grabbed my hot chocolate, and took a sip.
It was as good as I’d remembered it being.
I also ate every bite of that damned lemon tart.
We walked up and down the mall a little longer after that, but I was exhausted by then. Eventually, Black took us back to the MacLaren, and drove me further down the coast a few more miles on Highway 1.
I’d been wrong, though.
He didn’t get us a room in a fancy bed and breakfast.
He rented us a beach house.
He hadn’t been kidding about the privacy.
The house sat on the edge of a sandy bluff overlooking the ocean, with a small stretch of near-private beach below. The driveway was long, and there were no neighbors; it sat on a rock outcropping with water and more cliff on either side.
Parking the MacLaren in the driveway, he found the keys to the front door in a fake rock by a palm tree, where apparently someone left them for us.
Inside, the living room and balcony looked like a movie set.
Sleek, modern furniture sat in a sunken living room by a free-standing fireplace that bisected the room. A long window made up the ocean-facing side of the house, peaking in a faint V-shape out towards the ocean, with an enormous deck on the other side of sliding glass doors. Thee deck wrapped around that whole side of the house. I saw deck furniture out there, along with another fire pit, a lap pool, and a jacuzzi.
Someone had lit the indoor fireplace for us already.
Outside, the lights were on in the jacuzzi, and I saw bubbles, showing it was already on, which likely meant someone had heated it up for us, too.
“Yeah,” Black said, shouldering off his leather jacket and tossing it on the couch. He flashed me a quick grin. “We’re definitely going in there, doc.”
We’d showered at the public showers on the beach, then threw on street clothes for dinner and for walking around downtown Santa Cruz.
I was still faintly itchy from all the salt and sand, though. Some of that might have been from the restaurant on the pier and our walk on the boardwalk after, but I knew some was probably from surfing too. I was also cold, since Santa Cruz in December was even colder than San Francisco in December. I wouldn’t be able to sleep yet, not with how wound up I felt.
Staring at the jacuzzi, I couldn’t think of a single reason not to go in there.
I could feel Black pulling on me to relax, to trust him, to stop fighting everything, to stop looking for reasons to fight everything.
I wanted to trust him. I wanted to relax.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to relax, though.
I was afraid of what might happen if I relaxed.
He didn’t wait for me to wrap my head around it.
Grabbing my hand, he pulled me towards him, then helped me off with the jacket I wore, tossing it next to his on the couch. He led me to the sliding glass doors, walking me through the opening once he’d unlocked the latch and slid it open.
He undressed me by the jacuzzi, then nudged me to get in.
I didn’t argue with him any more than I had when he put me in the car in San Francisco, or dressed me in the wetsuit and handed me a surfboard at Nick’s favorite surfing spot, or took me to dinner, or to Nick’s favorite coffee shop and handed me Nick’s favorite post-surfing evening snack.
I sank into the hot, bubbling water, and lowered my body to the jacuzzi’s bench. Tilting my head back on the wooden deck, I stared up at the stars, which were visible in crazy numbers, reminding me of Thailand, even though the constellations were different.
Steam rose up around me and I closed my eyes, trying to breathe, to relax.
I didn’t notice Black hadn’t joined me until he did.
He climbed into the hot tub next to me and I opened my eyes. When I did, I saw that he’d lit candles all around the opposite rim of the jacuzzi. He’d lit white candles on the deck table, and on the benches around us, too.
He handed me a drink when I blinked at him, looking around at what he’d done. Then I glanced down at what he’d handed me. Like before, it wasn’t alcoholic, but a blended matcha tea drink, like he knew I liked.
I sipped at it, watching him look at me.
He held a beer, but he only took a sip while I watched, never taking his eyes off me.
Pain reached me, not only from the look in his eyes, but just everything… everything he’d done that day. Everything he’d done in Europe, and since we’d been back in San Francisco. Everything he’d done since we’d found out Nick was missing.
And what had I done? Unconsciously or not, I’d been taking the Nick thing out on Black for weeks, pretty much since I’d realized he was missing.
I blamed the bonding on some level.
I blamed me and Black for what happened to Nick.
I know doc, he murmured in my mind. It’s okay.
I shook my head. It’s not okay. I know you’re right. I know what you said about us not being capable of going after Nick on our own is right.
His mouth hardened, just before he combed a hand through his black hair.
Clicking under his breath, he took a longer drink of the beer.
Setting it on the deck above my head, he continued to frown.
“I blame me, too,” he said, speaking aloud. “But maybe not for the same reasons you do, doc. I let myself forget what Brick was. I let myself forget what he was capable of. I invited him there. I fucking invited him there. I trusted that sociopathic bastard with our friends.”
Black’s gold eyes darkened as he thought about his own words.
I felt a flaring of that black, fathomless light from the structures below him. I felt the ripple of power that went through me as that part of him flexed––intensely enough that my breath briefly stopped. I remembered his voice echoing through that cave, right before he snuffed out the mountain’s heart.
I’d almost forgotten.
I’d almost forgotten the power there.
If Black noticed what he’d done, he didn’t visibly react.
“Brick exploited a weakness,” he said, h
is voice still hard over the sound of the jacuzzi’s jets, and now holding a denser, more light-filled power. “When I called him in that state, I gave him an opening.”
“So you think he did it,” I said. “You think he definitely killed Nick.”
My mind had clicked back on, maybe from that rush of Black’s power and light through my aleimi, maybe from his actual words. Whatever the exact cause, I was totally focused on Black now, studying his gold eyes. I felt myself coming out of that crushing grief, well enough to really think, maybe for the first time since we’d left Thailand.
Something about Black’s anger, the sheer rage and power behind it, snapped me out.
“You think Brick deliberately killed Nick,” I said.
“I sure as fuck don’t think it was an accident,” Black growled, that anger bursting out of him in a rush. “I have no fucking idea what story he’s going to feed us on Saturday, doc. No clue. But every single instinct in me tells me this thing was planned… that Brick targeted Nick. The damnedest thing is, I saw it. I saw that he was overly interested in Nick, even in Louisiana. I caught the fucker staring at him. A lot.”
I felt my jaw harden.
I hadn’t seen that.
I’d been too wrapped up in my own shit to notice any of that.
Black gave me a hard look. “You have less reason to be wary of Brick, doc. I have no fucking excuse. I knew what he was. I fucking knew, not just in theory, but firsthand. What he did to me in that prison… what he was willing to do to you in New York. I knew, and I let myself get distracted by Charles, by wanting to complete the bond with you, by those seers coming through the portal… by everything but what I should have been paying attention to. I should have let Charles kill him and Dorian in D.C. I let them go. I fucking let them go.”
Staring past me in the direction of the ocean, he threw his arms behind him, leaning on the edge of the deck.
I watched as he shook his head, clicking angrily before he added,
“Honestly? At the time, I just thought Brick wanted to fuck him. Nick. I figured he was attracted to him, that he wanted to bite him and fuck him. It was that kind of look.”
“So you think that’s what happened?” Still watching Black’s face minutely, I felt my jaw harden along with his. “You think Brick wanted Nick, so he kidnapped him, and then things went too far? He lost control or something?”
Black gave me a hard look. “I think it’s really fucking possible.”
“You think Brick would risk an alliance with you over that? To get laid?”
Black’s mouth twisted into one of his delicate frowns.
His gaze turned inward as he shook his head slowly.
“That’s the part I can’t figure,” he admitted, still frowning. “It could have been an opportunistic thing that went wrong… but honestly, it still doesn’t make sense to me, even on that level. Brick may act crazy at times, but he’s not. He’s practical to the bone. He wouldn’t risk his people over his dick. I don’t care how big of a crush he had. He just wouldn’t.”
He met my gaze, his gold eyes glimmering with anger.
I sensed a wariness there too, a near caution.
Whatever was behind that caution, he didn’t voice it aloud. I practically felt him holding it back, although I couldn’t get a sense of what it was he was thinking, or what he was worried about saying out loud.
Whatever it was, he didn’t want to tell me, specifically, at least not yet.
“You think there’s more to it,” I said. “You think he wanted Nick for something more than sex.” I frowned, thinking about that, too. “Do you think Nick died, rather than give it to him? Do you think he refused them, whatever it was?”
Black’s frown deepened.
“Is he a vampire now?” I said, my voice hard. “Did Brick turn him?”
“We already know that’s not possible, Miri.”
“But we don’t ‘know’ that. You said they had other ways. Ways besides the venom––”
“I told you,” Black said, his voice harder. “We haven’t found a single case, in any of the files, of a human being turned into a vampire who didn’t match the genetic profile. That’s thousands of cases, Miri. Almost tens of thousands at this point––”
“But it’s not all of them,” I said. “It’s not all cases, Black. There still might be––”
“He’s bringing the body, Miri.”
I stopped, staring at him.
“He’s bringing Nick with him when he comes.” Black exhaled, exuding a pulse of anger so intense, I might have flinched if I was capable of it right then. “Honestly, I wasn’t going to tell you. I know how unrealistic that is. To try and smuggle him into a room where our people could do any kind of real autopsy… but I was worried, Miri.”
He met my gaze, his eyes apologetic.
His light and expression held so much grief I swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I had to. I didn’t know what you’d do.” His jaw hardened. “But I want the fucking truth. I want to know exactly what happened to him. So I told Brick to bring it, and to keep it on ice so we could do a real autopsy. I told him not to mention Nick’s body to you if he saw you.”
Feeling my heart stop in my chest, I could only stare at him at first, watching Black look at me. His eyes were glowing faintly, and I felt grief on him, along with his anger at Brick, his guilt, his helplessness that he even had to tell me this.
The next time he spoke, he lowered his voice.
“I told him we’d need proof,” Black said, gruff. “I told him we needed some way to verify whatever bullshit story he planned on telling us. He assured me he would ‘expect no less,’ from either of us, particularly from you. He said he knew you’d need proof, with you being a ‘scientist.’”
Black’s voice turned bitter.
“That’s when he told me he had it. Nick’s body. He said he would bring it to us ‘intact,’ so we could ‘mourn him properly.’”
Black met my gaze, his jaw hard.
“Fucker kept it. He’s had Nick with him this whole time.”
I stared at him, feeling that dull pain grow into a fresh wound in my chest.
I don’t think I’d ever felt so much hatred in my entire life.
I thought I’d hated Brick before, but I hadn’t, not really.
I did now.
If Black felt the change in me, he didn’t react.
Picking up his beer, he tilted back his head, taking another long drink before he looked up at the stars, his long jaw hard as he exhaled steam up into space.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, IT was me who woke Black up.
After we got out of the hot tub, we both showered.
We even made out a little afterwards.
I started it, pulling him to the bed when he was naked and still wet after the shower, until both of us were lying on the huge white comforter in the master bedroom, our light wrapped into one another’s. I pulled on him even then, tugging and coaxing and opening my light, until that heat and density below Black’s feet coiled up into me and around me, like a dense, protective cloud, physical enough to constrict my breathing.
Even so, Black remained cautious with me. When I slid down his body to give him head, he offered me a back rub instead.
He was really damned good at back rubs.
He joked it was because he was raised in Thailand.
Whatever the reason, I had trouble refusing him when he offered one.
I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the one he gave me that night. I suspect it was all of that time out on the water, not to mention getting sick in his office in San Francisco, and just the emotional exhaustion of the day and night in general.
I only slept for a few hours, though.
When I woke up, he was lying next to me on his back, naked.
He was dreaming.
As per our usual custom, he’d opened the drapes to the room. For the same reason, I could see h
im almost as if it were daylight. The planes and lines of his body appeared blue and black, bathed in the light from the nearly full moon shining on the other side of the glass, but I could see every line, every tendon, every muscle.
He’d gained some of the weight back we’d both lost in Thailand.
Of course, being Black, most of what he’d gained back was muscle. His chest looked significantly bigger than the last time I remembered looking in the bungalow, although he still wasn’t quite as big as I remembered from when I first met him.
The last few years had been hard on him.
I knew that more or less started when he met me.
He was breathing slow, heavy, a taut look on his face. He made a soft sound as I watched, his brow furrowing as his living light coiled around him and around me, flaring up abruptly in colored sparks, nearly physical as I used my eyes and light to look at him. I could see darker, more fire-like colors twisting through those structures below his feet.
I could feel his light wanting to connect more with mine.
His fingers grasped at nothing while I watched, his arms sprawled out at his sides, and something about his expression brought up a rush of pain, worse than I’d let myself feel in weeks. After looking at him for a few minutes, that pain grew so intense, I was gritting my teeth. Sliding under the comforter he’d wrapped around me, I moved closer to him, wrapping the white fluffy blanket tighter around me as I sat next to him, looking down.
He still had the ability to catch my breath.
He was so fucking beautiful.
I could honestly say I’d never seen such a beautiful man in my life before I met him.
He almost didn’t look real to me, even now, especially when he was asleep like this, or whenever I couldn’t see him through his eyes, or hear him in his voice.
Not that he was better-looking absence of his own presence––the contrary was true, for me, anyway. It was more that his presence somehow eclipsed his own physicality, making his looks less relevant somehow.
They became a bonus instead of something intrinsic to who he was.
I started stroking his skin, lightly at first.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 23
