by Mary Calmes
“What’re you doing?”
He walked out into the middle of the room so he could look up at me. “You had to prove to me that you didn’t need any help?”
He was pissed I’d climbed the stairs alone. “No, I figured out a way to do it that took little effort, and since I’ll have to do it when you’re not around, it was good to practice.”
“Fine,” he said dejectedly and walked back into the kitchen.
“Is that it?” I called out.
“I don’t wanna fight,” came the reply.
“I don’t either.”
“Then leave it alone.”
“Can’t do that, either.”
He reappeared in the living room, staring up. “What do you want from me?”
“So here’s what I thought,” I said softly, done drying my hair and leaning forward on the railing. “If something happened and I couldn’t be your partner anymore, you wouldn’t want me.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me.”
“Not want you?”
I ignored his tone, how angry he sounded, and the glare. “Part of that is that us being partners, me showing you that I could do the job plus keep up with you—that was how you first started trusting me.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“But it still matters. It’s like the guys on your team.”
“We’re back to that?” he retorted. “You think I’d let anybody in my unit fuck me?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“You need to know you can count on me.”
“I know I can fuckin’ count on you! I don’t depend on anybody as much as you.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you always have my back!”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “So what if I can’t? What happens then?”
“I don’t—” He growled before stomping up the stairs. “Why do you always have to make everything so goddamn difficult?”
I chuckled as he appeared in the loft and strode over to face me.
“So what’s in your head now?” he asked, stopping in front of me, arms crossed, muscular legs braced apart, power rolling off him as he stood there and fumed. “If we’re not work partners that I won’t wanna come home to you anymore?”
“It took you a long time to trust me.”
“But I do now,” he said curtly. “And I can’t even remember a time I didn’t. Don’t you—it doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
“Whether or not you get transferred or I do. If you wanted to go back to being a cop or if one of us really wants to move up.” He sighed, raking his fingers hard through his hair. “What’s important now is that we live in the same house, that we sleep in the same bed, and that we try as hard as we can to see each other all the time.”
“Ian—”
“Come on, M, you already deal with me leaving when I’m deployed. I’m gone and you’re here and—” His voice broke. “Don’t you fuckin’ miss me?”
“Of course I miss you! What the hell kinda question is that?”
“Well, then, don’t you think when you’re not with me all day that by the end of it I’ll be dying to get back to the office so we can go home together?”
I had never been particularly good about putting myself in another person’s shoes. I really sucked at it, actually. The only thing that had gone through my head was, If I can’t be Ian’s partner, do I still get to be his partner in all things?
“Miro?”
I met his gaze and saw the vulnerability there, as well as the hope. I cleared my throat. “I should know better.”
“Yeah,” he replied hoarsely.
“So the partner thing—that’s just a perk at this point.”
“Yeah,” he repeated.
I reached for him, sliding a hand over his hip and easing him forward, close to me so I could lean in and kiss his throat. He tipped his head sideways so I could reach more skin. “Nothing will change, whether I’m your partner or not.”
“Not between us,” he said with a soft groan. “But that doesn’t mean you get to be anyone else’s. You’re my partner, M. That’s how it needs to stay.”
Yes, it did.
His breath caught as I sucked on his skin. “Are you sure you—Miro!”
To show him that I was indeed up to the task of manhandling him, I stepped back, wrenched him off balance, and threw him down onto the bed face first.
“You know I could hurt you if you’re—”
“Stop talking,” I ordered as I came down on top of him, pinning him to the bed, my knee parting his thighs as I wrestled off first his worn denim shirt and then the white T-shirt underneath. Once I had his broad muscular back bared for my pleasure, I lifted off him enough to kiss down his spine.
“You always—” He was having trouble breathing and so took a gulp of air. “—treat my body like it’s—oh,” he finished with a groan.
“What?” I asked, moving down to his hips, tugging on his pants, kissing lower.
“You have to wait, M. I’m… I… you shouldn’t… I need a shower and—”
“You smell like sweat and soap from this morning, and you,” I husked, my hand sliding beneath him, working open the button and zipper, tugging the gray chinos down, revealing the round chiseled ass I loved. It was as close to perfection as one could get. I especially loved it when I got to watch my cock slide deep inside.
“Miro,” he panted as I put him on his hands and knees before spreading his cheeks and licking over his hole.
He smelled musky and I liked that, but what got me off was the noises he made. The husky groan, the throaty cries, and the pleading where the only word was my name—all of that made me want to see if I could get him to come just from rimming him.
When I pushed inside, tasting, sucking, and took hold of his hard, leaking length, he nearly came off the bed.
“Please,” he gasped. “Lay down.”
Normally I would have done his thinking for him, because that’s how it was for us in bed—what I said had to be followed. But his voice, the sound, so steeped in his own need, made me hesitate.
He scrambled out of reach and then flipped around and tugged the towel from my hips. “Could you…. M.”
He wanted me down on the bed, so I quickly complied, loving that he dove for the nightstand to get the lube.
Already painfully hard myself, it was agony when he slicked me fast and then straddled my hips.
“Go slow, okay?” I cautioned, hands on his thighs. “It’s been a while and—”
“I need you inside because you’re not dead. If you’re here, with me, you’re safe.”
It was not a fast plunge; he didn’t impale himself like a porn star. Instead he eased down steadily, slowly, taking his time so I felt every ripple of muscle, every release of tension, and every second that he shuddered against me.
He was so strong and powerful, his skin was like warm silk over steel, and when I was all the way inside him, buried, the second he moved, I felt my body flush with heat.
“You feel too good,” I warned him. “I’m gonna come.”
“Not yet,” he whispered, curling over me, hands fisted in the covers as he started to rock back and forth, rising and lowering, setting a gentle rhythm that quickly increased, eliciting a low moan from deep in my chest. “I need you.”
I knew what he needed. “If I can, if it’s up to me, I’ll always be here.”
“Right here,” he rasped as his muscles clenched around me, and I saw him visibly fighting to keep his orgasm at bay.
“Yes.”
“With me.”
“Yes.”
“I know we can’t promise,” he whispered, and I saw his jaw clench, his lips pressed in a tight, hard line.
“No,” I agreed, reaching to cup his cheek. “But we’ll try as hard as we can.”
His attention never left my face even as his movements became frenzied, riding me, not caring about anythi
ng but reaching his climax. He didn’t touch himself, and I couldn’t, capable only of grasping his thighs, holding him tight, my fingers digging into his muscles. When he spilled over my abdomen, lost in the throes of release, I yelled his name as I came deep inside his body.
Before Ian, I’d been selfish in bed. I had tried to make the other person feel good, but in the end, my pleasure was paramount. That had all changed when my partner joined me. With Ian I made sure: I wanted to hear my name in a breathless moan; I loved the smell of him, his taste, but more than anything, seeing him sated afterward, replete, panting beside me, on me, draped in a boneless sprawl… that was what I craved. To know that I had cared for him, loved him, made my heart swell almost painfully.
“God, Miro, I better not have ripped your stitches,” he said gruffly, rising off me gently, the small gush of fluid running down my cock and balls.
“I don’t think so, but who cares.”
He bent to kiss me, but I turned my head. “What’s with—”
“Think where my mouth was last,” I reminded him.
“I don’t care, you don’t care,” he growled, capturing my face in his hands. “I wanna kiss you.”
He mauled me until his head finally clunked down over my heart and his eyes fluttered shut, even with how hard he was fighting sleep.
I put my hand in his hair and massaged his scalp. “You should turn off the light.”
“You turn off the light,” he mumbled.
There was no more discussion after that.
TALKING TO the staff psychiatrist, Dr. Johar, was something I really tried to put off, but two weeks later after lunch on a Saturday—Kage scheduled the meeting himself—I had no way around it. He’d brought me into our meeting room, where we normally talked to people entering witness protection, and had my file, complete with pictures of my injuries in living color, spread out in front of him.
We were quiet for long minutes before I finally asked if he had any questions for me.
“I do,” he answered, smiling. He was older, early fifties—I’d never thought to ask—but as Kohn had said on a number of occasions, he looked like a shrink, with his mustache and beard, all dark chestnut brown, and his pale blue oxford, charcoal gray tie, and black cashmere sweater. He’d taken off his suit jacket, also black, which I thought he always did to make us feel more comfortable.
“So, normally I don’t talk to the other marshals about one another, but in this instance, I needed to know what they thought about you.”
“Okay.”
“Are you curious about what was said?”
“I dunno.”
His grin was warm. “They said you’re normally quite the clotheshorse.”
It was true, everyone knew that. I’d grown up poor in lots of foster families with nothing of my own. In reaction, I now had too many clothes, too many shoes, and I’d made sure that one of the first things I ever acquired was a thirty-year mortgage on an $800,000 home that had only become manageable after I became a marshal. When I’d first bought the house on my detective salary, my budget had been meager. Now, I could eat, buy clothes, and pay the bank on the fifth of every month.
“Why aren’t you dressing up right now?”
I shrugged. “I’m stuck in the office, and with my broken ankle I can’t wear any of my good shoes.”
“You’re wearing one combat boot, I see.”
It was Ian’s, and since it was already beat to crap, I didn’t feel bad wearing only the one. “Yeah. I don’t want any of my good shoes wearing unevenly so—gotta wait.”
“That’s important to you.”
“What’s that?”
“That your shoes wear evenly.”
“Sure,” I agreed.
He nodded and was quiet a moment, writing. I wondered what deep truth he had ferreted out of me with my confession about the soles of my shoes.
“So tell me about Agent Wojno.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Anything you’d like to tell me.”
I thought a second. “He didn’t deserve to die like he did.”
He stared at me.
“And I’m glad they only told his family that he was killed, but not how.”
“Did you know he was married?”
“He was divorced.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I asked. What I asked was, did you know he was married when you first met him?”
I cleared my throat. “No.”
“Did you have a relationship with Agent Wojno?”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t have a relationship with him?”
“I had sex with him three or four times. It was not a relationship.”
“You didn’t go drinking together?”
“No.”
“You didn’t have him over to eat pizza and watch a movie?”
I leaned forward. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
I met his gaze. “If we ran into each other and it was convenient, we’d hook up. I went to his place once, there were a couple of bathrooms, and his car, if I’m remembering right. I never had him over and we didn’t hang out.”
He nodded. “Well, then, please explain to me why you feel so much guilt over his death.”
I was surprised. “What’re you talking about?”
“Everyone I’ve talked to, including your boss and your partner, say that you’re not yourself. You come in, you go right to the back and sit in the computer room where you answer the phone all day, run searches, and work cases from the desktop.”
“That’s all I can do right now.”
“Yes, it’s true, but also, you wear your White Sox cap in every day, you’re always in jeans or chinos, you’re always in a hoodie and the one boot.”
I threw up my hands. “I have no clue why any of that matters at all.”
“No?”
“I’m doing my job!”
“Craig Hartley is still at large.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“His sister is in WITSEC.”
“I know that as well.”
“Your old partner, the police detective, Norris Cochran, was put on paid leave, and he and his family were relocated for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m seriously waiting for you to tell me something I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you go?”
I scoffed. “We tried that. He found me.”
“Because of Agent Wojno.”
“Yep.”
“But the leak is gone now. It won’t happen again. You could go to another city and work, and there would be no issue.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Who’s to say? I’d rather be home here where I know everyone, than in another city trying to get acclimated.”
“But there are people here that Hartley might hurt to get to you.”
I scowled at him.
“Marshal?”
“Did you ever meet Craig Hartley?”
“Yes, I did. We were colleagues.”
“Well, then, you know hurting someone I care about is not something he’d do.”
“But you cautioned your friend Aruna not to visit your home while you were in Phoenix.”
“Because if he was at my house and she stumbled onto him, he’d have to hurt her on general principal, from a witness perspective. But he would never go over to her house for the express purpose of harming her to get at me. He wouldn’t see the point of that when he could hurt me directly.”
“And your partner—Marshal Doyle? Aren’t you worried about him?”
“The same dynamic applies. If Marshal Doyle was protecting me when Hartley was trying to hurt me, that’s when he’d get hurt. But hurting Marshal Doyle to punish me or make me suffer is not his way.”
“No?”
“No. He’s got this huge ego, right? If he’s trying to hurt me, it’s me he wants.”
“So you’re only worried about others getting caught in the crossfire.�
�
“Yes.”
He studied me a moment, his small sepia eyes taking my measure. “Why do you feel guilty about Wojno?”
“I don’t.”
“He betrayed you.”
“He did.”
“He would have let you die to save himself.”
“Yes.”
“When the joint task force between the FBI and the marshals service went through his personal e-mail, downloaded his calls and other correspondence, they found that Wojno was personally recruited by Hartley to get close to you and sleep with you because Hartley wanted to know everything about you, right up to what you were like in bed.”
“I’ve been briefed,” I said sharply because I was so sick of thinking about this, having it all run around day and night in my head, that I was ready to put my fist through a wall.
“Hartley was blackmailing Wojno, yes, but his plan wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t slept with him.”
“What’s your point?” I asked, frustrated, feeling my anger rise, hating that Hartley, even though nowhere near me, was still the one in control. Because of him I was stuck feeling like shit and having to talk to a shrink.
“My point is that maybe your guilt is not from how Wojno died, but that he was in the position to report to Hartley to begin with only because initially you found him attractive.”
Since I couldn’t deny it, I kept my mouth shut. The truth was, if I hadn’t fucked Wojno the first time, he might still be alive.
Maybe.
I couldn’t say for certain what would have happened to Wojno. He’d made a mistake and Hartley knew about it, and between the time Hartley found out and the time when Wojno turned me over to him, he’d become an FBI agent. It was naïve to think that Hartley wouldn’t have collected his pound of flesh at some point.
As I’d run the last time I’d spoken to him back through my brain over and over, I was at a loss to figure out what I could have done differently.
“Marshal?”
“Okay,” I conceded, so tired of all of it, the second-guessing myself, trying to figure out whether if I’d been able to connect emotionally with Wojno, things would have gone differently.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, I feel guilty, alert the media. What the hell am I supposed to do about that?”
He seemed confused. “You stop it.”
“Just stop it?” I was incredulous. “This is your sage advice?”
