Recoil

by Evelyn Drake

  Kyle looked off into the distance, but it was a distance of time instead of space. “I didn’t know,” he said, his hands on his hips. “I should have figured that out.” He wiped at his cheek and then returned to his stoic stance. He sniffed once and then returned his attention to Tobias. “Can we go?”

  Tobias nodded his head without saying anything.

  I need to go see the on-duty shrink after this.

  Thirty minutes later, Tobias was dressed and sitting in a parked car next to Kyle. On the way there, with Kyle’s attention focused on the road, Tobias had taken the opportunity to focus on Kyle, to drink in the long lines of his body that were wrapped in enough muscle to be adequately shared between three men. He was beautiful, even more beautiful than his memory had painted him.

  “This is the place,” Kyle said, looking out the window at a house across the street and one door down. “This is where Therman lives.”

  “And what’s the huge discovery that has you convinced that Therman’s the killer?”

  “It’s inside the house. Come on.”

  Kyle had his door open and one foot already on the ground when Tobias’s strong hand wrapped around his forearm, pulling the big man’s attention back to him.

  “I can’t go in that house.”

  “Why not?” More than a little exasperation filled Kyle’s voice.

  “If I go in that house, it will make everything I find inadmissible in a court of law.”

  “Who the hell cares about a court of law? The guy’s a psycho!”

  “I care about a court of law!” Tobias’s harsh, bitten words seemed to stall Kyle’s gathering outrage. “I go in that house, and if he’s the killer, he could get away with it. I can’t do that. What is it that you wanted to show me? Tell me.”

  A wasted trip out here, but it had broken the tension between them, giving them a while to sit in relatively companionable silence as Kyle drove.

  With a certain amount of resentment in his expression, Kyle settled back into the car and shut the door.

  “In the basement, Therman has one of those captive hiding holes dug out. In it, he’s got a bed with chains and shackles on it, a picture of Victoria on the wall, and a locking steel door.”

  Tobias felt his stomach turn over, and he thought he might be sick. “And where is Therman now? Do you know?”

  “I locked him inside his sex-slave cave.”

  “Is he at risk of dying?”

  “He wasn’t when I saw him.”

  Tobias nodded his head, saying nothing as he stared forward, working through his thoughts, layer by layer. “This is what we’re going to do. You’re taking me home, and I’m going to put in a request for a search warrant based on an anonymous tip.”

  The pale illumination that filtered into the car from the overhead streetlights held Kyle frozen, as if captured in marble, a statue that would have been called, “Trapped Man Seethes.” Tobias knew the feeling. But he also knew what it was to break the trap. It was a path that led to nightmares.

  Saying nothing, Kyle took a deep breath and then turned the ignition.

  “The fucker’s even safe from a home invasion.” Then, struck with a thought, Kyle turned to face Tobias. “Don’t let him claim that place is his safety room. Don’t let him do that.”

  “It’s okay,” Tobias said, laying a hand on Kyle’s arm without thinking. “With a bed with chains and shackles and a past of obsessive behavior toward Victoria… the guy’s not going to be able to talk his way around this.”

  Kyle nodded his head in a way that was meant to mirror his thoughts more than it was intended to communicate, and his body slowly relaxed. His eyes turned down to where Tobias’s hand still rested on his arm. “You need something?” Kyle’s tone was flat.

  Tobias pulled his hand away at the mild rebuke, and he felt his heart tighten. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  The drive home was silent, and by the time they pulled up outside of Tobias’s condominium complex, he’d had the chance to relax enough that fatigue had settled in deep enough to reach his bones.

  Tobias couldn’t remember the last time the nightmares had let him sleep through the night. He was exhausted. Yet a thought niggled and teased at the periphery of his consciousness. Then, like lightning, it struck him.

  “How did you know where I live?” Tobias asked, turning to Kyle.

  Kyle shrugged without turning to look at Tobias.

  “So, all this time, not only were you alive but you knew where I was? And you said nothing. You piece of shit.” Tobias got out of the car, slammed it shut behind him and headed for the apartment. The sooner this case is done, the better. Sooner Kyle Rivers is out of my life, the better.

  He’d expected to hear the rev of an engine as Kyle drove away, but instead he heard a car door slam. Tobias’s heart beat faster as hope flared. He would stamp it down if he knew how, but hope was one emotion he’d never had any control over. Yet, Tobias kept walking, moving as fast as he had been. He kept his eyes forward. If Kyle had something he wanted him to hear, Kyle would have to work for it.

  The night was pushing nearly five in the morning now, and Tobias knew that there wouldn’t be any more sleep ahead of him for God knew how many hours. But as he neared his condo door, his keys in hand and the sound of Kyle’s feet growing faster behind him, Tobias’s adrenaline surged. Reaching his door, he moved to unlock it, but Kyle’s strong hands were on him, spinning him around and pushing him back until he was pressed against the wall. The big man didn’t say a thing. Instead, he bent in for a kiss, sliding his hand behind the base of Tobias’s head.

  Fuck… he always did know how to kiss.

  Tobias melted, but it didn’t matter. Kyle’s strong body was there to hold him up. Even now, years later, Kyle was taller than him. Through the years he’d wondered if time would have slowed Kyle’s growth down, allowing Tobias to catch him. That hadn’t been the case, and Kyle made Tobias feel small in his arms as Kyle’s hips pressed themselves into the flat of Tobias’s lower stomach.

  Opening his lips, Tobias welcomed Kyle inside of him once more, just as he’d done earlier that night. He only hoped that this kiss didn’t end with another slap.

  They both had baggage—put on them by their parents’ lies and damning beliefs—but he wouldn’t accept that treatment from the same man who held him like this, no matter how badly Kyle thought that Tobias had betrayed him… not if this was to be lasting.

  Get a grip. Stop picking out fucking bone china.

  Kyle’s body shifted as his hips moved to the side and Kyle’s hand slid down Tobias’s stomach. It didn’t stop at the waist of his jeans. Instead, his hand reached inside… until he got a grip.

  Tobias gasped into Kyle’s mouth, and Kyle used the opportunity to explore Tobias deeper. As their tongues danced, Kyle’s hand began to stroke to the limits that Tobias’s jeans would allow.

  Desperate for more—for all that he could have—Tobias’s shaky fingers unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. Suddenly Kyle’s hand was doing things to him that had him moaning and his eyes rolling back in his head. Reaching for Kyle’s back to run his hands up his amazing wealth of muscle, Tobias found himself swiftly rebuked.

  “Hands off. You know I can’t.”

  The words were murmured into Tobias’s mouth with Kyle’s lips against his, but Tobias knew better than to try to argue against them. Whatever helps him sleep at night… and keeps his hand wrapped around my cock.

  Kyle’s lips brushing Tobias’s as they shared the same breath.

  “But I want to. I would,” Tobias whimpered as he dug his nails into the wall behind him and did his best not to thrust his hips with the stroking slide of Kyle’s hand.

  “You can’t,” Kyle groaned as his skillful hand pumped faster.

  “I know,” Tobias breathed and then submitted to Kyle’s crushing kiss. It took every ounce of his willpower not to touch Kyle, not to hold him tightly to him.

  The sound of a door opening froze a moan in Tobias’s thro
at, and Kyle’s body was instantly in front of him, his back to whatever gawker they had become victim to with his body shielding Tobias completely from view.

  The sound of a lock latching filled the silence of the night.

  “Good morning. Off to work.” It was Charles, Tobias’s neighbor, and Charles sounded more than a little amused.

  “Morning,” Tobias called, wanting to hit the back of his head against the wall at how strained his voice sounded. Charles’ answering snicker didn’t help any, but the sound of his retreating feet soon faded.

  Tobias thought that that would be it, that the spell was broken—but then Kyle’s hand moved. It stroked, and Tobias moaned. Kyle’s big hand stroked again and Tobias moaned again, letting his hips pulse forward this time.

  In less than a minute, Tobias was crying his pleasure into Kyle’s demanding kiss as Kyle’s free hand held him firmly in place with his fist tangled into his hair.

  Tobias let go. He didn’t fight it. He let Kyle take control. Tobias was tired of control. He stood as the valve between justice and injustice. He made and broke lives and futures. He gave tortured families peace or shattered them beyond repair. He was tired, and he was ready to give all that he was into Kyle’s care.

  And Kyle took him—all of him—until his bucking, spasming body was pressed hard against the wall as Tobias painted Kyle’s palm with his hot cum.

  To Tobias’s surprise, Kyle didn’t release him right away. Instead, his hand remained in place around Tobias’s slowly flagging cock. Kyle waited, giving Tobias support as he caught his breath and as he came back to his senses.

  “I did love you,” Kyle whispered, taking Tobias’s lips in a tender kiss. “But I’m not gay. Not anymore. I wish I were… for you. But I not. They ruined me for someone as sweet and as good as you,” Kyle said, tracing Tobias’s stubbled cheek with the backs of his fingers. “This is a goodbye to who we used to be.”

  When Kyle released Tobias’s cock, turned and walked away—leaving Tobias void without the pressing presence of Kyle’s body—Tobias sank to kneel on the backs of his heels. He couldn’t breathe, and tears stung his eyes.

  He can’t do this. He can’t walk back into my life just to walk back out. He can’t. I won’t let him.

  Yet Kyle walked away to his car without a look back. And when he got behind the wheel and drove away, he did so without a glance in Tobias’s direction.

  All over again, Tobias’s heart was pierced and bleeding out. All over again, he was losing the only person he’d ever loved.

  6

  Kyle

  Kyle’s Dodge Charger pulled into the side driveway of his bungalow cottage just as the almost purple early morning sky of night gained the soft glow of day. Turning off the engine, he leaned heavy against the seat.

  “When did I sleep last?” He searched his memories. His body had the type of fatigue that vibrated with unspent energy. It was still in reaction mode, fight or flight mode, and as always, he was ready to fight.

  Getting out of the car, he travelled the stone pathway over the lawn to the three steps that led up to the small front porch. Roses cared for by Monica lined the front of the house, the red of the flowers perfectly matching the red of the door.

  Sliding his key into the door and giving it a turn, Kyle stepped inside to the smell of freshly baked biscuits and bacon, and he didn’t even stop the smile that pulled at his lips as he headed into the kitchen.

  “There you are!” Monica exclaimed, standing up straight from where she had been leaning over the countertop, using her insubstantial weight to smash half of an orange into a cone shaped, manual juicer. “I would have been so upset if you hadn’t made it home for breakfast. I just kept cooking and cooking and cooking, figuring you had to get home sometime!”

  Smiling big enough to make his eyes crinkle, Kyle leaned over—way over—to give the toughest woman he’d ever known a kiss on the cheek. “Morning.”

  At 89, Monica Collins was spry and fit, and she had a mind as sharp as a tack. Age had made her look a little frail, but he knew better than to ever let her think that. Fifteen years ago, she had been beyond ready to retire from work as a social worker—and then she’d heard about him. Already into her mid-70s, she’d put off retirement until she had fought with the system and the courts—using up every favor and connection she’d garnered over the years—to ensure Kyle’s release from a mental hospital on his eighteenth birthday while others had conspired to get him transferred to a hospital for the violently and criminally insane to be held until “cured”—a day that would have likely never come. Literally rather than figuratively, she had saved him. She had been his champion and his angel.

  But his angel cooked like a culinary demon on steroids. He hated to think what his arteries looked like.

  Glancing around the kitchen, he saw that in addition to the biscuits and bacon he’d smelled when he’d walked in, Monica had made a mushroom, feta, and onion frittata plus gravy to go with the homemade biscuits. And inside the fridge, he knew that her homemade orange marmalade was waiting for him.

  “You keep feeding me like this and there’s no way I’ll outlive you.” The words came out of his mouth but there was bliss on his face as he bent over the pan of gravy and breathed it deep. “But I’ll die a happy man,” he added, glancing back over his shoulder at her with a smile that could have lit up a dark cave.

  “You hush. I want to know where you’ve been all night,” Monica chided, returning to her work of squeezing fresh orange juice. Her arms were small but had the look of steel bands. Even with her ninetieth birthday just around the corner, she shamed him regularly with the yoga poses she could pull off. She could hold her balance in a hurricane.

  Kyle hesitated, unsure of how much he wanted to tell her. She was his best friend and closest confidant, yet their views on life differed, and frankly, he didn’t want to hear the lecture that came with her finding out that he’d spent time with a man. In the end, he shrugged noncommittally.

  “Don’t give me that,” Monica pressed, her shrewd eyes taking in every nuance of him. Kyle focused on making his body relax. Monica’s ability to read him gave seemed to at times give her supernatural, psychic powers. His eyes dropped to the counter.

  Monica stopped pressing the orange into juicing cone. “What did you do?” Her voice had gotten a worried edge to it.

  Kyle sighed, giving up trying to hide anything from her.

  “It’s nothing.” He flinched at his word choice. “I mean… crap.” He took a deep breath. “Somebody killed Victoria last night.”

  Monica gasped and dropped the fruit on the counter, bringing her fingers up to her mouth. “No!” Her face was twisted in grief and concern, but it suddenly scrunched in anger. “It was that fucker Therman, wasn’t it?”

  Kyle’s brows went up. He knew that Monica could cuss like a sailor. He’d heard her do it on more than one occasion, but her use of colorful vocabulary tended to go hand in hand with her willingness to pick up a knife and gut someone. She’d reached that “fuck it” age where she figured that them throwing her in jail for the rest of her life wouldn’t amount for much.

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said, opting for moderation in the expression of his opinion of Therman with Monica. He didn’t want to fan her flames. Yet he wasn’t going to lie or sugarcoat it either. “Maybe. I think so. But, I don’t know.”

  Monica studied Kyle’s face and then her eyes narrowed. “There’s something else. What are you not telling me?”

  Kyle tried not to roll his eyes as he fidgeted. He cleared his throat. “I, uh, saw Tobias.”

  “Saw him… or spoke to him?” Monica’s eyes were wide and she seemed to be holding her breath.

  “Spoke to him,” Kyle answered, keeping his eyes averted since the truth extended quite a bit further than talking.

  Monica gasped, this time with delight, and clapped her hands once as she bounced on the balls of her feet. “How did it go? No—wait. Here. Sit. Eat and we’ll talk.” In a flurry
of motion, she put together a plate of two buttermilk biscuits, laid open and smothered with sausage gravy, a huge wedge of frittata, five pieces of bacon, a third of an orange, and a glass of fresh-squeezed juice. For herself, she got a half of a biscuit with gravy, half of one slice of bacon, a whole orange, orange juice, and a modest sized wedge of frittata.

  “What?” she said, sitting down with her plate as Kyle looked between his portion and hers. “You’re like eight feet taller than me,” Monica shrugged with a wicked little smile.

  Kyle laughed before picking up his fork and then taking a bite of the biscuit and gravy. His laugh turned into a moan of pleasure that had his lids closing and his eyes rolling back in his head. When he looked at Monica again, it was to see satisfaction on her face that she still knew how to hit him right where it counted—his tastebuds.

  “So, start from the beginning. What happened last night?”

  Kyle ran through all that he knew—which wasn’t much. One of the girls had started screaming. He’d come running only to find Victoria dead. Then it was all hands off waiting for the cops to arrive—except for when he’d had to scour the dance hall looking for where that weasel Therman was hiding. Kyle had wanted to kill him, but he’d thrown him outside for the cops instead.

  That was when he’d seen Tobias…

  Kyle took a deep breath.

  “So, you talked to Tobias?”

  Kyle felt his face heat and he let his gaze drop to the table.

  Monica’s mouth dropped open as she sucked in a breath. “I told you that you were gay,” she cooed.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, old woman.”

  “Mmm, you watch your tone, young man.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “What they did to you—they locked you in a basement and tortured you. It was abuse, Kyle. It wasn’t therapy. Even if they’d done it different, you know damn well conversion therapy doesn’t work.”

  Kyle grunted. “What I know is that gay men are destined to an eternity in hell. They aren’t human.”