School of Fish

by Amy Lane

  “Sure you didn’t,” Ellery goaded, liking him riled so much better than helpless and hurting.

  “Counselor…,” Jackson warned as they entered the close darkness of the structure.

  “Jackson Rivers, action hero, can’t stand to not have any—”

  Jackson whirled, grabbed Ellery’s hips, and pulled him close into Jackson’s overheated chest, taking his mouth savagely. He thrust his tongue in without apology, swallowing Ellery’s moan as Ellery melted into his arms.

  “Any what?” Jackson taunted.

  “Wha?” Ellery managed before Jackson kissed him again. Ellery could taste the faint tang of blood, but mostly Jackson, and they’d made love the night before, but that didn’t mean that Ellery didn’t want more of him, and more and more and more.

  “You said I couldn’t stand to not have any.” Jackson grinned wickedly, his eyes sparkling in the darkness.

  “Any action,” Ellery said breathlessly. “Can’t stand not to have any action.”

  Jackson chuckled. “I’ll show you action, Counselor,” he said, and then he kissed Ellery again. The kisses were wonderful, urgent, and God, Ellery never had a day when he didn’t want Jackson Leroy Rivers.

  But he could sense the underlying tension, the slight tremor in Jackson’s hands, and when things might have gotten out of hand for two grown men in a parking garage, he pulled back, gentling Jackson, calming him down.

  “Shh.” He rested their foreheads together. “Home first. Dinner second. Stress relief third.”

  Jackson grunted. “Do you really think I’m only here for the stress relief?”

  Ellery suppressed a shiver. “God, I really hope not,” he confessed. “But, you know. Let’s just get away from the hospital.”

  Jackson let out a breath. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. He didn’t move, though. “Thanks, Ellery.”

  Ellery straightened. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Jackson turned and started walking to the car, his knowing chuckle echoing through the garage as he went.

  Worms and Hooks

  “JACKSON, EAT.”

  Jackson pushed the sautéed chicken and veggies around on his plate. “I’m not hungry,” he muttered and then gave Ellery an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry,” he said dutifully. “I’m not trying to be difficult.”

  Ellery let out a sigh and pulled his fingers through his wet hair. Both of them had gone for a swim after they’d gotten home. It was still thick and wet outside, so they’d come in to the air-conditioning for a late dinner.

  It had been nearly ten o’clock when Ellery had shooed him into the shower while he cooked. Jackson was trying to be grateful, but….

  “I know you’re not,” Ellery said on a sigh, closing his eyes. “I could go swim another twenty laps myself. God, this case!”

  “Why do they have to be so young,” Jackson wondered. It had been haunting him since he’d seen the two case files side by side. “Whatever is going on, whoever we’re dealing with, they’re smart, they’re organized, and my God, they don’t mind using children.” He shuddered. “It was so much easier when the psychopaths were just… you know, psychopaths.”

  Ellery shook his head and, for one of the few times in Jackson’s memory, looked bleak and at a loss.

  “I…. You know, that’s the one crime I could never defend. My mother told me it was a possibility someone would ask me to do it, and I just… couldn’t.”

  “Hamster, Fingerling—”

  “Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson and Cooper knew when I signed on,” Ellery said. He shrugged. “We all had a line. Some people wouldn’t defend drug offenses, some wouldn’t defend weapons offenses. I wouldn’t defend crimes against children.” He shuddered. “You have to see something defensible, I suppose, in order to do your job as a defense attorney. I couldn’t. I just—”

  “Couldn’t,” Jackson murmured, taking in Ellery in his “leisure” wear. Tonight it was a pair of linen pajama bottoms and a clean white T-shirt. He’d probably take the bottoms off before coming to bed, but he was remarkably prim about things like clothes and when to wear them and what their function was.

  Jackson was in one of the practically transparent pairs of basketball shorts that had survived the great clothing purge of Jackson’s recovery time, and a black Fitz and the Tantrums T-shirt with more holes than lettering. He may have vowed to make an effort to dress better when he represented the firm—and Ellery—but even Ellery conceded that he could wear whatever he wanted when it was just the two of them alone in their home late at night.

  But looking at Ellery working so desperately for order, trying to make the world a better place—one in which the bad were punished proportionately and the good were allowed to make their living—and seeing that he lived his life that way, gave Jackson faith.

  “I couldn’t see you defending anybody who would hurt a child,” Jackson said honestly. “But even abuse and neglect—those are terrible, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes they’re crimes of desperation, of poverty. Latchkey children who are unsupervised because their parents are working to put food on the table and pay rent. The parent who’s desperate over both those things and loses his or her temper. Those crimes can be… I don’t know. They’re awful and cyclical and all of those things, but they are at least functions of being human. Desperately flawed human beings, but human beings.”

  Ellery nodded meekly, and Jackson was struck by his vulnerability. It hit him—perhaps for the first time—that Ellery’s insistence on order, on wearing the right clothes for the right function, on following sometimes inconvenient rules, was a defense against the fear of the things he couldn’t control.

  “These people,” Ellery said softly. “Whoever would take Tage’s brother and sister and traffic them, whoever would set him up, would try to steal Ty’s future and slit James Cosgrove’s throat….”

  They both shuddered.

  “Monstrous,” Jackson said after a moment. “Tim Owens was monstrous, but I could see into his brain. I could see the human inside the monster.” Tim Owens had been a serial killer who’d worked for the police force under an assumed identity for years. But Jackson could still remember following his twisted logic, his obsession with Jackson, with the “dirty/pretty” people just fallen into life on the streets. “Martin Sampson’s father—I got it. It was ugly, and it was awful, and it turned my stomach, but I got it.” Sampson Senior had molested his son and then, when Martin refused to sell drugs or recruit his friends anymore, killed him. “But this? This is organized, and it’s far-reaching. Tage Dobrevk was a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’m hoping he’ll be alive when we get there in the morning to spring him. Ty Townsend was the same, but he was engineered to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And don’t get me started on Tage’s siblings. And we only have one face to it, Ziggy Ivanov, and he feels like a front man. He’s not small change, maybe—a mover and a shaker—but he’s not a mastermind.”

  “What makes you say that?” Ellery asked, the directness of the question sharpening his features. Maybe he needed to make sense of it as much as Jackson did.

  “Because a mastermind wouldn’t have been breaking into our office,” Jackson mused. “That’s desperation. That’s ‘Oh shit! Our guy didn’t get to the file at the PD’s office. We need to get where it was going!’ Stabbing Sean wasn’t planned. He was literally on his way out the door. But….” Jackson bit his lip, remembering the two bodies colliding, Sean staggering back holding his hands over his stomach.

  Ziggy’s footsteps pounding down the pavement before Jackson had realized what that meant.

  “He’s no stranger to violence,” Jackson said. “He probably killed James Cosgrove.” He grimaced. “God, poor No Neck. It would be nice to know why.”

  “Loose end for setting Ty Townsend up,” Ellery hazarded.

  “Yeah.” Jackson chewed his lower lip. “But maybe not. I mean, No Neck would have been an in. Whatever they were doing, Ziggy had the cop eq
uivalent of a CI in a population he was interested in manipulating. Why kill him?”

  “Good point,” Ellery said. “But you know what we really need to know is—”

  “What in the fuck are they doing!” Jackson burst out. “Drugs, human trafficking. Is it all of the above? Is it just a massive move on the streets to saturate a particular neighborhood with mob contacts…?”

  He stopped and looked at Ellery in surprise.

  “It’s a massive move on the streets to set up the mob so deep they can’t be unearthed,” Ellery said, as stunned as Jackson to find he was right.

  “There’s an epicenter,” Jackson said in wonder. “There’s a…. We can’t see it yet, but Ziggy, the poor bastard in the ER, Tage and his family—all of this is circling around something.”

  He scrubbed his face with his hands. “So. Many. Leads,” he muttered after a few minutes. “God, we need to put this together soon. Tage and his family need protection.”

  “We need sleep,” Ellery said decisively. “But first….” His lower lip wobbled. “Please, for me?”

  Jackson looked at the plate of food in front of him and took a bite. It was good even cold. He took another bite and glanced at Ellery. “I’ll finish it off on one condition,” he said, hating how naked Ellery seemed without the protection of his sense of order, his sense of rightness.

  Ellery arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Don’t say it.”

  Jackson summoned up a wicked smile. “Heh heh heh heh.” He took another deliberate bite, licking the fork.

  Ellery’s shoulders gave a little wiggle as his spine straightened, and his head assumed a haughty tilt. “Are you trying to seduce me over cold chicken and vegetables—” He paused, his eyes growing limpid again, before he added the endearment. “—Detective?”

  “I’m trying to seduce you,” Jackson said unrepentantly before taking another bite.

  “Why would you want to do that?” And he’d meant it to be arch—Jackson could tell—but it sounded lost.

  Jackson shoveled in his last bite, chewed deliberately, and swallowed before wiping his mouth. “Because we’ve both had a rough day, and we need to remember what’s good.”

  Ellery’s smile was particularly luminous. “You’re good,” he said softly, with that faith that used to terrify Jackson.

  Jackson swallowed again, took a last sip of water, and stood. “Only with you,” he said, extending his hand. Ellery took it and for once left the dishes on the table, letting Jackson pull him up into what Jackson had planned to be a mauling kiss.

  It turned into a hug. Jackson nuzzled his neck for a moment, knowing he’d smell like soap and clean man and a little like Ellery himself. It was a surprisingly exotic smell, spicy and rich, because Ellery wasn’t an average man.

  And tonight he needed comforting.

  He sighed in Jackson’s arms, melting, and Jackson kept up the nuzzle, then ran his nose along the shell of Ellery’s ear, turning it into a caress. Ellery slid his arms around Jackson’s waist, and Jackson trailed his lips down the side of Ellery’s neck, using his tongue and tasting a little, trying to pull that exotic, wonderful scent into his soul.

  Ellery tilted his head, giving Jackson access, accepting comfort in a way that told Jackson he needed it desperately. Poor Ellery. Worried about Jackson all the time, worried about his business, worried about his clients. Jackson had started their relationship assuming that he’d be the one to take care of things, only to find his life neatly managed, his body and soul neatly cared for, by the man in his arms. But Ellery wasn’t a god; sometimes he really needed someone to take care of him.

  Ellery gave a little gasp, and Jackson trailed kisses along his jawline, being very, very careful of the swelling where the guard’s punch had landed. “Tell me if it hurts,” he murmured.

  “No,” Ellery said, tilting his head back and giving Jackson access to his throat.

  “No, it doesn’t hurt, or no, you won’t tell me?” Jackson teased between kisses, between nibbles. The T-shirt Ellery was wearing, a silky, pricey affair, gaped to expose Ellery’s collar bones, and Jackson trailed more kisses down the line.

  “Nothing hurts,” Ellery assured him. “Not when you’re doing—” Jackson nipped lightly at his neck. “—ah… that.”

  “Heh heh heh.” Jackson captured Ellery’s earlobe and sucked, adding a little nip to it, delighted when Ellery shuddered in his arms, leaning against Jackson for support.

  “Jackson?” Ellery begged.

  “Bed?” Because Jackson would undress him here, strip his clothes off and make love to him standing in front of their dinner plates and the dining room table, but that’s not what he wanted.

  “Bed,” Ellery breathed.

  “Good.”

  Jackson turned and offered his hand, leading the way into the darkened bedroom. He paused for a moment to shoo the cat off the bed and pull back the covers, but he didn’t turn on the light. Tonight’s mood demanded the intimacy of the dark.

  Once Billy Bob had stalked off in offended dignity, Jackson turned toward Ellery to find him still dressed and realized his Counselor needed more from him tonight than he’d allowed Jackson to give him in a long time.

  “C’mere,” he ordered, and Ellery approached obediently, allowing Jackson to shuck off his shirt and run his palms down Ellery’s rib cage, the leanness of his stomach, before pushing at the soft pajama pants. Jackson sat on the bed and kissed Ellery’s sternum, the soft skin of his stomach, using his tongue to tease along the line of his boxer briefs.

  Ellery moaned slightly, and Jackson ran his hands along the backs of his thighs, teasing the inside of the boxer briefs with his thumbs. Ellery’s back rippled, and he thrust his hips forward, and ah! There he was, full and erect, pressing against Jackson’s chest.

  Jackson could have teased him some more, but Ellery needed tonight. Jackson removed his boxer briefs instead, pleased when Ellery’s sizable erection flopped forward, right at mouth level.

  A sign if Jackson had ever seen one. He opened, took Ellery in without preamble, and Ellery moaned again, a little louder this time. So many other lovers, but Jackson could never remember their taste. Ellery’s taste was the thing he craved—every morning, every evening—because it fed his soul.

  Down to the back of his throat. Jackson was good at this, opening up, pushing forward until his lips met Ellery’s pubic hair, his skin. He swallowed, milking the cockhead, then pulled back, allowing it to get passionate, sloppy. Welcoming the sting along his scalp as Ellery tugged at his hair.

  “Oh… oh God, Jackson.”

  Jackson did it again, again, sliding his hands along Ellery’s backside while he deep-throated, parting Ellery’s cheeks with his thumbs.

  “Ohhhh….”

  Jackson would have smiled, but that would have meant letting Ellery’s cock out of his mouth, and now he was the one who needed, needed it to fill him, needed more of Ellery’s taste inside. He let some spit dribble onto his fingers and parted Ellery again, this time timing his breach of Ellery’s entrance with the thrust forward along his cock.

  “Ah!” Ellery spurted a little, precome filling Jackson’s mouth, and Jackson swallowed again, savoring the taste. He thrust a little farther inside, and Ellery broke. “Now,” he begged. “Please. God, baby, I need you.”

  One more time along his cockhead, and then just when Ellery whimpered and threatened to come, he pulled back. “On the bed, Counselor. Be sure you can see me when I fuck you.”

  Ellery nodded meekly and then, to Jackson’s surprise, thrust his hands inside the neck of Jackson’s awful old shirt and yanked, ripping it off his body.

  Jackson laughed and stood, taking Ellery’s mouth in a mauling kiss that left him pliable and breathless. “Told you,” he said, ducking his head to pull a nipple in his mouth.

  “Told me what?” Ellery demanded, holding Jackson’s head in place, begging for more.

  Jackson pulled off the nipple with a pop. “Told you old clothes have their uses. Now lay down a
nd spread ’em.”

  Ellery did, some of the sadness gone from his movements, the moment lightened by his playfulness. Jackson loved him like this—loved him all the ways, in fact. Bossy and irritated, pliant and needy, and now excited and sensual, luxuriating in the touch of someone he loved.

  Jackson grabbed the lube from the bed stand, pausing just a moment to grease his cock, enjoying the feel of the slick as he rubbed.

  He added a little more to his fingers and knelt at the foot of the bed, teasing Ellery’s entrance as he lay splayed out for Jackson’s pleasure, just like he’d commanded.

  Power like that could go to a guy’s head. Both of them.

  “You done—ah!—teasing me yet?” Ellery rasped as Jackson thrust one finger in and circled.

  “Nope.”

  Ellery took hold of his cock and squeezed, his entire body trembling.

  “I’m gonna come without you,” he taunted, and Jackson shoved both lubed fingers in to the knuckle, enjoying Ellery’s shudder, his cry into the dark, the way the vulnerability had fled, leaving him powerful and pleasured and happy.

  “The hell you will,” he said, spreading his fingers. “You’ll lay there and take it.”

  “You’re not… oh… oh God! Jackson!”

  Jackson pulled his fingers out, not wanting to push too far. Some nights, when he knew Ellery needed it, he could be rough, could just thrust in with a little lube and know Ellery would be with him, greedy for the manhandling, for the bite of pain. Some nights he could tease until his lover was begging.

  But not tonight, when Ellery needed the reassurance of Jackson inside of him as much as Jackson needed to know Ellery was whole in heart as well as body, needed to know nothing was going to hurt him as long as Jackson was there.

  Jackson moved up until they were chest to chest, and his own dripping cock was poised at Ellery’s entrance.

  “You ready for this?” he breathed, pushing enough to tease.

  “Yes,” Ellery begged. “Please.”

  Jackson thrust in slowly until his head popped through, and Ellery hmmed in his throat in welcome. “Good?” Jackson asked.