by Rhys Ford
The latch was locked, but I was motivated. Wrenching it open, I tore it from its hinges. I slammed the gate open and rushed through, hoping the piles of discarded toilets, engine blocks, and furniture would keep my pursuer occupied for a few minutes. Or at least enough time for me to disappear down the street. Still, I wasn’t all that convinced I was free and clear of getting shot that night.
Jae would have my damned dick for chigae if I got shot again. He’d all but threatened to skin me if I came home with more holes than I’d left with.
Pookie twisted halfway around in her harness when I broke through and her snapping tiny teeth were hell-bent on piercing my nostrils.
“Come, dog, I’m trying to rescue you here. Give me a fucking break.” I took a few strides forward when a gruff voice screamed at me in a rough Spanish I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know him but judging by his pissed-off face, I guess he owned the lush greenery I’d trampled through. While my Spanish was failing me, I did however understand the semi-automatic he pointed at my face. With only a couple of feet separating us, chances were, even if he was the shittiest shot in the world, I was going to lose my face.
He came up to my upper arm and sported an impressive thatch poking out from under each armpit. The rest of him was shorn clean of hair, with only a whimper of a scrawny mustache over his pierced upper lip. Dressed in the odd combination of bright white socks, flip-flops and long cargo shorts barely hanging onto his skinny hips, his attire was made less laughable by the badly inked off-blue tattoos scrawled over his torso, neck and face.
He was a snarling bantam. The kind of man who really deserved to own Pookie since they seemed to share the same personality. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was pretty sure he would use Ava’s white poof of doom as a silencer for the enormous gun he held in his hand, I’d have handed the mutt over and wished him the best.
But he had other plans. Apparently he didn’t need no stinking silencer, poodle or not.
“I’m a’gonna shoot you, mother….”
Guys always have to talk when they’re trying to shoot you. There are some exceptions. My police partner, Ben, did no talking when he riddled me and my lover, Rick, with bullets from his service piece as we left a restaurant. I’m sure he did plenty of talking at some point. Just not to me. Since he ate his own gun shortly after killing Rick and damning me to a life of nerve-seizing scar tissue, I never did get the chance to ask him why. In the case of the shaven-head, hairy-pit rooster with a handgun masquerading as a cannon, I wasn’t going to stick around to listen to his threats or reasons on why I should let him fill me full of holes.
Besides, there was that promise to Jae that I wouldn’t get shot again, and I had a serious ass-kicking to give Bobby once I found him. It was one thing to jack a friend by leaving him in a club. It’s quite another to ditch him while he was nipple deep in a pot farm after pulling a poodle out of death-row solitary.
Not getting shot seemed like my first priority. However, ass-kicking seemed like it would be more fun.
No one really expects another guy to kick them in the balls. It’s a time-honored agreement between men. Thou shalt not emasculate the cock and scrotum. I, however, never claimed to be a gentleman, so my foot went up and scored a long goal shot down center field.
Then I did the sensible thing.
I ran. Unfortunately for me and Pookie, running seemed to come with a new complication—one of the biggest shepherds I’d ever seen outside of a horror flick.
Sadly, even though my Lilliputian terrorist was writhing on the floor cupping his own goods and I thought I was possibly home free, the large canine had other plans. It was huge, much larger than the ones I’d avoided in the alleyway. I could have stayed and admired it. Sleek and wolfish, the dog was a masterful specimen of whatever hellhound breed it belonged to. It also seemed more than willing to take up the task of riddling me full of holes, using his teeth instead of the mutant ninja pygmy’s gun.
I ran harder.
By no means am I graceful. Not ballet graceful and certainly not the slinky, bend-in-half-backward graceful Jae seems to be able to pull off, but in situations like these, grace hardly mattered. Stamina. I had stamina. I could go rounds with Bobby in a boxing ring, mostly dodging his cement-like fists before they pounded into my body, but still, I had stamina. It was the name of the game, outlasting one’s opponent.
Also speed. That’s never something to laugh at. Speed was key. Whoever said knowledge is half the battle did not have a ’roided up wolf dog chewing on their ass. Knowledge gave me jack shit in this instance. Fucking jack shit.
My heart pounded, and for some reason, the scar tissue along my rib cage decided right then and there it needed to perform an origami maneuver to curl itself into a crane. Or maybe it was a bunny. Either way, it was starting to hurt, and Pookie chose that moment to begin twisting around to break free of the harness.
Sharp teeth on the back of my thigh tore straight through my jeans, giving me further incentive to quicken my pace. My back pocket went next, along with a piece of skin. The ripping pain under the rise of my ass ached more than my side, and I kicked out, breaking my stride long enough to fight the dog off. I heard a yelp and kept running, praying my knees would hold out despite the angry, stabbing pangs kicking up my thighs.
Mister Bald Rooster must have recovered somewhat, because a trash can next to me sparked and shot backward, a smoking black hole through its battered metal walls. Another blast took out a piece of wooden fence, and I ducked, only catching a few of the wooden shards across my neck and face. Pookie screamed her defiance at the dog chasing me, speaking in an ancient Poodle tongue that I’d have liked to imagine insulted its mother and possibly cursed its shriveled dick. Then she bit my chest, scoring a hit through my T-shirt, and I knew she was only egging the dog on to take me down.
A few feet in front of me lay a desert of tarmac, and a tremor of fear tickled my balls. The tight alley broke apart into a double lane of black asphalt, and I’d be out in the open where the dog could maneuver around and circle me. My only hope was to hug the fences along the sidewalk and pray to get hit by a bus or possibly by a falling satellite. I’d take either one since it would mean I’d be taking Pookie with me.
I was a little bitter about the blood trickling down my belly.
My daring escape came to a screeching halt when the street I’d turned down lit up in a dance of red and blue. Slamming to a stop, my hands caught air just as the dog behind me caught up with me. Its teeth found their mark again, digging into my thigh, and I howled, drowning out the cop ordering me to my knees. I recognized Bobby and his truck silhouetted against the patrol cars’ headlights, and from the way his hands were pulled behind his back, he seemed to have a halfway decent enough excuse for not being where I left him.
Rough hands grabbed my shoulders and forced me down, jostling Pookie. She snapped at a cop’s hands, raking her teeth over his fingers. Screaming obscenities at my head, the cop backhanded me like I’d been the one to bite him, and I sensibly fell over. The asphalt grabbed my naked thigh and hip, scraping me raw.
As if auditioning for a talent show, Pookie popped out of the harness like a greased pig, shooting out and landing a few feet away. Barking happily, she squatted in the middle of the road and peed, wagging her tail at the dog who’d been chasing me down the alleyway.
The same dog I’d kicked straight in the head apparently seemed to be wearing an LAPD K-9 unit jacket.
It was still huge, more fur, teeth and muscle than should be allowed on a dog, and he trotted over to sit attentively at another cop’s side, no sign of his previous aggression apparent in his relaxed wiggling as the cop petted him. Within seconds, my arms were twisted behind my back and cuffs were snapped over my wrists before I could protest. A gust of cool wind blasted up the crack of my ass, and I could have sworn the dog’s muzzle curled into a wicked grin as he dropped what looked like pieces of my underwear right at Pookie’s fluffy white feet.
The bitten c
op leaned over and spoke, his words a malevolent curdle of a whisper filled with an awe-inspiring disgust I would have admired if I hadn’t been the one on my knees. “What kind of sick fuck steals a little dog?”
Chapter 2
SOME men are sexier when they’re angry. Apparently, my lover, Jae, was one of those men. My calling him down to a police station at four in the morning to bail out his boyfriend and said boyfriend’s best friend should have been considered a favor to all of the women and gay men who were in the station that night.
I know I certainly enjoyed the sight of him stalking back and forth as I was being led into the holding bay. I wasn’t going to like what he had to say to me, but still, I’d have to be a dead man not to enjoy the view.
His black hair was rumpled, sticking up slightly in front, and his sleepy, hooded brown gaze flirted between sensual fire and feral iciness. His toes were bare, sticking out of a pair of black flip-flops, and the white T-shirt he wore looked like one of mine, a bit too large for his slender frame. A pair of ratty jeans, barely held together by a whisper and a few threads, were stretched tight across his ass when he shoved his hands into his front pockets. I should have gotten a Get Out of Jail Free card just for getting that ass into the station. His face, like his ass, was a thing of beauty, a plump, succulent mouth set beneath high cheekbones and long-lashed almond eyes. The sight of his canines chewing on his lower lip evoked a lot of memories of that mouth and those teeth gnawing on sensitive stretches of my body.
More than one pair of eyes followed his progress back and forth in the waiting area, and I caught a very macho-looking cop dropping his gaze to the tight plumpness of Jae’s rear. The cop bristled when I grinned at him, and a red flush crept up from his cheeks and over his ears. Jae saw my smirk, and his mouth thinned into a disapproving line.
No, my hot, sexy boyfriend was not amused. Not in the slightest.
A wall of bars separated us from the waiting area, and there was only one other man in line with us. The guy’s suit was wrinkled and he smelled like burnt vodka. A thick brush of gray whiskers covered his movie-star chiseled chin and cheekbones. He looked like someone I should know, but I couldn’t place his face. Blustering, he shoved past us and stomped over to the outtake clerk. Whoever he was, he was one of three reasons the outtake window was open.
Bobby and I were the other two. Sometimes, it’s good to be an ex-cop. Even if most of the boys in blue weren’t too happy about us waving the rainbow flag, we were still their brothers. Okay, Bobby was still their brother. I was that second cousin once removed everyone had to invite to the wedding or else there’d be talk.
The outtake window was manned by a foul-tempered bear of a civil servant who seemed to take great delight in very slowly handing over the man’s personal effects. I didn’t have high hopes he would be any happier to see us when we finally got to the window. It was too early in the morning for him to be there, and by the sounds of his terse, biting questions to the man in the suit, we were all lucky he hadn’t come to work with a bottle of water for each of us and a hyped-up Taser.
“Hey, your boy’s here.” Like me, Bobby’d retired from the force. Unlike me, he’d not done it openly gay and in a hail of bullets but served out his time before coming out of the closet. It’d shocked me to find out he played on my team. Muscular and rugged, he’d seemed like the proto-cop when he’d worn the badge. With it off, he was making up for lost time, cutting a swath through the hordes of twinks who liked an older man with a bit of silver at his temples and enough bulk to arm curl a couple of industrial microwaves.
He’d also been my sanity while I recovered from my partner’s shooting and now seemed to be cruising my boyfriend.
“Stop checking out Jae’s ass.” I didn’t fear Bobby poaching Jae. They had a decent enough relationship, prickly at times but mostly solid. Still, I had to give at least a token protest of Bobby’s lechery.
“You sure you’re ready to get out of here?” Bobby nudged me with his shoulder, inching me forward. “Could have made some new friends in there.”
We’d been given a separate cell, farther away from the general riffraff, but there were still grumbles when we’d been led down the row toward our freedom. A skinny crackhead dressed in a purple spangled dress seemed mighty interested in seeing if he could suck my jeans off of me, but since the police dog already took care of that, I graciously declined.
“You’ll be lucky if you get to keep the one friend you have now, asshole,” I grumbled. Shuffling forward, I approached the window when a rookie buzzed the other guy out.
“Which one are you?” the guy behind the window growled at me. “McGinnis or Dawson?”
“McGinnis.” I took the manila envelope he handed me, opened it, and signed off on the line assuring the LAPD I was getting back everything I’d had in my possession when the cops brought me in.
The bag held everything I’d come with except for the dog. She’d been sprung nearly as soon as we crossed the threshold of the police station. All I had left of her was Ava’s smile, gashes on my hands, and the baby carrier I’d borrowed from Claudia’s daughter-in-law. If I’d had a lint brush on me, I could have gathered up all the fur Pookie left behind and made another dog. Luckily, the carrier was machine washable.
Passing through the gated door, I was glad to reenter the real world, and suddenly the fatigue hit me. My legs were rubbery, overextended from the long sprint down the alleyway, and then the punctures in my skin began to ache. I wanted to get home, crawl into bed, and pull Jae on top of me, preferably to be woken up sometime in the afternoon by the promise of a cold beer and a hot pizza.
Or maybe a cold beer and hot sex.
It would all depend on what Jae’s schedule looked like. From the look on his face, I’d be lucky if he still gave me a ride home.
“Are you okay?” Jae looked like he was hovering between punching me for getting hauled into the station and giving me a kiss, something he’d never have done in public a few months ago. Either would cause a scene, and Kim Jae-Min wasn’t one for scenes. He also had a wicked right hook, and I was pretty certain that would have won out if we’d been alone.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” I touched his arm lightly, twisting to show him the gauze and tape covering my thigh. “I got all my shots and everything.”
My jeans were a loss, and I’d tossed out my underwear. There was nothing much left of them after the K-9 cop got through with them, and they’d begun to bunch up against my balls. I asked the dog’s handler if he wanted them as a trophy, and he’d laughed, saying I wasn’t the first one Draven had given a reverse wedgie. I had to wear my torn jeans out, hoping the bandages gave me enough cover to hide anything I’d get arrested for.
The bantam gangster hadn’t been so lucky. One of Draven’s coworkers had taken him down in the alleyway, ripping him down to the bone. Considering he’d tried to empty his gun into my head, I wasn’t going to send him a get-well card.
“I’m glad you’re fine.” Jae leaned in so he could whisper into my ear. “Because I’m going to fucking kill you when we get home. What the hell were you two thinking?”
“I know… this wasn’t the smartest thing….” I stole a look at Bobby, who was still in the outtake cell. “We didn’t think it would get so… big.”
“Cole, how many police stations do you have to get dragged to?” Sarcasm cuts deep when sharpened with disgust, and in the hour between me calling Jae and being released, he’d taken his to a whetstone of mammoth proportions. “Is it like some quest the two of you have? Do they give those… what are those called… badges? They give those out for this?”
“Jae, we didn’t mean for this to happen.” We were getting sidelong glances from the clusters of cops around us. “Swear to God, it was supposed to be a simple go in and grab the dog.”
“Yeah, I know.” He rattled the keys in his palm and nodded toward my back. The clang of the barred door was ominous, a rattling metal screech announcing Dawson’s release. His heavy tread squeak
ed across the linoleum floor toward us, and Jae shot him a watery grin over my shoulder. “Bobby’s done. Let’s go home.”
It was still pitch black outside, but the liquid stink of a Los Angeles morning was already rising up from the streets. A rotary cleaner chugged past us, spurting out lukewarm suds to wash oil and soot from the road. The foam slunk down to the curbside, a frothy curl of dirt and black specks. Jae chirped open my Rover and dangled the keys over my hand, letting them drop into my palm when I opened my fingers for them.
“Hey, I want to see if I can get my truck back. That’s the detective there. Give me a few minutes to schmooze him.” Bobby looped an arm over Jae’s shoulders and gave him a quick half hug. “Thanks for coming to get us, man. I appreciate it.”
I answered for us both. “Sure, no problem. We’ll be by the car.”
I was already talking to Bobby’s back, a broad wall of muscle built up from years of kicking bad guys’ asses and knocking lesser mortals about in a boxing ring. Jae walked over to my Rover. His long legs ate up the distance to the car with a few strides, and I hurried to catch up with him, wincing when my leg protested at the rapid movement. The tape tugged on what little leg hair I had, and the gauze stuck to my wound ripped off of my skin, starting a slow, seeping leak into my bandage.
“Hey.” I caught up with him at the Rover’s passenger side and placed my arms on either side of his waist, trapping him against the car. “I’m sorry. I am. It really wasn’t supposed to go down like this. How were we supposed to know we were walking into a drug sting tonight? It just got… out of control, okay?”
He tilted his head back and exhaled, pursing his lips to kiss the air above him. He scrubbed at his face with his hands, and when he lowered his chin to look at me, there was a shimmer of wet in his eyes. He wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not out in the open. But it was there, lingering on the razor edge of his control. There was a break in his voice when he spoke, a painful crack of emotion in his sultry rasp.
