by Rhys Ford
“You sure? Could be interesting.” I smirked at his derisive snort. “Bobby’s done some fucked-up shit.”
“I worked in a host club. Pretty sure I’ve seen things Bobby hasn’t even thought of.”
The hipsters were stalled in the middle of the road, seemingly having a long discourse on the price of wool jumpers and totally oblivious to the Rover. I honked my horn, startling them into action. There was not a single apology from the duckling pack. Instead, I got outraged glares through the Rover’s windshield, and one of them had the nerve to flip me off.
I would have stepped out of the Rover to discuss his gesture, but one of the hairy-pitted women who owned the café hustled out and grimaced an apology at me, ushering her ill-mannered customers in. She and Bobby’d had words before, mostly Bobby having words and her wincing at the volume. A few weeks ago, one of her regulars decided spitting on Bobby’s truck was a good idea while he’d waited for them to cross the street and, once again, they’d stopped to talk midroad. He honked and spittle flew.
Things escalated from there. Lessons learned that day: never spit on an ex-cop’s car, especially when you’re heading over to a coffee shop with a special garden growing in the back alley.
“They’re very… rude.” Jae watched the herd pick up their pace and shuffle to the sidewalk.
“You, love of my heart and loins, are a master of the understatement. What they are, are assholes.” I drove the Rover up onto my driveway and parked it in the carport. Jae’d parked his Explorer on the cement pad next to the driveway, and I checked the windows and tires automatically when we walked by. “But if I start screaming at them to get off my lawn, put me in a nursing home, okay?”
The office was quiet when we came through the screen door. Mo was behind his grandmother’s desk, buried deep in what looked like a calculus book thick enough to kill a dinosaur. The conference room door was open wide enough, and a murmur of loud sound effects and steamy Korean seeped out. I couldn’t follow a lick of it, but it sounded sensual. I shot a look over at Jae, but he seemed unconcerned.
After calling the girls out, I then dealt the first salvo in a battle I had no hope of winning. Still, handing Tiffany a sheaf of hundreds from petty cash so she could go get some clothes that didn’t belong to me or Jae seemed like a good idea at the time.
Her brother didn’t seem to think so.
Mo did what Mo did best. He analyzed the situation, then herded the girls outside amid confused, querulous objections and closed the screen door behind him. I made a mental note to give him a bonus. Maybe a car. Hell, an aircraft carrier wasn’t out of order. Next thing we heard was the Mo and Sissy mobile firing up and pulling away from the curb.
Jae was going to argue with me. I could see it before he even drew in a full breath. “Cole-ah—”
“Hear me out.” I put the cashbox back and locked it up. “She brought nothing with her, right? Dude, she’s wearing my clothes. How fucked-up is that for a teenaged girl? I’ll give her a few hundred dollars, and she can get some of her own stuff. We can order some pizza and go over the papers Hong Chul gave us.”
“Cole—” He wasn’t weakening. Not by a long shot, but I had a trump card up my sleeve he couldn’t fight.
“You promised we’d do this kind of shit together.” I was stretching the words that’d come out of his mouth, but if I could get him to give on this, it would lay a groundwork for larger things. I needed something to budge between us. At some point, Jae was going to have to acknowledge I was standing beside him. “Trust me. Money is pretty small shit in the scheme of things.”
“I don’t want her to… depend on your money.” He exhaled hard, leaning against my desk. I stepped closer, letting the warmth of my body wash over his skin. “It’s not—”
“We’re together in this, remember, babe?” I softened my voice to a whisper. “That means everything. Whatever you need to get done, we can do it together. And as for my money… dude, it’s there. And there’s enough of it that all it does is make more money. I don’t spend a lot. This place was the biggest purchase I’ve made. Hell, I was still driving my old Rover until Grace decided she needed to blow it up.”
“I hate that I can’t give her things like… this.” He finally broke, and his pride crumbled. The stoic façade he wore to argue with was gone, swept away by frustration and something fragile I couldn’t quite name until it dawned on me he was ashamed, hurt by the inability to hand his sister a few hundred dollars to go shopping.
Reaching for him was easy. Holding him close was even easier. Jae folded into me, curving his body against my chest and wrapping his arms around my waist. It felt good to have him tuck his head under my chin, and the tickle of his hair in my nose was a sublime pleasure. It was like having a full-body orgasm encasing me in its tight grip.
“I don’t have money,” Jae murmured. “We’ve never had it. Anything my mother got from Uncle was for Jae-Su. He didn’t send enough to support all of us. I can’t… wrap my head around the money you have.”
“Hey, you think I’m good with it?” I kissed the top of his head and stroked at the small of his back until he nearly purred under my touch. “You know why I’ve got it?”
“’Cause of Ben… because he shot you.”
Besides me, the only other people who knew exactly why the department shoveled boatloads of cash at me to keep me quiet were Mike and Maddy. It was probably time to talk to Jae about the whole mess.
“Kind of.” I hesitated. “See, Ben’d gone to the department shrink after one of our cases. He was losing it. Really losing it. Drinking too much and not talking enough. The captain thought he needed some talking to. The doctor… I don’t know what Ben said to him. No one really does, but the doc told the department Ben should be given a leave of absence. That he needed some time to work through some issues. The department disagreed.”
“How long—” Jae couldn’t finish his sentence. His words choked somewhere in his throat. “Before he—”
“Two days,” I answered. “Two days later, Ben shot the doctor when he was leaving his office. Man lived, but… Ben caught him in the spine and the neck. It went up through his head. He’s lucky to be alive, but the dude’s not all there anymore, you know? No one knew Ben was the one who shot the guy until later.”
We’d begun to lean on one another. I was no longer the one pouring strength into him. His heart picked up the beat in my chest, and we breathed in together, joined as close as we could be without scandalizing the spider sitting up in the corner of the ceiling.
“When did they figure it out?”
“It wasn’t until after Ben shot us… killed Rick… did the department make the connection. Ballistics and all that crap. By then, it was too late to do anything but cry.” It was hard to talk about it. Even after three years, it still hurt to find my world suddenly missing not only Rick but Ben, the man I’d counted as much of a brother as I did Mike. “That’s why there’s money. It’s got blood on it. Mine… Rick’s… the doctor’s. Hell, even Ben’s, because they could have stopped him from blowing his own brains out. But they didn’t.”
“I wish they’d stopped him. Even if it meant… Rick.” Jae swore into my chest. I knew what he was trying to say. It was impossible to express with words without sounding like an asshole, but he tried anyway. “Even if it meant you and I… someone should have stopped Ben. They should have fucking listened.”
“Yeah, they should have listened, but since they didn’t, they dumped a bunch of money at me and told me to get the fuck out of the department. So, giving Tiff some money to go shopping for clothes is nothing in the long run. What’s important is that she feels comfortable and is happy. Life’s too short not to try to be happy. Fucking let me tell you, if anyone knows that, it’s me.”
“Okay.” His voice was barely a whisper, but the hug he gave me was tight enough to nearly bring me to my knees. “Thank you.”
“Now come on, let’s go home.” Reluctantly, I let him go and pushed him toward
the door. “Your cat probably misses you, and I could really use a beer.”
NEKO greeted us at the door, then abandoned ship once I’d popped a can of smelly crap into her porcelain dish. I took a couple of beers from the fridge, padded into the living room, and stepped over Jae’s discarded sneakers.
Jae had thrown himself onto the couch, having tossed the journals and papers we’d gotten from Hong Chul onto the apothecary chest. Sitting on the chest in front of him, I tucked his knees between my legs and put my hands on them. I bent forward until our foreheads touched and kissed his nose.
“You want something to eat first or just start tearing apart the papers?”
“Papers?” Jae’s sloe eyes were nearly black when he glanced at me. “But… we don’t have a lot of time… alone, no? Just a few hours until Tiffany comes back….”
I liked how my boyfriend thought.
Even better, I loved how he felt against me. Preferably naked.
“Well, you know, there’s a spare bedroom. Hell, even two if you count the Murphy bed in that den I don’t use,” I murmured back. “You two could spend the night. Can’t be very comfortable over at that place of yours. I’ve napped on that bed of yours. Couldn’t walk for a week afterward.”
“You never let go of things, huh?” He broke contact with me, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re not going to be happy until we’ve moved in.”
“Hey, if I’ve got to suffer your cat’s farts under the blankets in the middle of the night, you should too,” I countered. “We’ll give Tiffany a pass. There’s only so much angst a teenager should have to suffer through.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to sleep with you… while my sister’s in the house,” Jae admitted. “That’s a lot to ask her to handle, Cole-ah.”
“Okay.” It was hard to say. Even harder to swallow. “Agreed.”
I had to give him that. We’d have to take baby steps where Tiffany was concerned, and if she was going to stick around, she’d have to be folded into our lives as carefully as we could. Frustrating, especially since my dick missed having Jae to nudge up against in the wee morning hours, but it was going to have to suck it up.
Didn’t mean I didn’t want to let her pick out colors for the spare bedroom so she could set up camp there, but like Claudia always told me, hold my fucking horses. Things happen when they happen.
That being said, it was time for certain things to happen. Especially since we had only a few hours to get to them.
“So, you wanna go upstairs and um… how did Mo put it?” I crouched forward, nipping at Jae’s neck with my teeth.
“I am not your something-something,” Jae hissed, but he tilted his head back anyway, carding his fingers into my hair to draw me closer.
“Baby, you’re my everything.” The words were out before I could hear them in my head. “Fuck, that’s cheesy.”
“Smoked Gouda cheesy. Maybe even a triple cream Brie,” Jae agreed, hooking his arms around my neck. “But it’s okay. I like cheese. Just not too… much of it. Lactose intolerant.”
“Jae, honey, I’ve got a lot better things to feed you than cheese.”
WE MADE it upstairs, but our clothes didn’t quite get past the steps. Well, my jeans did. Jae’s shirt was left someplace in the living room, and his pants were mostly off by the time I pushed him back onto the bed. My hands going down the front of his undone fly did the rest of the job, peeling the denim off his long legs in one fluid push.
Strange how a few hours didn’t seem enough time to spend worshipping Jae’s body. I needed—wanted—a few days. A week if possible, but I’d take what I could get. Especially where he was concerned.
Climbing up onto the bed, I sat on my knees, and stared down at him, taking in the sight of his lean, pale body against the dark chocolate sheets. Tracing the cut of his hip muscles with my thumbs, I dropped down and kissed the dip of Jae’s belly button, scraping at the ridge with my teeth.
Erotically boneless, Jae curled up over me and cupped my side, stroking at the shiny blotch of scarring along my ribs. Shifting under me, Jae edged his knee up between my legs and guided me to the side.
“Lie down.” His voice was thick with need, painted with splashes of seductive, round Korean. “Let me do something… this time. Please.”
I didn’t know what he was asking. His words were too lost in the desire coming up from inside of him, but I understood him enough. I slid over onto the mattress and lay back onto the pillows. The sheets were already warm from our bodies, a light hint of lavender coming up from the fine cotton where we’d been.
Jae took his time unzipping me, the snick of metal teeth a loud, slow tease in between my heavy breathing. He slid the jeans down my hips and over my thighs, pausing every few inches to suckle at me. My skin was glowing pink by the time he was done, a rush of blood pouring into each press of his teeth and lips on me.
“Jae—”
Reaching for him was useless. He only pushed my hands back down to my sides and shook his head, the fall of his black hair ghosting over my hard cock. I could already feel my dick leaking. A trail of moisture glistened on my flat belly, and Jae’s tongue found the edge of it, lapping at the salty liquid in long strokes. His mouth was soft on my skin, a glide of rough satin smoothly taking in the smear of my seed.
“God, you are so fucking gorgeous,” I whispered.
He was. There was no denying how beautiful he looked with his pinked mouth curving down over my abdomen, then the obscene intimacy of seeing it wrap over the head of my cock. I found his hair with my fingers, tangling them up into the strands before I stroked down the length of his neck. I had to strain to reach him. He was too far away, barely allowing me the pleasure of running my palms over his shoulders before I gave up and brought my fingers back up to curve over his cheekbones.
His eyes were hooded, his gaze on me as he sucked and pulled on me. I felt the sharp edge of his teeth catch me on my glans, and I hissed, aroused by the slight pain. Jae dropped one of his hands off of my thighs, burrowing it between my legs. A hitched breath later, my balls were cupped in his long, elegant fingers, rolling about on his palm as he squeezed them lightly, enough to tug my mind off of his mouth’s erotic journey and onto the sharp pull of my sac.
The sheets no longer smelled only of lavender. They’d taken on the sweet-salt musk of our sweat, a glorified masculine odor I’d treasure once Jae left me for the evening. Even better, the linens would catch the sticky joining of our bodies, and I’d end up sleeping amid the wet until it stained my flesh with its flakes
“Come up here.” I wasn’t too proud to keep the edge from my voice when I begged.
“No, you always get what you want, Cole-ah. It’s my turn now,” Jae whispered. “Every time I have you in my mouth, I want more. I think of the taste of you when I’m alone, and sometimes when you look at me, I want to drop to my knees and wrap my mouth around you. Having you in me… the scent of you in my mouth… takes away any doubts I have… any pain I might feel. I’ve missed that. I want that, agi.”
“Jae, I’m not going anywhere. You won’t ever get rid of me.” I arched my back when his fingers found the length of my cock. Twisting his grip around my base, Jae huffed a breath over my shaft’s head, the tight skin along my sex roiling beneath his hand. “Forever, hon, remember? I promise.”
“I remember. I love doing this to you.” He climbed up my body, stretching out over my chest until our mouths could touch. Sliding his lips over mine, he shared the taste of us from the mingle on his tongue. “I like making you shake. It makes me feel… powerful. Because you let me do this to you. Let me do more.”
Jae lifted away, leaving me behind, a gasping, writhing mess. Trailing his mouth down to my chest, he first kissed at the scars across my shoulders and down my sides, lingering long enough to make me twist at being tickled. Jae’s clever fingers took up a journey of their own, twisting at one of my nipples until it was a plump, taut pink nub.
“You’re mine, Cole-ah.” Ja
e grasped my dick and fondled its velvety head. “This is mine too.”
He returned to suck at my mouth, driving his tongue in past my lips. I took as much from him as he would give, licking at the roof of his mouth until he could no longer stand the feathering against his palate. Grinding his hips down into mine, Jae began a slow, circular roll on my crotch, pulling up every nerve he’d stoked with a fiery passion. His legs were sleek against my thighs, a soft, silken touch against the fine hairs growing there. His cock caught on my skin, leaving behind a thicker moist trail.
“I… want to do this while I suck on you, Cole-ah,” he murmured, pushing a digit up against my entrance. His fingers found my taint, caressing the soft skin there while the heel of his hand pressed in and out against my sac. His touch fluttered, circling at the tightness he found there. “Can you stay still?”
I wasn’t even sure how to say shit fucking no around the lump of shock in my throat. The best I could come up with was, “Um, sure?”
He swallowed me down to the base of my cock, short-circuiting my brain. My stomach and muscles trembled with the strain of keeping myself from spilling into his mouth. Pulling back, he dragged a shallow bite along my shaft, leaving behind a light red scoring. I’d probably feel it for a couple of days.
Personally, I couldn’t wait.
Fuck, I wanted his cock in me. Hell, I’d be happy with his fingers, but his cock would be better. I liked the heft of it, its length, and how it curved slightly to the left. I’d had it down my throat, tasting its spicy sweetness. There’d been times when I’d thought about being around him, but the thought of it had been distant.
“Can you grab the lube?” he murmured around the base of my dick. His cheek lying against the hair spread around my groin was obscenely erotic. “I don’t want this to hurt. I just want to touch inside of you while I have you in my mouth.”
There were condoms and lube on the nightstand, left over from the last time we’d been together, and I stretched out, snagging what we needed. A snick of the bottle opening and the scent of almonds were the only warnings I got. His fingers moved in, spreading me apart, and I gasped, lifting my hips up from the bed.
