Psychic Men: Hunter Dane Investigation 3 (Hunt&Cam4Ever Book 5)

by Adira August

  Hunter still had nothing to say. But he did reach into the nightstand and open a wipe to hand Cam.

  “Thanks,” he said. He cleaned himself up. “Look. I’m pretty sure I want to leave the team.”

  Hunter concentrated very hard on Cam, wanting to be there for him, not wanting him to stop until he said everything, not letting himself protest.

  Cam picked up Hunt’s good hand. “You aren’t saying anything.”

  “I’m waiting for more because I’m not connecting your experience with the avalanche to leaving the team.”

  Cam let him go and ran his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this.”

  More pausing. More waiting.

  “I feel called.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not by God or something, by the work. By everything about the Tussey Foundation, if we call it that. Hunter, who else is better than me to do all this research and organization? But proving there’s more or people on some other side isn’t enough. I want to know how it works. I want … I want to run it.”

  “I think you should,” Hunter told him.

  All the tension left Cam’s shoulders and body. “You do?”

  “I can’t think of anyone in the world better suited. When you weren’t skiing, you spent your childhood doing work in your mother’s law office a lot of adults couldn’t handle. You’re smart and driven and know how to deal with people and make decisions. You know a lot of rich people to support the project. You’re young and this can be your life’s work if you want that. It’s endlessly interesting, and you’ll never get done. It’s exactly the reach that will always exceed your grasp and, my darling, you have one hell of a goddamned reach.”

  Cam grabbed Hunt and kissed him, not briefly. He kissed him with his tongue and lips and body and heart. He broke away and got them both on their feet.

  “Come to bed with me, Hunter. I want to fall asleep with you.”

  “Yes, Cam. Do I have permission to make love to you, first?”

  “Not tonight,” he said and brushed Hunter’s hair back so he knew it wasn’t a rejection. “C’mon. I want to check your butt myself, make sure you’re okay.”

  CAM LAY IN THE perfect silence and deep darkness he’d always loved, living in the hills. Hunter’s back pressed into him, his head on a pillow, Cam’s arm under his neck, his other arm over Hunt’s waist, wrapping him, so he felt every quiet expansion of Hunt’s chest with every breath.

  Cam had seen his face watching the record-setting run. He saw Hunter’s awestruck admiration for a man who got to the bottom of a hill, first. Cam remembered every second of those runs. He couldn’t recall anyone shooting at him. He went down a mountain faster than some other people and it made him a millionaire.

  Hunter Dane went up a mountain in pitch darkness and waited, unarmed, for a killer. He would have put himself between the boy and the gun, fought to his last breath for a kid he barely knew. He didn’t have a sponsor, he hadn’t been in training for years, inspected the slope before he climbed it, or been given special equipment. No one came to interview him after he got Asher safely home. No crowds cheered, no interviews were scheduled.

  Exhausted and damaged, he hadn’t left the hospital until he knew Merisi would be okay, hadn’t rested until Jeffco had what they needed to proceed with their investigations and he’d given his statement several times. He’d spoken to Asher’s grandfather and to Morganfeld by phone expressing his true and deep regret at the loss of his cousin and friend.

  Why would Hunter Dane give a moment of his life to Camden Snow?

  Cam hadn’t let himself think about not skiing again, about never being that idol, never training that hard or being part of that company, never pushing himself to edges other skiers didn’t even know existed. When he’d seen the footage, seen Hunter discovering him as the man he’d been before they met, his grief and rage overwhelmed him.

  Hunter’s breath caught and he stirred. Still asleep, he pressed harder back into Cam’s chest, grabbing at his arm, pulling Cam more tightly around him, like a blanket on a winter night. Cam pressed his cheek to Hunt’s hair and made a low shushing sound. It seemed to settle him when he was restless, which he often was in sleep.

  And now he lay in the perfect stillness he no longer trusted while tears seeped sideways down into a pillow like a girl stood-up for the prom, holding his most precious and undeserved reward in his arms. His hero, the man who awed him, the man who would be his submissive.

  “I’m the best there is at what I do. I am that because I don’t accept less than everything there is to give. And your sometime, half-assed, so-called submission is not good enough for me.”

  His shame threatened to drown him. He was the best? Hunter wasn’t good enough? Did he actually say he was a Dominant and there were no days off? At that moment Cam couldn’t imagine ever going to the club again and pulling his magic tricks out of his bag, his special restraints and his Cuban quirt and the butt plugs and …

  What felt good to him was Hunter and the idea he could find a new thing to devote himself to. It was exciting to him; it gave him hope. And Hunt, who seemed to love him no matter what kind of asshole he was, didn’t say ‘please don’t, just work for me’ or ‘why would you want to do that’ or even ‘but you have no qualifications.’

  Hunter fucking Dane. Who didn’t tell Cam he loved him. He just did it.

  “Cam?” Hunt’s voice, thick and sleepy in the darkness. Hunter rotated in Cam’s arms and touched his face. “You can’t sleep?” He felt the wetness.

  Hunt didn’t say anything. He wound Cam up in his arms and pulled him close. “I’m here, okay?”

  Cam suddenly rolled Hunt onto his back. “I need you naked.”

  “Help me.” One-handed, flat-on-your-back disrobing was too slow. Cam quickly had them both naked.

  “I need to feel you, all of you.”

  Hunt’s hands ran over Cam’s body, his legs wrapped around Cam’s. He pulled him up with legs and arms and their cocks raced to be hardest first. It was a tie. It was always a tie.

  “Does this mean I get to make love to you?” Hunter asked.

  Cam’s mouth found Hunt’s in the dark and he spoke against his lips. “No. I’m making love to you.” He felt Hunter smile.

  Cam was hard in a way he’d only ever gotten with Hunter Dane. In the way of a solid erection that wasn’t urgent or demanding, but filled him with a steady thrum of anticipation of satisfaction. There were no demands, no rush and no need to perform. Sometimes they stayed there for an hour or more.

  Until Hunter, he’d thought a ‘comfortable erection’ was a myth. With Hunter, it was a time so erotic and so intimate, he wondered why he ever craved another way.

  But he knew he would. And he knew his miracle lover/sub/friend/protector would be there with him. Ready for him, making him always feel like the champion he knew he wasn’t. But Hunt would make him feel that way no matter who or what he was.

  He grabbed Hunter by the hair and tilted his head back, not hard, but enough to feel the control they both loved. “I’m not going to fuck you, Hunter, you’re too sore.”

  Hunter was panting, he licked his lips and opened his thighs slightly to feel Cam settle in against him, his thick shaft sliding down and to the side, tucked between thigh and sac.

  Hunter’s hips lifted to get more, more pressure, more feel, more hard and hot and solid and warm. Cam lowered his head and his lips found a nipple. Hunt gasped and moaned, his arms flailed a little, trapped under Cam’s, who had not released his hair.

  Cam sucked his nipples between his teeth, one and then the other. Hunt writhed with pleasure and need at the deep itching that Cam fueled and satisfied, at the hot-wire stretched-taut connection with his balls. Precum spurted and spread between their bodies, and he moaned as Cam switched sides again, knowing he could keep this up for a very long time, relishing the role of sweet torturer with Hunter unbound but trapped beneath his body
.

  And Hunter did love Cam’s body, so heavy and solid, the feel of the outsides of his thighs, crinkly hairs rubbing the soft insides of Hunt’s, the muscles bunching and shifting. Hunter often thought he could come from that, alone, if Cam didn’t distract him in so many other ways.

  Cam stopped moving back and forth from target to target and lifted his head.

  “Listen,” he said and waited for Hunt to acknowledge him, to know his attention had moved from cock and nipples to Cam.

  “Yeah, here,” Hunt managed.

  “Really here?”

  Hunter cleared his throat.

  “Always,” he said.

  “I’m going to tell you something and then I’m going to suck many parts of your body, ending with your dick and make you scream a little when you come. Is that okay with you?”

  “You’re asking?”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “It’s fine with me.”

  “Fine?”

  “Cam. Please. Please suck me all over and and make me come.”

  “And?”

  “Scream … shit.” Hunt’s cock give a hard twitch.

  “One more thing before I make these nipples sing,” Cam told him, rubbing the end of his nose over one of the still-hard buds.

  “Ah - uh - thing … okay.”

  “Don’t make a big deal, but one of these days—like maybe Christmas or sometime around then—I’m marrying you.”

  And Cam dropped his head and used his tongue and teeth did suck Hunter Dane all over until he screamed.

  Just a little.

  * * *

  Epilogue

  * * *

  “How could you know all that?”

  “I didn’t know all that,” Lissa told him. “I told you what he gave me. What he showed me. You might have said you accidentally dropped your car keys in the trash can in front of a daycare with animal pictures painted on the wall and put him inside to get them. These messages are for you to recognize. I almost never know what they mean.”

  The woman looked around like she might glimpse her child. “Is it over?”

  “He’s around. He might have more to show me or he might pull all the way back or he might do something else,” Lissa told her. “It’s … think of it as a sound that gets louder and fades but sometimes comes back a little. He started out loud,” Lissa smiled. “Very happy you were here, eager to let you know things.”

  “What things?” he asked.

  “Just that he’s still him. That he’s okay. More than okay. Sometimes they let me feel it.” Lissa felt it, then, and her face transformed, reflecting the peace and joy. “He’s completely happy and safe. He wanted to comfort you. Especially you, sir.”

  The woman nodded, agreeing.

  “I’m fine,” he said. Gruff.

  Lissa’s eyes unfocused. “Bulls … big and black … running … like in Pamplona … two … three … two… three …” She looked to the man. “This is for you. Just you.”

  He was white, his eyes were huge. Lissa thought for a moment he might faint.

  “There was a book,” he whispered. “Vi left it out one night. Wanted me to read it. It was about this,” he gestured vaguely around the room. “Doing this. I read some of it. But I never told her. Ever. It said you could have a password. … I just thought of one, I just said it in my head. ‘If this is real, say this’.”

  The woman, Vi, looked at Lissa and shook her head. This was all new to her.

  “Bulls. Two-three. Chicago Bulls. Number twenty-three. Our favorite player.” He blinked hard. “Can you tell him something for me?”

  “You can,” Lissa told him. “You can tell him whatever you want. Whenever you want. Direct your thoughts, your words to him, he’ll hear you. He’ll always hear you.”

  “Always?” Vi sounded hopeful.

  “Always.”

  “Is he”—Vi stopped to blow her nose—“alone? Does he need … I mean … does he miss me?”

  “They’re never alone,” Lissa told her. “And they don’t miss us; they can be with us anytime they want.” She held up one finger, eyes back on the wall. “A little window. Way high up. A bad smell … his clothes … he says he was there.”

  Lissa refocused on them. “Little Jack.”

  Vi was smiling now. “After the funeral. Days after, I started to finally—do things. The last load was still in the washer. His clothes. Sour. You know how they get.”

  Lissa nodded.

  “Mostly dry,” Vi went on. “I didn’t want to take them out, I wanted them there forever and always be able to come down and open the lid and have them there, like I’d never opened it and dropped it when I heard the car horn and knew …” A flood of tears down her face and neck. “I heard his voice, right behind me.” A furtive glance at her husband. “He said ‘that’s silly’. I heard him. I felt him. I knew it was him. I knew.” She broke down completely.

  They were holding each other, now. Lissa felt Little Jack leave. She wondered for a second who Big Jack was. She was sure the father’s name was Carl.

  LISSA CHECKED HER watch after they left. She had time for some herb tea with Dolly. The session with Carl and Vi had been one of the good ones. Strong spirit. Clear information. Ready validation.

  Sometimes, no one showed up for the people who came to her. Sometimes the people would not validate, even though Lissa knew the information was for them. Sometimes she misinterpreted. She tried not to interpret at all, but it crept in.

  The faint tinkle of the bell reached her. She picked up her cup and headed for the front. When she got to the counter, Dolly seemed frozen, staring at the young blond man just inside the door.

  Lissa understood Dolly’s reaction, he was beautiful. Powerful. So was the dark man who came in behind him. Lissa knew this one was armed.

  It’s okay.

  But it was the third one who exuded the Light, who made the shop expand and dissolve. Who filled her vision. Whose eyes caught hers and would not let go.

  There’s a man coming for you. … A powerful man …

  … coming from the Light

  She smiled because the joy was irresistible. She stayed behind the counter because he was new and inexperienced and so very young. He smiled back, and she knew they’d know each other for the rest of this life.

  Dolly whispered something about snow. The blond man moved further into the store, looking at the books. The other man, the tall dark one with the gun, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and walked him up to the counter.

  To her.

  The man seemed about to speak but stopped himself, aware of their response to one another: she and the boy from the Light. Lissa knew the man was connected.

  It was the boy who spoke. “You’re going to be my teacher.”

  Her smile broadened. “I am.”

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  Addi’s blog/website -> https://adiraaugust.blog

  I’m also on MeWe -> mewe.com/i/adira.august

  * * *

  WTF, Addi?

  * * *

  This is for my regular readers.

  Deep cleansing breath, guys. … Ahhhhhhh….

  There’s always a murder to solve and the Hunt&Cam4Ever series doesn’t change. Hunter’s always been an intuitive guy. He’ll keep being that. But he’s also a logical, reasoning, guy. And a great cop. And he and Cam are crazy about each other. That doesn’t change, either.

  Cam’s life was in deep flux when we met him. We didn’t know that in On His Knees. We found out in Dancing. And the work he wants to do, the place where his life finally settles down, will be chronicled along with Lissa’s and Asher’s here:

  In all cases, recall what Hunter told Asher:

  “it’s love that sent my father to you, love that fuels it all…”

  * * *

  HISTORY AND LINKS

 
* * *

  From the early 1970s to 1989, the United States government sponsored psychic research at the Stanford Research Institute. (SRI)

  In 1990, the government sponsored psychic research at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) under the direction of Dr. Edwin May. Dr. May had been Project Director of the previous program at SRI in the mid-70s and from 1986-1989.

  From 1979 to 2007, The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program at Princeton University studied the effects of human consciousness on mechanical systems. It was established in 1979 by then Dean of Engineering Robert G. Jahn after a short project by an unnamed undergraduate produced startling results in the area of human intent affecting the random performance of a machine. (see Margins of Consciousness on Amazon)

  When I started writing Psychic Men in March of 2018, the PEARS site was still available online. I was unable to find it a few weeks later, but did find it in the Wayback Machine. I was not able to locate it there or anywhere as of this writing June 2018. (Not an expert researcher.)

  Luckily, the portion of that research that became The Global Consciousness Project is still available and the theory is the basis of essential elements in Psychic Men.

  (http://noosphere.princeton.edu)

  From the site:

  “Random number generators (RNGs) based on quantum tunneling produce completely unpredictable sequences of zeroes and ones. But when a great event synchronizes the feelings of millions of people, our network of RNGs becomes subtly structured. We calculate one in a trillion odds that the effect is due to chance. …

  …We collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in up to 70 host sites around the world at any given time. The data are transmitted to a central archive which now contains more than 15 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials generated every second.”