by Aiden Bates
Sam stared at Oliver's body for a long moment. The dress pants weren't doing much to hide his bulge. All of that dark skin, unlined and unblemished, just called out to Sam. He ran his fingertips lightly over Oliver's smooth skin and traced the lines of his lithe little muscles. Then, meeting Oliver's eyes, he very carefully reached out and rolled one of Oliver's pink nipples.
Oliver closed his eyes, tilted his head back and gave a loud groan. His hips rocked, and Sam could feel just how hard he was. "You like it when I do that?" he asked Oliver, a grin crossing his face.
"Yeah." Oliver's lashes fluttered as he opened his eyes. "I like it when you touch me."
Sam hesitated for just a moment. He should stop. He shouldn't be putting his hands or his mouth on this man, or tasting his bare skin like it was water in a desert. He shouldn't wrap himself up in Oliver's moans and sighs and little groans. Those sounds weren't some kind of defense against solitude or loneliness. They weren't a defense against his own surliness, proof that someone could see past it. They were proof that Sam was incapable of fighting his own urges.
But those sounds made such pure and perfect music for him, and that skin felt so right against his own. He could no more stop himself than he could stand against the tide. "Is this all right?" he asked, letting his fingers slide just under the waistband of Oliver's dress pants.
"Yes. Yes, Sam, please." Oliver lifted his hips.
Sam slowly stripped off Oliver's pants and underwear, like he was unwrapping a treasure. Then he yielded to the inevitable. "If we're going to do this, we should move into the bedroom." He stood up and offered his hand to Oliver.
Oliver stared at him in a daze for a moment, and then he allowed himself to be guided to his feet. Once upright, he followed close behind Sam, up the stairs and into the master bedroom. There, trembling, he started to drop to his knees.
Sam stopped him. "We have plenty of time for that," he told his lover, stroking Oliver's cheek. "Right now, if it's okay, I just want to be inside you."
Oliver's silver eyes shone bright in the reflected sunset for a moment, and he nodded. Sam threw off his own clothing, and then he guided Oliver to the bed. Oliver didn't seem to know exactly what to do with himself, but right now Sam wasn't worried about that. All he cared about was pleasing Oliver and bringing their bodies together.
He reached into his nightstand for lube, which he found after barely a moment. "I'm going to make this so good for you," he promised.
Oliver settled onto his back, and Sam started to prep him while continuing to cover that amazing skin of his with kisses. He couldn't believe how tight Oliver was. He seemed to be enjoying the process, but it took forever to loosen him up enough to take the second finger, and then the third. Even then, Sam couldn't be sure that he'd be able to take all of him. He stretched him as thoroughly as he could, until Oliver was rocking onto his hand and all but begging for more, and then he slicked himself up.
Good God. For a moment he thought he'd been right. He and Oliver might not be able to do this. Oliver was just so damn tight! He couldn't remember the last time he'd been with someone who was this tight. The last time must have been—
Oh. The last time had been Chris. And Chris had been a virgin.
At this point, it was a little late in the day to stop himself, even if Sam wanted to. He entered the rest of the way into Oliver with shallow, short thrusts and did his best to be patient. Oliver, for his part, wrapped himself around Sam in an attempt to make it easier for him. When Sam was fully seated, he gave Oliver a moment to get used to the intrusion. Even though he very clearly wanted it, this was a big adjustment. The last thing that Sam wanted to do was to hurt his lover.
When Oliver told him to move, he moved. Sam's instincts told him to drive a hard and fast pace, to claim every inch of Oliver inside and out. Sam wasn't about to do that to the guy, especially without talking to him about it. He aimed for a tender, loving pace instead and drew their lovemaking out as long as he could.
Oliver could only give away his virginity once, after all. He could have made a better choice about who to give it to, but it was too late now. The least that Sam could do was to make it good for him.
When he felt himself starting to lose the rhythm, he reached between them and touched Oliver's hard, heavy cock. It didn't take much to make Oliver come. He finished with a loud, wordless cry. His silver eyes rolled back, and his entire body clenched around Sam as his orgasm overtook him. That was enough to send Sam over the edge, and he spilled into Oliver's body.
After a moment, he got up and went to get a cloth to clean them both up. Sam didn't turn on the light. He couldn't stand to look at himself in the mirror. What had he just done?
When he came back, Oliver was in the same position he'd been in. His eyes were open and alert now, though, and a little smile graced his beautiful face. "Thanks," he said, as Sam wiped him clean. "That was incredible."
Sam huffed out a little laugh. "You could have warned me it was your first time." He sat down on the edge of the bed and tossed the washcloth over toward the laundry.
Oliver's face fell. "I didn't think it was something that merited an announcement." He pushed himself up into a sitting position. "I'm sorry if it wasn't very good for you."
Sam grabbed his hand. "Oliver, stop. It was fantastic for me. I'm just worried about you, okay? Your first time should have been special, you know? Important. You should've been with someone you could be with for the rest of your life, not some old fart you happen to be working with." He looked away. "I mean, you're not a virgin because no one wants you, okay? You were saving it for someone."
Oliver hung his head for a moment. Then he leaned over and kissed Sam's cheek. "Sam, I gave it to the alpha I wanted to have it. Okay? I'm happy." He let his hand run down Sam's bare shoulder as he got gingerly up from the bed. "I'd better get home. We've got a lot of work to do tomorrow."
"Yeah." Sam couldn't make himself look Oliver in the eye as he left.
Chapter Five
Oliver drove back to Framingham in silence. He didn't even have the radio on for company. He'd been building up this night, this moment, since he'd learned about sex and what it meant for an omega. On the one hand, he knew that nothing could possibly live up to the fantasy he'd built up in his head. On the other hand, he didn't think it had been bad. He'd liked it, even though there had been parts that were kind of uncomfortable at first.
At least, he'd liked it up until Sam got up from the bed. Everything that Oliver had ever seen, or read, or heard about, had implied that there was supposed to be more than just a roll in the hay and then out the door. Maybe if he'd been better at it, done more for Sam, he'd have let Oliver stay for a little while.
Then again, maybe not. Your first time should have been special, you know? Important. You should've been with someone you could be with for the rest of your life, not some old fart you happen to be working with. There was no relationship there, beyond what the state police forced on them. Sam didn't want Oliver, any more than he wanted any other omega.
He got back to the apartment, where Jake frowned at him. "I figured you'd stay the night." Jake took in Oliver's tousled look. "Oh God. It went badly."
Oliver held up a hand. He'd managed to hold off the despair as he drove home, but now that his mind wasn't occupied with keeping the car on the road it hit him. "I just really, really want a shower right now."
Jake wasn't the kind of friend to back off, especially when he could see that his friend was distressed. "Yeah. Yeah, I for one would rather have this talk after the shower. But Oliver? We're going to talk. Okay?"
"Sure." Oliver staggered into the bathroom and tossed his clothes to the side.
He carefully blanked out his mind as he turned the water up as high as his skin could tolerate. Only a short while ago, Sam had been touching him. That nipple was tender now because Sam had put his mouth on it and teased it, driven Oliver wild. If he thought too hard about it, he'd fall to pieces here in the shower. He couldn't allow tha
t.
After he finished washing, he got into his pajamas and shuffled out to sit with Jake. Jake, being the friend that he was, had poured them both deep glasses of wine and set out cheese and crackers. "Let me guess. Dad got Chinese."
"That we didn't even eat." Oliver covered his face with his hands. "Sorry. You don't want to hear that right now."
"Not even a little bit." Jake picked up his glass. "I'm just going to sit here and pretend you're talking about some other guy."
Oliver squirmed. The last thing that he wanted to do was talk to Jake about his own father. He grabbed at his wine glass. "It's just… I mean…” He put his glass down. "It's like this. You know that I come from a pretty conservative background myself, right?"
"Yeah. I've met your mom." Jake swirled the wine in his glass. "So?"
"Well, I'd always wanted—planned—to hold off on sex until I was claimed. And I expected it to be something…” He shook his head. He'd gone into the explanation all wrong. He could see that from Jake's wide-eyed expression. "I didn't go over there expecting Sam to claim me or anything like that. I didn't go over there planning to have sex either. That just kind of happened. And it was good. Don't get me wrong. I just… it was just kind of like… in my head, and from everything I've heard, there's supposed to be more to it than finishing and then leaving. Especially for your first time, right?"
Jake's eyes bulged out of his head. "He kicked you out right after? I'm going back to Hopkinton, and I'm going to kill him. You'll be my alibi."
Oliver chuckled in spite of himself. "No, no. It wasn't quite that bad. He was upset that I hadn't warned him that it was my first time, for some reason. I was always told that giving your virginity to a guy was supposed to be special, but it turns out that it's the last thing they want. I should have gone out and gotten rid of it as early as I could."
"Aw, Oliver." Jake's face crumpled, and he took a deep gulp of his wine. "That's not… yeah, that's an awful way to feel. And I'm totally going to kick his ass, because whatever he was actually thinking he shouldn't have made you feel that way. But Oliver, I'm sure he didn't mean to treat your first time as a throwaway."
Oliver took a deep breath. His hands shook this time as he lifted his glass to his lips. "He told me that my first time should have been special, with someone I could be with for the rest of my life. Not with him. And then he watched me walk out the door. For him, it was nothing." Oliver gulped at his wine. "I guess I've been carrying a bunch of old-fashioned notions around, you know? I've been thinking of sex as some kind of big, special, wonderful thing. It's time for me to grow up. There's nothing special about it at all, is there? There's not even really any emotion attached, not for anyone over eighteen." He put his glass down and rubbed at his temples. "It's best if I just stick to the lab."
"You'll probably feel like that for a little while." Jake's voice was quiet. "Everyone does, when their heart gets broken." He sipped some more of his wine. "Don't tell my dad this, but my first time was with this alpha—captain of the lacrosse team, good friend of Joey's. I was sure it was forever. The guy had no idea what he was doing, and I didn't even care because I figured it was his first time too.
"Found out later that no, he had two or three other omegas on the hook too. He was just that bad at it." He gave a rueful laugh and leaned back in his chair. "I made sure that they knew about me and him before I dumped him, because you've got to do right by other omegas. Last I heard he was off in Florida somewhere."
Oliver chuckled. "Awesome." He finished his glass of wine. "I can't blame the guy for how he feels or what his intentions were. People feel a certain way, you know? And there's nothing you can really do about it. I'm just disappointed in myself, really." He washed his and Jake's glasses and headed to bed.
He couldn't quite bring himself to regret what he'd done. Maybe he couldn't give his virginity to his alpha anymore, and that would continue to give him a twinge of sadness for a while, but he'd wanted to give it to Sam for years and he'd been more than willing. Besides, he'd apparently been the only one to treasure his virginity.
He regretted his own foolishness, for expecting any more. He wasn't a kid, to make up fairy stories.
He went to work the next day and immediately went to the stored evidence from the original Cooper Block fire. He wanted to get through this case as soon as he could, if only to minimize his contact with Sam Nenci. Was it only two weeks ago that he'd been desperate for any opportunity just to be around the man?
Oliver was pretty sure that he'd done as much as he could, independently, with the Marsten properties. If someone decided that exhuming the bodies was worthwhile, then he'd have more to do with that side of the case, but that was a highly unlikely outcome and Oliver couldn't be happier. Exhumations, no matter how old, were disgusting.
He grabbed a notepad from his drawer and wrote down, OBJECTIVES, in huge letters at the top of the page. Underneath, he created bullet points. The first objective, of course, was to identify the arsonist responsible for the Cooper Block fire. Oliver created a sub-header under that objective, because simply saying identify the arsonist responsible was both too simplistic and too complicated a task to get it all done.
So underneath that first objective, he added space for physical evidence and motive. Sam had been right. People didn't often murder fifty other people out of the blue. There hadn't been any Couchers living at the Cooper Block, so the murders had simply been a way to strike out at the Coucher family's business interests. Oliver wasn't the kind of person who could really speak to the inner workings of the criminal mind—hell, he'd actually expected affection in a sexual encounter—but he knew that the person who would resort to such measures would usually be pretty careful about leaving things behind himself.
Criminals were always pretty careful about leaving things behind. They still usually managed to leave some trace of themselves. The thing with a fire like the one that had taken out the Cooper block was that it had moved fast, and the building had been open at least fifteen minutes before the building went up. The killer must have been able to move very quickly, sure, but someone moving in a hurry usually leaves something behind themselves. Detectives at the time of the fire had been more concerned about looking for the accelerant and possible weapons than they had for personal effects or scraps of clothing.
He brought the box over to a clean, hooded space and examined the contents. The soil samples he ignored for now. Too much time had passed for him to learn anything new from analyzing those samples. He found plenty of items that were left at the scene and certainly by the killer, but none of them had any hint of fingerprints on them.
The area near the barred doors had been the location of most of the finds that couldn't be identified as building materials. That had been where most of the dead were found. Most of those personal items that survived the blaze in any kind of useful fashion had been identified by loved ones, and before an hour passed, Oliver decided that if he ever saw another child-sized cross on a little chain, in either gold or silver, streaked with greasy smoke, he might scream.
By the time that he sorted out all of the items that were found where he'd expected to find them, he was left with artifacts that were out of place for the time, place, and circumstances. These required special attention.
He returned the rest of the evidence to its box and spread the five items, in their plastic evidence bags, out on the workspace in front of him. He had the remains of an antique handgun, which had been noted in the evidence log but not treated as particularly unusual. Maybe one of the deceased was known to carry; Oliver would have to check.
He had a kitchen knife. According to the evidence log and the photographs, it had been found clutched in the hand of a deceased woman of nineteen years. That made two weapons among the dead; had they seen their killer? Had they made some attempt to fight their way out?
The third item that Oliver found, that was unexpected, was a clay bong, the type that people made in art class and convinced themselves that the
teacher didn't recognize. It had been broken into pieces by the heat and by collapsing debris, but some kindly evidence tech had pieced it together again just in case.
The next item in the lineup was a silver pocket watch. It looked to have been an antique. Oliver was no expert, but the filigree on the case suggested something Victorian or maybe a little bit later. People were into that kind of thing back then. Notes indicated that the pocket watch was indeed an antique, dating back to 1904. It also indicated that the manufacturer was "Omega," which gave Oliver a little chuckle despite his foul mood.
The final item before him was a gold ring, sized for a man. The ring had three stones, two diamonds flanking a large emerald, and the detail on the ring made the metal look evenly twisted. It was a lovely ring; a person might give that to his omega after a claim.
