by L A Witt
“Just tell me to leave you alone, and I will, okay? But don’t make me guess what’s wrong with you. I get enough of that in my day job.”
There. Gauntlet thrown. My heart was racing, but I felt oddly relieved, too. There was no wriggle-room here. He could tell me we were done and that would be that. I just needed to know for sure.
I needed to hear it from him.
Chapter 15
Mark
Lately my life had consisted of incredibly stressful conversations, but I had to say, this one made me squirm the most. A four-on-one grilling session from officials well above my paygrade? A two-hour browbeat by the mayor’s campaign manager about how this could affect the election? Lieutenant Bridges warning me—again—about how this might blow up in my face if I didn’t have an airtight case against Officer Russel?
None of that had anything on standing in the crosshairs of Ryan’s angry, hurt expression. Especially since this was the kind of conversation where I usually fell flat on my face. I could withstand hours on end of cross examination in a courtroom and not even break a sweat as I calmly stated facts and discussed evidence.
The minute someone asked about emotional shit, though? I was fucked.
Ryan shifted his weight, one of his dress shoes underscoring the subtle motion with a quiet squeak, and panic shot through me. He was running low on patience, and I suspected it wouldn’t be long before he said “to hell with it” and bolted for the door. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did.
But I didn’t want him to.
I dropped my gaze and took a deep breath. “Look, I haven’t been avoiding you. Not… Well, not because I want to avoid you.”
“What does that mean?” he asked flatly.
I hesitated, then looked him in the eye. “It means that no matter how much I want to be with you, you’re a material witness in a case that’s on incredibly thin ice.”
Some of the hurt and anger dissipated in favor of confusion. “Thin ice?”
I nodded. “I’m pressing serious charges against a decorated officer, and Martin’s murder is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Ryan gulped.
“If I deviate from the book,” I went on, “this case is fucked. And there are a lot of people who want it fucked, so I can’t take that chance.” I studied him. “Look, to be perfectly honest, you mean a lot to me. Probably more than…” I blew out a breath and shook my head because damn if I could get that train of thought out coherently. “I want this to work. Us. Whatever it is we’re doing.” I looked right in his eyes even though his scrutiny made me want to back up a step. “But this case is fragile as fuck, and I’m trying to do everything I can not to jeopardize it.”
Ryan blinked. “What? How can it be jeopardized when it’s so blatant what’s happening?”
I sighed and leaned against the bathroom sink. “It’s… I’m not going to bore you with city politics and all of that shit, but just trust me here that no one likes it when cops get busted, and they like it even less when I’m the one busting them. Everyone is more worried about the optics of something like this than about what happened.” Something about being alone with Ryan, shutting out the rest of the world and finally being able to be candid and honest brought a whole lot of emotions to the surface. I shouldn’t have been here. I shouldn’t have been talking to him about any of this. I couldn’t help it, though, and I went on, “There are a lot of people looking for reasons to discredit me and declare Russel and DeMarco innocent because there’s a whole lot less money and embarrassment involved. But I can’t let them do that. Martin deserves better, and I am terrified of fucking this up and letting Officer Russel get away with murdering an innocent black man.” I swallowed. “With murdering another innocent black man.”
His eyes were instantly huge. “Another one?”
Wincing, I nodded. “I probably shouldn’t be—I know I shouldn’t be telling you even that much. The only reason I am is because I don’t know how else to explain that this thing is incredibly precarious. I can’t compromise this case, Ryan.”
He watched me. The horror in his expression faded to understanding, and that slowly faded to resignation. He leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh. “So you can’t be involved with a witness.”
“Exactly. I can’t even be seen with you. That’s why…”
Eyes closed, he let his head fall back. “Damn it.”
“Yeah. My sentiments exactly.”
“So there’s no way we can do this.” He opened his eyes again, face and voice full of defeat. “Not until the case is over.”
I nodded, rubbing the back of my neck. “And cases like this can drag on… They can go on for a while.”
“Fuck.” He squeezed his eyes shut again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This is also why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to disappear on you, but I was afraid anything I said to you could wind up as evidence.”
“Yeah. I get it.” We were both quiet for a moment before he looked at me again and quietly said, “I, uh, I guess we should go back to the wedding. Before anyone realizes we’re gone.”
My heart sank. As much as I hated needing to have this conversation with him, it was also the only time we’d been alone in a while, and God knew when or if we’d have the opportunity again. Was it too much to ask for a few more minutes with him?
It was, yes. Because then we’d just be torturing ourselves with what we couldn’t have. The sooner we rejoined the real world and went our separate ways, the better.
I pushed myself off the sink I’d been leaning against. “Okay. Well. I’m sorry again. For, uh, disappearing you.”
“No, I get it.” He shouldered himself off the wall and came a little closer, and as our eyes met, I realized the confines of the small restroom hadn’t left a lot of space between us.
He stared at me. I stared at him.
Then, with a half step, he narrowed that space to a sliver, and my breath stuttered in my throat. “Ryan…”
He touched my face, and the hunger in his eyes weakened my knees. Sounding a little breathless, he said, “No one knows we’re in here. Anything that happens in this room, stays in this room.”
I swallowed. “You really think it’ll be that easy to walk away and pretend nothing happened?”
“No.” He shook his head once, eyes never leaving mine. “But if here and now is the only chance I’m ever going to have with you, then I’d rather not pass it up.”
I blinked. I’d known from the start that Ryan was direct as fuck, but to say he’d caught me off guard this time was an understatement. Or maybe my brain was just scrambled because he was touching me and my cock was well on its way to hard, and…
And I must have hesitated for a long time, because his face fell a little, and he started to draw back, his hand lightening against my cheek.
Fuck that noise.
I grabbed the back of his neck, slung an arm around his waist, and pulled him into a long overdue and feverishly hungry kiss. I couldn’t have him after this? Fine. But right now, while we had some privacy and some time, I wanted him.
“You on call today?” I murmured between messy kisses.
“Nope.” He slid his hands down over my ass. “Even if I was…” He finished the thought with another kiss, and we stumbled a step or two before my back hit the wall. We didn’t miss a beat. Now that we had the wall to keep us upright, we kissed and groped with long weeks’ worth of need and hunger.
Some part of my brain tried to remember that this was a bad idea. That Ryan was a witness in a volatile, precarious case. That there was a reason we hadn’t done this and more already.
I broke the kiss. “We can’t do this after… After we leave this room, we have to—”
“I don’t care what happens after we leave this room,” he panted. “I want you. Right now.”
A million klaxons went off in my head. All the reasons this was a terrible idea and what could happen when—not if—we got caught.
But the gl
eam in Ryan’s eyes quieted every last one of those alarms.
I’d been craving him like air since our first date, and this was likely the one and only time I’d have to give in. Fuck rules. Fuck ethics. Fuck everything except how much it had been killing me to keep him at arm’s length when I saw him at all.
So I dragged him into another deep, aggressive kiss.
Just give me tonight, and I might stay sane tomorrow.
Someone tried the door, but only once. They must’ve accepted that it was locked and moved on to find one of the other restrooms. Or they were patiently waiting outside for the restroom to be available, in which case, well, I hoped they were really patient.
Ryan’s hips were flush against mine, pinning me to the wall, and it took some work to slide a hand between us. Once he apparently realized what I was doing, he drew back enough to give me some room, and he shivered as my fingers traced over the outline of his hard-on. I started unzipping his pants, and he touched his hot forehead to mine, breathing hard as he murmured, “God, yeah…”
“I haven’t even done anything yet.”
“No, but you’re gonna.” He kissed me and murmured, “I don’t even care what. I want it.”
Oh, fuck yes. I hadn’t touched a man in way too long, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched someone who’d been trembling with this much need, responding to every single thing I did or even thought of doing. I’d have sold my soul for an entire night in bed with him, naked and unrestrained without any fear of being caught, but this was all that was in the cards for us, and I was going to enjoy every second of it.
In between a lot of messy, breathless kissing, we managed to get his belt unbuckled and his pants undone, and finally—oh God, finally—I had my fingers around his fully hard cock.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, bracing a hand beside my head on the wall as I stroked him. “Mark…”
“If we had more time and more room,” I said between kisses, “I’d be reaching for the lube so you could fuck me.”
Ryan shuddered, whimpering against my lips. “Jesus…”
“When all this is over?” I stroked him faster, adding a subtle twist at the end to weaken his knees. “When we don’t have anything to worry about except getting each other off? I want you—”
“You better believe I’ll fuck you,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Till you can’t walk.”
I groaned and kissed him hard, and he fucked into my hand so frantically, I wondered if he was imagining what it would be like to ride my ass. God knew that was where my mind had gone.
“Promise?” I panted.
“Promise.”
“Good. In the meantime…” I nudged him back a few steps until his back hit the opposite wall. Then I went to my knees, and when I took his cock—damn near deep-throating it right off the bat—the moan that escaped his lips was loud enough that if someone was waiting outside the door, they definitely heard it. Oh well. We weren’t the first to sneak off from a wedding reception for a quickie in the restroom. We wouldn’t be the last.
As I went to town on his cock, Ryan gripped my hair and thrust into my mouth. I usually hated when guys did that, but it turned me on this time. It was like a taste of the way he’d fuck me once we had the all-clear and didn’t have to worry anymore about being together. I loved how aggressive he was, how he wore his hunger on his sleeve, and above all else, I trusted him not to choke me.
“God, Mark…” He raked a hand through my hair, pulling hard enough to sting. “I’m gonna—”
I grabbed his hips and pinned him against the wall, and he whimpered again as I deep-throated him. His muscles tensed as he tried and failed to thrust, and his whispered curses were increasingly both frustrated and aroused, and fuck, he turned me on. He was close, his dick rock hard and thick between my lips, and he was almost vibrating with the need to thrust.
“Oh, shit. Mark… shit… I’m…” He gasped, shuddering so violently I almost lost my hold on his hips. “Baby, don’t stop.”
I kept right on blowing him, and his breathing turned into sharp gasps and his hips jerked in my hands, and then he clapped a hand over his mouth, muffling the strangled cry as he unloaded on my tongue.
Ryan slumped against the wall, knees trembling, and I sat back on my heels.
“Whoa,” he breathed, sounding dazed. With shaking hands, he fixed his clothes. I stood, ignoring the tingling in my feet and loud crack from my left knee. As soon as I was upright, Ryan wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a kiss. Then he touched his forehead to mine. “Would you think less of me if I said I’d been fantasizing about that since I met you?”
“Not at all.”
“Good. Because I have.” He kissed me, and his lips curved into a grin as he started on my belt. “Haven’t just been fantasizing about being on the receiving end, though.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh.” He nudged me back to where we’d been making out earlier, pinning me to the wall again, and he kissed me hungrily as he undid my belt and pants.
He wasn’t satisfied with just having my belt unbuckled and my fly unzipped, though. As he went to his knees, he shoved everything down, and I gasped at the rush of cool air against my exposed cock, ass, and thighs. Again at the heat of his palms sliding up my legs.
And then he had those talented lips around my dick, and I didn’t give a damn about the state of my clothes. The cool air just underscored the heat of his mouth as he teased every inch from base to tip. I threaded my fingers through his hair just for something to hold on to, and stared down at him because… Because goddamn, I didn’t think there was anything sexier in the world than Ryan Campbell kneeling at my feet with my cock down his throat.
This was about as far from “me” as I’d ever been—up against a wall in a public restroom with my pants around my ankles and my dick down the throat of a man I wasn’t even supposed to be talking to. This was absolutely not how I did things, and it flew in the face of every by-the-book rule that dictated my life, and it was the hottest goddamned thing I’d ever experienced.
I kneaded his scalp and bit my lip, trying like hell to hold back the curses and groans that wanted to give us away to everyone within earshot of the restroom. I wanted this to last a long time, but that wasn’t in the cards tonight. Not after I’d spun myself up getting him off, and not after I’d been going out of my mind with need for him for weeks now.
“Keep doing that,” I murmured. “Oh, fuck…”
He groaned around my dick and gave me even more—swirling his tongue around the head, stroking the spit-slicked shaft, teasing my balls with his other hand. When his eyes flicked up and met mine, I almost lost it. Holy shit, this man was hot, and he sucked cock like every fantasy I’d ever had come to life, and all that lust in his eyes was… fuck.
“Just like that,” I whispered. “You’re gonna make me come. God, yeah, just like that…” I couldn’t resist rocking my hips and pushing myself into his mouth, and that made him groan again, which just drove me higher. I bit my lip to keep quiet, and I let him take me right to the edge, hold me there, tease me there, keep me there, and then—
I gasped. Shuddered. Almost collapsed. And came hard in Ryan’s eager, relentless mouth. He kept stroking me, egging me on and not letting up until I sagged against the wall. “Holy…”
Ryan rose, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He grinned wickedly. “Well, I know what memory I’ll be jerking off to for the foreseeable future.”
I laughed a little drunkenly and, after I had my pants up and at least my belt buckled, I pulled him closer. “Yeah. Me too.” And then I kissed him, and we just stood there for a moment, letting the dust settle while we indulged in a long, lazy kiss that tasted of cum. Even after the dust had settled and we’d both caught our breath, we held on. I had no idea how long we’d been in here, or how long we’d stood here kissing in the afterglow, but I didn’t want to care about anything outside this room right now.
We couldn’t stay in h
ere forever, though, and we both knew it. Reluctantly, we separated, and in silence, we used the restroom mirrors to straighten our hair and our clothes so we didn’t look like we’d been doing exactly what we’d been doing. Our skin was a bit flushed and our lips were a little swollen, but there wasn’t much we could do about that. Hopefully the detective fathers of the bride were duly shitfaced by now and wouldn’t have their usual powers of observation. No way in hell I’d ever live this down.
Ryan tugged his sleeves into place, and we faced each other. The second he met my gaze, my heart sank because I could see my own thoughts in his eyes.
This is all we get.
As soon as we walk out this door, it’s over.
I touched his face. Sighing, Ryan pressed his cheek against my hand.
My voice was shakier than I expected as I whispered, “This case won’t last forever.”
“I know. I just…” He put his hand over mine and kissed my palm. “You’re not even gone yet, and I already miss you.”
“Yeah. Me too.” What the hell could I even say? It was true that cases like this didn’t last forever, but they could drag on for a godawful long time. I couldn’t ask Ryan to wait around for me.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. “We should get back to the wedding.” He swallowed. “Before anyone comes looking for us.”
