by L. A. Witt
I turned. “Hmm?”
He gestured down one of the aisles. “Look at that.”
I looked where he was pointing, and stiffened. “That’s fucking ballsy.”
“No shit.”
For a moment, we both stared at Brian McIntosh’s back. He couldn’t see us, and even if he’d been facing us, he probably wouldn’t have noticed we were there. Not when he was focused on neatly arranging cereal boxes on a shelf.
Without another word, Darren and I continued out to the car.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said once we were outside. “He’s too smart to come back here.”
I nodded, hands in my pockets and eyes down. Something definitely didn’t make sense.
“So what now?” he asked.
Yeah. What now? I knew without a doubt we’d found our killer. But without being able to finger him in the lineup, we’d never be able to charge him. A city-issued lawyer would have him out so fast his head would spin. We knew, but we needed proof. Not a victim’s uncle’s hearsay. Not a victim who wouldn’t point the finger at the assailant. Not a mountain of circumstantial fucking evidence. Proof.
We had everything, and we had nothing, and our case was dead in the water.
And Brian McIntosh knew it, because otherwise he wouldn’t have the balls to come back to work and continue putting cereal boxes on the shelf in plain fucking sight.
I took out the keys and unlocked the car. “For now, we go home. We sleep. And tomorrow, we figure out what the fuck we’re overlooking.”
We exchanged glances. His forehead was creased with skepticism, and I didn’t try to talk him out of it.
Because I didn’t see us sleeping anytime soon either.
Neither of us said much on the way back to Darren’s apartment. I suspected he had gears turning in his head like I did. Maybe he was getting somewhere. I sure as hell wasn’t.
And my mind wasn’t just occupied by the case that kept throwing us curveballs in between slamming us into dead ends. I was exhausted. Fucking drained. The last few weeks had been a nonstop blur of stress and chaos. Darren in the hospital. Half the cops in the city turning on us. A serial killer who was going to strike again in a matter of days. Asher deteriorating. My daughter finding out more than I’d wanted her to know about me. Little holes in Darren’s memory that I wasn’t even sure he noticed. Others that he did. A case that was two steps forward and twelve steps back at every turn. Darren’s sister-in-law pouring salt on his wounds.
I pressed my elbow against the door and rubbed my temple. It wasn’t one thing after another—it was one thing on top of another. No stops. No breaks. No relief.
If more shit came our way, I could cope. Somehow, I could.
It was Darren I was worried about.
He’d barely slept last night—or any night recently—despite the exhaustion and the Percocet. Tonight wouldn’t be any better. Now he was second-guessing himself. He was convinced he’d fucked up and torpedoed our case, and no amount of reassurance would change that. And damn if he needed this right now. His confidence as a detective—newly minted or otherwise—seemed like it was the only thing that had been holding him together, and now that was shaken.
I parked below his apartment, and we were still silent on the way in.
He went straight to the kitchen without even taking off his jacket. I didn’t think anything of it until a bottle clanked heavily on the counter. Curiosity brought me to the doorway just as Darren took a sip from the highball he was holding in a shaky hand.
Without looking at me, he swallowed, grimaced, and set the drink down. “Want one?”
“Not really.” I stepped closer. “Something tells me you don’t either.”
He slid his gaze toward me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means I don’t think you want it—I think you need it.”
He laughed bitterly. “If I drank as much as I needed, I’d be dead by midnight.”
My gut clenched, and apparently my face reflected it.
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I just . . . your gallows humor is a little harder to swallow since I almost watched you die.”
That rattled him, and he dropped his eyes. Bringing his glass up to his lips, he muttered, “One of the few things I’m glad I can’t remember.” He threw back the drink like a shot, and reached for the whiskey again.
I stopped him, grasping his wrist gently but firmly, and he froze but didn’t release his choke hold on the bottle.
“Andreas.” His voice had an unsteady edge. “Don’t. After the day I’ve had—shit, the week I’ve had—you’re right, I do need this.” The edge weakened, and he barely whispered, “Just . . . don’t, all right?”
I didn’t let go. “You want to bust this case or not?”
“Of course I do,” he hissed.
“Then you need a clear head, and this—”
“A clear fucking head?” He jerked his arm away, nearly knocking the bottle off the counter. “Every goddamned corner of my life and my career and—” He made a sharp, frustrated gesture, and once again, the bottle almost bit it. “I can’t catch a break. From anything. Literally the only thing with an end in sight is Asher.”
My breath hitched.
He leaned hard against the counter and rubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck . . .” He exhaled. “That’s . . . What the hell kind of asshole am I?” He laughed like he’d had a hell of a lot more than one generous shot of whiskey. “The only way I’m going to get any relief from any of this is when this fucking disease finally does what we all know it’s going to do.” Eyes losing focus, he sagged a little more. “And then I can just lie awake at night and wonder when it’s going to happen to me.” Another bitter, drunken laugh, and he reached for the bottle. “Or maybe I’ll forget that too.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Isn’t it?” He poured some more whiskey into his glass and picked it up with a shaky hand. “Because I can either laugh about it, or cry about it. Or”—he raised the glass in a mock toast—“drink.”
“Fuck, Darren. You’ve got to—”
“I’ve got to what, Andreas?” He slammed the glass down and glared at me. “Suck it up and keep it quiet so you don’t have to hear about it?” The fury in his eyes wasn’t nearly as painful to see as the shine beginning to form on the lower lids. “If you don’t want to see me falling apart just like my whole fucking life is, you know where the door is. Don’t feel like you have to—”
“This has been hell for me too,” I snapped, and he jumped. “You think it’s been a cakewalk to have this dead-end case on my ass while I’m worrying myself sick because you’re going through all this shit and there’s nothing I can do about it?”
He blinked.
Through clenched teeth, I went on, “That feeling I had out on the tarmac? When I thought you were gone? That’s—” I cleared my throat. “I haven’t shaken that feeling. Not once. Because the only thing I want more than to solve this case is to fix all this shit that’s killing you, and I can’t.” Whoa. Fuck. Now I needed a drink. “I can’t do anything for you. I just . . . don’t want to see you self-destruct on top of it all.”
Darren stared into his mostly abandoned drink. He sniffed sharply and swiped at his eyes.
“I’m terrible at this kind of thing,” I said. “I don’t know the right things to say or do, but . . . seeing you like this scares the shit out of me.”
He looked at me again, eyes wide like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if the words had come out in the order they’d been in my head. I could rip a confession out of a killer, but God help me if I had to pour my own heart out.
“Just . . .” I swallowed. “If there is something I can do, tell me.”
Darren held my gaze, still shocked and disbelieving, his eyes still shining like he was careening toward his breaking point.
“Say the word,” I said. “Anything I—”
He grabbed the front of my
shirt, and kissed me.
And the whole world jerked to a halt beneath my feet.
For a second, my hands hovered uselessly in the air, but as his arm snaked around my waist and his fingers slid up into my hair, I held on to him. Despite the exhaustion that seeped all the way into my bones, I kissed him back as hungrily as he kissed me. When was the last time— Hell, did it matter? Too long. Way too long. Everything had gone to shit, and just kept getting worse at every turn, and though I hadn’t been in the mood for anything besides sleep, I suddenly craved him like he was the only thing keeping me from crumbling. And maybe he was. And maybe that meant I was what he needed, because God knew he’d been through more hell than I had lately.
Darren touched his forehead to mine. He sniffed again and pulled back to wipe his eyes, but he wasn’t quick enough to keep me from seeing the tear that had slipped down his cheek.
I cupped his face. “Listen, we can—”
“I don’t want to talk any more.” He met my eyes, more tears gleaming in his. “I’ve been trying so hard to stay sane, and I just . . . tonight, I . . .”
“You don’t have to be sane right now.”
A ragged, whiskey-tinged breath rushed past his lips and across mine, and then he kissed me again. Sanity could wait. Darren couldn’t, and now neither could I.
I broke the kiss, gently freed myself from his embrace, and took his hand. He didn’t protest. He probably knew exactly what I was doing, where I was leading him, and we half jogged across his apartment.
The second we crossed into the bedroom, Darren took over again, and shoved me down onto the bed. He pinned my wrists and kissed me, rubbing his clothed erection against mine.
Abruptly, he flinched and sucked in a sharp breath. When he shifted onto one arm, I understood.
“Your shoulder. We—”
“My shoulder’s fine.” And he kissed me before I could say anything else.
Still, I couldn’t imagine he was comfortable, so I rolled him onto his back.
“This all right?” I asked between kisses. “With your scar and—”
“It’s fine,” he growled, and pulled me into another kiss, this time gripping my hair so I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to. Fine by me. If this was comfortable for him, I wasn’t going anywhere.
Gradually, he seemed to get the message. His grasp on my hair loosened, and his hands started drifting all over me. He tugged my shirt free and slid his hands under it. The warmth of his palms on my skin underscored just how long it had been since we’d done this, and I kissed him even harder until I was sure we’d both have bruised lips tomorrow.
His hands moved down my back, and as his fingertips teased at my waistband, not quite sliding under but not backing off, I shivered and broke the kiss with a gasp.
“Been too long,” he murmured.
“Mm-hmm.” I leaned down to kiss his neck, breaking out in goose bumps when he tilted his head to bare more of his throat. “Way too long.” Wasn’t that the truth? Some little voice in the back of my mind tried to tell me this was wrong. That being insatiably turned on in the middle of what felt like a warzone was crass. Inappropriate. Insane. But that voice didn’t last long. As I rocked my hips against Darren, both of us hard and out of breath, nothing about this could possibly be wrong except for the fact that it had taken us so long to get here again.
The rest of the world could go to hell. We needed each other tonight, and I wasn’t stopping until Darren couldn’t move.
I pushed myself up and glanced down at our rumpled clothes. “We really should—”
“Naked.” He licked his lips. “Now.”
“Great minds think alike.” I rolled off him and onto my feet, and a second later, he was upright as well. Our clothes, shoes, wallets, phones, keys—everything landed on the floor, and so help me, if one of those phones rang, no warranty on earth would cover the damage I’d do to it.
As Darren dropped his briefs on top of everything else, I paused for a moment just to give him an appreciative down-up glance. God, he looked good. He’d lost weight in the hospital, and I was happy to see some of it had come back, along with some of the color in his cheeks and the light in his eyes. His recovery would be a long one, but he looked exponentially healthier than he’d been not very long ago.
And he sure as hell wasn’t lethargic like he’d been the first week or two he’d been home—he pulled me back down on top of him and kissed me. I couldn’t keep my hands off him, partly because I was turned on and partly because I was just so relieved to be touching him like this again.
I met his gaze, and he grinned, but it faltered.
“I’d fuck you into the ground tonight.” He swept his tongue across his lips. “Not sure I’ve got it in me, though. Not after all the—”
“That can wait. Just want you to feel good.”
“Oh my God, I do,” he moaned, fingers digging into my shoulders as he shuddered underneath me. “I so do.”
“Good.” I dipped my head to kiss his neck. “Me too.”
He kissed my shoulder, then sank his teeth in, and I groaned as my dick got impossibly harder. His hips moved and encouraged mine to do the same, and somehow we were rocking together in perfect time, cocks rubbing together between us.
“Should . . .” I struggled to form words, “get some lube.”
“Good idea.”
I kissed him, pried myself off him, but came back for one more kiss. And another, but he stopped me.
“Lube. Now.” His voice was laced with that shaky desperation he’d had in the kitchen, as well as echoes of the insatiable power top who’d fucked me right here in this bed a lifetime ago. Yeah. Lube. Now.
I found the bottle in the top drawer of his nightstand, and before I’d even opened the cap, he’d grabbed it out of my hand.
“Back on top,” he ordered as he poured some in his palm.
His half-pleading, half-commanding tone went straight to my balls. It was like he was as raw and brittle as he’d been earlier, and at the same time as bold and confident as he’d been the first time. Either way, I was going to give him what he needed, so I got back on top as he stroked some of the lube onto his dick. Before I’d even settled over him, hips between his parted legs, he was putting the cool, slick liquid on me too, and my eyes almost rolled back from the sheer intensity of his slippery hand sliding up and down my shaft.
Without really thinking—my body was kind of moving on its own now—I started rocking against him like before, moving as if we were fucking and I was the one on top. He closed his fingers as much as he could around both our cocks, and every time I thrust into his hand, the head of mine slid past his fingers and damn near turned me inside out.
We tried to kiss. Couldn’t. Tried again. Gave up. We were both breathing too hard, and I was moving too fast now, riding him and getting drunk on his little moans and tremors as he pumped our dicks in time with my thrusts.
“Oh fuck.” He shuddered. His grip tightened, drawing a groan out of me, and I closed my eyes as I thrust harder into his fist and against his slippery cock. “Gonna . . . Oh fuck, I’m gonna . . .”
“Me too.” I buried my face against his neck and fucked against him for all I was worth, and nothing in the world—nothing—would ever be as erotic as the hot, ragged “Oh God” he whispered in my ear in the same instant his body jerked with the first spasm of his orgasm. One more thrust, and I was gone too, my toes curling as I came in his hand and almost passed out in the process.
With a long sigh, I collapsed on top of him, heart thumping and legs shaking. Holy fuck. I hadn’t even had the energy to jack off in a while, and if I’d been spent before, I was utterly done now.
Darren wrapped his arms around me. He pressed a soft kiss to my temple. “I think I might actually sleep tonight.”
“Yeah.” I lifted up and met his gaze. “I think I will too.”
I’d always been a clinger in my sleep, from the time I was an infant. There were pictures of me sound asleep at three months, b
oth arms wrapped tight around whatever I could reach of my mother, like a baby opossum. When my brother and I had shared a room as kids, it hadn’t been unusual for me to snuggle into his bed with no regard for his personal space. As I got older, stuffed animals and then pillows had taken the place of family members, with me clutching them like they were a life jacket and I was desperately trying not to drown.
Turns out, a lot of boyfriends didn’t like that. It was nothing personal, not for most of them at least—they just needed their space. I learned, reluctantly, to separate my inclination from my actions. I learned to keep to my side, to roll away instead of toward, to reach around myself instead of for the other person. I learned to keep my distance, and figured that was life. You didn’t wake up entwined with another person like you saw in the movies, because it ended up hot and sweaty and uncomfortable and limbs fell asleep. It wasn’t realistic.
I didn’t know if it was because Andreas was a closet snuggler or if he’d adapted for my sake, but he never, ever asked me to back off. The few times when I’d gotten myself settled on the mattress six inches away, almost close enough to feel his heat, he’d gone ahead and reeled me in tight, just where I wanted to be. He was always careful of my shoulder, but never pushed me off or pushed me back, even in sleep, and I appreciated that more than I could say.
That was why it was a little strange waking up alone the morning after one of the worst days of my career that had been followed by one of the best nights of my life. We’d fallen asleep locked together like puzzle pieces, and I’d been so tired I hadn’t even cared that we didn’t bother to clean up after sex and we’d be gross in the morning. At least we’d be gross together. That was just about the best happy ending I could hope for.
Instead, I woke up on my stomach, left arm wrapped around Andreas’s pillow, the right one positioned carefully on account of my shoulder, which meant I probably hadn’t put it like that. I was alone in bed, but not in the apartment. I could smell coffee. Not my cheap-as-shit bulk brand stuff, either.
It smelled amazing. I should really get up and get some, except then I’d have to move, and I was still enjoying the lazy high that came from being totally rested. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept like that, out like a light but without the side effects of the drugs weighing down my body and brain. I sighed and stretched, and apart from a twinge in my shoulder, nothing hurt. It was amazing.
