by C. S. Poe
“Calvin’s almost out of mints,” I replied.
She jiggled the condom box.
“Please stop waving that around.”
Beth rolled her eyes and shoved them back into the bag. “Your priorities are something else.”
I snatched the concealer and stared hard at it. “So this won’t work?”
“No. Unless you want a giant brown smudge on your face and makeup-caked whiskers.”
“Great.”
Beth tossed the bottle into the waste bin for me. “Been sleuthing, have you?”
“Not really.”
“Liar.”
“Only a little. But it’s regarding that film from Tuesday, so I’m not meddling in police business.”
“Then why have there been cops outside your store all day?”
“The window got shot out,” I said, maybe a bit too calmly.
“That was next door?” she protested. “Holy hell! I thought it came from down the street!”
I shook my head.
“So… why?” Beth put her hands on the counter and leaned forward.
“Someone—” I looked over my shoulder to make sure the future vacationers hadn’t moved close enough to overhear. “Someone stole that footage from my shop and a teenager was found dead in our dumpster. I think whoever did those acts tried to scare me this morning into handing over more footage.”
“D-did you?” Beth asked, stumbling over her words.
“I didn’t have anything to hand over,” I replied. “But afterward—”
Wait a minute.
Wait a damn minute.
Calvin might have been right. Fuck!
After the shots at the Emporium, Mr. Robert had called. He’d called, enticed me to come grab more footage, and then I’d had it stolen less than three hours later by another teenager. And the gun that had been fired at the front window…. Calvin suspected the casings had been collected prior to the attacker running off, but what if….
Mr. Robert had antique weapons at his house. They were hanging on the walls for me to see—single-action revolvers from the 1830s and ’40s. And those didn’t have bullets like we know them today. I hadn’t made any mental notes about a space on a wall missing a gun, but that house looked like what I suspected my own would be like in a decade or two. There could have easily been a pistol unaccounted for.
I looked down at the hoodie on the countertop.
That teenager who escaped with my fucking bag was taller than me. Not a huge guy, but he had seemed healthy, especially since I’d no chance of catching him. He might have been the partner-in-crime to Casey Robert…. Which meant he’d followed me home last night. And today, by the time I’d visited the grandfather’s house. Maybe even prior to that. Since I left the Emporium for Pop’s? Regardless, he’d have confirmed by Astoria that I had more footage, and must have been waiting for the perfect moment to jump me. It wasn’t a random attack at all.
Was I honestly being set up by a prune juice-drinking, ninety-year-old man who was using his own grandson to do the dirty work? I couldn’t be sure if Casey’s murder was part of the plan, but… this was bad. Outward appearance was that Mr. Robert certainly wasn’t hurting for cash. He lived in a gorgeous brownstone in a highly desirable neighborhood, with a house full of shit that’d make him the most popular seller at an auction.
But who knows. Maybe he was destitute. What the fuck did I know about his financial situation?
Was it just bad luck that he’d chosen my antique store from a Google search instead of my asshole competition, Marshall’s Oddities? And if that were all true, did that mean the Dickson footage meant jack squat in this modern-day mystery?
No. I refused to believe these long-lost movies were red herrings.
Beth snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Sebastian.”
I blinked and looked at her. “S-sorry… what was I saying?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “How’d you bruise your cheek?”
I furrowed my brow. “Someone tripped me getting off the subway.” I stared at her for a beat. “I have to go.”
“Of course you do.”
I grabbed my things, took a step away, then paused. “Do you have a pair of glasses I can borrow? Mine were stolen.”
She raised an eyebrow and pulled off the ones she wore, the rhinestone chain hanging from them. “Want these?”
I winced. Not my style. “What about more Miss Butterwith books? I still need Miss Butterwith Plants a Clue.” Beth had been helping me reassemble my extensive, old-lady sleuth series I’d lost in February.
“Nada.”
“Gay cops?” I tried.
She reached under the counter briefly, then stood with two paperbacks in her hands. “I knew I’d convert you to romances eventually.”
I leaned closer. “Miss Butterwith will always be my number-one gal.”
“Sure.”
I snatched one of the offerings. “But this looks promising.” I slid it into my plastic bag.
“Get out of here, troublemaker.”
“I’ll see you later.”
I stepped outside and let the door fall shut behind me. I was considering if, in my current state, it was possible to go home to grab my extra pair of glasses while remaining safe and under the radar, when I spotted Neil’s car still parked across the street. I guess multiple shots and shattered glass was more than enough to keep an evidence-gathering detective busy for the better part of a day.
I marched toward the taped-off area surrounding my shop. I peered around a uniformed officer who moved to block me. I only made out a few people through the open door, and there were definitely less cars than earlier in the morning.
“Almost done?” I asked.
“You’ll have to use the sidewalk across the street, sir,” the officer replied.
“Is Detective Millett still inside?”
“Sir.”
“I’m the owner,” I said, waving a hand at the store. “Could you just check if he’s available for thirty seconds?”
“I believe the detectives left a few hours ago.”
“He’s CSU,” I corrected.
She put her hands on her utility belt.
“Please?” I looked over her shoulder again as two people stepped out of the Emporium, carrying evidence kits. “Hey!” I called. “Neil!”
Both detectives stopped and looked at me. Neil said something to the other man, handed over his gear, and then walked toward the police tape.
I moved away from the officer and met Neil about ten feet away from her. “I have a question,” I stated.
Neil took in my rumpled, bruised appearance. “And I have several,” he countered. He reached out, touched the side of my head, and pulled his still-gloved hand back. He held up his fingers to show a dark stain on the latex. “What the hell is in your hair?”
“I was on the subway floor.”
“That does not narrow the list in any way whatsoever. When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
“I’ll take a shower.”
“Make it a good one,” he agreed, yanking off the glove and checking his watch. “You’re a mess, and it’s been, like, five hours since I last saw you, Sebastian.”
“A lot can happen in five hours.”
“Jesus,” Neil swore under his breath. “What’s your question?”
“What kind of bullet did you get out of my wall?”
He put his hands up. “No. No case questions.”
“But I—”
“No.” He turned around and was already walking away.
“Was it a lead ball?” I called after him.
Neil stopped. He looked over his shoulder.
That was a yes.
“Lead balls look like pancakes after being fired,” I continued.
Neil glanced at the officer to my left before he returned to loom over me.
“We know it wasn’t a musket,” I said, trying to sound helpful. “That’d have drawn attention. But on the
other hand, those shots were in pretty quick succession.”
“Yes,” Neil reluctantly admitted. “It’d need to be something with a revolving cylinder. How do you know this?”
“I have a suspicion an antique collector I visited today may be behind everything happening. He had a lot of well-kept weapons on the walls.”
“That’s not proof.”
“No, I guess not. But I challenge you to a scavenger hunt. First one to find someone in New York City who owns a nineteenth-century pistol with a stock of black gunpowder and lead balls wins.”
“Sebastian.”
“Who’s also the grandfather of the kid in the dumpster.”
Neil’s features softened into curiosity. “What? Does Winter know?”
“I told him,” I agreed. “About the family relation. The gun realization just occurred to me a few minutes ago. I know Calvin’s going to talk to Mr. Robert at some point.”
Neil was already pulling his cell out. “I’ll tell him about the bullet so he can ask the grandfather about his collection.”
“He should get a warrant to test Mr. Robert’s firearms.”
Neil put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Go home.” He then moved it and said, “It’s Millett.”
“Tell Calvin I said hi.”
Neil made a shooing motion.
ADRENALINE CRASHES were hell.
After a successful, though nerve-racking, pit stop at home to find my backup glasses, stuff a backpack with clean clothes, and borrow Calvin’s tablet, I hightailed it to Pop’s. I had no idea if this was the last I’d see of the second teenager, but I was fairly confident he was working in conjunction with Mr. Robert. And if that was the case, I wasn’t looking to be caught alone with a guy who was brutal enough to slit a friend’s throat.
So I got reacquainted with Pop’s couch.
And promptly fell asleep about forty pages into my hot cops book.
“—sorry to wake you, William.”
“Hush, hush. Sebastian warned me you would be late. He’s been asleep since seven. Stay the night.”
“Are you sure? Thank you.”
My brain was a bit sluggish on the uptake—unable to successfully identify the whispering voices near the front door until the sounds had migrated behind me. I recognized Pop’s bedroom door shutting. Then I heard another door farther away—Calvin in the bathroom.
I opened my eyes, wiping my mouth while sitting up.
I drooled. Great.
I leaned forward, took my glasses from the coffee table, and put them on. The near-dark room came into focus. The curtains were all drawn, both pups were attempting to sleep on Maggie’s bed across the room, and at some point in the night, my dad had put some pillows on the couch and covered me with a light blanket.
I hoped he hadn’t gotten an eyeful of the page I fell asleep reading. That’d been a damn fine sex scene.
I picked the book up from where it’d fallen to the floor and set it on the table. I turned my head to the right and stared down the dark hall with the small bit of light peeking out from under the bathroom door.
I can’t be sure what prompted me to stand and walk down the hall just then.
Maybe it was confidence shining through after the late spring cleaning of my heart.
Maybe it was the desire to feel alive after the morning’s shoot-out.
Hell. Maybe it was just the lingering effects of the scorching-hot read.
But I stopped outside the bathroom, knocked on the door, and opened it.
Calvin turned as he dried his face with a towel. His sleeves were rolled back, showing the cords of muscle in his arms, and his tie was loosened, with the first button of his shirt undone. “Hey, baby. I’m sorry I woke—”
I pushed the door shut, took a few steps forward, grabbed Calvin by the tie, and pulled him down into a kiss. And it wasn’t just any kiss. It was everything that I was—everything that made him and me, us. It was affection, trust, surprise, want, and need. It was pure, undiluted joy, uncertainty, weakness, and strength.
It was every promise I’d made. Every apology owed. Every vow to do better.
It was every last ounce of love I had for Calvin Winter.
He broke the kiss first with an audible gasp.
I reached around Calvin’s neck and let him pull me closer. “I know Lee used to be an old boyfriend.”
He looked surprised that was my conversation starter. “That was a long—”
“Hang on. Just let me… I don’t care,” I said quietly. “I don’t. I’ve been a mess lately. I know that. Trying to convince myself that this will somehow end because I’m not a good enough catch for you.”
“Sebastian….”
“Listen,” I insisted, looking up at him. “I get self-conscious. There are some days… when I’m wearing mismatched clothes, have crumbs on my sweater, and the clerk at CVS gives me a dubious look when I buy condoms because she’d sooner believe I’m making balloon animals out of them than getting laid. And it gets to me. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes it’s worse. But I want to apologize to you. Because for months I’ve asked you to be honest with me and talk with me when you’re hurting, and I haven’t had the balls to do the same.”
Calvin’s face softened. His arms wrapped a little tighter around me.
“And I let Mr. Suave and Handsome get under my skin. But he’s an ex.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m not.”
Calvin smiled lightly and shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
“And… and I think we’re imperfectly perfect for each other. Like, peanut butter is too savory alone, and jelly’s too sweet, but we….” I started laughing. “We make a great sandwich.”
Calvin smiled with his entire face. He leaned down and kissed my forehead.
“You picked me,” I continued. “Despite all the warning signs that I’m an obnoxious know-it-all on even my best days, you’re here now. You could be anywhere in the world. And you’re right here. So maybe I’ll never be wholly confident in life. But… when it’s just you, and just me, I know I have nothing to be afraid of. You’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m not,” Calvin said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I answered before kissing him again.
I pushed Calvin back against the sink, grabbed his arms, and guided them down my body until his hands settled on my ass. I slipped his tie from around his neck, tossed it to the floor, and fumbled with the buttons down his chest as we continued kissing.
Calvin slid his hands into my pajama bottoms and gripped my ass hard, forcing me up against him. His erection pressed against his suit trousers and nudged my lower belly.
I tugged Calvin’s shirt free and pushed it from his shoulders, before it got caught around his lower arms. He laughed against my mouth and broke the kiss in order to finished pulling off his shirt. Calvin quickly threw it to the floor, took my face into his hands, and kissed me hard. He tasted like too much cheap coffee and never enough sleep. But he also tasted like love and life, and I was woefully addicted.
I reached between us and stroked Calvin through his clothes. I cupped him in one hand and gave a squeeze as I kissed his neck. He sighed and put a hand on the back of my head, keeping me in place. I licked from the hollow of his throat to his Adam’s apple, and he swallowed hard in response.
I said, with a surprising amount of confidence in my tone, “I want you to fuck me.”
Calvin leaned back a bit and raised my chin. “We’re in your father’s bathroom.”
“We can have sex on the couch if you’d rather, but I’d prefer not to subject my dad to front-row seats of his son getting plowed.”
“God, you’re so romantic.” Calvin held my face in both hands again.
“Finish getting undressed.” I untangled myself from Calvin and went to the door.
“Where’re you going?”
“Getting a condom.”
“You brought condoms?”
I stepped into the hall and l
ooked over my shoulder. “Balloon animals—remember?” I smiled and hurried back to the living room.
I grabbed the backpack beside the couch and dug through it to retrieve the plastic bag from the store. After fighting with the wrapping around the box, I yanked it open, tore a condom free, and returned to the bathroom. I slipped inside and locked the door behind me.
The bathroom was small, but luckily there was enough space for the thick towel Calvin had put on the floor. He’d ditched his pants, too, but was still wearing boxer briefs when I entered.
“I hope you thought to pack lube as well, because I’m not using a makeshift product that’ll inevitably not work and/or leave us smelling like peaches and daffodils,” he said.
“Luckily for you, my dad has neither peach- nor daffodil-scented lotion.” I gave him the condom and opened the cupboard under the sink. “I left a small bottle here from, like, a month ago.” I felt around for a minute before finding it still safely tucked away behind the neat little baskets Pop used to keep items organized. I held it up triumphantly.
“You’re insane,” Calvin said with an amused smile.
“Yeah. And horny as hell. So ditch the briefs.”
When both of us were naked, Calvin took the lube and indicated with a finger for me to turn around. He leaned me over the sink, pressed his body against the length of mine, and slid a wet, slippery finger between my asscheeks. I took a few deep breaths and consciously relaxed to accept the slow, deliberate ministrations.
Calvin kissed my spine. “Feel good?” he murmured.
“Y-yeah.”
“Spread your legs a bit more.”
I did as instructed and gasped when Calvin started pumping two fingers into me. Of all times to feel enthusiastic about offering up some dirty talk, of course it was the middle of the night at my father’s house. But whatever. Sexy whispers were nearly as good, right?
“I want your cock… please, Cal….”
His hand faltered for a brief second.
Yup, good enough for Calvin.
Calvin reached with his free hand to carefully wrap it around my throat. He pulled me back into a straight standing position with his fingers still pushing in and out of my ass. Calvin tightened his grip enough on my neck to make me gasp again. He looked at our reflections in the mirror above the sink.
