by Adira August
Hunt agreed, having been photographed, himself. “The backpack is interesting,” he said, looking it over carefully without touching it. “It’s dirty but not worn. This thing’s a couple hundred bucks, at least.”
He caught the gleam of the edge of Cam’s cell phone in the diffuse light.
“Might not be bright enough.” Cam moved the phone around as Hunter rose and ducked out of lens range. “We’re taking the laptop?”
“I don’t know. Asher didn’t ask for it. We don’t know if that laptop is his, and I’m not sure what anyone’s agenda is. There’s no body; we’re documenting that.”
“I might be documenting shadows. But …”
“But, what?”
“I’m wondering if we’re trespassing? And what if there was a body here? What if there are bloodstains under the sleeping bag? Can we search? Look in the backpack? Maybe it looks arranged to cover something up.”
Hunter stepped outside and fished out his own cell. Diane Natani, the assistant district attorney assigned to their team, picked up on the first ring.
“Do not tell me you aren’t coming in,” she greeted him.
“Okay, I won’t. And don’t tell me you don’t have an answer to a jurisdiction question.” He briefly described their situation, leaving out Cam’s name and the details of Asher’s visitation.
The silence was lengthy. He felt her disapproval radiating through the phone. “I need to know exactly where you are,” she said, finally. “Exactly.”
He scanned the landscape. “You know how you can go from the upper parking lot at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and there’s like a crappy trail that’s really a dry wash that goes to Mount Morrison? I’m on the north-facing slope.”
“Okay, facing straight north, if you point at the top of Mount Morrison, what o’clock is it?”
He checked the compass app on his phone. “Eleven,” he said. “Looks like 330 degrees on my cell compass. I got map coordinates here at the bottom.”
“You’re in Denver,” she told him.
“You’re shitting me.”
Cam came out of the cave and stretched his back and neck. Hunt put Natani on speaker.
“Make a note of the map coordinates, but Red Rocks Park encompasses Mount Morrison and that ravine back from the amphitheater. And … hang on … that area you’re in is closed to the public. There should be signs posted; didn’t you see any?”
“I came cross-country. So what’s my legal status, here, in terms of the stuff in the cave?”
“It’s found property. You seize it, catalogue it, and sign it into the property bureau. You know the drill. And I want you in here, asap.”
“You know, Diane, a random observer might think you were my boss.”
“Tell whatever ‘random observer’ you put me on speaker for that I should be. I need to get out of here by four, okay? So could you please, please, oh exalted one, get your ass in here as fast as possible?”
“Just go. I’ll be in early tomorrow, before you. It’s admin crap; it’ll wait.” Hunter clicked off and shoved the cell into the right front pocket of his jeans. From the left front, he drew a handful of nitrile gloves and handed Cam a pair.
Cam knew better than to be surprised. He suspected Hunter liked impressing him this way and had taken the gloves from the box under the sink while Cam was at the table with the laptop. He hid a smirk and gave Hunt the victory.
“Always prepared, aren’t you?” Cam put the gloves on.
“Me? If I pat you down right now, will I find more lube packets?”
“If you pat me down right now, you better hope that cave stays empty.”
Hunter rested his forearms on Cam’s shoulders. “That was not the bet, remember?”
Cam loved when Hunter demonstrated he was no slavish submissive. It made his surrenders galactically hot. And just that fast, Cam was hard.
“You’re doing this on purpose, sub.”
Hunter gave him a lopsided grin. “And I’m just getting started.”
“You think you won’t pay later?”
“There is no penalty for raking in the pot.”
He let go of Cam and led the way into the cave. Cam rolled up the sleeping bag with the laptop inside while Hunter secured the campstove and then strapped the bedroll and the stove to the sides of the backpack with the straps meant to hold tools and helmets.
It was a big, bulky, awkward package. They looked around, but found neither bloodstains nor any other evidence of violence. Or habitation.
Outside, Hunter hoisted the pack onto his shoulders and cinched the straps around his waist.
“You’ll kill yourself trying to go up that cliff wearing that,” Cam observed.
Hunter grinned. “My people are champions, too, Mr. Olympics.” Hunt scrambled easily up the steep slope, the camp stove rocking. He disappeared for a moment and then his face appeared above Cam, who was looking dubiously at the almost vertical rise.
“C‘mon. Up is easier; you can see the hand holds.”
He was right.
3:09pm - Touching
* * *
Instead of returning over the ridge, Hunt took the longer but faster paved road back to Cam’s.
“You in a hurry? You have plenty of time if you’re not going to the office.” Cam asked.
“I’m taking you to dinner. Then we’ll go to the club together and come home together.”
Cam ducked his head, his habitual hide-a-blush posture, and smiled up at Hunter through his absurdly long blond lashes. “Dinner? Like in public?”
“The Overlook is on the way,” Hunt told him, referring to a five-star steak, ale and atmosphere restaurant perched on the side of the hogback overlooking Denver. “We’ll just eat unfashionably early.”
When Cam grinned with true pleasure, double dimples accented his sculpted mouth and softened the perfect planes of his face. Hunter had never said the word ‘adorable’ to him. He’d only recently begun to think such words about an adult man. It never occurred to him before Cam. And only occurred to him about Cam.
He picked up his cell. “Bernie, Hunt. Ready for us? … Perfect … yeah. See you then.” He clicked off.
“You planned this all along. You lied to me.” Cam stopped smiling.
“Yes, I did. And no, I didn’t. I said I was grabbing a bite on the way to the club. I am.” Hunt turned into Cam’s long driveway. “And it’s okay to lie when it’s about surprise things.”
“Who said that?”
Hunter parked the Bronco in front of the breezeway. Unsnapping his seat belt, he reached past Cam for the seat lever. This time, Hunter lowered the back, following Cam, pressing against him as much as possible.
“I did. Just now.”
Cam shifted under the pressure of Hunter’s body, pupils widening. Releasing Cam’s seat belt, Hunt nuzzled under his chin, getting him to tilt his head back.
“We’re going to have sex in the driveway?” Cam’s hips flexed.
“We’re going to have more foreplay in the driveway.”
“More?”
“We started in front of the cave, remember?” Hunt put a palm against Cam’s cheek and ran a thumb lightly over his mouth.
Cam’s lips parted. But Hunter didn’t kiss him. He traced Cam’s lips and strong brows with his fingertips, taking his time, getting his fill of looking at him.
Cam’s hands closed around Hunt’s biceps, his voice low and soft, needing. “How long are you going to do this?”
“I have until midnight,” Hunter whispered. He brushed his lips lightly over Cam’s. “That’s the deal.” Smiling, he sat back. “We need to shower before we dress.”
THEY SHOWERED together in Cam’s open-sided birch-lined space. But even though Cam stood under multi-jets of water a foot away, Hunter did not touch him. He made a show of soaping himself, paying special attention to his impressive, uncut, and very erect cock.
Hunt knew Cam had spent the majority of h
is sexual life as a Dom and no one had ever really seduced him. Or teased him. Hunter also knew Cam had little tolerance for the things he did to his subs. While Cam would deprive himself of his own release while edging a sub to sexual desperation, he’d never consider allowing himself to be denied by another.
But Camden Snow had also never been with an Alpha submissive, or one this experienced. A decade older than he, Cam’s bisexual, switch lover was well-versed in both sides of the power dynamic.
Hunter was determined to give Cam as much as he could enjoy of the experiences he’d missed. To touch Cam as no man ever had, the way Cam had touched him—in this case, without making physical contact.
Cam distracted himself from the sight of Hunter Dane smoothly jacking his well-lathered erection by talking about the case.
“There isn’t a case,” Hunt said. “Not yet.”
“Maybe. But it reminds me of the matchstick murder, where everything seemed to be about you.”
Hunter leaned his head back and let the water sluice down his body, islands of lather gliding over the hills and valleys of muscle and smooth skin stretched over bone. Posing for stock photo images in college, taught him how to show himself to greatest effect.
“None of the players know me this time,” Hunter said, turning to let the water run down his back and over his well-developed glutes and strong thighs. “But I agree if you feel we’re being manipulated. In this case, though, we should look at who you know.”
He faced Cam again, pushing his wet hair back out of his eyes, his dense fringe of black lashes spiky, rivulets of clear water snaking over his neck and shoulders and chest.
Cam was hard, leaning away from Hunt against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.
“You’d be the expert at manipulation here, I’d say.” Cam cocked an eyebrow, openly appreciating Hunter’s body. “Why do you think it’s got anything to do with me?” He turned off the water and got out, tossing Hunt a towel.
He didn’t use it on himself. “Put your hands on the wall for me, Cam.”
He hesitated. “The bet didn’t include being the boss of drying off after a shower, just of our sex.”
“We’ve been here before, Cam. This is sex.”
Hunter waited to see if Cam would refuse, back out.
But he turned and put his hands flat on the wall. Hunter repositioned Cam’s arms, higher, wider. Flogging position. It was a position Cam had once put him in, and Cam had also used towels. Wet, cheap, hard. Hunt had borne the bruises for a week.
He dried Cam with hand towels, replaced as they became damp. Being rich for Camden Snow seemed to mostly comprise having an expensive sports car, a fantasy bathroom and enough thick, soft, expensive white towels in various sizes to open a bath boutique.
Hunt used two hands and two towels. He dragged the soft material up Cam’s arms, leaning his damp body against Cam’s back and ass and thighs. He stretched and slid against Cam while he carefully dried each finger and brought the towels back under his arms.
He grabbed new towels and wrapped his arms around Cam in a gentle almost full-nelson, drying his shoulders, pulling their bodies together, his half-mast cock snugged into the cleft of Cam’s well-developed buttocks. He swiped over Cam’s chest and abs, down his belly to the dense, honey-colored curls of his pubes.
With more dry towels, Hunter went to one knee and dried each leg, down the front and up the outside, down the backs and up the insides, rising as he did, pushing in between Cam’s cheeks to soak up the hidden moisture.
Cam held his breath. Hunt kept his hand in place while he went over the outsides of Cam’s hips. But he did not move or press, for his Dom was sensitive there. Cam breathed again.
Two more towels. Hunt moved to the side, one hand in back, finding the creases where thighs and torso met, while his other palmed Cam’s heavy scrotum through the toweling. He carefully worked the towels with both hands into every crevice.
Cam’s head had fallen back, eyes closed, his lips parted. His cock, clean and cut and slightly shorter and thicker than Hunter’s eight inches, a semi, now.
The last two towels Hunter smoothed over Cam’s skull, drying the blond hair, short at the sides, the longer strands on top falling over his eyes when he hadn’t made it crazy with hair product. How Hunter loved Cam with his hair free and silky and around his face.
He leaned over and kissed a smooth knob of vertebrae between Cam’s shoulder blades.
“There you are.”
He left Cam to himself as he picked up all the towels and tossed them down the laundry chute. Cam’s big arms circled his waist from behind.
“Why do you think it has anything to do with me?”
Cam’s arms tightened as he felt Hunter stiffen. “I know when you’re trying to change the subject, Hunter. And I really enjoyed the effort.” He took a step back and turned Hunter to face him. “Answer the question.”
“When I went inside, Asher made an excuse to get me into his room. To the doorway, anyhow,” Hunter said. “He had a poster of you.”
They went into Cam’s bedroom where he took clean underwear from a drawer. “Morganfeld said he was a fan. Fans buy posters.”
“This one was all blue and white. In a full-body suit of some kind, with helmet and goggles and face protector. It could have been anybody coming around a pole, except for ‘Snow’ across the bottom over the name of some ski maker, I presume.”
“Skjeggstad,” Cam supplied “They made everything I was wearing, including the skis and poles.” He sat on a chair to pull on white socks. “My first sponsor. So what?”
“So it looked brand new and it totally hides you. And it was mounted on the wall at the head of the bed, not on the opposite wall where he’d see if he was lying down.”
“What was on the opposite wall?” Cam asked.
“Several Daisy Ridleys.”
“Star Wars?”
“Magazine layout.”
“So, he’s not gay. I’m still not getting where you’re going,” Cam said, selecting a pair of jeans from amongst ten identical pairs that hung in his closet next to a dozen white dress shirts. His club uniform.
“You went up there because Morganfeld called you,” Hunt said. “He called you because Asher asked him to. But Asher knows where you live; he could have just come here. Why was I there? Because the ‘cougar’ reference and curiosity would get me to go along if I was here. I’m not always.”
Cam was nodding. “And he didn’t wait for us at Morganfeld’s. It was like a scene from an old Disney movie—Asher in the streaming beams of morning light with the forest creatures.”
“And this kid who is supposed to be such a big fan barely spoke to you.”
Cam slipped into one of the white shirts. “You’re saying he doesn’t have a fan crush on me. But how does that make it about me?”
“He got you to meet him, go to him, for some reason. He asked in a way that would make me come, if I was here. That leaves your house empty,” Hunter said. “Was he just waiting on the stairs? Or was he a lookout?”
“Goddamnit!” Cam jumped up and looked around the bedroom, then went through the connecting door to his gym. In a few minutes, he was back and heading for the stairs.
Hunter grabbed his pile of discarded clothes and followed Cam downstairs, where he searched for signs of disturbance or missing items. But his medals still hung on the wall of the alcove next to the fireplace, his books still sat in neat rows on his shelves.
Still dressed only in a towel with one arm full of his clothes, Hunt squatted in front of his bedroom door, examining the knob. “It’s clean,” he told Cam. “Somebody wiped it. Amateur.”
“Why?”
Hunt stood and the towel gave up clinging to his hips. “Doorknobs are messy. If you want to hide your presence, you leave them messy.”
“So someone’s been inside.”
Hunt nodded. He reached for the knob. “C’mon, we’ll take a look.”
Cam followed Hunt’s exposed ass inside, where he dumped the pile of clothes next to the door and surveyed the room, unconcerned with his nudity.
“Is this more foreplay?”
Hunter grinned. “A serendipitous side-effect.”
Cam crossed to the closet and went inside. “You don’t have much here.”
“I don’t need much when I’m here,” Hunter told him. “Not hanging in the closet stuff, anyway. There’s sweats and all that in the dresser.”
“But you have three pair of boots?” Cam came out.
“You want me wearing brown boots with black pants?” Hunt crossed to the closet and slung an arm around Cam’s neck as he passed. He bit down on Cam’s wide, warm shoulder through his shirt and felt him shudder.
Cam reached behind and cupped Hunt’s balls, feeling the warm weight of Hunter’s cock against his wrist. “Right now, I don’t want you wearing either.”
Hunter lifted Cam’s hand, raising it slowly to the small of his back and wrapped his other arm around Cam’s chest, caging him tenderly. “You smell fucking amazing.” The words were muffled by his mouth against the side of Cam’s neck.
“I smell like you, we were in the same shower with the same soap. More foreplay?”
“No, just you being fucking irresistible.” Hunter nudged Cam’s shirt collar aside with his nose and kissed the hollow behind his clavicle. He let go before he left a sticky deposit on Cam’s jeans. “On with the search.”
Ten minutes later, Hunter was pulling on his black cowboy boots. Nothing alien or incriminating or out of place found. Cam had gone to get his coat and keys.
Before he left, Hunt checked the lamp for a listening device. Someone had been inside and he doubted it was Asher Gamble. The kid was no genius sociopath from a movie mystery. He was an orphan with the kinds of father issues and abandonment fears that made him easy prey for a real-life predator.
If Hunter was being manipulated by Asher, the boy was being manipulated as well.
