Blood Indulgence: a serial killer thriller (Phineas and Liam Book 3)

by V. J. Chambers

  Liam shot her a glance, confused.

  “I think we’re done here,” she said to Slater. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Wait, that’s it?” said Slater. “I give you Destiny goddamned Worth and I get Liam for five seconds? I don’t think so. That’s not playing fair.”

  “Come on, Liam, let’s go.” Dawson tugged on him.

  He was still focused on Slater, though, and he didn’t move.

  “Liam,” breathed Slater, “you think you’ll ever feel a fraction of the things you feel for me for that? She’s a novelty, just like all your boy-girls, but you know that there’s no one else in the world who will ever make you feel like I make you feel.”

  Liam’s face twitched.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Dawson whispered. She tugged on him again.

  “Case in point, how many successful relationships have you had, Liam?” said Slater. “You know why that is? Because nothing is ever going to compare to me, and the next time your cock gets hard, you’re going to think of the way it felt when I touched you. You can let your tranny touch you, and it’ll be me. It’ll always be me.”

  “Liam.” She tugged even harder.

  Liam wavered on his feet. He sniffed, and then he rubbed his jaw with one hand. He was still staring at Slater. “You never touched my cock, you fuckwad. I mean, you touched it, but it was me that got you off, and you never once fucking got me off. You say this bullshit to me about us having some kind of connection, and we…” He let out a disbelieving laugh. “You know, maybe I used to be this stupid when it came to you, I don’t know, but I’m not anymore.”

  He looked at Dawson, drawing in a noisy breath and then letting it out.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. He put his back to Slater and started for the door.

  “Liam, that’s a lie,” said Slater’s voice, low and rumbling. “That’s a lie to say that I never got you off. You know that’s a lie.”

  “There’s nothing between us, Finn,” said Liam. He banged on the door to be let out.

  It opened.

  “I am inside you, Liam,” snarled Slater.

  Liam clenched his jaw and stalked out of the room.

  Dawson shot a glance at Slater.

  He was half out of his chair, and he looked positively insane. His face was red. His teeth were bared. He was like a wild animal, and she thought of watching that video of him, watching him kill Lyla Griffith. He was a wolf.

  She shivered.

  “He’s mine, Haysle,” growled Slater. “He’ll never be yours.”

  She followed Liam out into the hallway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LIAM paused, lingering outside the passenger door to Dawson’s car. “You okay?” he said. “If you need me to drive or something, I can do that.”

  “I’m good,” she said, yanking open the driver’s side and getting inside.

  He followed suit.

  She started the car. “How are you? Are you okay? You talked a good game against him, but I know that must have been difficult.”

  He shrugged. He leaned back into the seat and looked out over the parking lot. It was dark now, the lingering light of summer fading into the September darkness.

  “I’m going to Baltimore tonight,” she said. “I’m going to get in touch with Moore as we’re driving back to Cape Christopher, and I’m going to get the Baltimore police to help me out.”

  “Tonight?” he said.

  “I don’t want to waste time,” she said. “Besides, I think it’s better to strike at night. If we wake Worth up, maybe that makes things easier for us.”

  “You started calling her by her last name,” Liam said, still staring out the window as they pulled out of the prison parking lot and headed out towards the highway. “Does that help you in some way? Maybe it makes her seem less like a person and more like a monster.”

  “It’s just habit.” She seemed defensive. Briskly, she moved on. “Anyway, I promised Ricky that I would make sure that you weren’t drinking tonight. So, you can come along, if you want. But if you think you’re okay on your own, I’ll drop you at your place.”

  “No, I want to come along,” he said. “But I’m not in any danger of getting drunk or something.”

  “Okay,” she said, but he wasn’t sure she believed him.

  He was annoyed. “He’s not inside me, for fuck’s sake. He’s obsessed with me or whatever, but I’m not obsessed with him.”

  “I know,” she said softly.

  The car was in a turning lane at a red light now, and the blinker was on. He could hear that, the insistent click-click-click of it.

  “You don’t know.” He was a little bit sulky.

  “You might want to keep in mind, when we’re in that place, that everything is being recorded,” she said.

  He let out a huff of air.

  “I should have reminded you before we went in,” she said. “I mean, I guess everyone already knows that you and Slater have this sexual history.”

  “They do,” he said. “I don’t care about that shit.” He had no shame, but he wondered if he should have shame. Maybe restoring his shame would give him a measure of dignity, something that Finn had stripped away from him a long, long time ago.

  “Okay,” she said. “But I am pretending that I’m doing the eating stuff with him to manipulate him, because if Moore knew how bad off I was on this, he would pull me.”

  Liam was thinking that if she was actually pregnant, she should be pulled from it, because it wasn’t healthy to be interacting with Finn. But he knew that was an asshole thing to say to her, and it demeaned her, and it made the baby more important than she was, because why didn’t her health matter if she wasn’t pregnant?

  And anyway, it was very likely that she was not pregnant at all.

  “There’s not going to be a case to get pulled from,” he said. “Because we’re going to Baltimore, and we’re going to find Destiny, and we’re going to lock her up, and we’re going to close the door on this nightmare, once and for all.”

  She eyed him, nodding slowly. “Damned right we are.”

  “MY sister?” Quentin Worth’s voice was shrill. He was standing in the doorway to the Baltimore townhouse that Slater had told them about, wearing a robe over silk pajama pants. His hair was mussed from sleep. “I told you the last time I saw you, detective, I haven’t seen my sister in years.”

  Dawson wasn’t surprised. Well, she hadn’t expected Quentin Worth specifically, but she’d expected something underhanded from Slater. She hadn’t been able to convince herself that this case would actually be over by the next day.

  “I’m not sure that is what you said, Mr. Worth,” said Dawson.

  “You seemed to think my sister was dead,” said Quentin.

  “Well, we both know that’s not true,” said Dawson. “We’re coming in to look for her. We have a warrant for her arrest.”

  “She’s not here,” said Quentin.

  “Well, we’re coming in anyway,” said Dawson, gesturing for the uniforms from the Baltimore Police Department to come with her. “It’s in your best interest to cooperate, Mr. Worth. I have no evidence you’re involved in your sister’s criminal enterprises, not truly. So, stand aside and let us do our jobs.”

  “She’s not here.” Quentin balled both of his hands up in fists.

  But he did step aside.

  The townhouse was two stories, and they searched it thoroughly, in every room, in every closet.

  There was no one in the place besides Quentin Worth.

  Dawson did remember him saying that he split his time between D.C. and New York, and this was neither, but Quentin said he was staying at the Baltimore property to conduct some business the following day. He also said that if it went badly because he hadn’t slept properly, he was going to sue her personally and the entire Baltimore Police Department.

  On that note, they all left.

  Liam was waiting for her on the street.

&nbs
p; She wanted to throw herself into his arms. He looked strong and comforting and she remembered how nice it felt to be close to him.

  Instead, she said, “Well, we should have known better than to think he’d give it up right off.”

  “He’s going to claim that he gave the address in good faith,” said Liam. “He’ll be all wounded and act innocent. And then he’ll probably send us on a few more wild goose chases for good measure. We’ll probably be bringing hamburgers in there to eat for him before this is all over.”

  She groaned. She knew he was right. “Let’s not,” she said. “I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted. Let’s just check in to a hotel and deal with this tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”

  They drove to a Red Roof Inn nearby and she got them separate rooms, but the kind with an adjoining door. They’d had rooms like that in Delaware once. There was no reason for them to have those kinds of rooms now.

  She told herself that she would not knock on the adjoining door, and she got into her pajamas (because they had stopped to pack bags on the way up here. If they’d actually found Worth, then they’d have been up here for several days). She brushed her teeth. She turned down the covers of her bed.

  And then she knocked on the adjoining door.

  He opened it immediately, like he’d been waiting for her to do it.

  She looked him over. He was wearing a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt that fell flatteringly over his pectoral muscles. He was a little soft in the belly, but he had nice shoulders, and she liked looking at him. She closed the distance between them and ran her hands up over his chest to his shoulders. She tilted her head back, offering him her mouth.

  He kissed her.

  The kiss was good. Sweet and urgent, but with an undercurrent to it, something deeper and more affecting, something like the formation of a bond.

  She gathered up handfuls of his t-shirt and urged it up, baring his skin.

  He helped her, removing it entirely. He put his hands inside her pajamas, tracing shivery fingertips over her skin.

  When they were horizontal on his bed, nothing between them but skin, he whispered against her mouth. “Shouldn’t we, uh, use protection this time?”

  She just reached between their bodies and guided him to her opening.

  He grunted.

  She gasped.

  Their lips met again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LIAM liked waking up with Dawson’s small, nude body pressed into his. She was warm and smooth and soft in all the right places, and he floated into wakefulness, wrapping himself more tightly around her as he did.

  She only sighed and shifted against him, pressing her ass more firmly against his crotch.

  Good, he thought sleepily. Perfect.

  They lay like that for a while longer, and he drifted in and out of dreams about the sky and bright meadows and pleasant things.

  Eventually, he woke up when she wriggled out of his arms and climbed out of bed.

  He made some sort of noise of disapproval.

  She didn’t respond.

  She went into the bathroom, and he rolled over on his back and waited.

  When she emerged, she went directly for the adjoining doors.

  “Where are you going?” he said.

  “To shower,” she said. “We’ll do the continental breakfast and then go in to the local station and make sure everything’s tied up there. Then I guess we drive back to Cape Christopher and gird our loins before we have to go in and see Slater again.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk?”

  She spread her hands. “I mean, we can, but I don’t know how I feel about any of this.”

  He sat up in bed. “I definitely ejaculated in you again. I mean, that was on purpose. You did that on purpose.”

  She shrugged. “I was in the moment. You did it on purpose, too.”

  “Well, I’m not the one who…” He pointed at her. “It’s a bigger deal for you. It’s your body. And you still haven’t even told me if… if you’d let me…”

  “I think it’s illegal to keep a child from its biological father, Liam. You’d have rights.” She went through the adjoining doors.

  He flopped back on the bed. What the fuck? Was she angry with him? She seemed a little angry.

  He got up and found his pajama pants. He stepped into them and went through the adjoining doors into her bedroom.

  She was shutting the door to her bathroom.

  “Hey, wait,” he said.

  She paused, looking at him. “What?”

  “Are we, like, okay? Are you mad? Did I do something you didn’t like?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  He nodded slowly.

  “God, don’t look at me like that,” she said. “If you really didn’t want to deal with this, you could have turned me down last night, you know?”

  “That’s what you have to say?”

  “I like the way you’re shaped and the way it feels when we touch each other. Last night, I was tired and not feeling particularly great, so I wanted to feel good, and you were there, and…”

  “Thanks, this is abundantly flattering.” He sighed.

  “What?” she said. “It’s not like this is an epic love story or something. I mean, unless, for you…?”

  He glared at her. “Way to put me on the spot.”

  “Sorry.” She gestured. “I need to get in the shower.”

  “If I did feel something, I wouldn’t feel great about blurting it out after you told me I was a convenient warm body. And, I guess, a sperm donor.” He turned back towards his room. “Just forget it.”

  “Liam, that’s not how I see you,” she called after him.

  “No, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s good. I’m cool with this.”

  “I’m just confused,” she said. “I like you. A lot. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t need… that.”

  “I’m not really ready to talk,” she said.

  “Got it.” He left the room, pulling the adjoining door closed after him. He rested his head back against it, swearing under his breath.

  He was such a fuck-up.

  DAWSON didn’t know what to say on the drive back home, so she put on a podcast, and instead, they listened to a long multi-part investigation into the Salem witch trials. It was actually really interesting, and she thought Liam had gotten into it, too.

  She shouldn’t have slept with him again.

  She shouldn’t have slept with him in the first place.

  And now there was an even stronger chance that she was pregnant, and that wasn’t necessarily good either. She thought of the possible arrangement with Carter, which would have been so tidy. What would having a child with Liam be like? She didn’t think it would be so tidy.

  She wanted to think that he could be a good father. She knew he cared about his stepdaughter. She knew he had a good heart. But he was, well, damaged.

  Of course, she had her share of baggage, too.

  It wasn’t as if she had any chance of having some kind of white-picket-fence fantasy. She had known, when she made the decision to detransition, that there was a good chance she’d never have another romantic relationship. Such a proposition hadn’t been an easy one as a trans man who was attracted to men, anyway. She’d been lucky to find Carter. But she’d decided that it was important for her to be who she was than to continue living a convenient lie.

  It was important.

  The thing was, she was probably never going to find another man who was as attracted to her as Liam was. It was… she couldn’t deny she liked it. He drank in the sight of her eagerly, and he made the nicest noises when she showed him her body. She could not complain about any of that.

  And the sex was good.

  He was attentive and enthusiastic, and she liked his dick.

  So, there were lots of good things.

  Maybe there was no reason to feel uneasy about it.

  Except, well, she did feel
uneasy, and she couldn’t ignore that.

  Sometimes, she felt so lost. She had barely embarked on being Haysle again, after being Hayes for so long, when she’d gotten pulled into this case. Now, she sometimes wondered how much of her identity was twined up in this case. What if she could never leave it behind, not really?

  And what if the hold that Slater had on her was permanent?

  If that was the case, she had no right bringing a child into her life.

  The odds were still against her being pregnant. She knew that it often took months for people to conceive when they were trying to do so. She also knew there was a small window when she was fertile, but she was going to have to do some research, because she couldn’t remember how long that was after her last period.

  She wasn’t even sure what she wanted to be true.

  Did she want to be pregnant or not?

  Everything was very confusing.

  So, she was almost grateful when Liam distracted her, even though what he distracted her with wasn’t particularly comfortable.

  They were getting off the interstate and back into Cape Christopher, maybe fifteen minutes from Liam’s place. Liam reached out, picked up her phone, and paused the podcast.

  “I want to see it,” said Liam.

  “You want to see what?” she said.

  “The video that Destiny sent you of me and Finn and Cora,” he said. “I want to see it.”

  “Oh,” she said. She gripped the steering wheel. Why? she wanted to ask. That seemed rude. She didn’t ask that. “Okay.”

  “I know it’s technically police business, but I don’t want to watch it at the station,” he said. “Can you pull up your work email on another computer?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Then come to my place,” he said.

  And that was how they ended up sitting in front of Liam’s work computer screens—him on his swivelly office chair and her on a kitchen chair that Liam had brought in—in Liam’s living room, watching the video on a fairly large computer screen. He had it big to do his video editing, she guessed.