by Elle Keaton
He was shaking, all the anger and fear from running just now and throughout his life bubbling to the surface, molten hot, spilling out into the open.
“You need me. I have evidence—some evidence, anyway—against some very bad people. Me and Troy, we were doing what you guys haven’t been able to, gathering evidence against the shits who run this town. You can’t make me hide.”
“A minute, Klay? I’d like to speak to Carsten.”
Klay nodded, turning to face the window, giving them a semblance of privacy.
Beto put his arm across Carsten’s shoulder, pulling him close and speaking quietly into his ear. The dog sat obediently on her haunches at Beto’s side.
“We do need you. We need you alive, and the best way to keep you alive is to make it so they can’t find you.”
“No.” Carsten was firm.
“No what?”
“No, I’m not hiding away somewhere. I don’t know how to explain it, but I guess I’m done living in fear. I’m done worrying the bogeyman is going to come in the night and find me. They could have killed me tonight, but they didn’t. I’ll be careful, but I’m not afraid.”
Beto tugged him further away from Klay, maneuvering Carsten so they were face-to-face. Eye to eye. “I don’t trust myself.”
Carsten cocked his head and frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Beto looked up at the ceiling and then back down into Carsten’s eyes. “I don’t trust myself to make the right decisions when it comes to you.”
“Why would you need to make a decision? I make my decisions.”
Beto didn’t respond right away. For a long time he stared into Carsten’s eyes as if there was something there that would help him with the right words. Finally he leaned in and brushed his mouth across Carsten’s, a butterfly kiss, a promise.
He leaned away again. “I don’t trust myself,” he said again, “but you make me want to try. And you’re right, you do make your own decisions.”
“Is staying with you an option?” Carsten asked.
A grunt from the direction of the door meant Klay was listening to their every word.
Carsten understood what Beto meant about not trusting himself, at least he thought he did. Years of enslavement—he wasn’t afraid to call it what it was—meant he doubted his choices a lot. Sex was easy. Making himself emotionally vulnerable was, until Beto, nearly impossible. He never would have survived if he’d allowed himself emotional freedom. The problem was, once the walls were built, they were difficult to tear down. Beto didn’t try to tear them down, he had just appeared on the other side.
“The house is a crime scene right now,” Beto answered.
“Okay, um, can we stay somewhere else together?” If he was going to do this, he might as well go big. If something went wrong, he’d just need a bigger Band-Aid.
“Jesus Christ,” Klay huffed. “Yes, please, say yes so I can go home; it’s been a long night. Hernández, the agency will set the both of you up in a safe house for the rest of the night at least. When Hernández’s house is back in order, you can return and we’ll make sure that’s as safe as possible. In the meantime, tomorrow we’ll get a statement and compare notes. And—” he looked directly at Carsten “—we’ll talk about why Carsten Quinn doesn’t seem to exist. For tonight, can we aim for me getting into bed before my boyfriend gets out of it?”
20
Beto
* * *
The house they ended up at was just as boring as any safe house Beto had been in before. A split-level out in the county that looked like it had been decorated by someone on a limited Ikea budget. The dog had gone home with Klay; the safe house was not equipped with dog food and didn’t have a fenced yard. Klay had promised she would be well taken care of and muttered something about a menagerie as he shut the SUV’s door behind Freya.
Carsten looked around the house as if he’d expected something more.
“It’s not bad. I’ve been in worse,” Beto offered.
“I guess. Sheesh.”
Carsten—or whatever his given name was—walked ahead of Beto into the kitchen. Beto’s eyes were drawn to his butt. It was a nice butt, round enough to grab but not too much. Carsten wasn’t a showy man. In fact, he seemed to have no idea just how gorgeous he was. It wasn’t only Beto who noticed; he was one of those people others were drawn to.
Carsten did a lot to play down his looks. Yes, he wore his hair long, which Beto found sexy, but he used it to hide behind when he felt shy or uncomfortable. He didn’t wear flashy clothing; in fact, he tended to wear old blue jeans (which fit like a second skin) and overly large sweatshirts and hoodies, as if they could disguise his lithe form.
The shabby clothes didn’t hide anything from Beto. He followed Carsten into the kitchen and watched as Carsten opened and shut the cupboards. He should be exhausted. Instead he was thrumming with tension and awareness. Awareness of Carsten and the fact that they’d both survived a life-or-death situation. Beto wanted to run his hands all over Carsten to make sure he was okay, to feel his skin, his warmth, his very life.
“What are you looking for?”
“Coffee. There’s got to be some here.”
Beto looked at the clock on the microwave above the stove. “It’s nearly four a.m. Neither of us need coffee.” He didn’t want coffee at all; he wanted something else. Something he and Carsten had been dancing around for a few days. If he was honest, since the very first time they’d met.
Carsten had his back to Beto. He turned, hitching himself up onto the counter. “Yeah? I figured we needed to”—he raised both hands and twitched his index fingers— “‘talk’ about what happened or something.”
Or something. It wasn’t Beto’s imagination that the air in the kitchen was instantly taut, full, pulsing with want. Talk was not what either of them wanted to do. Leaning back on his hands, Carsten spread his legs wide enough to be an invitation—or a dare. Was he waiting for Beto to make the first move? There was a dangerous current cycling between them.
Instead of giving in to his base instinct to trap Carsten against the counter and kiss him senseless, until his mouth opened and Beto could plunder—yes, plunder; deep inside, tongue against tongue—he would clear a few things up between them. Carsten was right. They did need to talk.
While he considered how to question Carsten about his identity, Beto slowly took off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of one of the two chairs tucked under a small table in the corner. He felt Carsten’s eyes on him, watching, waiting.
He turned the chair around and sat down. Still pondering, he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt. Then he loosened the cuffs and rolled them up, exposing his forearms, leaving his shoulder holster in place for now. He did feel most comfortable in a suit. A suit made him not an imposter. Not the Hispanic kid from LA who wanted to be a ballet dancer, but a well-educated, seasoned investigator. His mamá may have drowned in her grief and betrayal, but she’d made sure Beto got to school every day, that he did his homework. She made him apply to college; she wouldn’t let him work after school like most of his schoolmates did.
“You’re not going to work in the fields or be a truck driver like he was.”
Bending down, he untied his Johnson & Murphys and slipped them off. He released a sigh of pleasure and wiggled his toes. Carsten cleared his throat. Beto looked up at him, but Carsten was pointedly looking at the blank wall across from him. Beto let himself smile just a bit. After the night they’d had, Carsten was turned on by Beto stripping out of business clothes? Note to self.
He leaned his elbows on his thighs and clasped his hands together, knowing full well his dress shirt stretched perfectly across his shoulders.
“When I was a kid, I had a pretty good life: a roof over my head, an overprotective mamá who made sure I had food on my plate, and clothing that fit. She always said, ‘Clothes make the man, Beto. Don’t ever forget that.’ I don’t know where she came up with that idea; my ma
má worked at one of the big truck stops off I-5 for most of my childhood.”
He stopped and stared at his hands for a second before continuing.
“Anyway, I had all the important things, the things that help a kid thrive.”
“What about your dad?” Carsten was looking at him now, listening.
“Well, that’s the part, right? The part that makes my childhood a weird lie. See, my dad was one of those long-distance haulers who drive back and forth across the US. He’d come home for a week, maybe two, before he was out on the road again for a month or more delivering his loads. That’s how it always was; I didn’t know any different. I had some friends who didn’t even have a dad at home. They were across the border, in prison, dead.
“Then he disappeared. It took a while for Mamá to worry, because he was gone a lot and didn’t always call, but he’d always come home. Eventually she called the trucking company he worked for. You have to understand, my mamá was a Hispanic woman whose second language was English—calling a company like that, trying to get information, it wasn’t easy for her.
“No one at the company would talk to her. They said she wasn’t on any records. Finally one of the truckers at the truck stop where she worked, one who knew my dad, came in, and she found out he’d been killed in an accident way out on the East Coast. That’s when she found out we were the second family.
“Now, I know my parents loved each other; the times when he was home were great. But he betrayed us, especially my mamá. It broke her. She was never the same; she was so ashamed of being fooled.”
“Did you find the other family?”
Beto nodded. “I did. I went out to Akron, drove to the address I’d found for them. Then I sat and waited in front of the house. I don’t know what I wanted to do: Confront them? It wasn’t their fault. It made it more real to me, though.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“No. I left. They’d been betrayed too, right? I was just the secret by-blow of their cheating husband and father’s mistress. I didn’t matter. But I guess it set me up for the next thing.”
“You don’t have to tell me all this.” Carsten’s handsome face filled with concern, his brow furrowed.
Beto let a small smile cross his lips. “I need to.” He looked down at his hands again. “I think … the lesson I took from my childhood was, I am not good enough to be publicly loved. My dad must have been ashamed of me, so ashamed he hid me and my mother away.”
Carsten made a noise; would have said something had Beto not held up a hand to stop him.
“No, wait, I know that’s probably not true. But it set me up for some things, for a relationship where I allowed myself to be a secret again. I convinced myself I didn’t mind; being a gay Hispanic man isn’t always safe or accepted. I figured Jerry and I could live in our own little world, and it wouldn’t matter he didn’t want to be out.”
“That’s not what happened?”
Beto let out a bitter laugh. “No. Jerry was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He insisted we never tell anyone about ‘us.’”
“Why are you telling me this?” Carsten hopped off the counter and moved to where Beto was sitting.
Beto looked up at him. “I need you to tell me your story. I’m hoping a little equal ground may help you tell me. I don’t want sympathy or a hug; what I experienced was nothing compared to what I think you went through. But I need you to tell me everything, and I’m going to have to pass it along to Gómez and Klay.”
Carsten made a face. “Ugh. I don’t like to talk about it. You heard what Dany said.”
Unexpectedly, he swung a leg over Beto’s thighs, sitting and facing him. It was a very intimate position.
“Are you trying to distract me?” It was late, but as tired as he was, Beto could feel his body reacting to Carsten’s closeness.
“Maybe?” He shook his head. “No, I just was tired of being way over there. My real name is Casey Olsen, but it feels like Casey died a long time ago.”
As close as they were, Beto could see Carsten’s eyes weren’t a uniform shade of blue. They looked like the icebergs and glaciers he’d seen pictures of, darker in the center and lighter toward the surface.
Carsten started talking, and Beto forgot about eyes and icebergs, thinking only that when he got his hands on the motherfuckers who had done this to Carsten and countless other victims—survivors, he reminded himself; they were survivors—when he got his hands on them, and he would, they were going to beg for death.
“Do you still know the two guys who picked you up in the van?”
“Uh, yes, why? AJ’s the one who runs the rainbow readers group.”
First, he was going to thank them for being the kind of human beings who helped other people out of the goodness of their hearts. He was also going to need to see if they’d be willing to take the team to this cabin in the woods. Carsten might be able to find it, but Beto didn’t want to ask him to go back there.
“They may be able to help us find the cabin. Even years later, there could possibly be evidence that would be useful.”
“Oh.”
While Carsten talked, Beto had kept his hands at his sides; Carsten didn’t need Beto groping him while he shared his secrets. Now he allowed himself to pull Carsten a little closer, to slide his hands under Carsten’s T-shirt, to find the warm, smooth skin underneath.
“We’re going to see if you can identify the two men from the fire and the hospital. With what happened tonight, we’ll have access to that tape ASAP.”
Carsten sighed and nodded, then rested his forehead against Beto’s shoulder, grinding unsubtly into Beto’s lap. “Can we go to bed now?” he mumbled into Beto’s neck.
21
Carsten
* * *
Carsten wanted Beto Hernández like nothing he’d ever wanted in his life before. He craved him like a drug. The emotions he was feeling contradicted each other. A little voice in his head was still skeptical, still scared. At the soft brush of their lips, the sigh of warm breath between them, Carsten froze. This was an all-or-nothing situation.
He wanted Beto—he was the one who’d asked to stay with Beto, he was the one sitting in Beto’s lap—but an awkward space formed between himself and the man he wanted in his bed and in his life. An inch or a mile between them, what did it matter; it suddenly felt unsurmountable, he was unworthy.
Beto misunderstood. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.” He did know.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I’ve never done this before when it mattered, to me.”
Beto leaned back and cocked his head. “Qué?”
Carsten tucked his face against Beto’s strong shoulder. “Yeah, like with anyone who this might mean something with.”
Beto lifted his chin so he could see Carsten’s face. “Might mean something?”
It was hard to look into his dark eyes, knowing that Beto knew about him—everything about him. There were no secrets; the ugly had been exposed. The scars, the hurt, the nothingness.
Heat flamed in Carsten’s belly. He was hungry, starving even, for what Beto offered him.
“Allow me to be the one to show you how it is when you’re with someone who respects and wants you for your inside as much as your outside,” Beto said. “What being cared for and touched and caressed”—his warm palms smoothed along Carsten’s biceps, then down to his waist and back up as he spoke, emphasizing his words—“is like.”
“I’m afraid I’m not good enough. Somehow I will hurt you.” Carsten needed to say the words out loud so Beto understood.
“You are too good for me. You won’t hurt me, you can’t.” Unspoken was the other truth: Beto had already been hurt so deeply he believed he couldn’t be hurt any worse.
“You can’t know that.” Carsten had to try and warn him one more time, before it was too late for both of them. Carsten knew if they crossed this line, this last line, he was fighting tooth and nail to keep Beto.
* * *
There was no more space between them. Carsten couldn’t get close enough, and Beto seemed to feel the same. Beto’s hot lips pressed against his own, their nipples brushing as they adjusted to each other and pushed to their feet.
Carsten had fully intended on taking sex slow, letting himself experience it in a way he had never been allowed before, but suddenly now wasn’t soon enough; a minute ago wasn’t soon enough. He wanted both of them to be naked and—he backed away, panting, sliding his fingers under the waistband of his pants while Beto watched with a bemused expression.
Stepping close again, Carsten did the same for Beto, plunging his hand between waistband and warm, soft skin, pushing Beto’s dress pants partially off his lean hips. Leaning against Beto’s chest, Carsten let his hands roam across the magnificence of Beto’s ass. Beto groaned, nibbling on Carsten’s neck.
“Bedroom?” Beto murmured.
“Yeah, just a sec, I want to see you naked.” He knelt, tugging Beto’s pants all the way down and freeing his erection. Carsten watched for a second while it hardened further, right in front of his face. Beto’s cock was perfect, surrounded by a thick thatch of black hair—definitely trimmed. Carsten had to chuckle. Of course Beto would keep himself tidy and neat. What Carsten wanted now was an untidy, not neat, a little bit dirty Beto. He pressed his nose into Beto’s groin and inhaled, the sweet scent of sex and possibility overwhelming him.
Strong hands pulled him to standing again. Beto kicked his pants all the way off and left them lying on the kitchen floor. “Bedroom, before we do this on the linoleum,” he growled as he bent and plucked his wallet off the floor.