I unearthed the bagels and got both the current men in my life drinks.
Axl started in when we were sitting at my bar, eating.
“You date anyone recently?”
I was surprised it was getting-to-know-you time with Sly leaning on a kitchen counter right across from us.
“Uh …”
“Let me explain,” he said. “This shit that’s happening to you does not stink of stalker. This stinks of wronged asshole.”
“Oh,” I replied.
Axl explained further.
“First, he knows your cell number. It’s not impossible to find a cell number, but it requires some work. Second, the threats are not escalating. He’s telling you what he wants to do to you and sticking with that. Third, it’s sexual in nature, which does not preclude a garden-variety stalker, far from it. But he seems stuck on one theme like he either thinks that’s the threat, or he thinks that will fuck with your head or … ” he hesitated, “that was something he wanted that maybe he didn’t get and he’s pissed about it.”
“I didn’t recognize his voice over the phone,” I noted.
“If you know him, in order that you wouldn’t recognize him, he could have farmed that part out.”
Great.
I looked to Sly. “Can we have a second?”
Sly readily lifted his lemon-lime ICE and stepped out on the deck.
Yeah.
I understood his reaction.
I didn’t want to be in on this conversation either.
I looked to Axl.
“The last guy I dated was a somewhat long time ago and he was really boring in bed.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Axl replied.
Though, in saying this, he looked both sorry and like he thought something was funny.
I homed in on the last part.
“Bad sex isn’t funny, Axl,” I told him the god’s honest truth.
“I know, baby. Christ, you poor thing,” he soothed at the same time teased.
I looked away and took a bite of my bagel in an effort to share I was miffed.
“Back to the subject, Hattie,” Axl called.
I looked back at him, and in an effort to get this done, got over being miffed.
“Do you think he might feel like you done him wrong?” he asked. “Did he want to end it? Was there a guy before him that might be a red flag?”
All right.
Well …
This sucked.
Maybe one day, in the distant future, when we were enjoying a glass of wine in his Jacuzzi, I could share about lovers past.
And maybe not ever, since there was not much to share.
But before we even had our first date?
Not a big fan.
But he needed what he needed so none of the men in my life felt I needed a bodyguard.
And thus, I had to give it to him.
“The last guy I dated was a couple of months before Lottie met Mo,” I shared.
“Whoa,” he muttered.
Yeah.
It wasn’t years ago but it wasn’t weeks ago either.
The curse of the shy girl.
I sallied forth.
“I think he was excited that he was dating a stripper. This could be why we had about three dates before he was all in to introduce me to his friends, and about a second after he said my name, he told them I was a stripper. Therefore, we had about three dates after that so I could give him the benefit of the doubt. Then I quit taking his calls. I slept with him twice in that time, and like I said, it was boring. But I didn’t get to know him well enough to know if he had any latent or non-latent kink tendencies. He could be sweet, but in the end, I realized that hid he was mostly a jerk.”
Axl didn’t look amused anymore.
“The guy before that,” I went on with a shrug. “Big spender at the club. He was the first and only patron I dated. I did this because he bought four lap dances from me and he acted during them like it was less about the lap dance and more about getting to know me while I was giving them to him.”
Axl looked anything but amused now.
Nevertheless, I kept going.
“He was definitely sweet. Treated me really well. Had a nice house, a flashy car. Was decent in bed, but it could be good. A couple of months into it, he shared that he wasn’t a one-woman guy. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be a one-woman guy. He was seeing two other women as well as me. And he wanted to continue seeing me, but he didn’t feel it was right to do that unless I knew what the future held. I liked him and he treated me great. But I wasn’t a big fan of feeling like a number instead of feeling special. I ended things with him. He was disappointed and told me so. Said if I changed my mind, all I had to do was call. But he wasn’t too broken up about it, even though I kinda was. And even if I was, that said I’d made the right decision.”
“And before him?” Axl asked when I quit speaking.
“No one of note,” I answered.
“You’re sure?”
“I’ll think on it, but yeah, pretty sure.”
He nodded.
Then he launched in.
“I had a girlfriend sophomore through senior year in high school. We didn’t last through basic training, and that was mostly on me. I loved her in high school, but halfway through basic, I knew my feelings were in a way high school was where they ended. I’ve dated a lot but not as much as other guys I know because I find the game playing annoying. If I ask a woman out, I know her and know I definitely want to know more about her. Not know how many days she makes me wait to get a return text. Being active military isn’t conducive to relationships, but I saw a woman at the base who was also enlisted. We broke it off before I got out. Had one long-term relationship since, that lasted nearly a year. She wanted marriage and babies and made that plain. I wasn’t ready, which made it plain to me she wasn’t the one. And that’s it.”
I stared at him, liking that he leveled the playing field straight off the bat, making something awkward and not fun at this stage in our relationship something that was quick-hit sharing.
I gave, he got.
He gave, I got.
And he continued doing it.
“I’m not into kink but I am into being creative. That will range from the fact we will not only fuck in a bed, but anywhere we feel like it to light bondage and me willing to talk through shit you might want to explore. And I have a life philosophy. That being, you shouldn’t just be aiming to do it right, or not at all, you should aim to excel at it. And that includes sex.”
Oh my.
“You not into kink?” he asked boldly.
“I, uh … really …never gave it much thought from a practical standpoint.”
“Either of these guys or any guy you’ve been with try to introduce it and you shot him down?”
I shook my head, going on to say, “Which is probably why I didn’t give it much thought. It wasn’t introduced and I’ve never been with a guy long enough to uh …as you say, explore.”
A short nod, no commentary, more questions.
“Any guy tell you he wanted to take you to a sex club? Watch BDSM porn with you?”
I shook my head again, but shared hesitantly, “Though, I watch porn.”
His ear dipped to his shoulder and his voice changed. “Yeah?”
I nodded my head.
“You watch with a guy?” he asked quietly.
I went back to shaking my head.
“You want to?”
“I’m into gay porn,” I told him.
“Well, shit.”
He grinned.
But I sat up straight.
And Axl didn’t miss it.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, I watch BDSM gay porn. Some of it is pretty hard-core.”
“And it’s a watch thing only?”
“If you mean on my laptop, yeah.”
“I mean you don’t go to clubs?”
Back to shaking my head.
“Conventions? Shows?”
More shaking of my head.
“So you haven’t met anyone in that world,” he stated.
“No,” I confirmed.
“You watch it with your curtains open, say someone can see in?”
God.
This was humiliating.
“No, in bed.”
“Right,” he whispered, lips twitching.
He knew I did it, and I touched myself while I did it.
Ugh.
Someone kill me.
He kept at it.
“So online pay-per-view?”
Yes, I needed someone to kill me.
“I have a subscription.”
No more twitching, he smiled.
“Atta girl,” he murmured.
“This is mortifying,” I murmured back, turning my attention to my forgotten bagel.
“Baby, look at me.”
I didn’t want to, but I looked at him.
“It’s natural. It’s healthy. And just so you know where I’m at with it, I find it attractive. You know what you like, you got the courage to seek it out and get it.”
“It’s probably not what you like.”
“No, but women dig man-on-man like men dig women-on-women. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Do you dig women-on-women?”
“Absolutely.”
A giggle erupted from me.
He smiled at me while it did.
After it was done, he said, “When we get to that point, and we’re in a mutual mood, we’ll go to our corners to get our thing and meet in the middle.”
He’d said “when.”
And also, I mean, having a porn deal with the guy you haven’t quite started seeing yet was pretty awesome.
“Okay,” I agreed.
He bent in, and this time I didn’t get a neck kiss. I got a lip touch.
But that was nice too.
He moved back, took a bite of his bagel, I took one of mine.
But when he swallowed, he asked, “It’s an outside shot, but your subscription, you have to give a cell number for that?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Sorry, Hattie, I gotta know the site just so we can rule that out as an avenue to you.”
Fantastic.
I told him the site.
He just nodded and did nothing else.
“Well, one can say this quick ride home has been a, not so quick and b, eventful,” I mumbled to my bagel, before taking a bite.
“Hattie?”
I looked to him, chewing. “I’ve wanted this for months, being with you, and it’s safe to say I wouldn’t have started with your porn preferences, but I’ll take anything I can get from you.”
Okay.
Serious.
How lucky could I be with this guy?
I swallowed my bagel bite and smiled.
Axl smiled back.
Then he shouted, “Sly! We’re done.”
Sly came in, grousing at me, “Jesus, did you share your dating history since middle school?”
“Yes, and porn preferences,” I shot back.
Sly’s eyes got huge.
“But it’s all about bagels now,” I told him.
“How many of those girls of yours are taken?” he asked.
“All of them,” Axl and I answered together.
I started laughing.
Axl just grinned and bit into his bagel.
CHAPTER TEN
Us. Here. Finally.
AXL
Axl walked into the offices, looked right, and saw the men in the conference room.
Hawk, Mo, Boone, Mag.
He lifted his chin that way but did a sweep of the room and found who he needed.
So he headed straight to Jorge.
Jorge Canseco had been with Hawk the longest, second runner-up in that was Mo. Guys had come and gone in the meantime, not many. This was because Hawk paid well, bennies were great, and job satisfaction was high.
Axl was tight with the rest of the team—Jorge, Zane, Marques and Billy. But not as tight as he was with Mo, Mag, Boone and Auggie.
This was because Jorge was older, had seniority, was Hawk’s lieutenant when that was needed, was married with two kids, and he wasn’t ex-military. Jorge’s experience came from the street and a longtime mentorship with Hawk.
Marques and Zane were ex-military, but they were younger and newer to the team.
Billy was the newest member of their crew and his history was murky. Hawk didn’t share, neither did Jorge. Definitely not Billy. Even Elvira, who was a big fan of all kinds of sharing, hadn’t let anything slip.
That message was received so the men didn’t ask.
Now, Axl needed to brief with Jorge before he briefed with the men in the conference room.
This being before he left, went home, showered and changed for his date with Hattie.
And he needed to brief with Jorge because his crew was his crew, but it was also Hattie’s, and there were things about her the other guys didn’t need (and wouldn’t want) to know.
And Jorge would never share.
“’Sup?” Jorge asked when Axl stopped across the console from him.
“Day’s done. Debriefing with the team, then outta here,” Axl told him. Then he asked a useless question because he knew the answer. “Got anything?”
Jorge nodded.
Yep.
That was always the answer with Jorge.
You needed something, he got it.
Jorge gave Axl what he had.
“That porn site is run out of LA. They do all their filming in LA or around there. All their players are from there. They don’t contract out anything, film production, tech, IT or customer service. The site doesn’t have message boards. They don’t ask for reviews. Customer email in and out, that’s it. Unless someone hacked them. And I don’t have the intel yet if someone did. I’ve asked Brody at Nightingale’s shop to dig into that. But outside a hack, since no one involved is local, it’d be impossible for someone there to have had a personal sitch with Hattie. Not to mention, their players are gay. This is a shop by and for gay dudes. They have a mission statement about it, being a safe place for gays and kink, their actors and their viewers. I’m sure they get they have female and hetero male viewers, but I think chances are low there’s some insider who wants to dick with a woman.”
Axl had suspected there was nothing there.
That didn’t mean there was nothing there.
It just wasn’t an inside man.
“Do they require cell numbers for subscriptions?” he asked.
“Yeah. For possible tech support and payment issues purposes,” Jorge answered.
“Right, then for that to be the angle for how he got her info, the guy would have to know she’s into that,” Axl pointed out. “Which means he’s either hacked her laptop, or he’s been in her apartment, got into her laptop, and checked her history.”
“Already got Brody on a potential hack of her system. But for the other, we need to dust inside,” Jorge replied.
“I’ll tell Hattie. Any prints we can use on the rope or note?” Axl asked.
Jorge shook his head.
Fuck.
He’d hoped this was just some amateur asshole fucking with her, and because of that he’d screw up fast and they could get past this.
Then again, pretty much anyone knew not to leave prints.
“We’ll get inside, Axl,” Jorge said. “See if we can find anything. And we set up the cameras. Farmed out on that and they went in wearing a bogus uniform, just in case this guy is casing her, he wouldn’t know the cameras were put in. If he makes another approach, we’ll see.”
Axl nodded. “Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jorge replied.
They tipped chins at each other, and then Axl headed toward the conference room.
He did this looking at the multitude of monitors on the wall in front of the workstations.
And yeah.
There
was Hattie’s place. One monitor had a revolution of shots of the front door to her house, her apartment front door, the back door and her parking spot with her car. Another monitor had a revolution of sides of the house.
Of course, this meant, unless the dude could dematerialize and rematerialize in her apartment without getting anywhere near the outside of it, she was safe there. They’d know the instant someone tried to break in and they’d be able to roll out, not to mention call the cops.
But Axl preferred the added precautions his place could offer.
And walking in to see her in his kitchen.
“Anything new on Hattie’s sitch?” Mag asked before Axl sat down.
“Nothing,” Axl answered while he folded into one of the rolling chairs.
Mag gave him a Sorry, dude look.
Axl turned his attention to Hawk. “Thanks for the camera loan.”
Hawk just nodded.
Then he said, “I know we all wanna get home, so let’s get this out of the way. And as usual, there isn’t much. Lynn and Heidi aren’t budging. I talked with Mamá. She thinks they need time.”
Hawk saying they weren’t budging had to do with the fact that their first meeting with the two wives of the two men that were on two very different sides of this dirty cop situation had been postponed.
Though that wasn’t accurate considering the meeting was never rescheduled and they weren’t jumping on rescheduling.
So essentially, it had been canceled.
“Someone has gotten to them,” Axl suggested.
“We can’t know,” Hawk replied.
And they couldn’t. It easily could be cold feet that came with the desire to remain breathing and keep their children in that same state.
But it could be one of these fucks got to them, reminding them how they could be certain to keep breathing and keep their kids safe.
And even if their investigation was a joint effort with Cisco, Nightingale’s crew, and Hawk’s team, with Chaos Motorcycle Club offering support, they all had jobs, lives, other clients and couldn’t have someone on the women 24/7.
They had bugs on both.
But that wasn’t giving them anything, and whoever was leaning on them knew what they were doing.
The proof of that was that the best investigative team in Denver: Nightingale Investigations, the best scrapper crew: Chaos Motorcycle Club, and the best tactical team: Hawk and his men, not to mention five seriously invested cops, did not have dick.
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 12