The first time they had played this kind of scene, Jake had been reluctant to take his belt to Mari, but it had been the beginning of his lover’s road toward complete relaxation in the bedroom. Mari could not—or would not—explain it, but he was just more at ease after a spanking. It was not down to childhood abuse. Mari had been adamant that his parents had never laid a hand on him in anger. But someone must have taught him to love punishment, because it had come as no surprise to Mari when the feel of Jake’s belt across his cheeks turned him on enough to take things further in their relationship.
Jake put his hand on the center of Mari’s back, more to steady him than to hold him still. The flogger was nice and stingy but it was just a warm-up for Mari. Jake doubled the belt over and brought it down hard right at the top of his thighs. Mari jerked but didn’t make a sound and Jake swiped him with the belt again, the smack of leather against his skin loud in the small room.
Mari caught his breath, sucking in air hard, as the short, pliant strap seared his skin. Jake guessed that sitting down was not going to be a barrel of laughs for him tomorrow.
“You want to use that word?” he prompted, caressing Mari’s heated skin again.
His lover shook his head. “Nuhhh… I can take it.”
The low growl in his voice told Jake that Mari was close, though.
Jake belted him once more, in a different spot, higher on his buttocks, purposely avoiding the stripes where the flogger had landed on his skin. He reached under him and wrapped his hand around Mari’s jutting cock, giving that a few strokes as well.
Mari moaned, a low, quiet sound that seemed to begin down deep below his ribs and quiver up through him like breaking ice. He had jerked on the cuffs as the belt had fallen across his skin but he didn’t struggle. His responses were quiet and controlled, like he was rationing his reactions.
Jake realized that he’d stopped, mesmerized by Mari’s pinioned body.
“You are so beautiful. You’re always beautiful, but especially like this,” Jake murmured, running his hands over Mari’s abused backside. “You ready to come yet?”
“Oh yes…always.” Mari managed a short bark of laughter but it was laced with an emotion that was not quite humor. His face was turned to the left, eyes closed and features relaxed, but his voice sounded breathless, almost drunk. “Make me come.”
Jake reached under him to rub his cock, letting go only long enough to pull the knot in the rope around his balls free. He hadn’t tied it very tight but enough that he knew the blood rushing back was going to be exquisitely excruciating. Jake only had to stroke the loose skin of his sac with the back of one finger to make him jolt and whimper.
“Fu-uh-uck!” Mari sang, shaking his head, though he didn’t cry ‘enough’ as Jake tenderly fondled between his thighs. His body shuddered like a jet caught in turbulence. As he whimpered, a desperate two-note sound, Jake gripped his cock and jacked Mari hard. It was fairly unusual for Mari to take so long to reach his release, especially when he was this horny. Jake let go of his balls and slid two fingers back into him, twisting them around inside and fucking him with them as his other hand worked Mari’s cock.
A rapid, shuddering sigh slid out of Mari and, just like that, he was there. He came hard, blasting jets of thick warm cum over Jake’s hand.
“That’s it, such a good boy,” Jake whispered, milking him more slowly, bumping his fingers up over the sensitive head and feeling him twitch and shiver. He kept going, though he knew it must be both a pleasure and a torture for Mari to be touched like this, right after he had come. When Mari elicited a last shudder and started to squirm, Jake let him go and pulled the buckle free on one cuff. He gently rolled him over and released the other before towing Mari into his arms and kissing him.
Mari’s body tensed briefly under him as Jake unbound him. But when Jake embraced him, his limbs flowed around him like a strong river, dragging him into Mari’s undertow. Mari returned the kiss like a starving man, devouring Jake’s mouth. His body arched and he undulated against Jake, stretching out their sweet moment of intimacy. When their lips finally parted and they both lay panting in each other’s arms, he whispered, “I love you more than life, Chivis. You know that, right?”
The words warmed Jake’s heart. He kissed Mari’s temple and caressed his shoulder. “I do. I love you, too, Ilmari.”
Chapter Eight
“Jake!”
He heard Manny call him as he passed the front of the bar, so he stopped and reversed course, going inside. It was a Wednesday night and not all that crowded.
“Hey, Manny, how’s things?” Jake said as he walked up to the bar.
“There’s an easier way to say that, you know. ‘Awright?’ That works for everything.”
Jake flashed a grin at him. “Yeah, I’ve gotten used to hearing it but not saying it. What gives, then?”
“I’ve got a favor to ask you.”
“What? You planning to break your arm again and need me to haul more cases downstairs?” Jake had only recently stopped helping out as Manny’s temporary cellarman, since the barkeep had gotten his arm out of plaster after falling down the steps to the basement.
Manny chuckled wryly. “No thanks, pleasant as it was to watch you do that.” He set a pocket watch on the bar, an old-fashioned-looking thing with a chain. “I got this and I was wondering if you could, you know…tell me about it.”
Jake looked up at him and lifted his eyebrows. He didn’t talk much about what he could do and Manny hadn’t ever bothered him about it like some people did, so this was certainly unusual.
“You want me to tell you if it’s hot?” Jake asked.
“Well…maybe…but more I wanted to be sure that it’s not haunted.”
Jake snickered. “I can tell you it’s not haunted without doing anything. There’s no such thing. Even if there was, I’ve never come across any object that could hold on to a spirit. Just memories. Where’d it come from?”
“One of my punters couldn’t pay his bar bill. He brought it in out of the blue and asked if I’d take it as part-payment. Reckoned it was his great-granddad’s or something,” Manny told him. “He said the old boy was in the war. Was a bit vague about which war. I guess that should have got the old alarm bells ringing straight off, huh?”
Jake shrugged. “Well, if he killed someone and ripped it off, that memory is probably stuck to it. Trauma tends to stick around.”
Manny stared at him as if he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or if he was serious, and when Jake didn’t say he was joking, he quickly swiped the bar with a clean cloth.
“That’s fucking spooky, man.”
Jake chuckled again then focused. Another watch, this one considerably older than the one he’d read for Cordiline. Hopefully if it held any memories, they were just of innocuous occasions, like a wedding. He took a few moments to open himself up, to be receptive to any memories that might be clinging to the watch, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He reached over and touched it.
He watched his breath plume from between his lips as he shivered in the cold. Looking down, he checked the time. Five minutes to eight. He tucked the watch into his pocket as he walked along the cobbled street and straightened his waistcoat. Whistling a merry tune to himself, he turned down an even narrower, darker passage. The sign on the side of the building read Dorset Street. He heard the clip-clop sound of iron-shod hooves and the rattle of what he imagined was a carriage behind him.
A slim, dark-haired girl wearing far too little clothing for the chill weather stood in a doorway under a dim light—a gaslight, Jake noted. The way she was dressed and the way he was dressed, coupled with the sound of the horse and carriage and the look of the buildings and streets around him, told Jake this memory was very old, not this century…maybe not even last century.
“Don’t you look like a lonely lamb. Why don’t you come in and warm your bones?” she called out to him flirtatiously.
He turned toward her. “Now what kind of g
entleman would I be to refuse such an offer.”
He stepped up onto the narrow flagstone stairs next to her. They went inside and she giggled softly and lifted her hair from her neck.
“Give me a hand with my dress, lovey.”
He closed the distance between them and slid one hand up her slim back. He reached the other into his pocket and curled his fingers tightly around something. He took it out, and when he flicked it deftly open and put it to the prostitute’s neck, Jake saw it was a pearl-handled razor.
She gasped and he yanked her head up by the hair.
“Don’t you make a sound, you filthy whore,” he snarled as he pressed the blade harder into the tender skin of her throat. “What’s your name?”
“M-Mary…”
He cut her, slicing deep and watching the blood spray out in a gory scarlet fountain. “Hello, Mary. I’m the butcher, but you can call me Mr. Kraft—Harold, to my friends.” He let her go and laughed at the way she clutched at her throat. He slashed at her again and—
Jake sucked in a hard breath as he came out of the memory, shaken and wide-eyed.
“What, mate? Is it haunted?” Manny asked worriedly.
Jake shook his head and carefully turned the watch over to look at the reverse side of the casing. It was engraved with the initials HBK. Could it be…? No. That was too much to believe. And yet if it proved to be true… He heard the sound of those clip-clopping hooves again and recalled the rattle of the wooden cartwheels on the cobbles and how everything had been so dark in the faint glow of the gaslights. Jake swallowed hard. Even if it was true, who would believe him? No, maybe it was safer to leave the past alone in this case. Some mysteries were perhaps better left unsolved.
“No, no, it was nothing. I just got a vague impression of a foxhole and gunfire. Most likely he was right. It did belong to someone’s grandfather.” Jake set the watch on the bar. He took a rain check on the beer Manny offered him and continued on his way to the gym.
Jake didn’t like treadmills, preferring to do his running in the park, even in miserable weather, but he used the weights and the heavy bag. As he’d once told Cordiline, boxing wasn’t his thing, but he did know about stance and technique, and pummeling a big bag of sand was actually a good way to work out his frustration. He ran when he wanted to clear his head and think. He hit the bag when he just wanted to release some anger.
He wasn’t exactly angry now, but he had spent most of the day brooding. He warmed up with some stretches and basic calisthenics, afterward moving to the weights for a while. When he was done with his reps, he went to the heavy bag hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the gym. He proceeded to treat it like it was the reason for that distressed look on Mari’s face all the time he was trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered by his ex being in town.
“That one pissed you off big time,” a familiar voice remarked, as if summoned by his thoughts. Cordiline slid onto the bench of the weight machine close by and racked up another fifteen pounds, slipping into a slow, smooth pattern of reps that allowed him to talk. “Haven’t seen you down here for a while. How’s it going?”
Jake threw a right into the bag, using his arm, shoulder and back for maximum power, and landing it where the midsection would be if the bag were a person. The force of the blow made the bag swing and he followed with a left that would have probably broken some ribs. He hated violence, but that didn’t mean he had no idea how to fight or couldn’t make someone regret deciding they wanted to test him.
“Fine,” he answered, shortly.
“It looks it.” The detective raised one dark, wing-like eyebrow. After twelve reps he eased off, flexing pectoral muscles that weren’t always evident under the smart cut of his shirt and jacket during his day job, and added another couple of five-pound weights. “Looks to me like you need to take your mind off something. A desk job is fine but it’s a bitch for not getting shot of frustration. Speaking of… What does your pretty boy get up to when you’re down here? He doesn’t do the whole gym scene, I’ve noticed. I’d have thought he’d enjoy the talent spotting, if nothing else.”
“He’s working late tonight.” Jake jabbed a few more punches into the bag. He ignored the rest of what Cordiline had said about Mari.
“He puts the hours in. I’ll give him that. This new job must be pushing his buttons. You know, if you’re at a loose end while he’s working, I might be able to nudge some work your way, Jake. If you’d be interested, that is.” Cordiline eased the weights back into their rests and sat up smoothly.
Jake smirked as he pounded the bag. “Trying to pawn off your cold cases, huh?”
“Never let it be said that I’m afraid to try new methods,” Cordiline said. “I’m a modern, forward-thinking type of copper, Chivis, and I hate an unsolved case. From what I’ve seen so far, the same applies to you, I’d say.”
Jake rolled his eyes at the attempted flattery and Cordiline continued.
“But, cold cases are for if and when you have time. I’m talking about consulting on current cases.”
Jake hit that bag hard. It swung and he caught it when it came back at him, stopping his flow for a moment. He looked at Cordiline expectantly and the DI nodded approval.
“You were right about that idiot with the dog not being the right perp. We let him go. There’s no DNA, nothing connecting him to any of the victims.”
“That leaves you with no suspects.”
“Correct again.”
“You want my help with your serial rapist?”
Cordiline acceded. “For starters, yes. And if anything else comes up. The department frowns on using consultants, generally speaking, but seeing as how you are a trained detective on top of your other ability, I think you’d make a good asset.”
Jake snorted. “All right, stop with the buttering up already. You want my help with the case, you got it. I can’t make any promises on other cases. I do have a job. Remember?”
Cordiline shrugged. “So, quit. You get your PI license and you can start charging clients. In between, you can help us out.”
Jake heaved a sigh. “It takes time to build a practice like that.”
“I’m sure your boyfriend wouldn’t mind helping out with your upkeep while you’re getting on your feet.”
“He probably would, but I’m not going to ask him.” Jake let the bag go and took a swing, following it with a few left-handed jabs.
“You think he’d take issue with it?” Cordiline narrowed his eyes. “I reckoned things were more serious between the two of you, given the death-threat looks he gives me whenever I’ve had the pleasure of his invariably charming company.”
“You want me to lie and say he likes you? Not gonna happen,” Jake said with a humorless huff.
“I wouldn’t believe it anyway.” Cordiline nodded acknowledgment. “Tell him he’d be an asset, too, if he could take instruction and do as he was told, will you?”
“Tell him yourself.”
“I’m serious, Chivis. I’ve talked to the higher-ups about this and they’re on board. If, and I mean that, if it gets results, they would be interested in testing you guys out on a case-by-case consultancy basis.” Cordiline leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking up at Jake earnestly. “Tell me you’ll think about it, at least.”
Cordiline was just telling him what he wanted to hear. He knew it and still he couldn’t help being seduced by it. He didn’t hate his job, but he’d worked hard to build a career as a detective before chucking it on the trash heap. He couldn’t say he didn’t miss it, and what Cordiline was offering was more than just throwing him a bone. He’d be doing what he’d been trained to do. He’d be doing what he truly loved. He hit the bag one more time and set it swinging on its chain.
“I’ll think about it.”
Cordiline looked satisfied with that and settled into his workout again. For about twenty minutes, they carried on in silence, working up a satisfying sweat. Before Jake hit the showers, though, Cordiline told him, “We’r
e back to square one on the rape case. No new suspect. No new leads, which is annoying. And worrying, given the game he likes to play with his victims. How long do you reckon it will take before he decides to bury one a bit deeper and she doesn’t make it?”
Jake grimaced. It was probably not long at all. It was every detective’s worst nightmare—a dead end on a serial case where the perp was escalating.
“I’ll start interviewing the victims tomorrow.”
Chapter Nine
Mari chewed thoughtfully on the end of his phone stylus as he surveyed the list he had just completed. It was quiet after six-thirty at Trafalgar House. Most of the administration staff had gone home by this time of the evening and those of his colleagues that remained were busy in their own cubicles, working on their own projects. Mari had been involved in two investigations for his employers during the afternoon and his reports for those jobs were neatly typed up and sitting in Ashcroft’s inbox. The two personal traces he had been working on between his official duties were what presently occupied his mind.
Natalie Craig was the second known victim of the Highgate Cemetery rapist. She had been attacked after a night out with friends and, according to her statement, she never saw her attacker’s face. The last thing she remembered before coming to her senses in a shallow scrape, covered in earth, was waiting at the stop for the night bus home. She said that she thought she heard a hissing noise, but it could have been the sound of tires on the wet road.
He made a shortlist of potential ways that people could have made contact with her, based on the material he’d pulled out of the police files on her case. The Met were still trying to improve their online security but as yet they’d not developed a system that could keep an interface out. He liked to tease DI Cordiline about that whenever their paths crossed. They had no way of proving that he’d sleepwalked his way through their files but his opponent for Jake’s attention would be aware that whatever he knew, Mari knew, too.
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