by Tinnean
I was suddenly famished. “I think I will.” I picked up a slice of bread and bit into it, savoring the combined salty taste of the caviar and butter, determining what my next step would be.
Vincent was in Fall River. I was going to find out what he was doing there, fly up to find him, and then….
Well, I’d decide what to do when I got there.
VIII
MARK didn’t need to brag about how good he was—his success rate spoke for itself.
However, I was good too. I wouldn’t have made Deputy Director of Operational Targeting if I hadn’t been an extremely competent officer.
I took some personal time, and using my own methods, I learned Mark’s mother had passed away due to liver failure. I knew Mark was careful about his alcoholic intake because of her addiction. It was too late to send flowers, and so I made a donation to AA in her name.
Mark had never spoken much of Virginia Vincent, but I knew how devastated I’d be if I’d lost my own mother. This thing between us aside, he needed some companionship.
I tracked him to Proven House, a bed-and-breakfast on Cape Cod. Of course, he wasn’t using his own name; I learned that, as well.
“Mr. Wells is your friend?” The pleasant woman behind the desk smiled up at me. “What a lovely coincidence!”
I filled out the registration card and returned her smile. “Yes, isn’t it?”
“He’s staying just down the hall from you in the St. Andrew.” People were only too willing to talk, if given half a chance. “I believe my husband told me he’s gone out for a short while, but he should be back in time for dinner, which is served at seven thirty.” She handed me the key.
I took it and went up to the second floor, glancing toward the rear of the house where Mark’s room was situated.
My room, the Harpooner, was small, with an attached bath. I dropped my carry-on in a corner, and from habit I took the time to examine the room.
An armoire served in place of a closet, and the bathroom had a shower stall instead of a tub.
A single window looked out over the street that ran in front of Proven House, letting in the last of the afternoon light. Another wall had a fireplace with a simple oak mantel.
I contemplated the double bed. I hadn’t had a bed that size since I’d left my parents’ home. It really wouldn’t be much of a problem for me, but a man of Mark’s height might be a little uncomfortable in that bed—
Good God, what was I thinking? The man had walked out on me, and I was considering having him back in my bed?
Banishing from my mind the image of him lounging across my bed, hands stacked behind his head, that wicked smile on his face, I cracked my knuckles. It was time to let Vincent discover just how good I was.
I removed a slim leather case from my suit jacket and selected a lock pick, then went into the hall.
There was no one there, although I could hear soft sounds coming from the suite at the far end of the hall. According to Mrs. Proven, the couple staying in the King George were honeymooners. I wondered if they’d come up for air long enough to realize anyone else was sharing Proven House with them.
I studied Mark’s door carefully. The locks on the doors of this bed-and-breakfast were old, and I couldn’t see an agent of his caliber, who’d armed the locks of his front door with explosives as a deterrent, trusting them to keep anyone out. He’d have something that would be unobtrusive, that would let him know that someone had entered.
Sure enough, an inch or so above the floor, I found a fine thread of what was most likely chewing gum stretched from the door to the frame. There was no way I could enter Mark’s room without breaking it and revealing my presence, and if I tried entering through a window, the neighbors would be sure to see.
The last thing I wanted to do was explain to the Chatham police what, exactly, I was doing.
Of course I could wait until dinner and surprise him then, but what would be the fun in that?
I went to work on the lock. It only took a few seconds before a very satisfying snick signified its surrender. Then I snapped the gum with my finger and let myself in. I made sure the door was locked behind me before glancing around the room, which was a good deal larger than mine.
In place of a closet was an alcove, and hanging there was the same suit he’d been wearing yesterday morning when he’d left my town house. I turned away from it.
A door off to the side opened into a private bath much more lavish than the one connected to my room. The vanity’s countertop was granite, as was the tub’s surround. As for the tub itself, it was actually large enough to accommodate two.
I wouldn’t allow myself a moment or two to indulge the fantasy of being in that tub with Mark. On the one hand there was no longer a possibility that we’d share a bath. And on the other, I had no idea how long it would be before he returned.
I continued exploring the room.
There was a fireplace against an inner wall, its mantel also oak, and a switch to the side to turn on the gas jets that would ignite it. In front of it was a plush rug. Once again my mind was filled with images of Mark and me wrapped around each other in a wanton sprawl on it.
Why torment myself with visions like that, when Mark had made it obvious he no longer saw us that way? I sighed and set them aside.
Live plants throughout the room added a splash of welcome green, and near the window, a vase of bright yellow daffodils and tulips, along with a spray of forsythia, let it be known that spring was upon us.
I turned my attention to the king-size bed with its pale ivory comforter. The mattress was soft and high above the floor. I couldn’t resist the temptation to test it, so I toed off my shoes and made myself comfortable.
I remembered the picture Mark had taken of himself in my bed, one hand cuffed above his head, and the other cupped over his erection, and my cock grew hard.
What was it about that man?
It would be so easy to jerk off in his bed, to reach for my zipper, free my cock and stroke it, all the while remembering what it was like when Mark did the stroking—
Abruptly the door burst open, and thoughts of sex vanished, the unexpected sound having me on instant alert, adrenaline flooding my system. I came up into a crouch, my revolver drawn and aimed, my forefinger ready to squeeze the trigger.
The barrel of Mark’s Beretta was in turn aimed at my head. His mouth was tight and grim. I imagined mine was a reflection of his.
Son of a bitch. I knew he wouldn’t have missed the broken thread of gum; flinging the door open would have been his way of startling whoever was in his room. Well, he had succeeded. My heart was thudding, and sweat beaded at my hairline.
“Jesus, Mann, who do you think you are, fucking Dirty Harry?” He lowered his gun.
I reholstered my weapon and snapped back, “Do you have any idea how close I came to blowing your fucking head off?” Oh, my God. I’d never sworn this much before I’d become involved with Mark Vincent.
“That’ll be the fucking day! What are you doing here, anyway? How did you—”
“Do you really expect me to tell you how I knew you were staying on Cape Cod, under the name of Joseph Wells?” No, I could see he didn’t, as much as he might want to know. “By the way, remind me never to get on your wrong side.”
“Huh?”
“I learned Sperling’s dead. His was the body in the morgue.”
“I don’t know where people get this idea that I had anything to do with that shit’s death.” He had the gall to look annoyed.
“Well, it’s a well-known fact you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t like a lot of people, Mann. Doesn’t mean I go around killing them.”
“But he did die in your apartment.”
“I wasn’t there.”
Of course you weren’t.
I ran my eyes over him, suddenly distracted.
I’d never seen him in jeans, and he looked damned good. The cuffs were rolled up, leaving his lower legs bare. Sand adhered to
the pale skin, to the hair that clung damply to his calves. Didn’t he ever go out in the sun? I pictured him on a blanket at one of the secluded beaches of Provincetown, soaking up rays, bare-assed, his head pillowed on his arms, his legs spread enough so his balls were visible….
My mouth went dry and my trousers grew too snug. However, I refused to allow myself to shift. That would make him aware of my arousal, and wouldn’t he gloat over that? Quinton Mann, the man with ice water in his veins, hot for him.
And then I noticed that he was limping and had a makeshift bandage around his foot, and I forgot my arousal. He’d left bloody footprints behind him.
“Get in the bathroom, and let me take a look at that.” He opened his mouth, and I felt my temper slipping out of control. With an effort, I restrained it. Why was everything with him such a big production? “And don’t argue with me, or I’ll—”
“Yeah? You’ll what, Quinn?” he taunted. It was as if he wanted to see how I would react to his pushing.
I pushed back. Literally. I turned him around and planted my palm in the middle of his back and shoved. “Move it, tough guy.”
Instead of the argument I was expecting, he actually obeyed me. He hobbled into the bathroom, lowered the lid of the commode, and sat down heavily.
I started the water running in the sink, took off my jacket, and rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, then soaked a washcloth and wrung it out before setting to work.
“You mind telling me what you are doing here, Quinn?”
Coming after you, you pain in the ass! I scowled at him. Did he think I hadn’t noticed he was ogling my ass?
I picked up his foot. There were two cuts, and their location had to make walking a problem. No wonder why he’d limped. How deep were those cuts? Was he in danger of infection?
“Maybe we should get you to an emergency room.” We? What was I thinking? As much as I might want there to be, I had to accept that there wasn’t a “we” anymore.
“No. It isn’t necessary. It’s not that bad. Give me that.” Was he rattled? He grabbed the washcloth out of my hand. “You’re too gentle.”
There was blood on my hands, his blood. Although I’d been shot at any number of times in the years I’d been in the CIA, I’d only been hit the once, in that warehouse on the Patapsco River in the matter of Bruchner’s cyclotron, but Mark—I had felt his scars under my fingertips, seen them, although I’d said nothing.
Had there ever been anyone who said something about them?
“Fuck! Listen, Mann, you don’t have to worry, I’m clean….”
For a moment I stared at him in mute surprise; then I realized what he was talking about, and I snarled, “You’re an asshole, you know that, Vincent? Do you think I’m worried about that?”
“Why not? I would be.”
“I have a copy of your last physical.” And the ones before that, going back almost to the day he’d been recruited to the WBIS.
He sat there looking stunned, and my temper began to slip its leash once again. I surged to my feet and dragged him up off the commode, tempted to shake him. I remembered how futile that had been when he’d stood in my hallway after the explosion in his apartment—Jesus, was it really less than a week ago? My hands tightened on his sweater, and I yanked him against me and locked lips with him.
I was in control of that kiss, that situation, until he reached between us and found how hard I was. He molded the length of my cock with one hand while his mouth feasted off mine. His other hand ran over my back, down past my waist to the crevice of my ass, the touch so light that if I hadn’t been sensitized to it, I might not have felt it at all.
He pulled me closer, and his hips began to rock.
I ground my cock against his groin. I spread my legs for better balance, and he raised his knee and lightly rubbed the vee of my crotch. The tantalizing friction caused me to moan into his mouth, and he shivered and echoed the needy sound back into mine.
I wanted him. I could feel how much he wanted me. And then I remembered his injury, and I backed away from him, more reluctant than I wanted him to know.
“Do you have any bandages?” I asked briskly. If he wasn’t going to let me run him to the emergency room, we’d need something to keep him from bleeding all over the place.
“There’s some first-aid stuff in my shaving kit. Hand me a towel, would you?” He seemed satisfied with the condition of the cuts and began patting them dry. He kept his eyes glued to his foot, apparently fascinated by that action, but I could see he was watching me from under his lashes. He licked his lips, and I waited for him to say something about that kiss. What he did say was, “Want to tell me now what you’re doing here?”
We were going to do this the hard way. Fine. I gritted my teeth. “What we have between us is too good to be tossed aside on a whim.”
He frowned. He wasn’t expecting me to challenge him? I drew in a breath and then blew it out.
“Why did you run, Mark?”
Of course he denied it, but who was he trying to kid? He had done an outstanding imitation of Jesse Owens!
“Was it… was it because I fucked you?”
“Shit.” He scrabbled in the first-aid kit. “I know I had iodine in here!”
I sighed. He was going to ignore the elephant in the room. “This?” I had removed the brown bottle when I’d been searching for something to protect the wounds. “Sit down, Mark.”
He sat. I wished I could find a way to make him obey me so readily all the time.
And I found I couldn’t ignore the elephant. “I thought you enjoyed it.” I certainly had.
“I did. That’s why—” But he didn’t continue, and I was left without a clue as to where he would have gone with that.
“I thought if we were—” I didn’t like the term “fuck buddies”. Boyfriends? Surely not. Lovers, I concluded wistfully, and I sighed once more. “I just thought it would be enjoyable to switch from time to time.”
“Well… well—”
His groin was close enough that I could smell the musk of his arousal. If I leaned forward just a little bit I’d be able to mouth the bulge through the material of his jeans.
Did he realize where my eyes were, what I was tempted to do? He must have, because all of a sudden he dragged me against him, and this time it was his mouth that took mine.
The kiss was hungry, as hungry as the one I’d initiated, and my response to it was anything but gentlemanly. I buried my fingers in his hair and pressed myself against him, against the vee of his thighs.
His arms tightened around me, one hand possessively on my ass, and I shivered.
By the time we broke apart we were both breathing heavily. If teasing him would get me kissed like that again, I could spend my life—
I could do it over and over again.
He let me go and sat back, and I let him put some distance between us. I didn’t want him to spook and run again.
He was hard, though, the evidence right in front of me, but in spite of how much I wanted to lean forward and run a fingertip over it, I didn’t.
I finished putting the last bandage on, then sat back on my heels. “I’m done.”
Mark stood up and began removing his sweater with jerky movements, but then his face darkened; he began to swear, and he banged the tiled wall. I winced in sympathy.
This was a side of Mark I had never seen, that I doubted anyone had ever seen. He prided himself on his control.
“Mark!” I rose to my feet. “What’s wrong?”
“No supplies,” he told me morosely.
“Pardon me?” We had supplies; his foot was disinfected and bandaged—
“You heard me, Mann.” He scowled at me, but I could see that it was himself with whom he was unhappy. “I didn’t bring anything with me. No condoms, no lube—”
Ah. So that was what he meant. I shook my head. Usually I was more perceptive.
“So, you didn’t plan on fucking someone while you were away.” An inordinate sense of satisfact
ion rippled through me.
Mark Vincent was a man who prided himself on always being ready for the inevitable. He carried a first-aid kit stocked with items most people never saw outside an emergency room, and yet he’d left DC without even a condom in his wallet, something every teenage boy in America made sure he never left home without. True, there were pharmacies on every street corner, and buying a rubber wasn’t a big deal. But—
He hadn’t come to Cape Cod prepared in case he picked up someone. I could live with that.
There was lotion in the bathroom, and I took a condom out of my wallet and waggled it gently before him.
He would have taken it from me.
“Ah, ah, ah, Mark.”
I touched his ear and thought about nipping the lobe, taking it into my mouth, sucking on it, then threw caution to the winds and did it, to find he liked it as much as I did. His ears were almost as sensitive as my nipples.
I leaned my cheek against his and gave a pleased sigh. This was nice.
What had we been talking about? Condoms, yes, condoms. I drew in a deep breath. “I brought it; I wear it! We can go out to a drugstore after dinner and buy more, if you’d like.”
He grinned and resumed stripping. “We have an hour and a half until dinner. Get naked, Quinn!”
I wasn’t surprised. Even when he bottomed, Mark Vincent topped.
IX
“C’MON, Mann!” Mark was on his back on the bed. My fingers, coated with the lotion, were busy slicking and opening him. “Hurry it… ah!”
“Going fast enough for you, tough guy?” I’d found his prostate.
“Again!” He groaned and arched into my touch. His cock was hard against his belly, drops of precome beading the tip. I reached for my own cock. “No. That’s mine.”
At his possessive words, a flush of heat swept from my hairline down to my groin, and my cock became even more engorged. I eased my fingers out of him to get more lotion on them, needing to get three fingers into him. Before I could, he somehow dragged me around, and I found myself straddling his chest, my cock inches from his mouth.