by Adira August
“What’s wrong with him?” Hunter took out his notebook.
“He’s severely malnourished and dehydrated. He has an abscess in his mouth we’re treating with antibiotics right now, as we don’t want to sedate him. There’s also some arrhythmia cardiology thinks might resolve with food and hydration.”
“No,” Hunter turned to Greenstein. “What’s wrong with him?”
Greenstein shook his head. “I don’t know, yet. I think ‘schizophrenia’ is easy to assume and probably wrong. I’d like to see where he was living and how. I’d like to meet with your team.”
“That can be arranged.” Hunter stood with his hands on his hips, watching Robl. “He’s clean, he’s safe and he’s receiving medical care. What do you want from me, right now?”
“I’d like you to speak to him. His starvation is acute, detective. He’s burning more calories than he’s taking in. His mouth is too sore for him to eat. I’m trying to avoid dropping a tube into his stomach and force feeding him.”
“I can’t speak to him, ” Hunter said. “At all. He’s a suspect in four murders. He hasn’t been advised and cannot be in his present condition. He’s not free to leave. If he confesses, even of his own will, it’s inadmissible if you find him competent in the future.”
“It could be a death sentence for him if I can’t get him calmed down,” Greenstein told him. “What was the point of rescuing him from the attic just to lose him here?”
Hunt went to the door. “I didn’t rescue him; I arrested him. He attacked one of my officers and I restrained him instead of shooting him. … You don’t have straight-jackets, anymore?”
“Outlawed a long time ago.”
“Turn the light down. Wrap him in a blanket. Tightly.” Hunter opened the door. “Someone will call you about meeting with the team.”
THE PROSAIC DING of the elevator in 440 Dunton Court soothed Hunter Dane. The sound of Cam’s voice reached him when the door slid open. He detoured down the hall to say hello before he went into the office. To tell Cam he’d like to go back to the A-frame that night. To simply be near the good sound and sight of him.
Approaching the door to the Foundation, Hunt heard another voice. He stopped. Two voices, neither of which were Merisi’s. He caught a few words about limiting site downtime and social media presence.
Cam was working. Disappointment tightened his chest. He backed up. Backed off.
Inside the Unit offices, Hunter glimpsed Natani through her open office door, writing furiously on a yellow legal pad. Avia sat at the low table, hands in her lap, staring into space, her mascara streaked and dried. She’d been crying.
Merisi and Twee were huddled together at the high table, evidence logs spread out, making some kind of grid out of sticky notes.
Fighting the strong urge to ignore it all and lock himself in his office, he chose to talk to Natani. She’d have the perspective most useful to him.
He closed the door behind himself and settled in a visitors chair. One finger held up signaled him to wait until she finished writing a thought. Her straight, black hair was coming loose from the leather clip that held it away from her face. There were deeper vertical lines around her mouth than he ever seen before. A muscle jittered along her jawline.
Her pen lifted from the paper, but she didn’t look at him. “Go into your office and check your email. Watch the recording, then come back.” She began writing again.
He left her to it.
He found the email headed Penelope Maki Last Testament. Not “will and testament” he noted.
A PDF file was attached. In the form of a letter addressed to him, it meticulously chronicled her life of abuse at the hands of her father and cousin. She explained being terrorized from early childhood by being suffocated into unconsciousness if she objected to anything. Ever.
“But I am far too old for his pleasure now. My cousin’s wife bears only sons. So I am to produce a replacement for myself.”
There was also a video file with an evidence tag and Maki’s case number. Natani expected him to watch it. Instead, he went into the bullpen.
Avia was at the coffee station filling three mugs. That was better. He looked over Twee’s shoulder at the array of colored squares.
“You’re making a timeline?”
“Yeah,” Merisi said. “It was always really helpful when Cam did it.” He glanced at Avia. “Too complicated for a civilian. We’ll put it together and Rivers can enter it.”
“Good. Where’d you find the video?” Hunter moved around the side of the table to stay out of their way.
They paused to explain briefly about the aquarium.
“Good job.” Hunter went straight to Natani’s office. “You’re working on counts of charges?”
She nodded without looking up.
“I’ll leave you to it.”
He still had to deal with Avia. She’d delivered coffee and was at the high table, watching the others work.
“Rivers?”
She started a little. She seemed to have entirely missed that he came in. “Yes. How’d it go?”
He gestured for her to come into his office and waited until she was inside to sit down, himself.
“You able to work?”
“Of course.”
“Uh-huh. You’ve been crying.”
“Women do that. It’s a response to stress or sadness or anger or a lot of other things. It’s a few tears, not a debilitating condition,” she told him, drinking from her mug.
Her somewhat acerbic tone reassured him. “Notebook?”
She put the coffee on his desk and took it from the pocket of her skirt along with a mechanical pencil. “Shoot.”
“Greenstein wants to meet with the team and maybe tour the farmhouse. But he has nothing for us; Robl isn’t close to stable, yet. So call him and give him a tentative date in two weeks.”
“Okay. Now?”
He shrugged. “Tomorrow’s fine. … Let Natani know I gave Merisi tomorrow off if he wants it. I don’t think he will now and he never gets here until two on Wednesdays, anyway. Set the team meeting for two-thirty.”
She made a note and looked up expectantly.
“There’s a lot to do at this point in a case,” he said. “And these two are very complex. Everyone will be busy. You’re going to work for all of them.”
“I figured.” She gave him a curious look. “You have concerns about that?”
“I want to make sure you understand that while you will be serving them, making the timelines or doing whatever else they need, you report to me. And I need you to locate people.”
“Hideyoshi Maki and …?” She had her pencil poised.
“Russell Robl’s family and friends. Personal history. Anything you can dig up.”
“Might take a while,” she warned him.
“Fit it in amongst the other stuff you’re doing for the team. We have time.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope. Get to it.”
After she left, Hunter couldn’t think of a single reason to stay.
THE DING OF THE ELEVATOR reached Cam as he led the two men out of the Foundation offices talking about the prospect of working together. Cam caught sight of Hunter down the hall, about to enter the elevator car, just putting his phone away.
Hunter glanced toward the sound of the voices and saw Cam. He let the elevator door close. The talking stopped. Cam didn’t notice. In the sudden silence, Hunter Dane was distant thunder.
Cam felt his cell vibrate in his pocket. He checked the screen.
An image taken with the phone held up at arm’s length and angled down: Hunt on his knees in his office. Cam looked up.
Hunter remained motionless, eyes on his Dom.
“Give me just a minute, please.” Cam walked toward his sub. He stopped when they were less than a foot apart. Cam could feel it, like a faint vibration: Hunter’s need to fall before him, the effort to remain standing.
“I’m walking them out,” Cam said quietly. “U
se the bathroom and wait for me in my office.”
Hunt inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. “Cam?”
Hunter was asking permission to speak. “Go ahead.”
“I don’t want us to be a secret, anymore. Anywhere. Ever.”
Cam grasped Hunt by the jaw with one hand and brought him in for a kiss. A simple gesture, brief and familiar. “Follow me.”
By the time they reached the two men who had surely seen the kiss, Cam had morphed from Dom to CEO of a nonprofit foundation. “This is my fiance, Hunter Dane. Hunt, you probably know Carson Sanchez?’
“No, we’ve never met.” Hunter offered his hand. “You’re Avia’s racquetball partner, right? The man behind the curtain at The Week?”
Sanchez, thirtyish and self-confident, laughed, “That’s me, the Cyber Wizard of Odd. And you’re the cop?”
“I am. I don’t have a cool nickname, though.”
“And this is Thurgood Patterson,” Cam said. “He makes money appear from thin air.”
“Nice to meet you,” Hunter told him. “I hope you can help.”
A reserved, round-faced black man whose twisted curls were beginning to recede, Patterson shrugged. “Do my best.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Cam told Hunter. “You’ll find what you need in my desk.”
There was something powerfully sexual about Cam reiterating his order in this veiled way in front of other people.
Hunt jerked a quick nod, afraid speaking would make his arousal obvious—make his submissive status obvious. It was one thing to not be a secret. It was another to shove your sex life in the faces of people who hadn’t agreed to participate.
Cam ushered the two men down the hallway.
HUNT CAME OUT OF THE RESTROOM to find the hall empty. The Foundation offices were, too. Cam must have accompanied the other men to the first floor.
There was still little in Cam’s office. The few packing boxes were gone. An antique treestand occupied a corner. The oak desk, with its polished desktop decorated with thin geometric lines, had acquired a gooseneck lamp and a large laptop.
And an in and out tray. There was something incongruous about Camden Snow having an in and out tray. And yet, it was exactly right. Cam was not a boy any longer, he was man with things waiting to be done.
There were not yet any pictures or hangings on the walls. The barrenness increased Hunter’s restless anticipation. He finally did the one thing he could to center himself—dropped to his knees to wait for Cam. But unlike the first time he’d done this, he knew with unshakeable faith that Cam would come for him.
Hands clasped at his sacrum, eyes closed, Hunt felt tension sluice away like sheets of water over glass. His breathing slowed and deepened. It would be soon. Here. Hunter knew what he craved. But he also knew that whatever Cam chose for him, demanded of him, would be what he needed.
He heard the sounds of Cam’s approach. The closing door, the footfalls on carpet. The slight metal to metal sound of the doorknob. He didn’t open his eyes. Cam would tell him what to do.
He could follow his Dom’s familiar movements through the little sounds he made. Kicking off his trainers, taking off his knit pullover. He did something at the desk, something clicked and moved across the wood. Cam stretched and leaned, close to Hunt who felt the heat from his body mingle with his own.
“Bare feet, Hunter. Eyes on me.”
Cam reached out and turned the deadbolt. The quiet snick of metal sliding home fueled a prickling heat in Hunt’s groin. With the desk behind him, there was little in his view but Camden Snow.
Cam’s plain white T stretched across his wide chest, held neatly in place by the waistband of gray slacks with a thin black leather belt that dropped straight down to his bare feet.
The back-tilt of his head and icy stare belied his casual hands-in-pockets stance.
Hunter craved every bit of Cam against every part of himself.
Cam, who
… anything for you …
could do whatever he wanted. Because the last thing Hunter needed was a safeword.
“On your feet, now.”
Hunter rose.
Cam closed on Hunter, his hands moving over his sub’s body, establishing his ownership. He pushed Hunt’s suit coat off but not enough for it to fall to the floor. He unbuckled Hunter’s belt and opened his pants, but left them hanging on his hips. He was in no hurry.
“You haven’t needed this in a while. Why is this time different?” Cam asked, so close his mouth was a breath away, both arms around Hunter, pulling his shirt up in the back.
It took effort for Hunter to think of a response while Cam slid his hands inside Hunter’s pants and over his ass. This was no gentle stoking. This was Cam’s palms and fingers grasping, pressing, deliberate and deep.
Hunt’s body shifted with the power, pushed firmly into his Dom’s body when Cam’s hands moved up his back, fingertips pressed into the groove of his spine.
“Change. Everything—ah—changed. Cases … piled on. Too fast. Too … much. ”
Cam insinuated a hand between Hunt’s pants and his briefs, stroking his trapped cock with the back of his hand, down against his heavy sac. With the other hand on Hunt’s ass, he lifted and pulled his sub up onto his toes. Cam flipped his hand over, fingers slipped under, behind, strong, pressing up. He felt Hunt teeter slightly, off balance, arms limp at his sides as he had not been told to move them.
Cam loved how tall Hunter was, loved keeping this big, beautiful dangerous man on the edge, dependent on Cam for even the ability to remain upright. Keeping Hunter like this, stripped of his inherent dignity and grace, aroused Cam deeply. Reducing Hunter to his most elemental self—the self he ultimately surrendered—brought him a savage joy.
“Did you forget, Hunter?” He removed his hand from between Hunter’s legs, swiftly turned him, slammed him down on the desk, laid his body over Hunter’s. “Did you forget what’s greater, stronger, than all of that?”
Hunt drew breath with an effort under the weight of his Dom’s chest. His coat bunched up, a hard band across his back. His Colt clunked dully on the desktop with each gasp for air, the straps of the shoulder harness tightening and loosening. His forearms flat, hands next to his head, wrists safely bound by strong fingers. Barely aware of his arousal and need, there was only Cam, engulfing him.
Cam’s weight shifted. He stretched one of Hunt’s arms to the side, binding him with something Then did the same on the other side. A pang of regret—Cam would raise himself now, a small abandonment.
But he didn’t.
He felt Cam’s hand at the small of his back, his pants ripped down, exposing his ass. Cam didn’t push them all the way off; he didn’t take his weight away.
Lube. Hunt didn’t bother to wonder or look. Cam always had what he needed. A muscled arm was slung around his neck.
“Open.”
Hunter knew what he was supposed to do. He dropped his chin and opened his mouth wide over Cam’s forearm, just at the elbow.
“Just right. You stay still and relaxed. You understand?”
Hunter’s cock gave a hard throb as he answered “Yes, Sir” against Cam’s arm, the words slurred, saliva running down to the desktop. The casual humiliation was one of many subtle assertions of control Cam thrived on—knowing how much Hunter hated it, how deeply it excited him.
Cam had done nothing to make Hunter comfortable, his swollen length still caught by his briefs. The elastic waistband Cam pulled down in back, caught in front, scraped over his foreskin, the edge cutting under the rim. “Relax and stay still” seemed impossible.
Perhaps when Cam started fucking him, he’d want more room, more contact, and shove the briefs further down.
But for now, cocooned in a swath of loose clothing and lust, only Hunter’s bare buttocks met the cool room air. Even the mass of lube Cam slathered on and in him, warmed. Some trickled down, an itchy tease.
Anticipating Cam’s finger in his ass, feeling Cam rol
l his hand between his cheeks startled Hunter. It felt so good, so intimate, somehow familiar. He longed to push up into it, to rotate his hips, to get more of Cam there, sliding around in the lube. He ached to feel Cam pushing against him, opening him, taking him. The deep slide hardly burned now that they’d been together so long.
He found himself sucking the skin of Cam’s arm, his tongue moving over the hairs, huffing soft sounds of pleasure. Relaxed.
Three fingers, clumped together to form a cone shape, pushed into him, opening him. Three. Hunter concentrated on breathing deeply and slowly, relaxing his sphincter, taking the width …
Cam took his time. Working his fingers in to the knuckles, turning and opening them. Hunter felt Cam’s thumb and small finger sink into the cheeks of his ass as every millimeter of those three fingers penetrated fully. Cam pulled back and twisted and did it again, a slow pistoning.
Clothed, restrained, pinned, filled—this one place on his body so singularly exposed—the pleasure welled and flowed.
Four fingers.
Four fingers turning, pressing in … again familiar …
“...I don't stop until I'm done…”
Cam was going to fist him.
Hunter’s head lifted. Or tried to. Cam’s arm tightened, his head pressed to Hunt’s.
“You’ll hurt yourself, sub,” Cam said, pushing and turning. Hunt felt Cam’s thumb. He panted. He knew, he told himself he knew. He’d done this to a sub, himself. That’s why it was familiar.
It was ... oh fuck, too big Cam’s huge hands he loved, strong and wide and oh fucking no …
The pain was deep and hot and reached his balls and his cock hardened unbelievably and he groaned a rough cry and Cam would not back off. He was there, he was there, so oh ... so … too much, too much, too much good, it was so fucking .. oh god so good ..
Hunter rode the peak of the wave of pleasure/pain, only conscious of something huge, something he could not stop, would not … did not … Cam. Anything. Cam.