Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  “Are you ready?” Cobalt asked, his voice low and melodic, like the hum of a mountain cavern. Niko tried to even out his heaving breath, his entire body feeling afire. He couldn’t form a word on his tongue, which was all for the best as Cobalt didn’t seem interested in an answer. He reached down between Niko’s somewhat spread legs and pressed a finger to his perineum, tracing a line along the sensitive skin toward his goal.

  Fingertip probing at Niko’s hole, Cobalt surveyed Niko’s face. He watched as he pushed into Niko, slipping in much more easily than Niko could have expected without lube. Niko burned from the intrusion, but it sent a shower of ecstasy through his body. Cobalt smirked as Niko writhed, barely keeping his hold on the drawer knobs behind him. His legs spread further apart, a silent plea for more, for Cobalt to penetrate him fully. But Cobalt made him wait. He slid the one finger in to the knuckle, then slid it back out and added another. It went in as though he was lubed, even if only slightly, but Niko couldn’t spare an inch of brain to think about that.

  Instead, he felt a groan tear from his throat, his head knocking back against the top of the dresser, his body aching with the effort to control himself and not bounce up and down on Cobalt’s fingers. He contracted around Cobalt’s penetration though, and Cobalt leaned in to suck Niko’s lower lip into his mouth. Biting down, he sucked and dragged his teeth over it, pulling back to release. A sharp sting struck Niko’s lip when Cobalt released it, and he swiped his tongue over the area to find an iron tang. He was bleeding slightly.

  The sight of the blood did something to urge Cobalt on, and he pulled his fingers out of Niko’s ass, grabbing one of Niko’s legs and wrapping it around his own waist to get into position. Niko’s cock rubbed up against Cobalt’s tight stomach, and he moaned again. A strip of wet trailed from the tip of his cock on Cobalt’s skin. Niko thought he might come from that alone, but then Cobalt’s mouth crashed into his, and Cobalt thrust his cock deep into Niko, and Niko was fucking ruined.

  The intense burn of the stretching, the taste of Cobalt mixed with the slight tang of his bloody lip, and Niko couldn’t hold back any longer. He thrust back against every one of Cobalt’s driving motions. Kicking his other leg up and around, Niko wrapped himself around Cobalt’s waist and the angle of penetration changed. Cobalt hit Niko’s prostate and everything tumbled.

  Niko moaned into the kiss, barely able to reciprocate as Cobalt fucked him hard and deep. His arms felt stretched, muscles tearing from trying to hold himself aloft against the dresser. The burning friction around his hole sent coils of pleasure through him that travelled straight to his cock, and Niko didn’t think he’d last. Cobalt’s grip was tight on Niko’s hips, holding him up. Then one hand moved up Niko’s back, scratching shallow lines into his skin and pressing their bodies closer together. All Niko felt was Cobalt in him and around him, and he finally felt the last hinge release inside him.

  Cobalt thrust deep, pumping into him hard and hitting just the right spot, and Niko cried out. His climax hit him like a collapsing building, crushing everything else in him, and he shot his jet between their chests and stomachs. As his release dripped down on them, Cobalt leaned deeper into their kiss, thrusting a few more times, then Niko felt him jerk and pulse, spilling out inside him.

  For a few moments, they held their position, Niko’s arms and legs shaking, his forehead against Cobalt’s. His eyes closed, Niko breathed in the smell of Cobalt mixed with him, and he licked his raw lips. The bleeding had stopped, the tiny cut stinging only slightly under his tongue. Before letting go, Cobalt tilted his head and planted one more kiss on Niko’s lips. It was softer, smoother, and more desperate somehow.

  His muscles were shot, so Niko felt his one leg suddenly unlock from the other, his foot hitting the ground with a thud to catch his weight. He lowered the other with a radiating soreness in his thigh, then let go of the drawer handles. His fingers felt frozen into position, tightly coiled for too long. Everything hurt, but Niko was too satisfied to care.

  Cobalt didn’t release him right away. He slipped out of Niko unintentionally as Niko got to his feet, but he held Niko close all the same. But as the glow of pleasure faded, reality and the day seeped back in through the sheer window curtains. Niko felt dead on his feet, and the hollow in his chest throbbed.

  Pulling out of Cobalt’s embrace, Niko tried to breathe more evenly, making his way toward the bed. He was only vaguely aware the bedroom door was still open, and he distantly wondered if they’d kept Coral awake. He wasn’t sure he cared much though.

  “Lie back,” Cobalt said, making for the bathroom as Niko pulled the comforter back, tossing the soiled extra blanket from earlier aside. He did as Cobalt instructed, though he told himself it was because he had planned to do so anyway. When Cobalt came back, he brought with him a damp towel and began to see to Niko’s mess. He cleaned Niko gently, taking care in his most delicate areas. Then he brushed the pad of his thumb over Niko’s neck. It was slightly sensitive to the touch. “I’ve left a mark,” Cobalt whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  But Niko had no answer to that. The idea of Cobalt marking him was actually thrilling. Heat rose in him despite his exhaustion. But the Soul Stone glinted at him more clearly now, and Niko didn’t want to look at it. So he said nothing, turning over onto his side instead. Cobalt set the towel aside and laid down next to him, pressing in closer. Niko shut his eyes and pressed back into Cobalt. He refused to think about his need for contact, about how good he felt with Cobalt next to him, about how much he missed the taste of Cobalt on his tongue or the soreness in his body. He wasn’t ready.

  Niko had been tired and weak. He’d given in. He needed to sleep. However right it felt, however much he longed for this to be his everyday reality, none of it changed anything. One good fuck didn’t erase three months of silence. Maybe nothing could.

  ***

  Niko woke groggy and disoriented. His mind spun, his body ached, and he was alone. For a brief and unsettling moment, he thought everything had been a dream. Unsure whether that would qualify as a good dream or a nightmare, Niko blinked through the sleep in his eyes only to realize he was not at home. This was not his bed.

  One hand reached out across the mattress behind him in search of a body, but it found nothing. He had known he was alone without looking or touching, but a prickle of panic was quickly doused with a surge of anger and hurt. Then everything settled again as he heard distant voices downstairs.

  Falling boneless back into the pillows, Niko shut his eyes and hoped he could wake up again, this time in a reality where all this shit wasn’t actually happening. But when he cracked an eyelid open, he was still in the nondescript bedroom of Starla’s honey-trap-cum-safe-house. A glance at the windows told him it was likely late afternoon. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept, given he had no phone with which to check the time. He’d never really gotten accustomed to wearing watches, though he supposed now that was a bit of a handicap.

  Getting to his feet, his head spinning, Niko tried to muster up energy from nowhere. He’d slept, yes, but he hadn’t rested. There was too much turbulence in his life for sleep to be sound. Dressing quickly in his discarded clothing, he went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. The toothbrush and toothpaste he’d kept in his go-bag served to freshen his breath, but there was nothing he could do to wipe away the darkness beneath his eyes or the sallowness of his skin.

  The split on his lip hadn’t fully healed yet, so he went to Starla’s vanity to rummage through the drawers for lipbalm. All he found was a small tube of some kind of jelly with a soft pink tint. Pulling a face, Niko applied it anyway. It did feel moisturizing.

  The voices downstairs were caught between the loudness of anger and the shamed whispering of an argument. Niko moved to the upstairs hall slowly, careful to avoid making noise. The door to the small bedroom at the end of the hall was open, the bedroom empty. Niko pressed on toward the top of the stairs, straining to hear more clearly.

  “—right, ’cause this
is miles apart from where I was,” Coral’s voice answered sarcastically. “That handy little trick he pulled with the door or whatever means I’m basically a prisoner. Hostage to a fucking killer cop.”

  “He isn’t a killer!” Cobalt snapped back, trying to keep his voice low.

  “So says him,” Coral answered.

  “So I say,” Cobalt corrected.

  Coral snorted. “’Cause your word’s worth so much more than his,” she shot. “And s’not like it fucking matters, eh? Fucking coppers here shoot first, ask questions later, apparently. A fucking right mess.”

  “So what you after, Cor?” Cobalt asked, his voice rough. He sounded different than usual. Almost like he was affecting a dialect. “What’s the plan? You just gonna walk out to the streets? And do what? Back to your old tricks? You’re fucking skint, Cor. Won’t get you far here.”

  “Skint?” Coral asked, the word cut through with a disbelieving laugh. “You suddenly back in the Northern Reef, Cob? What happened to your pretty words? Forget yourself? Or you just remembering?”

  “I’m same I always was,” Cobalt answered, but Niko wasn’t so sure. Coral didn’t seem convinced either.

  “Nah. Dunno who you’ve been since I was fifteen.” There was a tense silence, then Coral continued, “But you’re right. I got nothing here—no money, no connections, no fucking clue where I am. Only option I have is to go back home. But can’t even do that with this fucking madness going on, so you’ve made me a prisoner too. Good job, Cob. Real good Royal Guard.”

  Niko didn’t know what she meant, but he didn’t think she was likely to explain further without his outright asking. And even then, he likely wouldn’t get an answer. So he made his way down the stairs to where they were arguing in the living room.

  “This’ll figure out, Cor. He’s innocent. We’ll get the fucker behind this and set up nice. You’ll see,” Cobalt was saying as Niko walked in. “A proper place. You can start clean.”

  “Everything okay?” Niko asked. The atmosphere in the room was frenetic and taut. It rubbed raw over Niko’s skin.

  Cobalt turned, a somewhat sharper movement than he might have intended, and sighed heavily when he saw Niko. Coral just rolled her eyes and sank down into the chair she’d occupied earlier.

  “Niko,” Cobalt said, his voice and tone already changing back to what Niko was accustomed to. “You’re awake. Are you all right?”

  Niko studied him a moment, his head tilted. The look he gave Cobalt was subtly pointed, as though to say ‘obviously not.’ Cobalt seemed not to know what to do with himself for a moment, perhaps caught between his argument with Coral and what he’d done earlier with Niko. But Niko had no time for that, anyway. He strode past Cobalt to the kitchen to search for something to eat. There was little more than crackers and some bottled drinks in the fridge, along with a questionable half-used can of whipped cream. The freezer yielded only a bottle of liquor, but Niko had no interest in that. He pulled a bottle of pop from the fridge and looked around for a bottle opener.

  Niko struggled to find any kind of useful utensils in the drawers around the kitchen and began to lose hope of finding a bottle opener anywhere. He considered the cap, wondering if he could twist it or manage to pop it off with sheer force. He was just about to make some kind of trade, resigning himself to the fact that magic was his only option if he wanted to drink the damn soda, when he heard Coral’s long-suffering sigh.

  “On the fridge, fool,” she said, pointing back to the appliance behind him. One eyebrow raised, Niko looked from her to the fridge. There were magnets scattered across the surface of the door, but nothing that—

  A shiny silver magnet caught his eye, and on closer inspection, Niko saw that what he’d thought were just magnets shaped like a pair of spread women’s legs were actually two different kinds of bottle openers. The heel on one leg had a lip on the tip of it to hook under the top of his cap. With a frown, he plucked the one leg from the fridge and popped open his cap. He replaced the leg in a different location, breaking the strange illusion of the magnetic pair.

  “Ah, thanks,” he said, tipping his soda to Coral. He took a drink of the bubbling blue liquid and sighed to himself. Blue raspberry was always a strange flavour to him, but it beat the alternatives Starla had in stock. Grapefruit and coconut were both flavours he could only tolerate in certain circumstances. Magically enhanced pop was not one of them.

  “Some detective,” Coral muttered to herself, and Niko tried not to let it sear at him. Cobalt shot her a sharp look anyway.

  “So have you thought of a plan of action?” Cobalt asked Niko. Niko held a mouthful of pop in his mouth, soaking in the flavour as he thought.

  “I thought we were supposed to be doing this ‘your way’?” Coral asked, eyebrows raised. The inky black coils of her hair spread over the back of the chair like a curtain of moss.

  Cobalt looked about done with her. Niko wondered, not for the first time, why he’d decided to bring Coral with him now. And why he’d never mentioned her before.

  “I still need to know what it is Niko needs,” Cobalt said, his voice carefully even.

  “You mean other than a good di—” Coral started, but Cobalt rounded on her.

  “If you don’t want to help, don’t. But actively trying to derail our efforts will gain you nothing,” Cobalt snapped. Coral stared at him, her green eyes burning into Cobalt’s silver ones. She looked unfazed by his veiled threat, but after their silent standoff, she shrugged and waved a hand as if to indicate they should continue.

  “I need to see the crime scene again,” Niko said, setting the soda bottle down on the counter. The room darkened suddenly, and Niko shot a glance at the window. The day beyond seemed greyer and deeper than earlier.

  “I’m sorry, Niko, but I cannot see a way for us to visit the crime scene without putting ourselves and others in danger,” Cobalt said, clearly hoping he’d get through to Niko this time. Niko moved around him, meanwhile, toward the window. The sky was already darkening, the winter months hanging low over the Court. At least they didn’t have snow to deal with, like in the northern Courts. Connor’s Court got blasted, as he understood. Niko had never seen snow in person.

  “I know that,” Niko said, letting the curtain fall back into place gently. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I need access to the scene to understand what happened—who was there, what weapons were used, what Sade might have been doing—all of it.”

  “Can’t your friend go for you?” Coral asked suddenly. Neither Niko or Cobalt seemed to understand what she meant, which made her roll her eyes. “The one who was here earlier? Who works for a detective agency? Ringing any bells?”

  “Starla,” Niko said, thinking it over.

  Coral nodded. “She could get in as a consultant or something, yeah? Say her agency wants to help catch this crazy killer cop on the loose?”

  Niko ignored the title she gave him and shook his head. “They won’t let her in,” he said. “They know she’s connected to me. And even if they didn’t, Chief Banyan isn’t a fan of working with ‘consultants.’ She had no choice for Indigo’s murder because Cobalt had a royal decree or whatever. But there’s no good reason to bring in consultants here.”

  Cobalt crossed his arms. “Particularly if they feel they’ve already identified their suspect. It was a valid suggestion.” He looked up to the window, considering the darkness beyond much like Niko had. “On that topic, should Starla not be back by now?”

  Unease crept over Niko. There was a clock on the kitchen stove. It marked the time as late afternoon, reaffirmed by the fading daylight. Starla had left them near sunrise that morning. She had to return home, check in a work, gather supplies, and possibly speak to police. The Chief would have identified Starla as Niko’s friend through any number of channels. Uri or the Captain could have mentioned her by accident, and any number of other officers had at least minimal knowledge of Starla’s situation. Niko had done all in his power to help her get out of tricking af
ter the auction case, and that had involved a lot of official paperwork and vouching for her with the Captain, the parole board, the Court, and anyone else who would listen.

  But there was no way to connect Starla to Sade’s murder. Her history with Sade aside, she was nowhere on scene. Niko hadn’t mentioned her at all in his own account of the events, and there was no reason to assume she was involved without evidence. Still, her connection to him and her history with Sade might lead the police to think she was sheltering him in some way.

  The clock ticked away, and Niko had no answers. “Hard to say,” he eventually answered, but Cobalt clearly didn’t take his word. The worry was evident in his voice.

  Cobalt made a move, as if to close the distance between himself and Niko. He wanted to comfort Niko, to be with him. It was obvious in every line of his body, but something stopped him. Maybe it was the way Niko’s eyes flashed away from him, the way his body language stiffened, or the way Coral’s disdain at the gesture fizzled on the atmosphere of the room. Or maybe it was the sudden, retina-searing light that began flashing around the baseboards of the room. The light strobed different colours, all of them impossible to block out, even with eyes shut and a hand over them.

  Cobalt started. “What the—”

  “The warding I put on the perimeter,” Niko answered. He blinked through the intense light to see detail. The light seemed to strobe toward the door at the back of the kitchen. “Someone’s trying to get in. From there.”

  Niko rushed to the door, reaching for his gun. He’d donned his holster out of habit, not really expecting to need a weapon on hand just then, but he was glad he’d done it. Flicking the safety off, he held the gun steady ahead of him and motioned for Cobalt to open the door.

  Cobalt was already at his side, nodding as he reached for the knob to pull the door. It opened inward, so Niko stood out of the swinging radius. Beyond the open door was darkness softened only by the strobing light from the kitchen and living room. Old concrete stairs descended in front of them, and Niko stepped forward. He approached the stairs like he would any scene to clear. He wished he had his tactical flashlight on hand, but otherwise, he held his weapon steady with two hands and proceeded down the stairs. Back to the walled side of the stairway, he scanned all the area he could see.