by Adira August
If Hunter was being manipulated by Asher, the boy was being manipulated as well.
CAM WAS CROSS-LEGGED in the back of the Bronco with a portable hard drive and the laptop from the backpack. He was wearing nitrile gloves.
Hunt put a hand on the back of Cam’s neck and looked at the screen over his shoulder. “You’re copying the files?”
“I’m copying the whole damned thing,” he said. “You going to get this all into property tonight?”
“Yeah, we’ll stop on the way to Scene and Not Heard.”
Cam detached the portable from the laptop. “Let’s get a camera from the office on the way and photograph all of it.”
“Sure.” Hunt fiddled with his keys while Cam put everything together and closed up the back. “You ready? I’m starving.”
Cam put the used gloves into the trash bag. “You’re always starving.”
Inside the car, Hunter clicked his cell into the dashboard charger. “You need your gym bag for tonight?” Referring to the carry-all Cam kept his sex toys and potions in.
“Behind your seat.” Cam snapped his seat belt into place. “You locked up?”
“Checked every door, including your studio.”
The driveway threaded through a band of forest left by the developers to shield the house from the road. Cam put a hand on Hunt’s arm when he stopped at the end of the drive to check for traffic.
“Listen, we don’t have to do this. We hang out in places where nobody makes a deal out of me, you know? But …”
Hunt waited.
“… if we go to dinner it’s gonna hit social media. Somebody will get a picture of us. People know I’m gay; it’s not a secret.”
“I see,” Hunter said. “So, if I happen to be kissing you when the cameras come out, will I go viral, too?” He pulled Cam in for a demonstration, made awkward by their seatbelts. Cam pulled back first.
“You don’t know what this is like. How are we going to be an investigative unit so discreet practically no one knows we exist if paps are tracking us all over the place with telephoto lenses?”
Hunt turned off the engine. “I thought you wanted this.”
“I love that you want it. And I do, too. A lot. But look at what happened today. We have a bunch of stuff in the car that’s maybe related to some crime. We’re going to leave it locked in here, in a restaurant parking lot? You’re the one who always thinks of this stuff, when did you start only thinking about me?”
“I’d really like to let you go on believing that,” Hunter sighed. “They open at four. Only staff inside getting set up. Our reservation is for five-thirty. The place opens to the public at six. We’ll be the only ones in there, in a private booth, a little room. Bernie will serve us himself. And I’m taking the backpack inside with us.” He shrugged. “Not so romantic, but necessary.”
“Oh.” Hunter’s practical attention to detail and duty was a major reason Cam trusted him. “I hope they have buffalo chimichurri tonight.”
Hunter turned the key.
They rode along in comfortable silence, Cam’s hand resting on Hunt’s thigh, his head relaxed back against the seat, a smile on his lips. He thought about how romantic Hunter had been lately. The man who claimed he’d never felt intimacy. Didn’t connect.
It amazed Cam, this place they’d gotten to in the five months they’d been together. He wondered how long he’d have to be off the slopes before he stopped being a newsworthy item and they could stop for food on impulse, wherever they were.
They’d just reached Sandy Gulch Road when the cell filled the car with the familiar strains of the 1812 Overture.
Dispatch.
Cam pulled his hand back. Hunt tapped the speaker function.
“Dane.”
“Got an unknown dead in Red Rocks Park,” the dispatcher said. “Park ranger just found it.”
Hunter had already swung into a one-eighty turn. Cam fished Hunt’s notebook out of his jacket pocket and made a note of the time for him.
“Location in the park?” Hunter asked, thinking he could drop Cam at his house and continue on to the paved road that would take him back to the cave.
“Stage services lot,” dispatch came back.
Hunt slowed down. “At the amphitheater?”
“That’s affirm. Patrol says they shielded the vehicle. They want an ETA.”
“What vehicle?” He and Cam exchanged clueless looks.
“Victim discovered in a PEV.”
Plug-in electric vehicle. Like a golf cart.
August 7th, 1992
* * *
“Annie!” Everett Laurence, Ph.D. looked up from some paperwork on his desk and gave his former grad student a big smile. Or a smile as big as one ever got in his narrow, lined face. The face was topped by an unruly shock of red hair, all of which made him look like a lab Muppet named “Beaker” in circular hornrims.
Students often portrayed him as such in blackboard graffitti, where he was usually holding something that had electrocuted him and his topknot was on fire. Dr. Laurence, too busy being a child prodigy to watch children’s shows, thought they were simple caricatures of him. And he was too well-liked for anyone to disabuse him of the notion.
“Good to see you again,” he said, not holding out a hand.
“Good to see you too, sir.” Annie took a seat. “I was surprised to hear from you.”
“Me, too. But I got a call from Bill Williams. He said the position fell through. I’m sorry, except I’m not. I hope I can entice you into accepting a job from me.”
Minerva Anne Tussey—whose first name she kept a deeply held secret—was now Doctor Tussey. She’d been hoping for a job in the private sector to jump-start her career, but it was tough for women in engineering. She’d gone from over the moon to deep in the pits when LunaSym Technologies had offered her a position and withdrawn it a week later, saying the project had been killed when their client pulled out.
Luckily, she hadn’t given up her apartment: half a basement within shouting distance of the highway. But it was cheap, dry, warm in winter, coolish in summer, and she sprayed assiduously to discourage centipedes. Still, she’d been very much looking forward to moving out of it into something above ground in sunny California. She’d be thirty in a few weeks, and it was time to live like a grown-up.
“I’m really flattered you thought of me, but I’m pretty set on a private sector job. I’ve been in school my whole life.”
“This is private sector, though we will have a facility a block off campus.” He rooted around the journals and files on his desk and handed her a student research project. The name under the title was “Jason Furney.” Annie wondered how she’d missed him; she thought she’d met all the engineering undergrads.
“He was a summer student, going on to Cambridge this year,” Laurence said as if he’d read the question in her mind. “Came to the U.S. for his gap year instead of digging wells in Zimbabwe, or whatever they’re expected to do.”
“‘The Effect of Human Consciousness on Electronic Devices’?” she read. She looked at the supervising faculty name. “You supervised a project on psychokinesis? Personally? You’re the Dean of Engineering.”
“Engineering and Applied Science. This is science applied to the human/sensitive device interaction. Results on page five, Doctor.”
She flipped to the inside. “These p-values can’t be right.” Her brows lowered as she read. “Point oh-three-two? How closely did you supervise him?”
“Very.”
Anne looked up at his cool tone. “I apologize if it seemed like I was questioning your integrity, sir, it’s just …” Her eyes strayed to the figures as she spoke. “Barring methodological flaws, the results indicate we can materially affect objects with our minds.”
“They don’t indicate, Annie,” he corrected her. “They prove it. Psychokinesis has been scientifically established.”
He tapped a pen on his desk while she read the
paper from the beginning. “It needs replication, refinement. It needs wider scope and narrower focus. It needs years of dedicated research by fully qualified people in a controlled, scientifically irreproachable facility. I don’t have the time.”
“You want me to be part of this?”
He sat forward, pointing the pen at her. “I want you to run it. The device used is the random event generator you designed. Be my project engineer.”
He passed her a sheet of paper. “This is the job description and starting salary.”
Annie’s name was at the top. The salary was in the first line.
She could buy a house.
4:30pm - Scening
* * *
Mike Merisi had just pushed his cock balls deep into Cal Derricksen’s well-lubed ass when the sound of hundreds of combat-booted feet marching in unison came from his cell phone.
The ringtone he’d assigned to his boss, Detective Lieutenant Hunter Dane.
Mike and Cal, the construction site manager he was presently tormenting with a slight and subtle pistoning of his dick, had been sex partners and friends for almost four years. They were exclusive to one another, but both very independent men.
They saw each other twice a week. On Wednesdays when Mike stopped by Cal’s office when his secretary was at lunch. And once on the weekend they’d meet at one of their apartments. They’d order in and suck each other off while they watched or ignored things on television. They talked and laughed and shared their lives on the weekend.
But Wednesdays were for this, the thing they both discovered they were when they discovered each other.
Cal had been pretty much a virgin when Mike finally worked up the nerve to come on to him. Cal wanted sex, but previous potential sexmates walked when they encountered “willy,” as Cal referred to his very small penis. Finally, Cal had given up the idea of sex, much less relationship.
Then Mike Merisi had come along and discovered treasure. Four years later, they each wanted the other as much, more, than on that very first day.
Now, Cal was on his desk, his legs jack-knifed over his body, spread by the ties around each ankle attached to his right and left desk drawer handles. One of the ties Mike had taken from his own neck, the other he’d removed from Cal.
Mike used his police handcuffs to manacle Cal’s wrists at the small of his back, and put a thick file of building code regulations under Cal’s sacrum to ease the pressure on his wrists. Then he’d stood back for a few moments drinking in the site while Cal panted and hardened under Mike’s appreciation of his helpless and, to Cal, somewhat humiliating position.
It was only somewhat because he still had his pants on.
Opening Cal’s belt, undoing his button, lowering his zipper, working his chinos over his tight round cheeks until his pretty little rosebud of an asshole was exposed, was one of Mike’s favorite things to do.
Cal always turned bright red. He always struggled. It always made Mike harder than a concrete pylon.
Mike had walked around the desk pulling Cal’s desk chair behind him while his sub followed his actions with wide, wary eyes. Mike positioned the chair in front of Cal’s gleaming ass cheeks, so he could sit comfortably while torturing him.
Knowing what he was in for, Cal had whimpered and struggled. But he tried to not move his ass while he did so, hating the idea of calling attention to the part of himself Mike had exposed. With only his bare bottom displayed while he was fully clothed, Cal felt more shamed and more naked than if Mike had stripped him completely.
Cal had been thankful, at least, that Mike had stopped before his true shame was exposed. But now that Mike had the chair, Cal knew complete mortification was inevitable. The thought made his willy swell and throb, and his tight ring pulse.
Cal knew Mike could see it. His cheeks clenched in a futile bid to hide himself.
Mike loved all things about sex with Cal Derriksen. He loved how he moaned and struggled and begged when Mike started to work his pants up further. He loved the rough groans of his degradation as Cal’s compact, darkening ballsac and his three-and-a-half inch erection popped into view.
Mike loved taking the whole, hot, succulent package into his mouth while Cal’s back bowed, his body writhed and he begged until he choked on his own words.
He best loved giving Cal what he wanted most: Mike’s fiery cock up his ass. Mike Merisi was a mid-twenties cop who kept himself in shape and benefitted in dark good looks from his Italian and Hispanic roots. But he was also a man of average height. And length.
But with Cal, Mike’s cock was a club that made a man gasp and moan when he rammed inside. And with Cal’s rigid stub nestled fully in his hand, Mike could bring him to howling tears and pitiful pleas for release. The thing they both loved.
But this time, just as the starting gate opened, Mike’s cell announced the imminent arrival of his marching orders.
Listening to every sound and word Cal uttered during sex was one of Mike’s major turn-ons. But Hunter Dane’s call gave him the opportunity for a new kind of torment. He picked up the phone with one hand and covered Cal’s mouth with the other.
“Make a sound while I take this call, and I’ll lay my belt across your tight little ass when I hang up.”
Cal’s eyes went to huge; they had never done that kind of punishment play. He wasn’t particularly into serious pain and he knew Mike always kept his promises. He looked fearfully down his body to the juncture of Dom and sub. Mike smiled, pulled his cock out to the rim and drove in. Cal’s mouth flew open and his head dropped back. He didn’t make a sound.
“Merisi.”
“You familiar with the stage services entrance at the Rocks?” Hunter Dane asked without preamble.
“Yeah, worked off-duty there one time.” Mike teased Cal’s balls and stroked his willy lightly while he fucked him.
“We’re going to lose the light soon; how fast can you come?”
Cal’s ass bounced up and down on the desk, looking for a tighter hold on his proud knob and deeper penetration of his greedy ring. It made his abs ripple and electric sparks zing from behind Mike’s balls to his cock and gut and spine and ass.
“I can come right now,” Mike answered truthfully, keeping his voice even. “Maybe twenty to your location? I’m in Lakewood.”
Cal’s mouth gaped, his tongue poking out to open his throat, to breathe quietly while his legs trembled and his hole clutched.
“Good.” Hunter hesitated. “Just so you aren’t caught with your pants down…”
“Sir?”
Mike made Cal feel his free hand slide around and grasp one sweet cheek. Cal’s head jerked up, and he shook it frantically from side to side. Mike showed Cal the cruel smirk he hated and craved. He tilted Cal’s hip up. Experience had taught him at this angle he’d stroke Cal’s prostate with every thrust.
Cal’s little rod gave a tiny spurt of anticipatory precum.
“You’re in charge of this scene, Merisi. In fact, when you get here, I’m off.”
Mike bent his knees slightly. Cal was shaking his head so hard, drops of saliva were flung from his mouth.
“Then I’ll be off in a minute, sir. … I appreciate the confidence. Is there anything I need to know, now?” Mike pulled out and eased in. Cal’s ass came off the desktop, the inrush of air to his lungs like a drowning man’s final gasp.
“No, I think it’s best you come to it fresh. See you in twenty.” The cell went dead, but Mike kept it to his ear.
“Yes, sir, what else?” he said to dead silence.
Mike grabbed Cal’s cheek more tightly and fucked him steadily. Cal was in a panic, tears running freely, legs kicking against the restraints, mouth stretched—his ass having mini-convulsions with every thrust and thump.
It pushed Mike to the edge.
He dropped the cell and tightened his fingers around Cal’s bright red shaft, his thumb kneading the tight, rippled, almost hard sac.
Mike stroke
d firmly, fucked furiously and slapped Cal’s ass very hard.
Cal screamed as he came. So did Mike Merisi.
He really liked Wednesdays.
DRIVING UP THE winding road to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Mike Merisi found himself wishing he’d had just a few more minutes with Cal. He hated to fuck and run, especially when he’d demanded so much of his submissive. When Mike caught his breath, he’d asked Cal if he was okay.
Cal had smiled and nodded. “You have to go.”
“I’ll have my phone close. This crime scene thing, it can be tedious. You call me if you want. If you feel, you know.”
Cal had nodded again. “I know.” A slow smile.
Mike returned it. “It was good?”
A bigger smile.
Mike and Cal knew they loved each other. They also knew the time they had together and the way they spent it was as much as they needed or wanted. But Mike had been intending to bring something up while they shared the lunch Cal always ordered-in for them. The lunch they hadn’t had time to eat.
Mike had been imagining an addition to their sex life lately—inviting another player on Wednesdays. Someone who’d ramp up Cal’s humiliation response just by being present. Someone who would take Mike, while he took Cal.
He’d been thinking about it since he met Camden Snow.
Merisi found the entrance to the stage parking lot, a narrow opening through a stand of trees planted to conceal the artist entrance. Scanning the small lot for Snow’s car, he only saw the tan privacy enclosure, Park Ranger vehicles, and the Lieutenant’s black Bronco. Otherwise, the lot was empty, as he expected since no shows were scheduled.
Hunter Dane excused himself to the ranger and met Merisi near his car.
“You made good time. I told you this is your scene, and it is, but it’s probably not going to be your case. The team meets in the morning. Ten. Be in at eight to brief me.”
“Yes, Sir.” Merisi had his notebook in hand already and jotted down the time.