“That’s easy.”
“I try to be easy.” His eyes finally opened as Simon snickered. “Wait, that sounded wrong. Sorry. See? Me no brain before daybreak.” Victor sighed. “I cannot fucking seem to get into a rhythm living here, though. Every fucking morning, I’m awake at like four a.m. and not really able to get back to sleep unless you’re with me. I cannot get a good night’s sleep. Weird. I slept like a damn rock at your place or when you’re here.”
“Well, it’s five fifty-two, so you slept in this morning.”
Victor flashed him a thumbs-up. “Yay. I’d say hot, humpy sex for the win, except we didn’t have sex last night. So must be your gorgeous ass being in bed with me that’s helping.”
Simon rolled over to face him. “You sure you’re a Dom? I didn’t know hot humpy sex was a Dom term.”
Victor’s smile could melt the sun. “Dom terms are whatever the Dom wants them to be, baby.” He yawned. “I could say I’m a kinder, gentler Dom, but that’d be a damn lie. I’m a sadist, but I’m not an asshole.”
Simon laughed. “Well, you guys do all go by the same code, then. I heard someone say that same thing at Venture that first Saturday night.”
“If you promise to stop talking and bring me coffee, I promise to send you to work well-fucked, milked dry, and with a load of my cum in your ass. Well, in the condom in your ass. Oh, hell, you know what the fuck I mean.”
“Oooh, Mr. Sweet-Talker.” Simon rolled on top of him, straddling him. “I guess if this lasts I’ll be the morning routine person, huh?”
“That’s a very safe bet, yes.” His hands rested on Simon’s hips. “I’m trying not to get either of our hopes up yet. You might hate my sadistic side. While I can spend time vanilla, sure, I do tend to get ornery if I can’t unleash that sadistic side of me every so often.”
“I was thinking about that.”
“Why are you still talking but do I not have coffee yet, baby?”
“I’m serious, Victor.”
Victor’s hands stilled from where they’d been stroking Simon’s thighs. “And?”
“Spend Friday and Saturday nights at my place. Let’s do more than just talk about playing this weekend. I know you need to work, but bring your implements and let’s…play. Plus I’ll make you breakfast on Saturday and Sunday and make sure I send you out the door on time and wide awake.”
Now Victor looked wide awake, his blue gaze piercing through Simon’s. “You sure?” The few nights they hadn’t spent together, Victor had slept like shit in his own bed.
“Yeah. Like you said, we need to sort this part out sooner rather than later so we don’t accidentally hurt each other in the bad ways.” He let his hands rest on Victor’s pecs. “And I’m really liking what we have so far. I don’t want to be unfair to you.”
“You said you couldn’t submit to Greg.”
“Yeah, and Greg was a douche there at the end. I don’t just love you, I trust you.”
* * * *
“If I promise to spend Friday and Saturday nights at your place will you please go make the fucking coffee?”
Simon leaned in for a kiss. “Yes, I’ll go make your coffee.”
“Thank you. And yes, I trust you, too.”
Simon climbed out of bed and Victor watched his bare ass as he walked down the hall and turned left toward the kitchen.
Yum.
He didn’t know if Simon could handle him at full Dom-speed, but he’d damn sure like to find out.
For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was with someone who wasn’t holding out on him. Was being honest with him.
Wasn’t ashamed to be with him or be seen with him.
And it felt good.
Maybe Simon was some sort of supernatural monster. A reverse vampire or something. It didn’t seem humanly possible for someone to be that awake and aware before caffeine infusions commenced.
As he lay there, he started to drift a little, and his eyes slowly slumped closed again.
That’s when he thought he caught a glimpse of something, a guy charging down the hall and into the spare bedroom.
His eyes snapped open and he sat up, heart pounding, not even realizing he was yelling until Simon appeared at the end of the hallway.
“Did you see him?” He practically fell out of bed as he ran down the hall and intercepted Simon in front of the second bedroom door.
“See who? You okay?”
“That…that guy! In the hallway! He ran into the spare bedroom!”
But the door was closed.
Simon stared at him before grabbing him by his upper arms. “Victor, you probably dozed off and it was a dream.”
“I swear I saw him!”
* * * *
Poor Victor looked terrified. The guy really wasn’t getting a good night’s sleep and Simon felt guilty that he was contributing to keeping him awake at nights.
“Look, see?” Simon reached out, opened the door, flipped on the light—
And a scream caught in his throat as, for a split second, he thought he saw a dead girl on the floor by the window.
But blinking made her disappear.
“What?” Victor looked around. “What?”
“Nothing. See? Nothing. My mind’s playing tricks on me.”
Simon realized he could see their reflection in the window through the open blinds, and pointed that out. “I haven’t had coffee yet, either.” He shuddered as he flicked off the light and nudged Victor out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Victor’s gaze narrowed. “You saw something. What’d you see?”
“Too many horror movies as a kid, that’s what I saw.”
“Simon—”
“I thought I saw a dead woman on the floor, but obviously there’s not one. Okay?”
“This is freaky.”
“Look, we haven’t had enough coffee to be playing Gay Ghost Hunters this early in the morning.” He reached out and grabbed Victor’s cock, knowing exactly how he could distract both of them. “Let me bring you coffee, and then I’ll go down on you and get you nice and hard, and then you can fuck me in the shower and do what you said you were going to do.”
Victor stared at him for a moment before he started laughing. “Jesus.” He rubbed his face with his hands and then pulled Simon in for a kiss. “This weekend I might end up falling asleep on you at this rate. You were right. No horror movies right before bed. That was a fucking mistake.”
“Exactly.”
He sent Victor back to the bedroom and stopped by the hall bath to take a leak.
It was just the movie, that was all.
That, and the fact that Victor had once mentioned he didn’t like the vibe in that room.
Still…
It didn’t explain how he’d been able to clearly see the woman—or girl, she’d been kind of tiny—why she’d looked so crystal clear, like she’d been beaten, and lying there with her eyes open and sightlessly gazing at him.
* * * *
After coffee and plenty of fluffing—and Victor getting Simon worked up to some Olympic-class begging to nut—they took their morning sex into the shower, where Victor was more than happy to lube up and fuck Simon silly while jacking his cock for him.
Victor was able to hold off until Simon came, then he plowed him hard, filling the condom and driving all thoughts of what they’d seen earlier out of his mind.
In fact, Victor didn’t even think about that until just before lunch, when he was sitting at his desk in his office with his laptop opened to their agency’s internal website. He pulled up the property listing for his apartment and studied it.
The current owner had inherited it from his parents just a few years earlier. Before that, that owner had owned it since it was built over thirty years earlier.
There was nothing of a mandatory disclosure nature in the file, either.
Hmm.
He went onto the county property appraiser’s website and researched there to see what the taxes were.
He wasn’t looking for a rental property yet, but the listed offer price noted in the file was a pretty attractive number, considering the location and the fact that it was an income-generating property. He could buy it and then rent it, fully furnished, as a seasonal vacation apartment, or an AirBnB.
For shits and giggles, he entered the address into Google and searched it.
That’s when his heart nearly stopped. His browser was filled with pictures of a teenaged girl, seventeen, who’d been beaten to death by her boyfriend over twenty years ago, said boyfriend who had then disappeared. His skeletal remains had recently been found in a local river a few months ago.
But what shriveled Victor’s balls and nearly made him puke was the picture of the boyfriend.
It was the man he’d seen in the hallway that morning.
He unplugged his laptop from the power cord and carried it into George’s office without knocking or seeing if he was on the phone.
Fortunately, he was neither with a client nor on the phone.
Victor held out his laptop. “What. The. Fuck?”
“What?”
“That fucking duplex you put me in to live? A girl was fucking murdered there! Why is that not in our disclosure info file?”
“What?”
He shoved his laptop at George, who took it and read it, his eyes widening in shock and horror. “Oh, holy fuck! I remember when this happened. Oh, my god, I had no idea that’s the house!”
“You had no idea?”
“No! The guy’s been a client for a few years now. We worked with his parents, too. Besides, Florida doesn’t require disclosure for deaths in a residential property, only for material defects. You know that.”
“Yeah? But why is it not in our file? Our internal files should always include shit like, oh, an infamous fucking homicide occurred there. I look like an asshole if I go to show a piece of property and someone’s Googled it and found a fricking crime scene. I can’t sell a property or mitigate PR damage when I don’t have all the info.”
“It should have been in the file, had he disclosed it to us.”
“No one checked it out?”
“No, because it’s not officially on the market, and he’s an existing client.” George looked sick to his stomach, though. “Update the file, please,” he said. “I’ll call him and rip him a new one. Son of a bitch.”
“Needless to say, I do not want to stay there any longer.”
“I never knew you to be squeamish.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve never seen a fricking ghost before, either. Me and Simon both saw some weird shit this morning. I saw this guy”—he shook the laptop—“and Simon saw the dead girl. I’ve always thought that second bedroom felt funny, and now I know why. He fucking killed her there.”
“I don’t have any other places I can move you into right now. We’re coming up on season soon. I can make a few calls, but we don’t handle short-terms usually.”
“Can I at least swap sides?”
“That’s the guy’s personal vacation home, so no.”
He slumped into a chair in front of George’s desk. “Swear to me you had no clue.”
“I swear!” He held up his hand and everything. “This is not how I do business. I hold our staff to a higher standard. And yes, I agree, that needs to be in the file, I told you. I’m sorry. I never would have put you there if I’d known. Or had I known, I would have told you first to give you a choice of staying there or not.”
Normally, Victor prided himself on being a pretty unflappable kind of guy. And he wasn’t even superstitious, much less religious.
But everyone had their Achilles’ heel.
Spiders, snakes, Friday the Thirteenth, bad Sy-Fy movies.
This was his.
He stood to return to his office.
“We okay?” George asked.
“Yeah, but I might need a couple of days off here shortly to move, if I can find a place.”
“Whatever you need.”
Victor returned to his office and plugged his laptop back in. He’d left his personal cell on his desk and realized he’d missed a text from Simon.
Hey, handsome.
He needed to talk to someone. He texted him back.
Can you talk?
Let me get back to my desk. I’ll call you in just a minute.
It was actually a little over a minute later when it rang. “Hey. What’s up?”
“We did see something this morning.” He told Simon what he’d found out. When he finished, Simon was so quiet Victor looked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “Simon?”
“Shit,” he whispered. “I remember that case. I was a kid when it happened. My older brother knew her from school. Holy fuck. He went to her funeral.”
“I’ve got to move. Today. I mean, I hate to blow my whole Dom rep, here, but yeah, I’m a weenie. I do not want to live in a place where someone met a violent, bloody end. If it was someone who’d died peacefully in their sleep, or a heart attack or something, that’s different. But…no. I can’t.”
“I don’t blame you. Wait…”
“What?”
“I have a crazy idea.”
“What?”
“I have the second bedroom. Move in with me. And before you shoot me down, I’ve got the garage that I never park in, because that’s a pain in the ass. Use it to store your extra stuff. I have four months left on my lease. Either it works out and we’re staying there for another year or looking for a place together, or it doesn’t and we part ways friends after having been roommates for a couple of months. Pay me rent, we’ll do a lease, everything.”
It wasn’t the worst idea.
And the thought of spending another night in the apartment…
Nope.
“Okay, on one condition.”
“What?”
“Can I please stay there starting tonight?”
“Is my big, bad Dom scared of ghosts?” But Simon’s tone sounded kind, and if Victor closed his eyes he could see Simon’s smile, the way his green eyes twinkled.
“Fuckin’ A, I am. That’s not just a hard limit, that is a you-will-get-your-nuts-punched-as-I-climb-over-your-ass-and-fucking-try-to-escape limit.”
“I should be home by five thirty. Come by any time after then. Or would you rather I meet you there so I can help move some stuff tonight?”
“That one. Please?”
“No problem. I’ll meet you at your place at five thirty, then.”
“Thanks.”
Victor was ending the call when someone knocked on his open door. He looked up to see Lara standing there, looking concerned. “Okay, why do you look freaked out and George is ripping someone a new one over the phone? I’ve never heard him do that before.”
He motioned for her to come in and close the door behind her, then he opened his laptop, logged in again, and turned it around so she could see the search results.
“That’s what he’s chewing the guy out over.”
Her gaze narrowed, then widened as she gasped. “Oh, my god! I remember hearing about that. I was real little, but when I was growing up, it was like an urban legend bigger kids would use to scare littler kids. That the guy would show up and get you. Where is this?”
“My apartment. Where I am currently living.”
Her eyes widened even more. “Oh, fuck,” she whispered.
“Yeah. Simon said I can move in with him. Starting tonight.”
“Well, in a pinch, we can put you up at our place. Or I’m sure Ev and Wy would let you stay there for a while, if you need to.”
“Simon’s going to come by tonight and help me move a few things.” He slumped back in his chair. “My Dom cred is probably shot now.”
She returned the laptop. “Nope. That’d freak me the hell out, too. Wait a minute…” She took the laptop back and looked at something. “Oh…shit!”
“What?”
Now she looked positively horrified. She turned the computer so he could see it. The girl on the sc
reen was the dead girl’s twin sister, a picture of her at a gymnastics competition.
“Her!”
“What?”
“That’s June, June Jarette, Scrye’s wife!” She dropped her voice to a hiss. “From Venture! She’s the dead girl’s twin sister!”
Chapter Twelve
Stunned, Victor stared across the desk at Lara. “Are you sure?”
“Right here. ‘The victim was discovered by her twin sister, June Corden, and June’s boyfriend, Mark Jarette.’ Scrye’s real name is Mark.”
Victor had lived a relatively charmed life. Yes, people close to him had died, but he’d never lost anyone to violence.
And he’d never lost anyone so young.
A shudder washed through him. “I’m thinking I shouldn’t mention this to them,” he slowly said.
Lara arched an eyebrow at him. “Gee, ya think?” She winced. “Sorry. This is…freaky.”
“Even more reason for me to move out.”
“Look, I’ll call Brad. I think he’s available this afternoon, and I’m sure I can get Wylie’s help. We can get you completely moved tonight. We’ve got a trailer.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“I really appreciate it.”
“Listen, why don’t you head out and start packing. Get some boxes and stuff.”
“I really don’t want to be alone there now.” He felt silly for even thinking it, much less admitting it aloud to someone.
“Would you rather be there tonight after dark?”
He took his laptop back and closed it. “You know, I think I’m going to head out of here, go get some boxes, go home, and start packing. That way I’ll be ready when everyone gets there tonight.”
Lara smirked. “Wise choice, domly dude.”
* * * *
Actually, Brad showed up at the duplex about twenty minutes after Victor arrived. By the time Simon, Lara, and Wylie joined them, they had everything packed in boxes or garbage bags, and were already starting the loading process.
“You sure this will all fit in your garage?” Victor asked Simon. “I can get another storage unit, if I need to.” The one he had was crammed full already.
Rub Me Raw [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations ManLove) Page 9