Park’s arms immediately came up around him and pulled their mouths together, one hand fisting into Cooper’s hair, the other cupping his ass and pulling him firmly closer and closer until Cooper had to break away with a gasp.
Without pause, the hand in his hair tilted his head back and Park just continued kissing across his jaw, behind his ear for a toe-curling moment, and then down his throat. Cooper shoved his hands between their bodies and fumbled Park’s belt off and his pants open just enough to yank everything down his thighs, freeing his cock.
When Cooper grasped it, hot and hard in his hand, Park bit down on the flesh between his neck and shoulder, groaning. Cooper only stroked him once, twice, before shoving Park away firmly. Pants caught halfway down his legs, Park toppled backward and landed with an oomph on the couch, blindfold still in place.
“You should bend your knees,” Cooper teased.
“After you,” Park countered, and Cooper complied, lowering himself to the floor at Park’s feet and immediately burying his face between his legs.
He nuzzled the base of Park’s cock, inhaling the comfortingly familiar scent, then gently began to mouth his balls. Park shuddered, and both of his hands came down on Cooper’s head, petting his hair, reverently at first, then gripping tight when Cooper made his way up and started to suck Park’s dick instead.
Cooper let it happen for a bit, working him farther and farther down his throat with Park’s encouragement. But when his hips started to twitch, Cooper pulled off. A reluctant little sigh-turned-whimper escaped Park’s mouth, and Cooper smiled. It was funny how such a simple sound could make him feel almost decadently desirable.
He stood, quickly shucking his clothes and rescuing the lube from his pants pocket. He tossed it underhand at the couch and felt a flicker of adrenaline when Park caught it in the air without sight.
“Blindfolded with one hand behind your back,” Cooper said, voice rough. “So how come I felt two tugging my hair and choking me on your cock?”
Maybe super-hearing was contagious, because he was positive he could detect Park’s eyebrow quirk beneath the silky black cloth. “If this is how you fight, I think we need to have a talk.”
“This is how I win,” Cooper said, straddling Park’s lap comfortably. He grabbed Park’s right wrist and pinned it to the back of the couch, by his shoulder. “Now, you’re going to stay right here while I open myself up. And when I’m ready, I’m going to ride you.” He brushed his thumb over Park’s lips lovingly. “I’m going to use your fat, pretty cock like my own personal toy, okay?”
Park nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes,” he said, passing Cooper the lube.
Cooper reached back and began to prepare himself with one hand, the other keeping Park’s wrist trapped. Park pressed his face against Cooper’s chest, just breathing deeply at first, but soon his free hand crept to Cooper’s waist, then from his waist to his ass, massaging the flesh there and inching toward where Cooper was stretching himself. There he traced the rim, and Cooper felt Park shudder beneath him. He began to nip and suck sloppily at Cooper’s chest, murmuring something into the skin.
When Cooper was ready, he kissed the top of Park’s head. “Scooch,” he said, repositioning them so that he could guide Park’s dick between his cheeks, just teasing them both like that for a moment before fitting the head to his hole and working himself down gradually, whimpering a bit at the stretch he hadn’t felt since they’d fucked goodbye last week in the airport parking lot.
When Cooper was finally fully seated, Park let out a desperate, primitive groan but didn’t move his hands. They both sat still for a moment, adjusting to the sweep of raw emotion that came from cohabiting, briefly, partially, a single body.
Cooper pressed his lips to Park’s. It didn’t have the finesse of a kiss so much as it was breathing together, panting into each other’s mouths. When he finally began to move, rolling his hips, his own dick brushed maddeningly against Park’s shirt, wilted with the humidity of their sex-hot bodies. Cooper fumbled at the buttons and yanked it down to his elbows, trapping Park’s arms at his sides.
The sight of him restricted by his clothes sloppily pushed to the side, blindfolded and sitting low on the couch, and the way he felt distractingly large inside Cooper with every circle of his hips made soft pleasure sharpen into a different need. Cooper began to ride him properly, with intent.
“God, you feel so good,” he gasped, bouncing in Park’s lap. “So deep.”
Park dug his head back against the couch cushions and whined, clearly struggling to keep still. “Cooper, my Cooper...” he groaned, mouth slack with pleasure.
Needing to see him, Cooper pulled the blindfold down without warning so that it hung around Park’s neck, and was momentarily taken aback by Park’s eyes, glowing gold and inhuman. Obviously startled too, Park stared at him for a millisecond before blinking hard, and suddenly his eyes were the same amaretto brown they usually were.
“Sorry,” he murmured quickly, but Cooper shook his head.
“It’s fine. Don’t be.” They’d stopped moving and just sort of sat there, in danger of losing the moment, despite the fact that Cooper was still stuffed full of Park. How strange to be tied together in the most physically intimate and vulnerable way and still be hiding parts of your body, your self.
“Can you...you can change them back. If you want,” Cooper said. “If that’s more comfortable for you.”
Park studied him cautiously, and Cooper was almost sure he wouldn’t do it. He had just enough time to feel disappointed and then wonder why he was disappointed when Park’s eyes changed again. This time without blinking, so Cooper could watch them brighten and expand, obliterating the whites, like clouds over the moon.
Cooper’s heart rate felt loud in his ears. He reached up slowly to cup Park’s face, thumb brushing the softest skin just below his dark bottom lashes. This close, his eyes looked a bit like gold flakes exploding out of a darker cloud of bronze that lined the pupil.
“How are you so beautiful,” he whispered, and tentatively rolled his hips.
Park’s eyes fluttered and he abruptly growled, ripping out of his tangled shirt with a flash of claws. Free, he grasped Cooper’s ass firmly, holding him in place on his dick as he stood. Cooper gasped and clung to Park’s back as he was picked up and turned around before being eased down on the couch. Flat on his back, legs bent and spread with Park positioned between them, pressing his thighs back, Cooper grabbed the blindfold hanging loose around Park’s neck.
“God, Oliver,” Cooper groaned, pulling gently but insistently on the black silk around Park’s neck. “Please.”
“Say it,” Park growled. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”
Cooper gathered the blindfold in his fist until it sat snug on Park’s throat. Like this, it couldn’t possibly choke him, but it did give Cooper a sort of makeshift collar to tug on. Which he did. “Fuck me. I want you to fuck me.”
“How do you want me to fuck you?
“Hard,” Cooper begged. “So hard I can’t move tomorrow without remembering who—who I belong to.”
Park snarled, pulled back, then slammed into Cooper. At this position it felt impossibly deep, and a prickle of tears appeared as Cooper’s heart launched up into his throat. Not pain, exactly, but surprise and that bone-deep ache of being completely and utterly taken.
He was just able to focus on catching his breath when Park thrust into him again and again, setting a demanding pace that Cooper urged on, guiding him, pulling him deeper, closer with one hand and grasping his own dick with the other, stroking himself frantically.
“Whose ass is this?” Park demanded. “Tell me who owns your slutty little hole?”
“Yours, yours,” Cooper said. He started to moan, approaching the edge now, punctuated by gasps and the slap of flesh on flesh. Cooper registered distantly that Park was staring down at his face intently, pu
pils so blown that all that remained was gold rings.
Gold rings.
Cooper was sure that any other time he’d think connecting Park’s friggin’ eyes to wedding rings embarrassingly trite, nonsensical sentiment he’d rather die than repeat. But right now—on the edge of orgasm, system going haywire—it seemed like the most poignant, poetic miracle in the universe.
Cooper laughed as he came, overflowing with feeling. Pleasure and joy.
He felt Park stiffen and jerk his own orgasm deeply within, making a broken sound, before collapsing heavily on top of him, forcing Cooper’s legs farther apart in a way that would have been uncomfortable if he had been capable of noticing anything but banked satisfaction. They drifted for one or many moments before Park pulled out and rearranged them on the couch, rolling Cooper over to rest facedown on Park’s chest, lulled by his heartbeat. Soon Cooper’s body would protest with all the dismay and outrage of middle age. But for now, all the happy sex hormones, and quite possibly shock at the audacity of it all, kept his bones relatively silent.
Park’s hand stroked lazily up and down his spine. He was just resigning himself to sleeping on the couch when Park spoke, his chest rumbling beneath Cooper.
“I know we like to laugh during sex, but cackling as you come is a new one,” he said mildly.
“Mmm. I was struck by something poetic. Blame my muse.”
“Does your muse get to hear the poetry?”
Cooper smiled, but wasn’t quite willing to expose his rambling, sex-brain thoughts, which, as predicted, seemed entirely absurd now. Park couldn’t even wear rings because of the shifting.
So Cooper just pressed a lazy kiss to his chest and dodged the question with some improv. “Oh, Oliver.” Another kiss to his collarbone. “You turn up my thermometer. Mmmm, it’s true I’m no philosopher, but I think therefore I am, in love with you, my Oliver.”
Park sighed. “To think I inspired such fine art. What a legacy I’ll leave.”
Cooper’s mouth moved, but he was so tired even he wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say and he was half asleep when Park spoke again. “Do you want your prize?”
“Hmmm?” Cooper asked, forcing his eyes back open with significant effort.
“The thing in my pocket. Do you want to see it?”
Park halfheartedly reached in the direction of his pants, abandoned on the floor somewhere, but Cooper caught his arm and pulled it toward his face instead. He kissed the inside of Park’s wrist gently, then dragged his teeth up his forearm and placed another soft, ticklish kiss to the crook of his elbow.
“I got what I came for.” He snorted with his eyes closed. “Came for, heh.” His face landed heavily back on Park’s chest. “Your surrender is all the reward I need.”
“It’s true. I did surrender,” Park murmured, sounding soft and even a little surprised. “I surrender everything to you, heart and soul.”
Cooper hoped he said something nice back before he drifted off completely, but couldn’t be sure. With Park, sometimes it was hard to tell what was real life and what was just a really lovely dream.
Chapter Six
Show business didn’t take a day off for death, and neither did whatever sort of business involved coaxing a titi monkey with a bit of fruit into perching on the exact right branch while three camera crewmen, four supervising zoo employees, and about twelve other people with unclear purposes stood around calling out unhelpful suggestions.
Sophie wasn’t working today, no reptiles on the docket, but she had told Cooper that Wild Nature Conservation would be filming inside the Amazonia exhibit, a brick building with an odd medley of fish, frogs, snakes and monkeys that could be found by the Amazon River. Most of the building was very dark to better highlight the tanks and who was inside them. But in one section, the monkeys were free to swing about the mini “jungle” in natural morning light, apparently free of noticeable confinement. Cooper had to pause just inside the space to let his eyes adjust to the brightness.
“That curator Ryan wasn’t exaggerating when he said people liked to hang around the sets,” Park murmured.
“No, and I can’t imagine that helps keep the animals calm and cooperative,” Cooper said, watching the puffy little brown monkey flee farther into the trees.
“Is it a bit strange they’re filming today?” Park asked. “James’s blood still being filtered out of the sea lion pool down the road and all that.”
“I got the impression from Sophie that they’re running hugely behind schedule. There’s some kind of screening at the gala tonight, and they were supposed to launch a lot more content as a follow-up to that. But it’s going poorly and Hirano is under a lot of pressure from all the people she’s persuaded to invest in this.”
Hirano was there today, among the crowd watching. Cooper also recognized the curator Ryan and—close to the barrier to keep zoo patrons from walking directly under the monkeys, looking every inch a nervy personal assistant with his coffee and touchpad balanced in his hands—Neil. Or J.T. Armstrong, as his cover story claimed.
“I was thinking we could get lunch in town after this,” Park said, interrupting his thoughts. “Since we didn’t get to go last night. That Cajun place you like is nearby. Maybe we could walk there. Talk.”
“Mmm, sure. That sounds good,” Cooper said, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Park. “Why are you so determined to eat out all of a sudden? I said I’d go shopping if you made me a list.”
Park appeared very focused on the various people still trying to tempt the monkey back into the spotlight. “I will. I just missed you this week. I want to spend time with you.”
Cooper raised an eyebrow.
“I want to spend some non-naked, non-working time with you as well.”
“All right, lunch out it is. But straight back to naked work after.”
“If you wish,” Park said, still watching the crowd, but he looked unaccountably pleased. A small, satisfied smile curling the corners of his lips as he rocked onto the balls of his feet and bounced a little.
Speaking of work. “We should talk to the Cranes separately, don’t you think?” Cooper asked.
“Yes. That’s Genevieve Crane,” Park said, drawing Cooper’s attention to the woman standing beside Neil, studying a piece of paper.
She was white, anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five, nearly as tall as Cooper, and very pretty, though he couldn’t quite point to why exactly. She had flat brown hair and flat brown eyes and she didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, though that perception was definitely just due to his own ignorance, because a second woman with buzzed, peroxide-blond hair and an enormous fanny pack could clearly be seen dabbing at Genevieve’s face with various-size brushes. Both of them looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t really place why.
“Are you sure?” Cooper asked. “Is she...” He trailed off suggestively, curious to know if she was a werewolf, but not wanting to risk being overheard.
Park huffed a laugh. “I can’t tell yet if she’s...” he teased. “There’s definitely traces of a wolf in here, but there’s too many people and unfamiliar animal scents to track who it belongs to or how fresh it is.”
“Then how do you know?”
Park shrugged. “I recognize her from Labyrinth of Love.”
“You’ve seen her show?” Cooper asked, surprised.
“Oh, yeah. More than once. Years ago. She had a minor role. The little town of Crete had to deal with a new monster every week. They never did werewolves, which was disappointing, but there was a siren named Sebastian on season five that, ooof.” Park blew out a long breath. “Let’s just say he could wreck my ship any day.”
Cooper laughed, astonished. “Oliver Park, I’m literally speechless.”
Park shrugged. “It was a very fun show.” He hesitated. “I was a bit...at a loss when I first left teaching and joined the Trust. I wen
t from a large pack to being alone. From colleagues who were interested in the work I was doing, to... Well, you see how it is. Cola has been good to me, but it’s not likely I’m ever going to be close with anyone else there, is it? Not with my past.”
Cooper felt a surge of defensive anger. He shifted to stand closer and subtly press his shoulder to Park’s.
“It’s not a big deal,” Park said quickly, though he did lean back into Cooper. “And it’s all worked out for the best now, of course. But there was a time in the beginning there, when the dramatics of Mikey the Minotaur and his best friends at Crete High were very...comforting.”
“Just when I think I’ve plumbed the last of your hidden depths, you reveal something like this.”
“Ask nicely and I’ll let you plumb my depths tonight, while we watch season five of Labyrinth.”
“You’re in a good mood,” Cooper noted.
Park cocked his head. “I am. I have a feeling this is going to be a very good day. I had an excellent night and an excellent part two this morning,” he added, looking pointedly at Cooper, who felt himself flush. “I have a couple possible promising avenues of investigation on this case, lunch plans this afternoon with the love of my life, and if I’m very, very lucky later”—he subtly dragged his finger up the back of Cooper’s thigh—”I might just get Genevieve Crane to give me that siren’s number.”
Cooper cut off a burst of laughter as Hirano approached, and he and Park took casual steps away from each other. “Back again? I’m guessing not for a third tour,” she said with some bite. Looked like she was well aware of who they really were now. Inevitable, after they had secured the scene yesterday.
“We’re here to speak to Arthur and Genevieve Crane,” Park said smoothly. “Is Mr. Crane here?”
“He’s around somewhere. Talk all you want to him—in fact, I’d appreciate you keeping him out of my hair—but I need Genevieve shooting with no distractions. We’ve already had too many upsets this morning. Everyone working yesterday was called in for questioning this morning leaving us with the B-team. A substitute makeup artist she isn’t used to and a substitute film crew unused to her. Thanks very much to your boss, that Cola woman,” Hirano said sarcastically.
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