by Aiden Bates
"I don't know about too pretentious," Ray teased. He kissed his omega and then stood beside them so Pete Nolan-Morris could get a picture of the three of them.
The whole family was here tonight. All three Kerry children were here, happy as could be for their guardian. Larry still looked uncomfortable in such a crowd, but he'd braved it for his son's sake. The other guys from Cold Case were there, as was Robles' omega Ryan. Chris Maggio was there, too, still glowing with pride from Doug's acknowledgement.
Doug and Ray stayed for a little while, but Dom was up past his bedtime and they needed to get him home. The facility was walking distance from their house, so they simply carried the little boy home and left the celebration behind.
They tucked Dom into bed and then retreated to their room to change out of their suits. The newness of the room had worn off, although it was still a beautiful space. Ray struggled out of his jacket. "You know, I think your dad might have been willing to bring Dom back, if you'd wanted to stay."
Doug had already ditched his jacket and trousers. Now he shucked his dress shirt, taking care to put away his cufflinks. "I didn't. I mean don't get me wrong, I enjoyed myself while we were there, but it was a kind of intense day and I was ready to be done with it." He met Ray's eyes and peeled off his boxers.
The surgical scar on his lower abdomen was still there. It would always be there, a reminder of how close they'd come to disaster. Ray traced the line of it with one finger, making Doug's cock twitch. "You looked amazing up there, you know. All of those people were watching, thinking, 'Who's the lucky alpha who gets to go home to that?'"
Ray walked over to the door and locked it, just in case. "I'm the lucky alpha that gets to go home with that," he purred. "Get up on the bed. You've been working hard, getting ready for today. You going to let me take care of you?"
"Yes, Alpha." Doug scurried onto the bed, almost as if the floor was lava. He knelt down in the middle of the bed and rested back on his feet, just like he knew Ray liked.
Of course, he knew that the words "Yes, Alpha" could drive Ray just about insane too, so maybe Doug had a plan here.
Ray finished disrobing. "I think that you liked all of the attention tonight."
"No." Doug shook his head. "I only care about one kind of attention. I mean yeah I want attention for the Center, I want it to do well, but I only want one kind of attention."
Ray slid into place behind his omega. Their bodies felt so good like this, slotted together. His big legs bracketed Doug's so that Ray's body was pressed into Doug's back. Ray put his hands on Doug's thighs and listed for the little hitch in his mate's breathing before he moved them at all.
It sometimes amazed Ray that the smallest touches could excite his omega so much. Just dragging his hands up Doug's thighs, over his sharp hipbones and up his torso, had Doug leaning back and throwing his head back, baring his neck to Ray. He never tried to hide himself from Ray. On the contrary, he wanted everything to be seen and accessible. He was Ray's, and he wanted to make that perfectly clear over and over again.
Ray's hands slid up to Doug's nipples. Maybe Doug hadn't planned to stay at the opening for the whole night. Maybe he'd always planned on a more private, intimate opening. He'd put in larger, more decorative nipple rings than he usually bothered with. These were rings that invited teasing, playing, exploring. Ray couldn't help himself, and Doug definitely didn't seem to mind. His happy little sighs were music to Ray's ears.
Ray couldn't stop himself from rocking a little bit, grinding his hard cock against Doug's heated skin. It was all the foreplay he needed for himself right now. Some days he wanted more. Some days even this would be too much. Right now, it was exactly what he wanted, just that little bit of friction.
When Doug rocked back into him, he decided that it was time. He urged Doug down onto his elbows, presenting his ass just perfectly for him. Then he grabbed the lube and slicked up his fingers.
Doug keened as Ray's fingers breeched him. Ray liked to do this. He loved to watch as his omega's body prepared to receive him. He loved to cloak himself in the scent of cotton candy and sex. He loved to taste the sweat on his omega's back as his heat grew to nearly unbearable levels.
And he absolutely lived for that first moment of penetration, the tight heat of his omega's body. Doug's body seemed to form up around him, like it wanted to keep him there forever. He held himself still for as long as he could, and then Doug told him to move.
He kept things slow and sensual tonight. Part of him, that little alpha lurking in the back of his mind, nagged him to take, take, take. Doug would enjoy that, so there wasn't anything technically wrong with it, but it wasn't what Doug really needed. Drawing things out, making things slow and tender and almost tantalizing, gave Doug something to focus on. His mind was usually still spinning on a few different levels after an event like this, and Ray could give him a chance to really bring it all back in and enjoy himself if he played it just right.
And he did. Doug responded beautifully to Ray's cues. He let Ray thrust in and out at a pace that could have been called lazy if it didn't clearly have a purpose. It gave Ray more of an opportunity to drag across that little bundle of nerves deep inside of him, the one that had him crying out.
Doug came first, like a huge wave crashing over an empty beach. Ray followed soon after, and they lay together for a little while after. Then they washed up, because there was no telling when they might be summoned to the bedside of a small terror with big green eyes.
The next morning, Ray found Larry in the kitchen making the coffee and reading the newspaper on his tablet. "Where's Dougie?" the older man asked.
"Sleeping in. It's been a long week for him."
Larry chuckled. "I'll bet. I'm thinking of calling up a photographer.'
"Oh?" Ray walked over to his father in law. "Why?"
Larry scrolled up. There, on the front page of the Globe, was a picture of Ray, Doug, and Dominic. Pete Nolan-Morris had taken the picture for an article about the Prism Center. "Would you look at that? 'Doug Morrison, Attorney and Philanthropist, with Alpha and Hero Ray Langer and Their Son Dominic.' Isn't that the cutest thing you've ever seen?"
"It is." Ray smiled. "I'll give Pete a call." He'd hang the picture up, he decided, right in the living room, complete with the caption.
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Preview Chapter: Father Figure
Oliver checked himself out in the mirror. The new haircut was a good one. It showed off the slight waves to his hair instead of fighting them. His shirt emphasized his narrow waist and his slender body, while the print brought out the best in his eyes and his skin tone. He looked good, damn it.
Then he threw his hairbrush down. What the hell was the point of any of this? He looked good. Fantastic. The well-cut shirt, which hadn't been cheap, would be hidden under a lab coat for the day. The hair could be well cut, or it could be bowl cut, or it could be shaved. No one was going to see it. No one who mattered anyway.
What good was working with a bunch of alphas if the one he wanted wouldn't even look at him?
He stripped off the pretty shirt and replaced it with something cheaper. The nice shirt was wasted on Detective Nenci, and he didn't give even half a crap if a table full of lab samples thought he had a nice ass or not.
He raced toward the door and barely remembered to grab his lunch on his way out. He didn't want to forget that; he hated to leave the lab once he got into a rhythm, and things had a way of building up enough that he found it difficult to leave.
He unlocked his bike from the rack in the parking garage and wheeled it out to the fresh air. He could drive to work. He did that if the weather was bad, or if he had a lot of stuff to bring back and forth. He would generally rather get out and enjoy a little bit of fresh air and exercise, and restrict the amount of pollution he dumped into the air if he could. He only lived a twenty-minute ride away from the lab, for crying out loud.
The air was beautiful at this time of year. It hadn't gotten to be too hot yet,
and all of the flowers that he passed gave off amazing scents that helped to ease his mood on his way in to work. Okay, so Nenci wasn't interested. He'd had time to get used to it. He could just avoid him, right? He loved his job, and the guys that he worked with were fun and respectful. Maybe it wasn't the kind of sunshine and roses life he'd imagined when he was a young teen, but he helped people every day and he could feel pretty darned good about that.
He waved to Rebecca, the lab's receptionist, on his way in. His workstation looked deceptively calm as he approached. There were no brightly colored sticky notes on his monitor, at least. That counted for a lot. Three huge file folders had been dropped into his inbox already, but that didn't mean a whole lot. Each file was a case. He might have a lot of analysis for each case, or he might have to run one DNA sample. There was no way to know.
He settled in, stowed his helmet and his lunch, and logged into his computer. Most of his emails were pretty bland and boring. He got the usual round of agency emails, to include the one that went around in mid-June or so every year reminding people about uniforms and standards of professional dress. Someone in Human Resources had taken to sending around weekly examples of Staties "doing good," in response to the recent dirty cop scandal. Oliver deleted that; he knew that they were doing good, just by doing their jobs. He didn't need to be pepped up.
Then he started to dig into the nitty gritty. The dirty patrolmen, and the dirty folks in Organized Crime, weren't the only scandal facing the State Troopers. The Crime Lab had its own issues. Oliver had those scandals and issues to thank for putting him in the position he was—a senior analyst, at only twenty-five. That wasn't too shabby at all. Unfortunately, that good fortune meant a lot of extra work. The Crime Lab had been forced to let a lot of people go very suddenly when they'd found out about some of what had been going on. And all of that extra work got a lot more scrutiny than it would have only a few short years ago.
He opened his first real message. This one was from Ryan Tran in Abused Persons. He wanted an analysis of injuries reported from one particular neighborhood in Springfield. He could build the program to do the statistical analysis, that wasn't a problem, but he needed data to run the program from. Was that something that Oliver could get for him?
Oliver tapped his pen against his teeth for a moment. He could get some of the information without a problem. Of course, so could Ryan. Teachers, principals, and school nurses were all mandated reporters. Sergeant Tran was a smart guy, and he'd have already thought of that. He needed something more.
Oliver accessed data from local hospitals. He couldn't see specific patient data; that would be illegal. It would be up to Sgt. Tran to go out to Springfield and talk to people, which was why he was a senior detective and Oliver was a technical analyst. If Oliver had to guess, Tran was working on something involving human trafficking; he did a lot of work with human trafficking. Well, good luck to him.
The next email came from Ray Langer. Oliver knew perfectly well which case Langer was working on. He had a thirty-year-old case involving a murdered child. Everyone knew that he had the Reyes case. He was in the news at least once a week, thanks to the Reyes case. Any word on that rope, Oliver?
Oliver sighed and scanned down the rest of his messages. The results should have come from the machine overnight, but they hadn't. Sorry, Detective Langer. The machine is still processing the data. The good news is that there's something to process. You'll be the first one to know.
That wouldn't make Langer all that happy, but out of all of the alphas on the Cold Case Squad he was the most reasonable to deal with. Oliver made a note to revisit that and make sure that the machine was still processing that request, and hadn't malfunctioned, and moved on to the next request.
"Hey." Wheels spun as Oliver's nearest neighbor slid his chair around the cube wall and into Oliver's space. "You got any plans this weekend?"
It would have been easy for Jake and Oliver to compete. They were both good at what they did, and as omegas they both had something to prove. What was more, they both had something to prove to the same man. The main difference, and what kept them from being at daggers drawn with one another, was that Oliver was trying to prove something to the only man he would ever want for his alpha.
And Jake was trying to prove something to his father.
"Nah." Oliver looked up from his computer. "I figured I'd come in here and get caught up on some stuff. You?"
"Nothing too serious. I figured maybe I'd go into Cambridge and hit a club or two. You want to come with?" Jake lifted his eyebrows and smiled in invitation.
Oliver squirmed. He'd never been into the club scene. They were all about pickups and hookups, and he didn't want that. "Thanks, but I've got a lot on my plate here."
"Hmm. Yeah, I know those guys over in Cold Case are running you kind of ragged. But you know, you're never going to find someone if you let them use you like that. Come out with me tomorrow night. You can come and pick me up at my place." Jake dropped his voice, so no one else could hear them. "I'm pretty sure my dad will be home."
Oliver's cheeks blazed. "Jake!"
Jake clapped his hands and laughed. "Oh, man. You should see your face. You look like carbon monoxide poisoning, dude."
Oliver glowered. "That's not a good thing!"
Jake toned down his response just enough. "Oliver, man, I'm mostly messing with you, but come on, you have to know that it's a great opportunity to let him see you out of the lab coat."
Oliver slumped in his chair. "You're joking, right?" He shook his head. "It's been years, Jake. If he wanted to see me out of the lab coat, he would have by now."
"Okay, so come out and meet someone who isn't literally old enough to be your father." Jake rolled his eyes. "Trust me, it's a life changing experience."
Oliver straightened up. "Some other time. I have this rope thing for Langer, and then once I've got that done you know he's going to want to run a test on the DNA under her fingernails. There's the room reconstruction, too. Plus, Robles is working on the kid they found in the Blue Hills, and Tessaro's got that forty-year-old shooting and someone needs to identify the remains for him."
Jake jabbed him in the arm. "You mean the good folks at NAMus?" He shook his head and scooted back toward his own space. "Look, buddy. The only way to know for sure that you can't have him is by not trying, okay? You know that. You have to know that. If you want to spend the rest of your life knowing that you didn't even reach out for what you wanted, then be my guest."
Oliver huffed out a bitter little laugh. "Yeah, okay. I'm sure he'd be all over an omega just strutting up to him and saying, 'Hey, baby, my place or yours?'" He checked his messages. "He's pretty old fashioned."
"Maybe he'll be so bowled over by your good looks and charm that he'll forget that he thinks fire is an innovation." Jake chuckled and retreated entirely to his own workspace.
Oliver got up from his desk. He was the go-to analyst for the Cold Case Squad, but they weren't his only constituents. He had a load of soil samples to run for an arson investigation up in Haverhill and six rape kits to run, just as part of the overall project to get the backlog down. He didn't have the time to sit around and moon over Detective Nenci.
He soon lost himself in the rhythm of the work. Lab work was precise. It required his full attention, all of the time. He needed to know exactly what he was doing. The soil samples came in unlined, clean paint cans. He heated the cans and used a charcoal plug for the vapors, and then he heated the plug to inject the vapors into the chromatogram.
He did this for six samples taken from the scene of the crime. Oliver could do this all day, but the process only took a short time. He'd worked on a lot of arson cases when he first started, and he'd interned at the fire marshal's office during his undergraduate days. He could run these tests in his sleep, and he could even interpret them before coffee.
He collected the results and brought them back to his desk to examine them. From the looks of things, the heaviest concentration of
the accelerant used—kerosene, contaminated by what looked like evaporated wood oils—was found in a spot near the front of the house. A small concentration of kerosene was found near where the front door would have been. Samples that had contained wood, labeled as having been from the second floor, showed that the kerosene had been splashed liberally upstairs too.
He wrote up his report and sent it to the detective in Haverhill. If he wanted to talk about Oliver's findings, he would be available. Until then, Oliver had rape kits to work on.
Once Oliver had gotten that depressing task out of the way, he started work on projects for the Cold Case crew. He checked on the rope in Langer's case, and found that the machine had finally finished analyzing the sample provided. He set it to working on the DNA from under the girl's fingernails and wrote up a report for the detective, but he knew that Langer wouldn't read it. He put a hard copy into a file folder and put it into his out box so he could walk it over later on.