Nine-tenths of the Law

by L. A. Witt

  Nathan nodded, staring into his drink. “No kidding. But then, he is a persistent son of a bitch.” He looked at me. “Did you tell him about us?”

  I smirked. “Absolutely.”

  His eyes widened, looking more horrified than amused. “Are you serious?”

  My smile fell. I shrugged. “You’re damn right I told him about us. Why should we hide it from him?”

  He pursed his lips, then nodded. “Point taken. So, what did he say?”

  “He was not happy about it,” I said.

  At that, Nathan grinned. “Really? Do tell.”

  “He couldn’t believe we had the nerve to see each other,” I said. “Christ, as if he’s justified in being pissed about anything we do, let alone together.”

  Nathan snorted and shook his head. “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?”

  “He really is.”

  “So when did he come by?”

  I shrugged. “This afternoon. Maybe around two or so.”

  Nathan ran a hand through his hair and nodded. “Explains a lot.”

  “Oh?”

  “Saw his number on my caller ID earlier,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I’d deleted his name from my phone list, but recognized the number.”

  “Did he leave a message?”

  “No. He never was one to-” He paused. “I guess you know how he is, don’t you?”

  I nodded. Jake hated voicemail. Always had. He didn’t even like sending text messages, which could be annoying as hell when I was too busy to talk but we needed to plan something. I wondered, then, if that was part of his method of covering his tracks. Keeping Nathan or me from stumbling across an incriminating message.

  I sipped my drink, then laughed. “I can only imagine what he’ll say if he gets a hold of you.”

  Nathan chuckled. “Probably ask me the same thing he asked you. How dare I find something in common with you besides him?”

  “Just tell him you and he have similar taste in men,” I said with a flippant shrug. “That’s what I told him.”

  With a cough of startled laughter, Nathan sat up. “You didn’t.”

  “I did.” I grinned. “Oh, you should have seen the look on his face. Especially when he asked where I get off seeing his ex-boyfriend, and I said I get off pretty much anywhere I see you.”

  Nathan laughed again, shaking his head. “Wow, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.”

  I leaned forward and rested my folded hands on the table between us, slightly closer to him than to myself. “If you’d been there,” I said, “I don’t think I’d have been able to come up with quite so many witty comebacks.”

  “Is that so?” He put one hand over mine, running his thumb across the inside of my wrist.

  “Yes,” I said. “Though I would have been thinking of a few ways we could royally piss him off, but…” I let my thumb trace the side of his hand. “That wouldn’t be why I was thinking those things.”

  His shoulders rose slightly as he leaned a little closer to me and his fingertips brushed the back of my hand. “So I’d be distracting you, then?”

  “You always distract me.” Especially when you touch me like that. Or look at me like that. Or breathe. I swallowed. “From everything.”

  He grinned. “Well, if I’m distracting you from everything else…” A single finger ran down the side of my wrist. “Then I guess that means that when I get you home…” The tip of his tongue made a slow arc across the inside of his lower lip. “…I’ll have your undivided attention, won’t I?”

  I shivered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Did you drive?” Nathan asked as we stepped out of the restaurant.

  “Nope. Walked.”

  He ran his fingers up my back. “Well, then, I guess you’re riding with me.”

  I grinned. “That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

  “God, I hope so,” he said, almost growling. “Come on, I’m about three blocks that way.” He nodded down the sidewalk, and we started off in that direction.

  “I should have parked closer,” he said after we’d gone half a block or so.

  “And paid fifteen bucks at one of these pay lots?” I gestured at the lots behind us. “Are you insane?”

  He shrugged and grinned at me. “Would’ve been worth it to save some time.”

  “We can handle a few minutes to walk three blocks, I think.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself.

  “Speak for yourself.” He laughed.

  “We’ve been waiting almost a week.” One long, long week. “What’s a few more minutes?”

  “What’s a few minutes?” He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close enough to whisper, without anyone else hearing, “With as turned on as I am right now? Fucking torture.”

  I couldn’t think of a response. I couldn’t think of anything, really, besides the vibration of his low, growling voice against the side of my neck. If he was as desperate as he sounded-as desperate as I was-we’d be lucky to get through tonight without catching fire.

  We continued on in silence, walking quickly. If I still gave a damn about appearing as desperate as I was, I’d have tried to slow our pace to a casual stroll. A cool, I’m in complete control speed.

  Fortunately, I didn’t still give a damn, and just did everything I could to keep up with him.

  From almost a block away, his car came into view. We were almost there. Just a little father, then another twenty minutes or so, and we were home free. Almost there.

  Nathan’s fingertips ran down the back of my arm, and suddenly the car was much too far away.

  A narrow alley between a pair of red brick apartment buildings, however, was not.

  Without stopping to care if this was a good idea or not, I hauled him into the alley with me and leaned against the wall, pulling him into a kiss. I may have caught him by surprise, but he recovered quickly, returning my kiss without hesitation as his hands went to my face, my neck, my hair. His cock pressed against mine, and even through our jeans, it was nearly enough to drive me out of my mind.

  “We should’ve just skipped dinner,” he said, panting against my lips. “Should’ve…” Paused to kiss me. “Met at my place and…” Another kiss. “Christ, Zach.” Holding my face in both hands, he looked into my eyes. “I can’t go this long without fucking you.” Then he kissed me again, and I was thankful for both the wall and his body, because they were all that kept me from collapsing.

  His lips went to my neck, and I let my head fall back against the wall.

  “My God,” he said, kissing his way up my neck. “I want you so fucking bad right now.” As soon as his hand left the side of my face, I knew what he was going to do, but I still gasped when he cupped my erection through my jeans.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d had in mind when I dragged him into this alley. Maybe just a few minutes of fooling around to relieve some tension, maybe just a chance to wind each other up a bit more before we went to the car. Maybe I hadn’t thought this through at all because all I knew was how badly I needed to have him, regardless of where we were.

  Either way, one thing was perfectly clear now. We weren’t going anywhere. Fooling around under the cover of darkness in a shadowy alley usually wasn’t my style, but no one could see us. And even if they could, I didn’t care, because Nathan’s fingers had found my zipper pull, and we weren’t. Going. Anywhere.

  He stroked my cock slowly. His mouth was close enough to kiss, but all I could do was breathe. Even that was almost too complicated when I was this close to the release I so desperately needed. When I was this close to him.

  “You know,” he said, stroking a little faster. “If we’d just gone to the car, we’d be halfway home by now.”

  “But I wouldn’t be-” My voice caught and I sucked in a breath.

  “You wouldn’t be what?” he teased, though the slightest hint of a tremor gave away his façade of being totally in control. “Come on, Zach, tell me.�
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  I tried to hold his gaze, but even the faint light from the nearby street was too intense. Closing my eyes, I whispered, “We’d be halfway home, but I wouldn’t be halfway there.”

  “Oh, God…” He released a ragged breath, his hand faltering momentarily. The space in front of me suddenly became vacant-no, occupied, but differently-and just as I figured out that he’d moved, his mouth was around my cock.

  My eyes flew open and I stared down at him in the darkness, watching in disbelief. What little light there was created a vague outline of him, a half-lit suggestion of shapes I knew well enough to fill in with my mind’s eye.

  Resting my head against the wall, I closed my eyes again and dug my teeth into my second knuckle, trying to keep myself quiet. My other hand was in his hair, every nod of his head against my palm making this real, making the electric sensations of his mouth on my cock real. I wanted to beg him not to stop, but my one remaining shred of rational thought warned me against speaking at all because I wouldn’t stop.

  A barely audible whimper escaped my throat and I didn’t have to wonder if Nathan heard it. He sucked my cock faster, stroked harder, sent me higher, higher, higher…

  My hand hit the brick wall beside me just as my back arched away from it. I wasn’t afraid of crying out, not when this powerful orgasm rendered breathing impossible. It was only when it tapered, bringing me back to Earth one heartbeat at a time, that I finally managed a whispered, “Oh, God…”

  Nathan stood and kissed me. I grasped his shirt, the back of his neck, his hair, anything I could get my hands on as long as it got me closer to him. The taste of myself on his tongue intoxicated me, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to taste him.

  With one hand still in his hair, my other drifted down to his shoulder, then his side until I found his belt. He shivered as I followed his belt to the buckle, but then his body tensed and he grabbed my wrist, holding it gently, but just firmly enough to keep my hand away from his zipper. “I think,” he said, pausing to kiss me, “that you overestimate my ability to stay quiet.”

  “And you…” I kissed him and tried to free my wrist from his grasp, “overestimate my ability to leave here without making you come.”

  His lips parted. Even in the low light, I could make out the look of disbelief in his eyes.

  He released my wrist.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dylan and I leaned against the box office, watching one mob of customers exit Auditorium Three while another funneled into Two. We’d had a problem with theatre hoppers recently and were determined to bust them.

  “This is why we shouldn’t schedule them so fucking close together,” Dylan grumbled.

  “If we add any more time between them, we’ll have to reduce showings.” I watched a couple of teenagers come out of the auditorium. They paused, eyes darting back and forth as they talked behind their hands.

  One of them looked right at me, and I swore he blanched. I raised one eyebrow, and the kid elbowed his friend, then half-dragged him toward the exit. I watched them until they were gone, trying not to laugh when the kid shot me a nervous glance just before they disappeared outside. That’s right, you little bastards. I’m onto you.

  “Zach, are you listening to me?”

  I turned to Dylan. “Sorry, I was giving some kids the evil eye. What’s up?”

  He gave a sharp, impatient huff. “What I was saying,” he said, “was that we might want to consider staggering showings by fifteen or twenty more minutes.”

  “We’ve been over this,” I said. “That adds up. We’ll end up cutting showings and having employees on the clock longer for the fewer showings. I’d rather lose a few dollars to these little shits than increase payroll and lose showings.”

  “Okay, fair enough, but-” Dylan suddenly stiffened. “Hoppers.”

  I craned my neck. “Where?”

  “Kid in the red T-shirt and the one in the Yankees cap,” he said. “Just came out of Three and are going into Two.”

  “All yours,” I said.

  “Thieving little bastards,” he muttered, and shouldered his way into the sea of people to throw the theatre hoppers out. I cursed under my breath and shook my head. We didn’t exactly show films that appealed to high school students, so I wondered if they just did this to get their kicks. I could certainly think of more entertaining things to do than sitting through a two-hour foreign film just for the thirty-second thrill of sneaking into another two-hour foreign film for free, but what did I know?

  Either that or they just liked indulging in the somewhat less stringent restrictions on full-frontal nudity and sexual content in films from other countries. That thought made me chuckle to myself. I couldn’t blame them entirely. Some of those scenes were well worth sitting through two hours of subtitles.

  Shaking my head, I started toward the office to finish some paperwork so I could leave on time and meet Nathan.

  “Hey, boss,” a voice behind me said.

  I turned around to see Max striding toward me. The door to the projector-room stairwell banged shut behind him and I barely kept myself from groaning. No, no, don’t say it. Don’t. Not today. Please-

  He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Projector’s down again.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered. He didn’t need to explain any further. Without a word-aside from the long, colorful tirade in my mind-I followed him upstairs. Fortunately, there were no more showings in Auditorium One that day, but it still needed to be fixed. We’d be relying heavily on it the next day. And my blood pressure so needs this today.

  Before I went to work on it, I glanced at the clock above the window. It was almost five. I was supposed to meet Nathan at seven, so I had plenty of time.

  By five thirty, the damned thing still wasn’t working.

  Around five forty-five, I found a component that was as defective as it was antiquated. Since the Stone and Bronze Ages were long since over, the parts were discontinued, so I hoped to God that someone in the area had a few spares lying around. It took a half hour of calling around to other theatres in the area, but a buddy of mine on the other side of town used the same kind of projector and had a pretty good cache of parts. I sent Dean across town to get the parts.

  So much for meeting Nathan on time. I scowled and speed-dialed him.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said.

  “I have to bail tonight,” I said, glaring at the piece-of-shit machine that was going to be replaced soon if I had to pay for the new one in blood. “I’ve got a projector down and there’s no way I can leave until it’s running again.”

  He was quiet for a second, then said, “Any idea how late you’ll be there?”

  “Not a clue.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m waiting on some parts, and God only knows if it’ll be enough to get it working before the next millennium.”

  The silence lingered a moment longer this time. “Well, if you still want to come by, give me a call when you’re done.” He paused. “I’ll be up late, so, whenever.”

  “I’ll call you when this thing is fixed or thrown out the window, whichever comes first.”

  “Talk to you then.” He didn’t sound amused, but I couldn’t blame him. I’d just thrown a wrench in his plans for the evening.

  I’ll make it up to you, Nathan, I promise, I thought after we’d hung up.

  Almost two hours after Dean left, he finally came meandering in with the parts-and some fast food.

  “Sorry, boss,” he said. “Got stuck in traffic.”

  “At the drive-through?” I growled.

  He looked a little sheepish, but not nearly repentant enough to satisfy me. Still, I didn’t have time to deal with it tonight.

  “Go eat,” I snapped. “Then I need you and Max both in the projector room.” I held up the bag of parts. “If these don’t do the trick, we’re going to have to move the projector, and I need the two of you to help me.”

  “Will do.”

  The parts, unfortunately, did not do the trick.


  “Max, go find Dean,” I said. “We’re switching One and Two.”

  “But what about all the showings in Two tomorrow?”

  I glared at him. “Dylan and I can figure that out. Go. Get. Dean.” He did as I asked and hurried out of the room as I unfastened the bolts on the base of the projector.

  With three people, switching the projectors didn’t take too long. We tested the working machine and made sure the film was in focus on the screen, then bolted both projectors in place.

  And we were done.

  Finally.

  I let out a breath. Tomorrow would be spent trying to get the projector back up and running, but disaster was averted for the time being. The main auditorium had a functioning projector. The showings in the smaller auditoriums could be bumped around if needed. We’d manage.

  Looking up at the clock, I scowled. It was almost eleven. I hesitated to call Nathan so late, but he said he’d be up. It might be too late to get together with him, but at least I could talk to him, if only for a few minutes.

  I reached for my phone, but it wasn’t on my belt.

  “What the-” I looked around, trying to remember where I’d left it. “Max, have you seen my cell?”

  “I think you left it in your office,” he said. “When you were calling around earlier.”

  The light came on in my head. He was exactly right. “Thanks.” At least you’re good for something.

  Just as he’d predicted, my phone was on my desk. There were two missed calls and a couple of text messages, all from Nathan. I couldn’t blame him. When I said I was working late, I don’t think either of us expected me to be working this late.

  I speed-dialed him.

  “Hey.” He sounded tired.

  “Hey, I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

  “No, I was awake,” he said, his tone flat.

  “Okay, good. Listen, I just wrapped things up here. Still have a few things to do before I leave, but I thought I’d at least call.”