He was saved from having to send out a tow truck when the guy on the other end said, “Oh, the driver’s coming now. Sorry I bothered you.”
“No problem.” Lawrence added, “You moron,” only after he’d disconnected the call. “That guy calls every night but I can’t drop him as a customer. I get pretty good business from him. Say…this looks like a cop approaching your vehicle.” He slowed the footage and we watched. He enlarged the quarter screen profile. At first the face was hard to see but there was no mistaking it.
It was my goddamn brother. In a cop’s uniform. He looked shifty as all hell as he stuck a slim jim down the passenger window and opened the door. He was inside my car for at least three minutes. He got out again, closed and locked the door, then walked to the rear of the car.
“He was going to retrieve the other tracking device,” I murmured. Just as Jackson crouched down, a patrol car pulled into the lot and I saw my brother rise, turn, and quickly exit the lot.
“Somebody you know?” Lawrence asked.
“My brother.”
“Want me to burn a copy of this for you?”
“Please. I’d appreciate it.” I was trying to put all this together. My ex bought the trackers, and got my long lost brother to stick them on my car. Why? How did they know each other?
“This is the brother who’s in the hospital?” Erik asked me as we waited for Lawrence to do his thing.
I nodded. I was suddenly exhausted. Beyond exhausted. Lawrence handed me the CD. “Sorry I didn’t notice him doing it,” he said, “But you can’t win ’em all.”
Erik and I walked out. The Porsche that had been following me earlier was out front of the police station, dangling from a tow truck. Lawrence followed us out. He walked over to the driver. Erik and I joined them.
“Where was it?” I asked.
The tow truck driver looked down at us from the cabin of his truck. “Near that house where they found the chained, caged guy. LAPD asked me to bring it here to process for prints and trace evidence.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Erik said to me. “You go home. You’ve had a hell of a rough night.”
“Thanks,” I said. I gave him and Lawrence a wave and got into my car. I drove near sixty all the way home.
§ § § §
At the door of my house, Ludo was waiting for me. “Mom’s still awake,” he said, kissing me gently. “She wants to talk. But I want to make love to you and feed you and then we can talk.”
“In that order?” I asked.
He blinked. “Of course.” He dragged me across the threshold, his mouth glued to mine as he closed and triple-locked the door.
“Oh you two and your hanky-panky,” my mom said from the hallway as Ludo pushed me into the bedroom.
He closed and locked that door, too.
“Don’t be long,” she hollered.
Chapter Four
“Puppy,” Ludo said the moment we were barricaded in the bedroom, “take off all your clothes.”
I would have protested except that one word unleashed a host of emotions in me I’d never known to exist before I found this man. Puppy. It had begun as a cute reference to his wolf or dog persona…but it became a signal when he was in this mood that he was the master dog, I was the pup, and I was completely at his mercy. When dog and pup played the games were never short and usually happened when my mom was asleep, or engrossed in a movie, not waiting to talk to us.
He paced the room now, waiting for me to obey. Obey I did and he was pleased to see I was hard, my eager cock springing upward as he reached out a lazy hand to stroke me.
“Good puppy,” he said. “Get on the bed. All fours.”
Dang.
I ran. He was taking his clothes off as I settled on the sheets, on my knees and elbows, my ass raised to the air. I was surprised when he unlocked our toy cupboard. No. We didn’t have time for this. I guess he felt otherwise because he came over to the side of the bed, leaned over me and snapped the thick leather collar to my neck. He’d surprised me the first time he presented me with the collar, which had four gold rings around it. Sometimes he used the rings to pull me to him, other times he leashed me to him—or to the bed posts.
His favorite thing was to handcuff me to the bed and spend hours licking and fucking me. Man…nobody had ever put so much time and effort into thinking about how to drive me crazy. He knew things about me I didn’t know.
With the collar on, my submission to his will was now complete. I could feel his luscious, huge cock at my arm and I turned my head to look at it.
Badly needing to suck him, I glanced up and found him nodding. He let out a low grunt as I swallowed his cock head and began to take more and more of him into my mouth. He leaned one knee on the bed to give me better access. I scooted around, kneeling in front of him. He ran his fingers around the collar, then right under it. Considering the bait thing going on, this was an especially heightened moment for us. But I knew two things in that moment. Ludo was reminding me he’d never hurt me; he was making sure the collar wasn’t too snug.
The other thing was that he was trying to tell me nothing between us had changed. Our increasing sexual bond was as deep as ever. Whatever was going on around us had nothing to do with us. That’s why he’d chosen this game. We might be having a family crisis but we came first.
I loved him more deeply in that moment than I’d ever thought it possible to love another human being.
He moaned as I sucked him deeply into my mouth. He gently fucked my face, his hands brushing back the hair from my eyes, running his fingers along my mouth and chin.
“Good boy,” he whispered. He let me enjoy myself a minute longer, then moved away again. I grabbed his ball sac with pursed lips. I knew he loved for me to suck it, but he had an agenda. He couldn’t give in. He pushed my face away.
“All fours, puppy.”
Once again, I did as I was told.
He got behind me on the bed and ran his slick cock up and down my ass crack. It felt so good. I wriggled around to get him in me, but he wasn’t ready for immersion…yet. He pulled me right to the edge of the bed so that my feet dangled off it. He crouched on the floor behind me, his mouth zeroing right in on my asshole. He sucked and licked me instantly, his hands caressing my cheeks. I could feel the muscles in his arms and shoulders against the soles of my feet.
It felt unbelievable to know that his whole body was working to bring me pleasure. He kept sucking me, trying to drive his tongue into me. When he pushed me down onto the bed and mounted me, I bit off a scream. It felt like heaven and hell.
“Fuck your cock, puppy,” he commanded. He knelt stock still behind me, making me work my ass up and down his massive shaft. As soon as he was in me all the way, he covered my body with his, grabbing one of the gold rings on the collar and pulling my head up. I turned my face so he could kiss me. I couldn’t move my body in this position but he soon arched up again.
I worked my ass muscles on his marauding cock. He waited for me to get what I wanted. I angled up toward him, his cock impaling me. Oh, God. I stopped, panting, the feverish pleasure which always spiked through me in this position.
The wolf and his mate, fucking.
I began to push back and forth, harder, faster. I could hear the gold rings slapping against the leather. He held on to my hips now. I could feel his excitement building. I came so hard, I bit my tongue. He came deeply inside me, whispering, “Yes, puppy, good puppy,” as he filled me with his juices.
He wrapped his arm around me, his free hand moving under me to reach my cock. He knew exactly how to tug on me to coax even more pleasure into my spasm-racked body. He began to rock me in his arms, his cock still deep inside me. I’d never experienced anything so primal as I did with him…it was almost like coming again.
When he finally released me, I almost wept when he took his cock away, but he kissed me as he stroked my ass then undid the collar.
“I love you, Cavan,” he said, loudly. He put the toy away and I
lay on my back on the bed. Both of us were still hard. He smiled down at me, then sat beside me, stroking my body, his fingers gently strumming my shaft.
“Cavan, I’m sorry I got mad about the steaks,” he said. He looked woebegone.
“I know you are.” I struggled to rise but I did, finding his arms waiting for me. He kissed me deeply.
“Now for the second part of my promise,” he said against my lips. “Food for my favorite puppy in the whole wide world.”
We dressed quickly and went into the living room. I hugged my mom and sat beside her on the sofa as Ludo went into the kitchen. My whole body was still on fire with need for him. I could still feel his fingers, cock and tongue on me, in me… God I wanted him.
“What are you watching?” I asked her.
“My Big Redneck Vacation.” She was now obsessed with the craziest reality shows. I wasn’t sure which was worse. Her former banana sticker craze or her unhealthy lust for the seamier side of humanity. Actually, the segments of shows she picked out for me were always funny, for a moment. They made her engage more with me and Ludo, whereas before, she used to mutter to the bananas.
“Look at this.” She picked up the remote. “This family of rednecks is vacationing in the Hamptons.” I watched as a rather large family fished from a small boat in the middle of the ocean. They all stared as a man on a paddleboard hovered into view.
“Holy shit, what’s that?” one of the men asked.
Nobody seemed to know.
“I thought that was Jesus for a moment there,” the man went on. Mom and I laughed. It sure broke the tension.
She clicked off the remote and reached for my hand.
“I’m sorry I gave him money. Dina is beyond upset, but I had to do it—”
“Mom, I don’t care about the money. It’s yours—”
Ludo came into the living room. “Are we eating here or the dining room?”
“Here,” Mom and I said in unison.
“Dining room,” he said. Once again he was in charge.
Mom and I grinned at one another. We helped her up. With our assistance she could walk into the dining room with tiny steps. Ludo was like a drill sergeant, monitoring her daily physical therapy sessions. She loved walking to dinner and sitting with us. It was always a special occasion for the three of us. Ludo was a master chef and always made the table look very pretty with flowers picked from the garden. He had a real thing about Sunday family dinners, apparently sacrosanct in his native Argentina.
It beat the days I’d eat a banana over the kitchen sink.
I was ecstatic to see that he’d whipped up a batch of locro, his hearty Argentine stew. Maybe he’d defrosted it because I knew his method took hours…ah…no. He’d made some for Mom. He would have made sure she had plenty.
For a moment I savored the mere eroticism of looking into my own cast-iron bowl filled with golden cubes of chicken, chopped chorizo, fresh corn, pumpkin, zucchini, bread. The smell was incredible. Then I realized I’d struck gold. I spotted my first nugget: a dollop of potato pudding that I knew would be stuffed with meat and pumpkin puree. I caught it up with my spoon and put it into my mouth.
I saw my lover’s dazzling smile just as I closed my eyes to relish the explosion of flavors. My mom was moaning as she ate hers. I opened my eyes, scanning the table. Ah…a loaf of his homemade bread and the target of my investigation…a bowl of quiquirimichi, his own blend of hot sauce that we drizzled on the top of the locro.
“This is my third bowl tonight,” Mom said. “The quiquirimichi is extra good.” She smacked her lips together. “The red bell pepper from our garden makes all the difference.”
“Do you think so?” Ludo came alive with excitement. “Oh, good. I’m so pleased.”
Like I said before, he continues to amaze me with his bliss in the details of our everyday activities.
“Darling, the bread has caraway and pumpkin in it,” he told me. My bowl already had some but I’ve always lived by the rule that one can never have too much bread, especially if my lover is the one who baked it.
He fussed over us, pouring us each a glass of red wine. We finished our meals. I would have been happy with a few rounds of gin rummy with Mom and then a night of ass-pounding sex with Ludo.
Instead, he gathered the plates and took them into the kitchen. We returned to the living room with a refill of his excellent pinot noir, sufficiently buffered to discuss the unpleasantness of Jackson’s attack.
I told them about the bugs I’d found on my car and how Vince and Jackson had been behind it. I told them all about the things that had happened to Jackson.
“Were there nails hammered into his hands?” Ludo asked me.
“No. Only his er…sexual organs.”
I suddenly understood why he’d asked. Ludo had told me one night that werewolves could only be killed this way. It was a little known fact, he’d told me. He had explained that silver bullets were the fictional method, but that Sean Masterson had no idea about the nails.
He told me that it was also a myth that werewolves bit a human to turn them. Most weres killed their prey in a frenzy. He’d told me very early in our relationship that he could have turned Masterson into a were. He said he’d never caved into the man’s desires even though it would have spared himself a lot of pain but, he’d said to me, “Why would I do that? Why would I subject anyone to such a terrible curse?”
The thought filled me with a mixture of terror and worry that maybe Cornelius Teru didn’t know that nails driven into a were’s hands would kill them.
I glanced at Ludo, who was staring at me. There was something he was trying to say without words, but what?
The expression on his face was unreadable. I kept thinking as my mom tossed out questions about Jackson, none of which I was prepared to answer, such as where would Jackson go to recuperate? Neither of us—none of us—wanted him with us.
I didn’t think for one second that Cornelius didn’t know about hammering nails into a were’s hands to kill him. He knew it, but Jackson wasn’t a were…
Holy shit. I could read my lover’s mind now.
Cornelius had left my brother in a catatonic state so that we’d have to take care of him.
Or…
Ludo would have to kill him.
It was ingenious, really. It was obvious now that Vince must have known our secret and that Jackson must know, too. Maybe he’d thought he could beat the weres. He was strong enough and…egotistical enough. Maybe he’d been promised some powerful position in the cabal if he survived.
My brother enjoyed violence and inflicting pain. Maybe that was why he’d survived the brutal torture he’d endured. Some sick part of his makeup got off on it. Maybe he’d built up a tolerance to pain like some people do to alcohol or drugs.
I shook my head. If I distilled all these shocking thoughts it came down to this: Cornelius Teru wanted to make sure that Ludo never made it back to Argentina to swim across his lake to break his curse. He must have gone to great lengths to find Vince and convince him to participate in his elaborate game. How had he known about Jackson?
He’d obviously done extensive research on me.
I heaved out a sigh.
“Well,” my mom said, “what do we do with him if he survives?”
“We put him into a rehab center,” I said. “We’ve paid him off now, but I bet he blew through his money.” My thoughts raced. “I’m going to investigate that aspect, but in the meantime, we can wait and see how he does and, like I said, send him away somewhere. But he’s not coming here.”
Ludo leaned forward now, looking from me to Mom and back again.
“I think Mom needs to know the truth,” he said.
Holy shit. Was he kidding?
I shook my head over the top of hers as she turned to stare at him.
“What truth?” she was asking.
Ludo and I traded a war of glances. I was the cop in the family. I had to take control. He could not announce he was a werewolf. My
mom just couldn’t handle it…not that she’d believe it. And did I want her to have irrefutable evidence?
“Vincent will probably try to kill me,” I said.
Her head snapped back to me. “No. I think he’s become obsessed with you. After all, you’re happy without him and I don’t think he expected that.” She shifted in her wheelchair. “I’ve been thinking about this. Your brother told me he was starting a business. We need to find out what kind. He told me it involved security and he said something about needing to hire strong men.”
Ludo’s gaze bored into mine. Not security…strong men. To fight weres.
Fuerte.
Oh, God. Had my brother been recruiting men to take on the cabal?
“There’s another thing,” she said. “If they’ve been following you and watching you they’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill you. I know you’re adorable, my darling, but I think the person they’re after is…Ludo.” She reached for his hand and he took it immediately. “I think they want to hurt you and I can’t let them do that.” She shook her head. “I won’t let them do that.”
Dear Mom. A cop is a cop, whether they still carry a badge and gun or not.
“I’m licensed to carry,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “Cavan, get me my gun.”
My mom had been a crack shot in her day and, frankly, I didn’t think I’d be able to talk her into staying with my sister for a few days or letting me send her to a resort spa somewhere, so maybe having a gun in her possession was a good idea.
It surprised me that Ludo knew exactly where she kept her Glock but he brought it to her from its hidden depths in the curio cabinet that held her favorite and most valuable banana labels. She opened the wooden box containing the weapon and immediately began cleaning it.
“You need to investigate your brother’s company,” Mom said, not even looking up at me.
“I will.” I blew out a breath. I’d also promised Sergeant Veo that I’d give him some names.
“First I need some rest.” I gazed at my watch. It was just after one o’clock and I needed to be at the station at seven.
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