Victor J. Banis

by Deadly Nightshade

  Now, here was Tom offering him this present. It was already unwrapped, too, under the sheet. So why did he suddenly feel so reluctant? He was reasonably sure that he was about as old as Tom was, or close enough, but the situation had skewed their ages. He felt like a bawdy old queen, about to seduce a not-altogether-bright young boy. The truth was, in the present situation, he felt far less desire for Tom’s cock than he had felt before it was made available for his taking.

  On the other hand, he hadn’t altogether lost his desire, either. Not so much, he decided, that he was willing to pass up what would almost certainly be his only opportunity.

  Oh, hell. He sighed . Here comes bawdy old queen. He managed what he hoped was an eager expression, like at the birthday party, came to the bed to sit on the edge, and reached a hand under the covers, tentatively, in case Tom changed his mind at this late juncture and decided to object. It had been known to happen. In that case, you weren’t just the seducer, but the perpetrator of an unsuccessful molestation, forever branded as a naughty queen trying to get into an innocent hetero’s pants. Probably every queen in the world had been led down that garden path a time or two, to their undying embarrassment—and resentment.

  “A nurse has to think of her patient’s welfare,” he said, watching Tom’s face with a careful eye.

  Tom’s eyes were closed. He said nothing, only took in a deep breath. Stanley slid the sheet back. An enormous erection bobbed into view—a thick shaft, a battering ram head, swollen until it was red-purple with blood.

  “Jesus, I never handled anything that big,” Stanley said without thinking, awestruck.

  “I can’t do anything about that,” Tom said, a little peevishly but not altogether displeased, either. “It’s the only one I’ve got. You don’t have to, you know…” He reached for the sheet. Stanley slapped his hand away.

  “Sacrifice, sacrifice,” he said, and leaned over to take it in his mouth, glad to discover it tasted as good as it look. “One thing, though—when you pass my heart, be gentle.” He heard Tom draw in his breath sharply.

  “The thing is,” Tom said, “I won’t come.”

  “Just to spoil my fun? Or you think you’re still too weak?”

  “No, it’s just, I can’t.”

  “You’re impotent, or what?”

  “Not that. No, I mean, I can come all right, fucking.”

  “I’m a top,” Stanley said. “I don’t take it that way.” He looked up, still holding Tom’s dick in his hand.

  “Well, I guess if you insisted. Seeing it’s you, I mean. Partners, and all that stuff.”

  “That wasn’t what I was angling for. I never fucked a guy. I mean fucking a woman. I can come every time. All I’m saying is, I just can’t come with a blow job. I never have been able to, even with a woman.”

  “Okay, so you can’t come having your dick sucked. So what?”

  “What do you mean, so what?”

  “I mean, it feels good anyway, doesn’t it, having your dick sucked? Why don’t you just let yourself enjoy what’s happening, and forget about what may or may not come later—so to speak.”

  “Yeah, but sooner or later you’re going to want me to shoot off in your mouth, and I’m just telling you…”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, why don’t you lie back and shut up and let me do this? I’m the cocksucker, if you’ll recall.” He took a firmer hold of Tom’s dick, put his mouth on it, took it all the way down his throat, and began to suck heartily.

  Tom sniffed. “Okay. But I’m just telling you, it won’t come.”

  Without breaking his rhythm, Stanley reached up with his free hand and shoved hard at Tom’s chest. Tom fell back against the pillow, but he raised his head almost immediately to watch.

  Jesus, he wondered, amazed, where did the guy put it all, nine and a half inches and it just vanished down his throat, to the hilt.

  Well, sure, of course he could suck dick. He was queer, wasn’t he? That’s what they did. Probably born sucking cock. He just hadn’t known they could do it like this. He’d had plenty of women chow down on the old banger, some of them he’d thought knew what they were doing well enough, but he had to admit, it had never felt like this. He remembered a woman telling him once that no man could eat pussy the way another woman could. It made a kind of sense, he guessed. So, maybe a guy knew how to suck dick in a way a woman couldn’t. Even so, though, a part of him wanted to object to this, wanted to continue to insist this was the wrong thing to be doing, having a guy down there working on him. Especially his partner in a homicide investigation.

  How could he object, though? His dick was so hard it was trembling, and his balls felt like they weighed a ton each…

  He came, so suddenly it caught him by surprise. One second he had closed his eyes, doing what Stanley had suggested, just giving himself up to the incredible sensations that Stanley’s mouth was creating—and the next second, the damn thing was going off like a cannon, like a fire hose, this geyser of hot come blasting out of it, into that sucking, hungry mouth.

  Stanley took it all, drank ever drop out of it until it had finally, it seemed an hour later, finished shooting, and still he squeezed on the shaft and ran his tongue over the head and licked the peehole until Tom pulled back from him, not out of distaste but because he couldn’t stand the sensations Stanley was creating, so intensely pleasurable that they became painful.

  Stanley looked up at him. He had a satisfied, unmistakably smug smile on his face.

  “Don’t say it,” Tom said.

  For an answer, Stanley burped loudly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Afterward, Stanley went into the kitchen and Tom took a long shower, stretching, occasionally feeling his dick as if it were something he had just discovered, like this was the first time he’d ever used it.

  He felt both good and bad. Bad about fooling around that way. Jesus, what had come over him? It wasn’t like Stanley had raped him or anything. Hell, he’d wanted it, had made up his mind when he was in the john, taking a piss, that he was horny, that he was in the mood for some head and he was going to let it happen.

  Besides, Stanley had taken care of him, hadn’t he, the night before, when he’d been so helpless? And he hadn’t tried to take advantage. If you looked at it that way, he owed him. And what was it going to cost him beyond getting his dick sucked?

  He felt good about the blow job, though. Much as he might want to, he couldn’t pretend about that. So, how could he hate queers and like having one suck his dick? It didn’t make any sense. Hell, there was only so much to a blow job, wasn’t there? To any kind of sex, if you were honest. I’ve got a pole, you’ve got a hole, that’s what it all came down to. So, somebody put it in their mouth and sucked on it. Just two lips, not much difference between lips, and there was the tongue and, well, that was it. It was just another kind of foreplay.

  He’d always done it as much for the woman’s pleasure as for his own. It generally got them turned on. One of the benefits of having a big one. Chicks got excited.

  So what had made it different with Stanley? Because, it had definitely been a number in itself, and not just a warm up. A random thought slipped furtively into his mind: what if it was Stanley that made it different?

  What if it was having Stanley doing it?

  He thought about that for a minute. They were partners. Even with a partner you disliked, you developed a kind of rapport, and he didn’t really dislike Stanley, not half as much as he put on. Really, when you got down to it, he’d kind of gotten to like Stanley, more than he cared to let Stanley know—it would only give him ideas if he knew. More ideas, anyway. Queer ideas.

  But, when he thought about it, he kind of liked, too, that he had made Stanley happy, done him a favor, so to speak. And, Stanley had saved his ass, hadn’t he, with the killer drag queen—even if he couldn’t get his gun out in time to do any good with it—again. What a pansy.

  But if it was having Stanley suck him that made it special, that would mean he
had a thing for Stanley, wouldn’t it? That would be queer. Getting your dick sucked wasn’t.

  Nah, he decided, turning off the shower and reaching for a towel, he was sure that wasn’t it. Really, it was just one of those things that happened. Like an accident. Yeah, that was it, it had been an accident. Like that chick had said a while back. It had just happened. In a way, it sort of didn’t count.

  He could hear Stanley banging pots and dishes around in the kitchen. Tom wrapped the big towel around his middle and followed the noises, pausing in the doorway, not sure how to handle things now that he was in the same room with Stanley, without a hard dick between them. The situation was always a little awkward.

  He’d had plenty of those “after it was over” bits with women, but he’d never been in one with a guy before.

  This was definitely different. With a woman, you just told her how great it had been, the best night of your life, blah, blah, blah. He was not about to tell Stanley how great it had been, and for sure, not that it had been the best night of his life.

  “I don’t think…” he said, and hesitated.

  Stanley turned from the stove and put a hand on his hips. “I already figured that out,” he said. He poured a cup of steaming coffee from the pot on the counter and handed it to him. “Want cream in that?” he asked.

  Tom had expected him to be all chipper, smiling and singing, pleased with himself over what he had gotten. He wasn’t though. He actually looked kind of surly, like it had been Tom who took advantage of him instead of the other way around.

  “Not yours,” Tom said with a laugh, meaning to lighten things up a bit. He took a sip. “This’ll do fine.”

  Stanley didn’t laugh, though. He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “Bacon and eggs on their way,” he said.

  “I’m a coffee and doughnuts guy.” Tom looked around like he thought he might find the doughnuts waiting for his notice. Like, whatever he wished for…

  “Bacon and eggs.” Stanley said, turning the sizzling bacon in the skillet. He still sounded sore about something.

  “Are you pissed?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Stanley said without looking, not sounding like he meant it. “Are you?”

  Tom had to think about that for a minute. He ought to be, he guessed. He wanted to be, actually. But he wasn’t. Hell, the bacon smelled good. There was something to be said for having someone fussing over you.

  When was the last time a woman had pampered him? With them, it was always wham, bam, thank you ma’am. He wasn’t a hang-around-afterward kind of guy.

  “No,” he said.

  “That took you long enough.”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “Now that you mention it, I am. Sore, I mean.”

  “That was quite a flip-flop.”

  “I had to think about it,” Tom said. “Look, Stan…”

  “Stanley.”

  “Stanley sounds fruity.”

  “I am fruity, in case you hadn’t noticed. I sucked your dick. You’re a cop, right? Sucking dick is generally considered evidence of fruity.”

  “Look, Stan, about that…” he stammered, his face turning red. “Look, it was okay, what you did.”

  “Okay? Most guys think I do it pretty nicely. I have even heard fantastic.”

  “And I kind of asked for it, but, well, let’s just forget it happened, okay? I mean, it isn’t going to happen again. It was, well, I was weak. I was still a little drugged out, I guess.”

  “I guess,” Stanley agreed. Stanley’s voice was definitely frosty now.

  “So, then…”

  “Look,” Stanley said, brandishing a spatula like he wanted to bang Tom on the head with it, “Let’s just leave it like that, okay? Let’s say I raped you—”

  “You didn’t, though. Hell, I was the one with a big boner showing… that was an accident, like, I didn’t do it deliberately, or anything, I just…”

  Stanley ignored the interruption. “—But the bottom line is still, you’re straight and you don’t do that sort of thing and you’re embarrassed now, and it’s going to get in the way of our working together—”

  “I’m not embarrassed.”

  Stanley fixed a steely gaze on him.

  “Well, some, okay, but not a lot.”

  “And you’re right, it’s better all around if we both of us just forget it happened, and agree that it isn’t going to happen again. We have a murder to solve. And for reasons of my own, I really want to solve it. Let’s just stick to that in the future, okay?”

  Tom glowered back at him. Of course, everything Stanley said was exactly right. Only, shouldn’t he have been the one to say it? If they were going to agree that it was a mistake and shouldn’t happen again, he would like to have pointed it out, not the other way around. He was the one who was in charge here—wasn’t he?

  “Okay,” he said in a grumpy voice.

  “Okay,” Stanley agreed, equally grumpy.

  There was a long silence. When it began to seem to Tom that Stanley was waiting for him, Tom said, to change the subject, “So, about our murder…”

  “I hope you’re going to say you’ve got it solved.” Stanley sounded relieved at this new direction, that they had somehow gotten past an awkward moment.

  “Actually, I was kind of hoping you’d figured something out. I mean, you’re the one who’s, uh, well, what I meant was, about our drag queen. Had any ideas?”

  It took Stanley a while to answer. He busied himself with the bacon and eggs, heaped them on a plate.

  The toaster oven pinged and he reached a piece of toast from it, added that to the plate, set it on the table.

  “Eat,” he said.

  “What about you?”

  “I ate already. Big breakfast. Very big.”

  Tom gave him a suspicious glance but Stanley’s face was blank. Tom grunted and began to eat. The eggs were just the way he liked them, over easy, the bacon shatteringly crisp. He took a big bite of toast.

  Stanley poured himself a mug of coffee, picked it up in his right hand and winced—still not back to normal, and massaging someone’s butt the night before hadn’t helped it any—and switched it to his left.

  “You know, what I can’t figure,” he said, sitting down opposite Tom, determined to bring the focus—his focus—back to their case, “is motive. I mean, people kill once, because they’re drunk, or they’re angry. Or they kill for some kind of profit—money, or sex. That’s how it always is in the books.”

  “Serial killers,” Tom said around a big mouthful of food. “They’re different.”

  Stanley watched him eating for a moment. He liked a man with a hearty appetite. Despite his best intentions, he somewhat disconcertingly found himself wondering if Tom’s tank was empty yet. He wasn’t wearing anything but a towel. There was plenty of room under the table. If I got on my knees… He looked up and saw the suspicious look Tom gave him.

  “You’ve got a funny look on your face,” Tom said. “What are you thinking?”

  Stanley sighed. No, they both knew it had been a mistake, a big mistake, and one that mustn’t happen again, or it would really fuck things up on their investigation, and that was important to him. He really needed to solve this case. Otherwise, it was back to pounding the pavements or riding around and around all night in a squad car wishing somebody would murder someone just to relieve the boredom, eventually thinking about who he could murder to get the ball rolling.

  “I was thinking about,” Stanley said aloud, and paused. “I was thinking about what you said.”

  “Serial killers?”

  “Right. Only, even so, there’s a pattern, isn’t there, with serial killers, a kind of a motive behind it? Anger, maybe, or frustration.”

  “The guy hates men. You said there’s lots of fag bashers out there. Maybe he got bashed one time too often.”

  “But, that kind of thing, you’d think he’d go after the kind of guys who had bashed him. Like those skinheads. Punks, you know, that type.”

>   “Skel. The bottom of the barrel,” he added when Stanley looked puzzled. “The punks, the bums, the shitbags. Good point, though. The guys our Tanya is killing, they don’t fit that stereotype. Hell, from all we can tell, they’re the kind of guys who like doing it with guys, with guys in drag, at least.”

  “Which tells us…?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “Something. I just can’t figure out what yet.”

  “Okay, then, so we keep checking out the drag bars. We know Tanya’s hanging around in them. Maybe she’ll have another go at you. Which, if you think about it, is another good question. Why did she want to kill you?”

  “Because we’re getting close?”

  “If we are, I sure don’t know it,” Stanley said. “Or, maybe she didn’t even know who you were.”

  “No, she knew I was a cop.” Tom thought for a moment. “Maybe she just wanted to kill a guy. You know, the serial killer thing. That’s part of the profile. The time frame starts speeding up, the time between killings gets shorter. They get more and more into it.”

  “So, you were just there, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Stanley did one of his long suffering sighs. “Well, last night was as close as we got. Much as I’d hate to lose you, I think we give her another chance at you.”

  “I’m not sure I’m real keen on being bait for some fag.”

  “Sugar, you already were bait. There were lots of fish in that pond last night just aching to go for your worm.”

  To his surprise, Tom laughed. “So it’s a worm now, is it? You didn’t think so a little while ago.”

  “Forget it,” Stanley said. “We weren’t going to talk about that, right?”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Tom nodded, looked for a moment almost regretful. “Okay, we’ll do the rounds again, see if we can catch her eye again.”

  Stanley thought for a moment. “Listen, that queen last night, the redhead, Belle—could she have been Gaye Dawn?”