Angels & Assassins: BWWM Romance

by K. Alex Walker

  “Good morning, love.”

  She’d left him upstairs in bed asleep. In a deep sleep. How in the hell had he already made it down to the kitchen?

  “Good morning, Gage. Did you sleep well?”

  His response was an incoherent grunt. The t-shirt that she’d spent several minutes searching for that morning came up over her thighs and hips. He was still naked and making a soft indentation in the curve of her butt with his erection.

  He made another noise, pulled the shirt over her head, bent her over the countertop and rubbed his hands over her back. She waited for the familiarity of his fullness, but instead she felt his hands move up to her shoulders. Then they moved over the space between her neck and shoulder.

  “Are you giving me a massage?” she asked, easing into the gentle kneading of his hands.

  “I saw you when you got out of bed. You’re hurting.”

  “In a few places, yeah. But, it’s not a bad kind of hurt.”

  “There’s a good kind of hurt?”

  She pushed back against his pelvis. “There’s a very good kind of hurt—the one you put on me last night, for example. I enjoyed that hurt very much.”

  His kneading maneuvered down her side to her hips. “You said kissing me was amazing. Now you’re saying that you enjoyed what I did to you last night.”

  “You make me feel good, I make you feel good,” she replied.

  He pressed against her opening, and with a solid thrust, he was inside. She cried out, searched for a grip on the countertop, and it was now clear why he’d kept a large pack of condoms.

  He didn’t move. Instead, he continued to mold his fingers over the tender parts of her body. She rolled her hips but he remained still, his hands continuing their mastery.

  “I plan to fuck you all morning,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She pushed back against him, and he pulled out only to thrust forward again. Her nipples grazed the cold marble. Then, another thrust, his palms kneading her hips as his thighs met hers.

  She squirmed against him. “Faster, Gage.”

  His fingers trailed the length of her spine. “I like to take my time.”

  He continued his momentum. The sound of their bodies connecting slapped against the walls of the kitchen. When he moved the focus of his massage between her thighs she lost all restraint.

  She cried out with each full stroke. Pleasure dissolved where she’d once felt any pain or soreness. The only thing that she felt was him, deep and intense. It couldn’t possibly get any better than what she was already experiencing, but as their surroundings shattered like glass, she knew that she was wrong. It was only going to get better.

  She pulsed along the length of him. He pulled out, flipped her around and found himself inside of her again. He lifted her so that her legs were around his waist, their faces only inches apart. Then, he began to walk.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, struggling to find the air necessary for such a simple question.

  “Upstairs. To start over.”

  She kissed him and pressed her forehead against his. “Start over?”

  “Yes. What did I say before?”

  “That you plan to fuck me all morning long.”

  “Exactly. I plan to start in the bedroom and work my way around the house before we end up back in the bedroom again.”

  Her hand made a pitiful motion toward the kitchen. “So, what was that just now?”

  “Warm up.”

  *****

  Gage struggled to pull himself away from Tayler as she slept into the early hours of the afternoon. Her sleep, for the first time in a long time, hadn’t been interrupted by the twitching of dark dreams. If staying that way meant her staying with him in California, then that was what would have to happen.

  He pulled on a pair of shorts and went downstairs to the kitchen. Memories of what had happened there earlier nearly pulled him back upstairs to tug the covers from her body and bury himself inside of her again.

  “Good morning, Gage,” Mo greeted from the kitchen, scraping eggs onto a plate. “I was here a bit earlier, but then I overheard you and Tayler doing something upstairs. I’m not sure what, though. Sounded like you guys were running on a treadmill. Really fast. In a hot room.”

  He ignored her with a slight smile and nodded toward one of his comrades, Giorgio Pozza, sitting on a stool at the end of the kitchen island. Wherever Mo went, Giorgio followed…whether she wanted him to or not.

  “Where’s Ares?” he asked.

  “Physical therapy. Where’s Tayler? She still, uh, asleep?”

  He’d forgotten how much Mo liked to goad him. She’d been doing it ever since they met at the University of Melbourne where both their fathers had taught. Both men had been faculty members of the university’s International Relations program and had a decade old friendship that had revolved around traveling abroad.

  She’d been sitting in her father’s office with her twin sister, Ari, Julien’s wife, and he’d found the contrast of her Melanesian brown skin and natural blonde hair so interesting that he’d pulled it. The next thing he knew, Ari was holding his shoulders down while Mo had repeatedly punched him in the gut. Their fathers had appeared, and he’d breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that they’d jump in to stop the attack. But they’d simply laughed. Gage, the troublemaker, had finally met his matches.

  For years afterward, whenever he told the story, six more people—none of which were girls—magically appeared as part of the narrative, and all six had jumped him while both of his hands were in casts.

  “She’s asleep,” he answered. “She’ll probably be down in a minute.”

  “Does she like eggs?”

  “She does.”

  “Good.”

  Mo divided the heaping, fluffy scramble into a separate portion and mixed in tomatoes and green onions. She then arranged avocado slices on a plate with a few triangles of wheat toast before sliding the plate over to Giorgio.

  “Did I get it right?” she asked. “That’s how you like it, isn’t it?”

  He responded by digging into his plate as though he hadn’t seen food in years.

  “By the way, Gage,” she turned to face him, “we need to talk. It’s about the knife you dropped off yesterday. Julien and Dez have already got the sequencing back. Don’t ask me how they did it, but it’s done and you’re not going to like what they found.”

  Gage followed her to his office and a flat screen on an empty wall behind them displayed a news article from the New York Times. It featured a picture of a woman’s face. She had short dark hair, brown eyes, and brown skin. She was smiling, which was a direct contradiction to the bolded title above her head:

  Jacqueline Wilshire is the Fifth Victim in String of East Coast Murders

  The print highlighted in blue as Mo ran the mouse over the title and clicked, pulling up the full article:

  Thirty-one year-old Jacqueline Wilshire’s body was found shoved into a dumpster behind a Target Department store in New York, NY Thursday morning. Jacqueline had been missing for two months and was last seen by surveillance video stopping for gas at a convenience store just a few miles from her apartment. Authorities suspect that Jacqueline had been in the dumpster for several hours. Initial reports point to strangulation as her cause of death.

  Jacqueline’s disappearance has been linked to four other women found dead in a similar manner along the East Coast over the course of the past four years: Amira Vincy of Florida, Alyssa Brown of Georgia, Kayla Butler of South Carolina, and Chasity Crane of Virginia. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been called in to handle what is now being referred to as the “East Coast Killings.” Currently, no suspect names have been released. Telvin Ritchit, Jacqueline’s boyfriend, has not been named as a suspect. Her family is still confused by the loss.

  “She’s never hurt anyone a day in her life,” Jacqueline’s mother, Harriet Wilshire, said. “She was a good girl. I have no idea why anyone would want to do this to my baby.”
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br />   “And this article is from last year,” Mo said.

  Gage tore his eyes away from the screen. Tayler was currently the only target to escape the claws of whoever this man was, and he didn’t feel as though this was a man okay with losing his prey. The notes, the stalking, the baiting, and the hunting were all things that had been planned for months in advance after setting his sights on his victim.

  “Amira, the first victim was the only one the police were able to extract DNA from, which is what Julien and Dez linked to the blood from the knife,” Mo explained. “Apparently, there was a trace of the suspect’s tears on her cheek. The DNA hasn’t been found in any database, which means that our killer is a newbie. Amira was taken right out of her driveway four years ago. Kayla’s friends said that she went missing trying to sell an old table on Craigslist, but the number that had called her was linked to a disposable phone. Tayler’s the only woman he’s taunted with notes.”

  “What about the phone Tayler found?” Gage asked.

  “Nothing. No fingerprints, not even on the battery.” She pulled up articles on all of the victims. “The murders are all spread apart by several months. Years for some.”

  Gage’s fingers made a path through his hair. “She didn’t even change her fucking locks.”

  “What?”

  “Tayler. She was getting those notes for months and didn’t even think to change her locks. And look at where his victims were from. He skipped North Carolina and jumped to Virginia and New York. Now he’s back in North Carolina. Tayler is, and always was, his intended target, and she didn’t even think to change her goddamn locks.”

  Mo eyed Gage carefully. His fingers clenched and released repeatedly. His chest rose and deflated in a way that would have given anyone else hypoxia. Then the corner of his mouth tilted in a sinister smile.

  “Still, she came face to face with that motherfucker and took a slice out of his arm.”

  Mo closed out the article. “Gage, it’s been a long time since I’ve had you lucid, so don’t spas out on me now.”

  “I’m fine, Mo,” he reassured, even though the empty look in his eyes told a different story. “I just…it doesn’t sit well with me to think about how close Tayler came to dying. The odds are fucking astronomical that I would have shown up at that moment and found those notes.”

  A low, deep growl rumbled in his throat. Giorgio appeared in the doorway, and Mo waved her hand to let him know that everything was fine. Tayler had gotten under Gage’s skin in the best way possible, but what came next would be Gage tormenting himself about the possibilities that hadn’t occurred, along with the overbearing fear of losing her.

  “Julien wants to meet with you today,” Mo said. “The FBI knows that Tayler’s on this man’s warpath. They’ll want to interview her and maybe provide her with their own protection.”

  “Over my dead fucking body,” Gage barked.

  Mo tossed up her hands. “Extra protection for Tayler is a good thing, Gage. But I get that you don’t feel comfortable leaving her. So tell me what to do.”

  Tayler’s arms appeared around Gage’s waist from behind. She peered around him and smiled. Gage’s shoulders relaxed and he covered Tayler’s hands with his larger one. Mo’s eyes darted to the gesture in surprise as she hadn’t seen Gage show any form of sentiment in years.

  “I can always tell when he’s all wound up,” Tayler said, touching a kiss to the center of his back. “Just like Ares, all it takes is a hug to calm him down.”

  “I told you to stop comparing me to the pup.”

  His eyes were light and playful, and Mo felt a surge of happiness rush over her. When Gage had left her to run the company, he’d been at his lowest. She’d known why he put her in charge of the investment company, and even why he’d told her that he was going away for a bit. She’d known that her begging him not to do anything stupid and come back home in one piece had fallen upon deaf ears. Every year, around the same time his world fell apart five years ago, so did he.

  She’d feared the day he wouldn’t be able to recover and the day she would receive the phone call that he’d been found somewhere, dead by a self-inflicted wound.

  He was fixated on the fact that if Tayler hadn’t found him, she would have died, but it was just as true the other way around.

  “You can’t tell me that he doesn’t remind you of Ares,” Tayler insisted.

  “It was one of the first things I thought when I met him last night,” Mo teased, caught up in the fact Gage was actually stroking Tayler’s fingers while she pressed her cheek into his back. The two were so in love with each other that they probably failed to realize it. This woman was now his lifeline, and if she failed to live through this, most certainly, so would he.

  “Did you eat?” Gage asked. “Mo made breakfast. It’s in the kitchen. She’s not the best cook, so you can find the seasonings in the pantry or more food in the refrigera—”

  Mo’s fist went into his chest in a sisterly punch. Gage merely laughed off the strike as though he’d been sucker punched by a honeybee.

  “She’s been trying to hurt me for years,” he declared.

  “Well, she has every right to,” Tayler said. “Something tells me that you’ve put her through hell and back over the years.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Mo said.

  She started to tug Tayler toward the kitchen, but Gage grabbed Tayler’s arm and pulled her back toward him. He leaned down and tapped his cheek. Smiling, Tayler touched a kiss to the spot he indicated. He then turned his head and pressed a kiss against her lips. “Good morning. Well, afternoon.”

  “Good morning, well afternoon, to you too,” she teased.

  “Sleep well?”

  “I did.”

  “You’ll sleep even better tonight.”

  He leaned back and released her arm. Tayler played off her knees buckling as her stumbling on the slight rise between the office and main level, and followed Mo out.

  *****

  Fire chief, Rick Moss, walked through the cottage taking in the damage. From what he could discern, the fire had been started with an accelerant in the back, and then it ripped a trail through the middle of the house, dispersing outwards to engulf each end before the entire thing had succumbed. All that was left were the charred posts that had supported the beams in the ceiling. Inside looked like a wasteland of ash. The only objects that were still recognizable in the fray were the old stove and refrigerator that Tayler had left behind.

  He continued his investigation of the house, shoving away blackened debris with the tip of his boot. He moved a piece of curled wood aside to reveal an area that was completely intact. The wood looked brand new, a sharp distinction from the rest of the pandemonium surrounding it. When he looked closer, he noticed that it was a pine storage box that had been hitched into the foundation.

  He kicked away the rest of the remains. Beneath the ash, in what looked like red marker, was a neatly written message:

  Tell that bitch to get back here.

  “Townley, get in here,” he called.

  The sheriff appeared, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “What’s up, Rick?”

  “Look.”

  Townley dropped to one knee to examine the message. “Same handwriting as those notes.”

  “What notes?”

  “Notes from a fella we believe might have been bothering the doc.”

  Rick tapped his foot against the wood. “But look at this. It’s completely unscathed. It’s as if somebody came in after the fire to chuck it beneath the baseboards. What sense would that make?”

  Townley’s face went stark white. He pulled the radio from his hip. “Get CSU in here,” he barked.

  He searched the edges of the wood until he found the deviation he was looking for, then pulled the box open. The minute the lid came off, an odor struck him in the face, forcing him backwards.

  Rick tucked his nose into the crook of his elbow. “Jesus, what the hell’s in there?”

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p; Townley didn’t even have to guess. After twenty-two years on the force, the scent of human remains was unmistakable.

  “Shit.” He pulled off his hat. “We’ve got a body.”

  Rick pointed to a piece of plastic on top of the body. “What’s that? Looks like a Ziploc bag or something.”

  Townley pulled a latex glove from his pocket, slipped it over his hand, and then pulled out the bag to examine it closer. He cursed again.

  “Shit. Craig Schulz came in a few hours ago to report that Anya was supposed to be back from her aunt’s this morning but never showed up.” He looked over at the fire chief. “This is Anya’s employee ID badge. I think we just found her.”

  -11-

  Mo watched Gage as he watched Tayler and wondered if he knew exactly how much he failed to tear his gaze away from her whenever they were in the same room. She was tugging on a red tank top over a pair of jean shorts, a smart move considering the current weather in California was starkly different from the erratic east coast spring. She pinned her locs back into a low bun off her face and then turned to face Gage in a motion that should have been followed with a “ta-dah”.

  “It doesn’t matter what you put on, Tayler. I still don’t like the idea of you leaving without me,” he said.

  “But she’ll be with me,” Mo jumped in. “And you know Giorgio will be tailing us.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “You didn’t leave me with much choice when you told me not to bring any clothes,” Tayler argued. “I have to go buy some or else I’ll be forced to walk around naked.”

  “And that’s a problem for me how?”

  Both Mo and Tayler shook their heads. Gage stared as though he was waiting for an answer to an aptly posed question.