Starling brought a hand up his leg, smoothly stroking the inside of his thigh. It wasn’t exactly on the level of what she was doing to his cock, but it felt pretty good. She cupped his balls, giving them a pleasant squeeze as she drew back. She never pulled it fully out; she’d just take it in all the way to the back of her throat and then bring her lips up to just below the head, apply a little suction, then slide back down again. Now with her hand on his testicles, she upped the tempo a little, just slightly, and it was like she’d punched the damn throttle, and Hendricks was flying toward cumming.
He looked down at her, and for a split second he imagined the red hair was gone, replaced by blond hair and crystal blue eyes, staring up at him mischievously, looking like a million bucks with her cock in his mouth, and he said, “God, I love you, Alison.”
To Starling’s credit, if she noticed what he’d said, it did not slow her down in the least. She kept at it while Hendricks’s cheeks burned like they’d been set on fire. He threw his head back so he wouldn’t have to look at her, not now, while she finished and he hit that last peak. It wasn’t as intense as it would have been if he hadn’t fucked up like that, but it was good nonetheless, and he could feel himself buck between her lips, the head swelling as she ran a hand up the base of his shaft and emptied him into her mouth.
It felt like heaven, like the sweetest waves of pleasure lifted him up and carried him high, high up in the air. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and he was still imagining a blonde down there, doing what Starling was doing, and he didn’t care if she knew now. He didn’t need to care, because she probably didn’t either. She didn’t quit on him until he let out the last gasp of air and sagged, his jizz all spilled out and consumed. She’d fucking devoured him and he loved it, like he was wanted more than he’d felt in … well, forever.
She was off his tip a second later, gently, like she knew it’d almost hurt if she’d pulled it out with a squeeze or something. Starling was still kneeling there, looking up at him with those dusky eyes, and Hendricks stayed still, ass and back planted against the hotel room door for a few seconds longer until he felt that burn in his cheeks again, shame setting in for having said the shit he did aloud. He reached down and pulled up his pants, fiddling with the boxers first and then dragging the heavy belt up, zipping and fastening and buckling so he could look at that instead of the redhead who was still there, making him feel awkward as fuck even though she’d just swallowed him like he was a ten-course meal. “I think I’m done for now,” he said, feeling like he pretty much was.
He waited for her to say something, but when he looked at her again, she was already gone, an empty space there where the naked redhead had been only seconds earlier. But wasn’t that every man’s fantasy? Pretty girl who takes care of business, doesn’t say much, and leaves when it’s over? He adjusted his belt, unfastening it again, and letting it drop. He kicked off his boots, put down his hat, and stripped off his t-shirt. There was already a lagging cum-spot in his boxers, and it’d be fucking sticky later. That shit dried like concrete in his pubes and leg hair, but he didn’t give a damn right now.
Once he was down to nothing but his boxers, he threw himself on his bed. His weapons were all right there in arm’s reach, but he lay on the cool sheets. The smell of sex was still on them because he hadn’t had housekeeping in for a good long stretch. Who gave a shit? It was the smell of his sex, not some stranger’s, his and Starling’s, and he wasn’t done doing it with her.
Hendricks stared at the gaps between curtain and window where the light snuck in, and then leaned off the bed to fish his phone out of his pocket. He felt callous about sex now, at least since things had blown up with Erin. It was just a physical thing to him at this point, just a reaction to years of not treating his boners with anything but self-medication. He needed to relieve the pressure, and if it was with Erin, back when she was pleasant, good. Now that it was with Starling, with no strings, that was fine too. It was all he needed, really.
Or at least that was what he told himself, ignoring that dark voice in the back of his head that suggested otherwise, the same one that had said the wrong name. Fuck that voice, he thought, and tried to put it out of his mind.
It didn’t work.
*
Drake sunk his teeth into the brisket, the pectoral muscle of an adult male. It had been roasted low and slow, smoked with the thick seam of fat on top to caramelize and melt down into the rest of the meat, all the juices pooling and collecting in the bottom of the Kamado in a drip pan set up on the indirect ceramic holder just above the fire. He’d run it for something like six hours at 250 degrees, letting it go the last hour in a marinade, wrapped in foil. Then he’d rested it for two whole hours wrapped in fresh foil, in a cooler, before taking his first bite.
It almost melted in his mouth. Brisket was a tough cut, and the only way to make it good was to do it low and slow, really allow time for the meat to steep in the juices and soften up. It maybe had been a little tough to get right, but it was good meat, and that was all that mattered. Properly cooked, properly prepared, given a reasonable amount of time to slow cook, and now—
Now it was soulful bliss, a flavor he could feel seeping into his essence. It was so delicious, another culinary triumph, and it filled him with a sense of rightness. When he bit into these foods, it was as though he was properly asserting himself in the food chain where he belonged. And he was under no illusions about where he belonged: right at the top.
The juice of the meat flowed down Drake’s lips, and he licked them. The meat oozed with sweet flavor. It was well spiced too, given a wonderful rub from some Tennessee barbecue house that he’d found in a display of local products. It felt right to use it—locally sourced meat called for locally made spices, after all.
And it had translated very well to this meat.
Still … it was a triumph, but not the triumph. No, the veal … that still evaded him. He could taste the texture of the brisket as he chewed. It wasn’t quite what he was looking for. It might have softened in cooking, but it still wasn’t soft.
He needed something so tender it would nearly melt off the bone. This came close; it was certainly easy to pull it off given how long it had been in the slow cooker, but the meat itself … it was still just a little tough in parts.
Drake sighed, putting the brisket down, his hunger not sated but thoughts—that unstoppable craving—giving him pause. Was this the culinary height for him? He wanted a child to sample, but with every house he’d broken into so far, he’d found none. Perhaps staking one out specifically, or looking for one with a swingset out back …
Something had to be done. This curiosity, it was only growing by the day. And as much as he enjoyed this meat—and he did, tremendously, he reflected as he took another bite—until he got his hands on a piece of human veal, maybe even more than one—it would, forever, be the rarest thing, the one that eluded him, like that boy that had escaped into the woods.
The one that got away.
*
Arch had gotten a ride from Barney Jones. Tucking himself in the back of the pastor’s car, he sat, flannel shirt still wrapped around his waist, the cloth delicately placed so as to cover him as much as it could. The car had a nice smell to it, like Olivia’s perfume lingered in the seats. It didn’t evoke memories of Alison because Olivia wore a perfume that suited her age. Alison had liked something younger. Arch couldn’t even remember the name anymore.
Braeden Tarley was riding shotgun, and Arch was happy to let him do so. Sitting naked in the back was more comfortable than in front. Not that either of the men riding with him hadn’t seen the male anatomy before, but it was more comfortable to keep these things under wraps as much as possible.
“I heard you saved that cowboy’s life,” Barney said, breaking the silence that pervaded the car. He sounded engaging, conversational. Like he always did.
“That’s really something,” Tarley said. “How’d you do that?” Tarley glanced back, then averte
d his eyes quickly. He didn’t ask how Arch ended up naked.
“Stepped out in front of that fire sloth to try and keep it from burning him,” Arch said simply. It was, after all, true.
“Looks like that fire sloth torched everything it could,” Barney said, looking in the rearview back at Arch. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I don’t reckon luck had much to do with it,” Arch said. “I think God might have intervened on my behalf.”
Tarley made a snorting noise, then quieted himself and got serious, smirk dissolving. “I, uh …”
Barney caught it, and he smiled at Tarley. Arch could almost feel the heat that was about to be turned on him go another direction. “Now, Braeden,” Jones said, still smiling, “we’ve talked a lot these last few days about faith, and what it might mean to each of us. You told me you believed in the Lord, and in a greater plan.”
“I do,” Tarley said after an interval of what looked to Arch like internal struggle. “I just … I don’t know, Reverend. God saving a man from flames?”
“Something which has Biblical precedent,” Jones said, still smiling.
“Yeah, sure, in the stories. I guess I just don’t … think about it happening in the modern day, you know?” Tarley shrugged, but it was plain by the flush on his cheeks that he was embarrassed to raise such a subject here and now.
“How can you believe in God but not think He might throw a miracle down every now and again?” Jones was smiling again, the sweet self-satisfaction of knowing what he believed. Arch knew a little of that.
Tarley, however, didn’t seem to quite get it. He retreated a little into himself, his neck retracting into his shirt an inch or two. “I dunno, Reverend,” he muttered.
“Braeden,” Jones said gently. “I ain’t mad at you, son. You got no cause to be ashamed right now.” Arch could see in Tarley’s eyes that he didn’t quite believe that, but he nodded nonetheless. Jones found Arch’s gaze in the rearview and held it. “Arch …”
Arch could feel the preacher’s intent burning him down. Still, he answered, “Yes?”
“You remember the Lord’s commandment about not committing murder, right?”
Arch’s brow almost furrowed of its own accord. “Of course.”
“You know,” Jones said, “that includes throwing yourself to your own death too, don’t you?”
As if Arch didn’t know that. “Of course,” Arch said, “and I haven’t. I threw myself in front of that thing to save another.”
“Mmhmm,” Jones said as if he didn’t believe it. “‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,’” he said, mostly for Tarley’s understanding, Arch figured. “You using the word of God as a shield from the world, Arch?”
“From the sin of the world, maybe,” Arch said.
“You sure about that?” Jones asked, and he was staring back at Arch something fierce. Arch was looking at the window now, though. “You sure you aren’t using it like a sled to go wherever you want to go? Because if you are, there’s only one direction it’ll take you.”
“Downhill,” Tarley jumped in, like he was trying to get points for the correct answer, or maybe make up for his earlier embarrassment.
Arch felt himself burning in a way that he hadn’t when that fire sloth was breathing down on him. “This is a fight we’re in, Reverend. What was I supposed to do? Let the cowboy burn? Because that wouldn’t seem to me like the Lord’s will.”
“Oh, you’re worried about the Lord’s will,” Jones said, and he had that air of mock sincerity, heavier on the sincerity but the mocking was there all the same. “I do apologize, Arch. I thought perhaps you were exercising your own.”
“I thought maybe the Lord’s will and mine coincided in this case,” Arch said hotly, “since He put me in the path to help.”
“You got free will, son,” Jones said, “so I don’t think the Lord shoved you into those flames. He may have protected your knuckle-head from harm while you were in ’em, but he didn’t push you in. You went a-jumpin’ in all by your own self. And maybe you did have good intention, Arch. I don’t know your heart; I leave that to Him. But you just keep in mind that He does—and if you go leaping into something else with your head not quite right, it’s Him you’re going to have to answer to if you’re lying to yourself about whose will you’re really following.”
Arch started to open his mouth to say something, but Jones cut him off. “Why don’t you just think on that a while and we’ll talk about it later? I think Braeden might have some things on his heart.”
Tarley blinked a couple of times, and said, “Well … yeah, I … I do have a couple things I wouldn’t mind … talking about.”
“Well, go on then,” Jones said, steering them up to a four-way stop and waiting.
Arch just sat in the back, steaming. He felt like he’d been whacked with a shovel right between the eyes, and he didn’t care for the sensation at all. It burned him worse than anything that fire sloth had done, that was for sure.
*
The fire was mostly under control now, and Reeve stared at the last few hot patches. The ground nearby was ashes with a few embers, water running in thick patches, puddling here and there in the low points. Smoke was still steaming high into the air, but the fire had petered out when it ran up against a section of ground cleared for a transmission line.
“We got pretty damned lucky here,” Marty Ferrell, the local fire captain, told Reeve, his face covered with smudges of soot. He’d been on the front lines of this thing. ‘Course, he was a member of the watch too, though it seemed like he mostly got out here on only a few calls. His first love was firefighting and first responding, and that was fine with Reeve. He’d reckoned on making this happen with a lot of people doing a little, and a few doing a lot.
“In that the woods didn’t burn down entirely, I agree,” Reeve said, looking off into the smoky distance. The air was tinged heavily with wood smoke, but it wasn’t nice and atmospheric like a burning fireplace. It was thick and heavy to the point that he felt like he was choking on it.
“Got a couple of places I’m still keeping an eye on,” Marty said, “but I think for the most part … we’re done.”
“All right then,” Reeve said, stretching, lifting his ass off the hood of his car. He’d moved back up to the road a while ago, figuring that lingering in the back yard of those burnt-down house shells wasn’t real productive and maybe even hampered the work being done by the real firefighters. “Guess I’ll be moving along then, unless you need me for anything else.” He caught the almost pitying look from Marty, and he knew: they hadn’t needed him in the first place. “Thanks,” he said, and the fireman nodded and moved off.
He saddled the OOCs with Mary and tasked them with taking her back to the station. They’d complied, Duncan as stoic as ever, and Guthrie wearing a sourly amused look. They hadn’t complained, though.
Which left Reeve free to do the thing he had to do now.
The thing he really didn’t want to do now.
He had to go see that son of a bitch, Pike.
Reeve rubbed his head, the steady ache behind his eyes spreading to his temples. This … this was not going to make his headache any better. At all.
*
Erin pulled into the parking lot at the same time as Father Nguyen, and when she got out of the car, he was dragging himself out of his own vehicle. He had a ragged look in his eyes, the bags beneath them looking a little like a … well, a baggage claim’s worth, at least. She thought about just saying, “You look like shit, Father,” but thought the better of it and went with, “You look a little tired, Padre,” instead.
Nguyen caught up to her on the way through the door. He was shorter than she was, but not by much. “You can say that again,” Nguyen said, tousling his black hair. His collar was stiff, but the black—outfit or whatever they called the priest’s uniform—was wrinkled as hell. “I’ve consecrated so many weapons these last few days it feels like I’ve go
t the entire ritual memorized now. I need to take a break, or I’m going to lose my mind and start speaking Latin in my sleep.”
Benny was behind the counter, running dispatch, and looking heartily bored. “How’s it going?” Erin asked.
“All quiet since the fire,” Benny said, looking back down at a well-thumbed copy of American Rifleman. Erin glanced at the pages; looked like a profile of a big rifle. Not quite as big as Alison had toted, but it was black and mean, and she wouldn’t have minded having someone covering her with one of those while she swung away with her ball bat.
That was a problem in her head; this herd of hellcats was going to get worse, she was sure of it. Rampaging across the landscape, ripping apart houses like Mary Wrightson’s—if they came into town like that, it’d be fucking carnage. She’d thought the Rog’tausch was bad, ripping its way through in a swatch.
If these things came to town? The chaos they’d cause would make the Rog’tausch look like a bullet to their nuclear bomb damage. They’d just shred whole streets at a time, locusts on the crops. And human lives would be the harvest.
She was about to voice one of these thoughts aloud when the door jangled, the bell above it clanging as it opened. “All I’m saying,” Casey Meacham’s voice reached her, that slight whine to it, “is that once you try it, you’re going to love it.”
Brian Longholt came in a step behind him, face like carved stone. “Then I guess I won’t know, because I’m not trying that, Casey.”
“It’d loosen you right up,” Casey said, making a clicking noise and winking at Brian, who seemed to strain himself, butt cheeks puckering.
Starling (Southern Watch Book 6) Page 42