Skin and Bone

by TA Moore

  “And the pathologist?” Cloister asked. “The fire made it difficult, but he got DNA to make the comparison. It went into the system.”

  Javi acknowledged that with a grunt and flicked through the rest of the pictures. They were all old surveillance photos and badly worn from a lifetime spent in a damp, old bag, but they looked as though they were professionally taken. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to them—crime-scene aftermaths with bored deputies standing guard, one of a woman at home, another of the same woman in a deputy’s uniform, and a few of what Cloister assumed were Macintosh’s old clients at court.

  Sean was in one of them, surprisingly young and cocky as ever in a neatly pressed uniform as he headed up the stairs of the courthouse.

  “And there were these,” Cloister said. He sorted through the photos until he found the one of a folded, legal-size sheet. The edges were torn, and the image was distorted with damp and mildew, but it was still easy to pick out the subject—a body on a steel gurney, green surgical sheet drawn up over her nipples and the two nicks of the upper Y incision just visible, and at the bottom of the page, faded and scraped thought it was, the morgue ID and case number. “This is from a medical report at the morgue. It doesn’t look like a connected case, so I don’t know why he had it.”

  Javi examined the photo for a moment and then grimaced and set it down.

  “I’ll get Galloway to check the file number against her records tomorrow,” he said as he pushed it away. “But I think I’ve had my fill of looking at dead men today.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Cloister said. “Macintosh made his own choice.”

  “It was my arrest,” Javi countered. He got up and paced the short distance to the window so he could stare out. The line of his back was pulled arrow straight with tension. “Now Macintosh is dead, Tancredi is going to need weeks of physical therapy, and I’m still worried about how this is going to look on my record—another black mark.”

  Cloister rested his elbows on his knees and studied Javi’s back. He knew a bit of the story, that Plenty was just a detour in Javi’s career and that he hadn’t been sent here as a reward. He guessed maybe the person Javi talked about the other night, the one he lost, was part of that.

  “If I asked,” he said, “would you tell me?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE ANSWER should have been obvious. Javi was surprised to find it wasn’t. He stared at his dim reflection in the salt-scored window and actually thought about what it would mean to say yes. It was still the last thing he wanted to do. The dead should stay buried, and the past should know its place.

  His plan to keep his head down, work hard, and prove that what happened in Phoenix was an aberration hadn’t worked. Kincaid wasn’t about to let it. It didn’t suit him to have Javi redeem himself. Then people might wonder whether what happened was down to a flaw in Agent Merlo’s character or if it had something to do with Kincaid’s supervision.

  He still didn’t want to tell Cloister, but the “Maybe” creaked out of his throat.

  “Do you want me to ask?”

  This time the answer was easy.

  “No,” Javi said. “Not yet. Not tonight.”

  That wasn’t fair. Javi knew that, but he also knew that anyone else would have asked anyway. Javi had admitted to a black mark on his record and a dead lover on his conscience. That would make anyone curious… or suspicious.

  But this was Cloister, and he took what he was given. The idea that he should, that he could ask for more seemed never to have occurred to him. Although that had worked in Javi’s favor, it only made it worse.

  Outside, a skinny cream-colored cat walked along the fence, mink-hued tail up and straight. Javi expected an outburst from Bourneville—his family never had pets, but he knew cats and dogs didn’t mix—but she just lifted her head, pricked her ears, and watched with interest as the cat picked its way from post to post.

  That had all the hallmarks of something that would end badly. Javi just had to watch and wait.

  “Sometimes just because something isn’t your fault, doesn’t mean you’re not to blame,” Javi said. “Macintosh might not have killed his family, but the sort of man he was is still why they died. He couldn’t live with that. I could.”

  “I didn’t ask,” Cloister said. He got up off the bench and joined Javi at the window.

  “You didn’t need to,” Javi said. “You won’t need to. Someone will tell you eventually. It might as well be me.”

  “Fair enough.” Cloister curled his hand around Javi’s hip and ducked down to place a kiss under the hinge of his jaw. His lips pressed warm and wet against the spot where Javi’s pulse throbbed under his skin. “It doesn’t have to be yet, though. You’ll be here in the morning.”

  He slid his hand down to cup Javi’s cock through his trousers and twisted his long, work-scarred fingers around fabric and hard, ready flesh. Javi swallowed hard, a wet click of surprised lust in his throat, and reached back to slide his fingers through Cloister’s hair.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t think sex might be a good end to a bad day—not why he’d driven over here, but not unwelcome either—but he didn’t expect Cloister to make the first move. Usually it was Javi who took the step from arguably platonic to hands on cocks.

  Javi liked the control of that, the fact that he could shatter Cloister’s composure just by tipping his head back for a kiss. Most people would describe Cloister as laid-back or easygoing, but Javi got to see all the hungry intensity, the want, that he kept tamped down.

  What gave him pause was that Cloister could do the same to him with a rough caress and the scrape of stubble and teeth down Javi’s throat. When had Javi’s buttons gotten that easy to press? Or had Cloister just paid attention?

  Everyone took Cloister at face value—the drawl, the dog, and the GED—and missed that he was a good cop and a better man. Even Cloister seemed to miss it sometimes.

  “Whatever,” Javi rasped as he flexed his fingers against Cloister’s skull. He could feel the planes of bone under his thumb. “Just don’t blame me when you regret it.”

  Cloister’s laugh was warm and tickling against his throat. He grazed his teeth over the taut tendons as he kissed down to Javi’s collarbone. Lust hooked tight in Javi’s balls at the way Cloister wrapped his mouth around his collarbone, the wet swipe of his tongue, and the dull pressure of his teeth. It made his cock ache with a heavy throb of impatient hunger for its turn.

  “You know it wouldn’t kill you to let someone like you,” Cloister said.

  That wasn’t what Javi was worried about. “If you’d let me finish, you’d know that wasn’t true.”

  A flash of motion outside dragged Javi’s focus out of his cock for a second. The cat had jumped down into the garden, a splash of milk-colored fur against the scrubby sand, and he braced himself for the shriek of attempted murder. Instead the cat bumped up against Bourneville’s face from jaw to nose and shouldered her away from her food. Bourneville just shuffled back on her haunches and watched it pick the chicken out of her dish with an adoring look on her face.

  “I think your dog’s in love,” Javi said.

  “Yeah, she loves anything little. She’ll sit and watch Tancredi’s baby for hours,” Cloister said as he let go of Javi’s cock. “I’d have bred her so she could have pups, but her hips are for shit.”

  For a moment Javi wondered if he had, finally, managed to put Cloister off. The thought was an odd mixture of weary satisfaction and blue-balled frustration. Then a T-shirt hit the window in front of Javi and flopped to the floor. He turned around just in time to see Cloister, long, bare, and honey gold in the sunlight, step out of his jeans. Javi’s cock lifted against his stomach, his balls tight and eager under it.

  “This?” Cloister thumbed an old notched scar on his collarbone. “A woman hit me with a hammer after I arrested her husband for trying to beat her to death with the same hammer. The scar on my back is from where the harness snapped when I was bein
g lowered down a cliff face to rescue some drunk kid from a crashed car. I’ve been blown up, beat up because I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut, and once some idiot rolled an armored truck over my foot and broke all my toes. I told you. If I haven’t managed to get myself killed, then some Javi-come-lately isn’t going to pull it off. Got it?”

  Javi licked his lips. He walked over and ran his fingers over the twisted ink and scar tissue that ran up Cloister’s side. It was hard to imagine the original pattern, but Javi sketched a rough impression of the initial cheap tribal flash that had been inked there.

  “And this?”

  There was a pause, and then Cloister shrugged. The long bands of muscle and bone shifted under Javi’s fingers. “It didn’t get the job done either.”

  The bruises from the car accident spread out beyond the edges of the old injury and blurred the ink down past Cloister’s waist to nearly the sharp bone of his hip. Javi traced its boundaries with his fingers.

  “So should I believe that you’re invincible, then?” he asked as he stroked his thumb down over the taut skin of Cloister’s stomach. “Or that you don’t care about yourself?”

  Cloister sighed and grabbed Javi’s shirt to pull him into a quick, impatient kiss. His cock nudged against Javi’s hip as their bodies pressed together.

  “Shut up,” Cloister said into his mouth, slipping his words and then his tongue between Javi’s lips. “And come to bed.”

  For a sharp, sticky-hot moment, Javi thought about it—facedown on Target’s best sheets, the weight of Cloister’s long, lean body on his back and the sweet ache of a cock in his ass. Would it be quick and rough or slow and sweet? Bruised hips or bruised lips?

  Lust twisted, hot and tender, in a long, tight line between his ass and his balls. The last time he got fucked, though, it was a preamble to being fucked over.

  Javier.

  Enough. Javi had given Kincaid enough room in his head over the years. He didn’t get to put a bad taste on this.

  Javi cupped Cloister’s face in his hand, laid his thumb along the sharp, stubbled line of his jaw, and kissed him back. He chased Cloister’s breath over his tongue, both of their mouths sharp with beer, and bit his hunger into the firm curve of Cloister’s lips.

  “You never use your bed,” Javi said as he broke the kiss. He licked his lips and stepped back. “Why should I?”

  Cloister looked confused.

  Javi pulled the curtains that looked out onto the rest of the trailer park. The windows at the far side stayed open, the light from the setting sun laid in ruddy bands over Cloister’s shoulder and thighs. Javi was too cautious a man to really commit to exhibitionism, but he could see the appeal around the edges of it.

  “Lean back against the counter,” Javi said as he unbuttoned his borrowed shirt and stripped the cotton off. His shoulder ached under the gauze pad as he moved his arm, the stitches laced through raw flesh like hot staples. It was more itch than pain, but it still irritated.

  “If I don’t?” Cloister asked with interest. It was empty defiance. He’d already leaned back and braced his good arm against the Formica. His cock jutted out from the crux of his thighs as he shifted position, his skin tight around the hard shaft of it. “What then?”

  Javi smiled sharply as he hung the shirt off the back of a chair. “Then I just bend you over the counter.”

  Cloister twisted to glance over his shoulder. “I should probably move the BBQ beef, then.”

  The smile caught at the corners of Javi’s mouth before he could stop it. He usually didn’t put a high priority on laughter in bed, but he supposed he could make an exception since they weren’t in bed.

  “Unless you think you’re going to need a snack in the middle,” Javi drawled as he stepped closer. He ran his hand up the outside of Cloister’s thigh, over hard muscle and a scruff of coarse, gilt hair, and around until he cupped the curve of his tight, freckled ass. “You’re a year older now, after all. Maybe your stamina isn’t what it was?”

  Cloister snorted and reached back to push the cold tray of food into the sink with a swipe of his cast. His skin pulled tight over his chest and shoulders as he moved. No spare flesh blurred the play of muscle. “I think I can keep up.”

  “We’ll see,” Javi said.

  He stepped between Cloister’s legs and pressed a kiss to the point of his shoulder. With his tongue he traced a path from freckle to freckle to bruise as he worked his way down Cloister’s chest until his mouth reached the dark-pink coin of his nipple. He scraped his teeth over the flat bud and flicked it with his tongue until it tightened and swelled into his mouth.

  Cloister made a choked sound and let his head fall back, the line of his throat tight and vulnerable. He clenched his fingers around the edge of the counter, and the muscles in his forearms stood out in high definition against his skin.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  It was as good an excuse as any to bite down on the plumped nipple in his mouth. He pinched it between his teeth, just hard enough to make Cloister suck in a startled breath and squirm in place.

  “My mother’s a lot of things,” Javi said as he let the slick, red nipple slip from between his teeth. “She’s not a bitch.”

  “Asshole, then,” Cloister said raggedly.

  Javi kissed the nipple he’d just abused and laved it with his tongue. “See? I can’t argue with that.”

  He trailed a series of quick, teasing kisses down over the hard ridge of Cloister’s abs as he went down onto his knees. The musk of salt and sweat and Cloister filled his mouth and nose as he breathed in.

  Cloister’s cock twitched with eagerness against his stomach, a smear of precome slick and shiny against the tight, flushed head of it. Javi swiped his tongue along it from the base to the tip in one long, wet lick. It made Cloister’s balls pull up tighter to his body and the tense muscles in his thighs quiver.

  “Do you get off on it?” Javi asked as he cuffed Cloister’s cock in one hand, fingers wrapped around the shaft and thumb pressed up hard against the base.

  “That?” Cloister asked as he swallowed hard and looked down. His pale eyes looked almost dark because his pupils were so expanded. “Who wouldn’t?”

  Javi wrapped his lips around the head of Cloister’s cock, precome salty and metallic on his tongue, and twisted his hand up. The thin, soft skin creased and wrinkled under his grip, the hard flesh below hot against his palm. He sucked briefly and then leaned back. He ran his thumb over the spit-wet head and thought again about being fucked.

  “Being told what to do,” he said. “You’re not a sub.”

  Not really. Cloister might go along with doing as he was told, might even get off on it, but that was because he was easygoing. It wasn’t the same as compliant. He’d buck against authority just for the sake of it if it weighed on him long enough… or try to punch an FBI agent through a wall.

  “No, but… it’s okay,” Cloister said.

  It wasn’t a good enough answer. Javi tightened his grip and gave Cloister’s cock a rough squeeze that made Cloister swear and bite his lower lip.

  “It’s okay,” Cloister repeated with a shrug. “I don’t need it, but it works for me. When it’s you, it works for me.”

  The easy admission twisted lust a notch tighter in Javi’s balls, the ache of it dull and heavy in his thighs and stomach. He trailed a row of soft, openmouthed kisses down the length of Cloister’s cock to the tight sac of his balls. The soft skin creased and folded under Javi’s lips as he sucked and nibbled his way around to the line of flesh and nerves that seamed from Cloister’s cock back to his ass.

  Stammered curses and ragged, wordless groans from above him suggested that this certainly worked for Cloister. Javi flicked his tongue along the tight thread and dragged another groan out of somewhere deep in Cloister’s chest. The long line of Cloister’s body shifted suddenly as he went down onto his elbow with a thud. His long, braced legs trembled, the muscles rigid as rock under the skin when Javi stroked his hands down
the back of them.

  “Everything about you works for me,” Javi admitted in a low, intent voice. It was possible that Cloister hadn’t even heard it, but then Javi didn’t know if he meant him to. He gave the underside of Cloister’s cock one last, wet kiss, lips and tongue and spit slathered over the hard length of it, and got back to his feet.

  Cloister groaned and reached down to wrap his fingers around his cock. He dragged his hand along the shaft in short, impatient strokes, the taut length of his cock wet and shiny with Javi’s spit as it smeared under Cloister’s palm.

  “Turn around,” Javi said as he stripped off his trousers. Cloister groaned and turned around, his elbows braced against the counter and his ass in the air. If Javi’s cock hadn’t already been pressed rigidly against the thin black silk of his briefs, the ache of it a dull drumbeat in his groin, that view would have done it. Javi pulled a condom out of his trousers, set them aside, and stepped out of his briefs. Thick gel oozed out of the packet as he tore it open as he plucked the latex ring out of the packet. He slid it on over his cock, and the pulse of pleasure as his fingers grazed along the thick shaft made his thigh muscles clench.

  He slid the ring of the condom down until it was snug against the base of his cock, latex tight and shiny as it stretched over his erection.

  “I don’t know,” Javi teased as he stepped forward and brushed the flat of his hand over Cloister’s ass. The tight curve of it twitched under his touch, and Cloister sucked in a sharp breath. “I can’t say I’ve seen much evidence of that problem with authority you’re supposed to have.”

  Javi idly traced a pattern between the freckles sprayed over Cloister’s skin, an abstract dot-to-dot, and then slid his fingers between the cheeks. As he pressed into the tight hole, Cloister swore softly and pushed back against him. His back flexed, his shoulder blades sharp where they pressed against the skin, as Javi hooked a finger to graze the bump of his prostate.