Oh shit. Oh God. Oh damn. He was already tightening up. It was going to be over in a matter of seconds. He’d had blowjobs before, but hell, this was—this was transcending anything that’d come before it. Whatever Jake was doing with his tongue and mouth was sending shuddering surges of pleasure radiating through his entire body.
He tried to pull back, tried to grab in a breath to calm himself, but it was no use. Jake held him immobile, firm hands keeping him in place under the exquisite demand of Jake’s attentions, who seemed intent on driving him into oblivion. The pressure kept building, surging higher, getting more acute until he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Jake, oh God, I’m going to—”
Jake did something—he had no idea what. Just that at the exact second he expected Jake to pull back or slow down, he instead caught Danny with some final trick that sent a burst of lightning through his veins. He came hard and sudden, groaning loudly, hips jerking up against Jake’s hands.
Jake took him the whole way, swallowing him down and releasing the pressure gradually and gently until the intense waves ebbed away into a light shivery sensation.
Crawling up his body, Jake kissed him slow and easy, but no less hot. He tasted like coconut with an underlying musk that was all him. It was possibly the most erotic kiss he’d ever shared.
“That was amazing,” he breathed out when Jake finally pulled back for air.
“You’re amazing.” Jake was staring at him with warmth and affection.
“I think I need to find a way to thank you.” He trailed his hands down Jake’s sides until he reached the waistband of his jeans.
“That sounds interesting.” Jake leaned in to kiss him again, but before Danny could follow through on his plan to get Jake naked, a pounding sounded on the front door.
Jake shifted off him and pressed his face into the bed with a frustrated groan.
“Can’t you just pretend you’re not home?” Because he really, really needed Jake to be naked.
“With my Jeep sitting out front?” Jake replied, half rolling to look up at him balefully.
The pounding sounded again, louder this time.
“You’ll have to answer it,” Jake told him as he sat up.
“What? Why? This is your house!”
Jake motioned at his crotch, where his erection was extremely evident. “Well, I’m not exactly in a fit state for company right now.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” He had to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing.
Jake actually growled at him. “Go and answer the door.”
This time he did laugh as pulled his jeans into place, then scooped up his T-shirt and hurried down the hallway. He felt a bit weird answering the door to Jake’s house, but there was nothing else for it. Hopefully it’d just be some random door-knockers he could get rid of quickly. Then he could back to his plan of getting Jake naked.
He pulled open the door, but all his plans went out the window as he found himself staring at Sheriff Hayes.
“Daniel.” The sheriff nodded, seeming surprised but quickly covering it. “Is Perez at home?”
“Um, yeah. Yep, he is. He’s just in the bathroom. I’m sure he’ll be out in a minute. Come in.”
He stepped back to make room for the sheriff to come inside.
“How’s the shoulder?” he asked as he took his hat off.
“A bit achy, but it’s okay.” Well, it was now, anyway. Jake’s method of pain relief was an excellent one. He shook his head at himself, knowing that line of thinking was only going to get him into trouble when he was meant to be holding a coherent conversation with the sheriff.
“Can I get you a glass of water or something?” he asked, simply to fill the silence.
“That’d be great, thanks. I suppose Perez won’t mind if I take a seat?” The sheriff sent him a smile and then moved to sit on the arm of the couch just inside the living room doorway.
“I’ll be right back,” Danny said, before heading through the dining room to the kitchen, glad to have something to do until Jake came out. He nearly laughed at the idea of Jake in there trying to calm down enough for polite company. Oh, was that totally unfair of him? Probably. But he was already planning on how to make it up to him later.
Chapter Twelve
JAKE PACED as he heard voices echoing from the front of the house, one of which sounded like the sheriff. Great, just what he needed right now. His boss waiting to talk to him while he fought down an almost painfully hard erection, while the person responsible for that was right there and looking delicious enough to eat. Again. Damn, the way Danny had stared up at him after, blue eyes all dark and hooded with pleasure and contentment. Sprawled utterly undone on his bed—
Jake groaned and dragged both hands over his face. For half a second he considered ducking into the bathroom and taking care of it the easy way, but shook his head at himself. He didn’t want two minutes of quick, empty pleasure. He wanted Danny. All of Danny. Everything he was willing to give.
“Get a grip,” he muttered to himself, because that line of thinking wasn’t helping him either. He stopped pacing to stand still with his eyes closed, counting his breaths in and out while he thought of the most boring stuff he could come up with. Finally, it worked and he hurried out of his bedroom and down to the living room.
The sheriff was sitting on the arm of his couch, and Danny was just handing him a glass of water.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir.”
“No, it’s no problem, Perez. I’m sorry to interrupt your day off, but I had some things I needed to speak with you about.”
He glanced at Danny. “To do with Danny’s case?”
The sheriff shook his head. “No, this is something else.”
“I should get going,” Danny put in, clearly sensing that the sheriff wanted to talk in private.
“I’ll walk you out.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—” The slightest hint of color touched Danny’s cheeks, probably not noticeable to anyone. Except for him, because he was watching him so closely.
“I’ll just be a moment, Sheriff,” he told Hayes instead of answering Danny.
“Take your time,” the sheriff murmured, before taking a sip of his water.
Jake and Danny walked quietly to the door and out onto the porch. Jake swung the door shut behind him and then looked at Danny, who had his hands shoved into his pockets and stood a good few feet away from him.
“Do you think he suspected anything?” Danny asked in a low voice.
Jake shrugged. “Why would he? I’m new in town and you’re making sure I’m getting to know people.”
“I guess so.” Danny’s brow creased, as though he was still troubled by it.
Jake wanted to cross the distance between them and kiss the frown off his face, but that obviously wasn’t a good idea when they were standing on the front porch and the sheriff was waiting inside for him.
“If you’re feeling up for it, can I pick you up at seven tonight so we can go on that date we were supposed to have the other night?”
“I’d really like that.” Danny’s smile turned almost shy, and Jake clenched his fists with a frustrated groan.
“What?” Danny asked, sounding a little concerned.
“You. Just you being so damn gorgeous and you don’t even realize it, and not kissing you right now is killing me.”
Danny backed up a step. “Later. You can definitely kiss me later.”
Before he could say anything, Danny had gone down the two steps off his porch and was heading out of his yard.
Jake stopped himself from staring after the guy like the besotted idiot he obviously was, forcing his mind into work mode. There’d be plenty of time for Danny later. Right now, he needed to find out if they were any closer to discovering who’d shot Danny with the crossbow.
He went back into the house where the sheriff was waiting.
“So, what’s happening?” he asked, going to sit on the chair opposite where Hayes still sat on
the arm of the couch.
“We’ve got a missing persons case. Last seen in the parking lot behind the library early yesterday morning.” The sheriff’s expression was grim. Everness had its share of minor crime, and having the ALP living just outside of town kept the department on their toes. But murders and people going missing were things that rarely happened. No doubt Hayes was under a lot of pressure.
“Do you need me to come in?” He was silently cursing as he asked, however, worrying if he went into work, he’d get caught up and have to cancel his date with Danny. Except then he felt like a douche, more concerned about his personal life than the missing person. Especially when he knew for a fact there was a killer walking the streets in the form of Leroy Hobbs. So maybe the bastard’s family money had gotten him out of any convictions, but it didn’t make him any less guilty in Jake’s eyes. And he needed to remember that instead of getting all giddy over his date with Danny. What if Hobbs was responsible for this missing person, as well as the Williams murder, and he’d missed something that could have made a difference because he’d been distracted by everything happening with Danny…. Who could blame him, though? Getting shot by a crossbow—accident or otherwise—wasn’t a small thing.
“No,” the sheriff replied. “I just need to ask you about what you remember of the body in the car before it exploded. We’re trying to determine if they’re connected.”
Jake nodded, casting his mind back. It’d been gruesome; he knew that much.
“I didn’t get time to do much more than work out that he was definitely dead.”
The sheriff nodded. “Any detail might help.”
“There was a lot of blood.” As he recreated the picture in his mind, something about it started niggling. Then a cold sensation trickled through him. “He’d definitely been stabbed. Possibly multiple times.”
As he said the words, he was experiencing some kind of shift. A deep sense of déjà vu shook him. Luis. It was the same way his brother had been killed. In a frenzied attack that’d left him suffering multiple stab wounds and bleeding in the street. He hadn’t even survived long enough for the paramedics to arrive. Leroy Hobbs had done that to him. It seemed too much a coincidence Hobbs came to town and then a few short months later, a violent murder had taken place. Was the missing person connected to the murder—a second victim—or was it just an unfortunate coincidence? And last but not least, did Danny getting shot with the crossbow somehow factor into it? On the surface, all the incidences seemed completely separate, but something was telling him there had to be a connection he wasn’t seeing yet. And when he did figure it out, he’d no doubt find Hobbs standing in the middle of it all.
“Has the missing victim been identified?” His stomach tightened, leaving him feeling sick.
“Emilio Gomez. He lived in the next county with his wife and young children. They’d only just immigrated here from Mexico about a year back.”
The missing person was Hispanic; the murder victim in the car had been black. He didn’t want to immediately jump to the conclusion that these crimes were racially motivated, but he already was. The only element that didn’t fit that picture was Danny—he was as Texas boy-next-door as they came. So maybe Danny getting shot with the crossbow really had been an unfortunate case of wrong-place-wrong-time and it’d just been some idiot kid messing around.
When Luis had been killed, Hobbs had gotten away with calling it self-defense using a team of hotshot lawyers and his family’s money. There’d been footage from outside a nightclub of Luis instigating the fight with Hobbs. But that hadn’t been Luis. He hadn’t been a hothead. Jake could only imagine Hobbs had said something terrible to make his younger brother react like that, and it wouldn’t have helped that Luis had probably been drinking and his judgment impaired.
Even though Hobbs had pulled a knife during the fight and attacked his brother viciously, the jury had somehow still ruled in favor of self-defense. Probably had everything to do with the fact that Hobbs had been portrayed as a good Christian man from a prominent Dallas family, recently graduated from college, had a steady job as an engineer at his father’s company with excellent prospects to serve the community and had no other record to speak of. Luis, meanwhile, was the son of an undocumented immigrant who worked minimum wage at a meat-packing factory… apparently no one important.
Jake had later found out Hobbs had a sealed juvenile record, but he hadn’t been able to get it unsealed, so he could only guess what Hobbs might have done as a teenager. There’d also been two separate incidents while Hobbs had been in college where he’d bashed fellow students. Both had ended up in the hospital, and one had almost died. But in each case, the charges had suddenly been dropped. He could only guess the victims had either been bullied or bribed into changing their minds and not pursuing the cases.
“Perez, are you okay?”
He gave himself a mental shake, realizing he’d been standing in brooding silence for several long moments.
“Yep, fine. Just thinking about it all.” Part of him knew he had to tell his suspicions to the sheriff. But that would create its own problems.
The sheriff would be pissed if he knew Jake had come here in pursuit of the man who’d killed his brother and walked free. And once that truth was out, he’d be blocked from any and all details of the case, if not outright suspended for the duration of the investigation. He hated that his silence might be leaving the community at risk—he might have been able to prevent this latest victim going missing if he’d spoken up sooner—but he’d tell Hayes only when he was absolutely sure Hobbs was the one behind one or more of the crimes. The prospect of being dismissed and accused of letting his personal vendetta get in the way of logic was the bigger risk. He needed to stick to his plan to be patient and keep a close eye on Hobbs, gathering what evidence he could against the man so when he did eventually slip up, Jake would be there holding the noose in an evidence trail even a blind man could follow.
Sheriff Hayes got to his feet. “We’re lucky we’ve already got Detective Stevens in town. The best thing we can do is leave him to do his job and stick to our regular duties. Hopefully he’ll find whoever did this and it’ll all blow over quickly.”
“And you’re sure you don’t need me to come in?” He needed to glean whatever he could from the case notes the detective had put together so far. No matter what Hayes said, Jake couldn’t leave well enough alone. Not on the chance that Leroy Hobbs was involved. He needed to see if he could sneak a look at the case notes, see if anything the detective had found so far maybe linked to Hobbs.
The sheriff sighed. “I didn’t want to have to ask you, but we are a little short—”
“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”
“Thanks, Perez. See you at the station.” The sheriff sent him an appreciative nod and then let himself out of the house.
Jake went up to change, trying not to feel guilty about the possibility of having to cancel the date with Danny when he’d been so insistent on them going tonight. Hopefully, though, he could put in a few hours to help out the sheriff, see what he could find out about the ongoing investigations, and still finish up in time to meet Danny.
WHEN JAKE arrived at the station, he walked into a frenzied hive of activity. He’d never seen the place so busy. Most officers were hurrying back and forth looking harried, while the phone at Laura’s desk didn’t stop ringing. There was a temp helping her, a young guy by the name of Curt, but neither of them appeared to be keeping up with the deluge.
Laura walked over to the watercooler to fill up the fancy colored drink bottle she kept on her desk, so he went to intercept her while she wasn’t glued to the phone.
“What the hell is going on?” He reached out to hold the tap open for her while she filled her bottle, and she sent him a weary smile of thanks.
“Word got out about the missing person. On top of the murder, apparently it was enough to send the town into meltdown.” She huffed a sigh and flicked away a strand of hair that’d fal
len loose from her messy bun.
“What do you mean? Why are so many people calling the station? Are they worried for their safety?” He supposed a murder and missing person in the normally quiet town would cause waves. However, every guy and his neighbor calling up the sheriff’s station certainly wasn’t going to make their jobs any easier.
“We’re getting two type of calls,” Laura said, heading back toward her desk, where Curt looked like he was ready to rip the telephone cord from the wall. “The first is people who are busybodies and want to hear firsthand what happened. And the second is people with tips who think they might have seen something suspicious in the past few days.”
Well, at least the second group of callers might prove useful.
“How many tips have you gotten?”
Laura sent him a flat look. “Jake, I don’t think that’s a rabbit hole you want to go down.”
He crossed his arms and settled a stubborn stare on her. “I came in on my day off. I told the sheriff I wanted to help. Maybe this is how I can do it—by following up on some of these tips. Who knows, one of them might hold the single piece of information we need to crack the case.”
“It’s your sanity. I’m distancing myself from any responsibility.” She set her drink bottle down and picked up an alarmingly high and messy stack of papers, and then thrust them in his direction.
“Mrs. Harris swears someone was peeking in her bathroom window last night. Mr. Martin, the school janitor, found a backpack in a dumpster at the school filled with, quote suspicious paraphernalia. Ms. Lee, who works the counter at the produce store, saw two strange-looking men having an argument yesterday. Mrs. Jefferies swears someone stole one of her cats—”
“Are you sure it’s not down the drain again?”
Laura shot him an unimpressed look. “Mr. Turner, who owns the butcher shop, thinks someone moved his knives around after he closed up last night. Mrs. Cook says someone went through her mail. Shall I go on, or are you getting the picture?”
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