“Coffee?” Tucker asked.
Elliot looked away from the window onto the interview room where Connie Foster was sullenly answering Detective Pine and Special Agent Yamiguchi’s questions.
“Thanks.” He took the paper cup, sipped the bitter coffee and nearly choked. Tucker had tried to dilute it with half-and-half and sweetener, but it was still spectacularly awful coffee.
Foster was saying, “No way were you going to let an FBI agent die. The head of your task force? You’d have had to negotiate. Mills would have had to negotiate.”
Tucker muttered, “She’d—they’d—have to be nuts to think that plan was ever going to work.”
Elliot shrugged. One thing Corian had got right was that Elliot would have been willing to do pretty much anything to get Tucker back. Right up until the end, Corian had understood the mind-set of his various victims perfectly. Elliot had been no exception.
Tucker said, “I’m guessing Corian had a different outcome in mind. I don’t think he’d believe abducting me would lead to negotiating the death penalty off the table. But so long as you believed he believed it, he could keep you jerking on his line. And that was always going to be the point. Making you suffer as much as possible.”
Yes. Tucker probably had that right. The only reason Tucker was still alive was because Corian had been put out of commission and his accomplices hadn’t known how to proceed. They still believed the goal was forcing law enforcement to the negotiating table. And since Tucker wasn’t going anywhere...
“When did you discover your son was killing the young men he brought home?” Yamiguchi asked.
“After he was arrested,” Foster said. She shrugged.
The shrug was...strange. Kids these days! That’s what the shrug seemed to convey.
“Come off it,” Pine said. “You’re trying to tell us you had no idea your long-lost son was a serial killer? You were helping him the whole time.”
“No. I was not.”
“You moved out there so you could be near him and help him with his sick hobby.”
“I don’t care what you believe,” Foster said. And she did seem completely and coldly indifferent.
Yamiguchi intervened again. “You’ve said Corian communicated with you through letters smuggled out by prison guard Tamir Flurry. He was also in contact with his ex-wife, Honoria Sallis. Are we right in assuming Sallis was part of this?”
“That snooty bitch?” Foster laughed. “No. She wouldn’t risk her manicure, let alone her cushy lifestyle. I tried to plant that agent’s belongings all over Capitol Hill to get you to at least look at her, but you dumb-asses never found any of it. His suitcase was in a Dumpster. But no, you couldn’t locate it. You couldn’t even find his phone! We could have left him in the Dumpster and you wouldn’t have found him. What did it all come down to? A stupid dog. My God.”
“Yeah, about that dog. Let’s get back to the murder of Todd Rice,” Pine said. “Why did you kill him?”
Foster stared at the two-way mirror behind which Elliot and Tucker stood. “Is he back there? Mills. Is he listening to this?”
“Miss Foster.” Yamiguchi tapped her finger on the tabletop to draw Foster’s attention. “How did you persuade Torin Barro to help you abduct Agent Lance?”
Connie was still staring as though she could see through the mirror. “I was waiting for you to open the door,” she told Elliot. “You took away my son’s life. I was going to kill you. Why didn’t you open that door?” She began to cry. “Why didn’t you open the door?”
Tucker put a hand on his shoulder and gave Elliot a hard squeeze. “You know what—”
Elliot nodded. Turned away from the window. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
They were pulling off their clothes as they entered the house, ignoring Sheba, who was circling them and barking in welcome.
Tucker’s shirt and shoes disappeared somewhere between the kitchen table and the hallway. Elliot’s shirt landed ghostlike over the standing lamp next to the rocker. Tucker’s jeans hit the floor next, belt buckle chiming on hardwood.
Elliot nearly made it to the stairs, but tripped over Sheba, who yelped and scooted out of the way as Tucker pushed him the rest of the way down on the bottom step, tugging at his Levi’s.
“Pardon my reach,” Tucker panted, “but if we don’t fuck pretty soon, my heads may explode.” He was laughing—so was Elliot—but the desperation was real. On both sides. The million years between this and the last time they’d had sex had been too damned long.
Elliot wriggled out of the confines of blue denim, ignoring the twinge his knee gave at the awkward movement. “Christ, yes. Please. Fuck me, Tucker...”
Finally free of Levi’s and shorts, Elliot pushed his hips back in shameless invitation, inarticulate with need. He shuddered pleasurably at the velvety scrape of Tucker’s unshaven jaw over the sensitive skin of his lower back and ass cheeks, bucking as Tucker’s lips and tongue teased his crease for a moment.
“Oh, Christ. Christ, Tucker...”
A butter-slick finger—now, that was presence of mind; Tucker had grabbed the butter from the dish?—pierced him, began to work him with nasty expertise. So intimate. So knowing.
“What do you want?” Tucker’s breath was hot on his naked back, the nape of his neck, and Elliot was shivering with every press and push of that big blunt finger moving inside him. He moaned and tried to move more deeply into Tucker’s touch. But it wasn’t enough. He needed to be stretched and filled, needed to feel Tucker’s cock moving deeply inside him.
“No.” Tucker was loving and ruthless, keeping his touch too light to really satisfy. “You have to tell me. I want to hear the words from you.”
“I want to be fucked. I need to be fucked. By you. Need you, Tucker. Please...” Elliot was babbling, begging.
“You want my dick inside you? Is that what you said?”
Elliot nodded frantically, hips pushing hard.
“I want my dick inside you too,” Tucker whispered, and one finger was now two, stretching Elliot, making him feel vulnerable and naked and helpless, stretched wide for the broad smooth head of Tucker’s big cock.
And there it was. Tucker’s cock rubbed against his hole. So big. A reminder of who was boss here. Who did the fucking and who had to kneel with his ass in the air and take it. Elliot whimpered at the weak, undignified pleasure of being the guy who got fucked as Tucker shoved in. Hot and slick and hard.
“Oh...oh...” Stupid, unguarded sounds tearing out of him at that sweet burn. “Oh, Tucker...”
Tucker pushed all the way in, the tickle of pubic hair against his ass. “Jesus, Elliot. This is...just...”
He rocked experimentally, then harder, pushing Elliot, who braced to meet it, head resting on his arms, eyes focused on the edge of the glossy wooden step. He met each thrust with a low groan, legs spread, hips angled for maximum penetration.
“More. Oh Christ, more....”
“Love. You. So. Much,” Tucker said between thrusts. “Never. Felt. Like. This. About. Anyone. Just. You.”
The crazy beautiful weirdness of sex with someone who totally got what turned you on and, even better, could deliver what you needed exactly when you needed it most.
“Love you too...”
Tucker gave a sudden, deep groan and Sheba began to bark.
Laughter welled in Elliot’s chest. He started to yell at the dog, but release seemed to roll up out of nowhere, bubbling out of the dark intensity of the moment, sudden and overwhelming as a tsunami, catching him totally, terrifically off guard. One second he was riding that wave of sexual satisfaction and the next it felt like he’d caught fire, was about to spontaneously combust, feeling an orgasm so fiercely exquisite it seemed to blaze in every molecule from the ends of his hair to the tips of his toes.
He sucked in what felt like his last breath and began to come, shooting wet white heat all over the steps, and wouldn’t have been surprised to see the varnish sizzle away where the drops landed.
At the same time he was distantly surprised to recognize the sounds and sensations of Tucker also reaching orgasm—and with equal violence.
Elliot’s shaking arms gave way and he crashed down. Tucker collapsed on top. He was trembling a little, his breaths harsh against Elliot’s ear.
Elliot began to laugh harder. Thank God for endorphins because between his knee and his spine...
“You’re crazy,” Tucker gasped, but he was chuckling too and trying to unfold without putting his weight on Elliot. “Are you okay?”
Elliot nodded, accepting Tucker’s help in sitting up.
“I think I put my back out,” Tucker said.
“I think we scared the dog.”
They looked at Sheba, who had stopped barking and was sitting a few feet away, watching them, her head cocked.
Tucker’s breath whooshed out in another unsteady laugh. “Why do I feel like she’s grading my performance?”
Elliot rested his face on his hand, starting to laugh again.
“Yeah, okay. But is she going to start barking every time we—”
Tucker broke off as his cell phone rang from the pile of his jeans. Yamiguchi’s ring. Elliot stopped laughing. They looked at each other.
Tucker’s expression hardened. He said with a flat certainty, “Corian just woke up.”
Instinct? Intuition? Or just putting into words the thing they dreaded: the next round.
His own cell began to ring from the kitchen. “I don’t think so,” Elliot said. “I think that’s Yamiguchi phoning to say it’s all over.”
Tucker’s phone shrilled again. His gaze shifted to the phone, slid back to meet Elliot’s.
“Either way, you will never again open your eyes to another day not spent thinking of me.”
“No way.” Elliot jumped up, ignoring the pull of misused muscles—or maybe well-used muscles. He turned to head up the stairs. “We’re off the clock. You’re on sick leave. And we’re not—not—living the rest of our lives jumping through Corian’s hoops. Let it ring. Game. Over.”
He reached for Tucker and Tucker met him halfway. Their mouths met and Elliot felt the curve of Tucker’s smile pressing against his own.
* * * * *
To purchase and read more books by Josh Lanyon, please visit Josh’s website at .