Ball & Chain

He slid his hand down the side of Zane’s face. “Marry me,” he whispered.



Zane grinned, biting his tongue as he narrowed his eyes like he was considering it. Then he shook his head once. “No, thank you.”



Ty snorted. “So polite this time.” They were both grinning when they kissed again, but the disappointment was sharper for Ty than he’d expected. He was going to keep asking until he got it right, until Zane had forgiven him and was ready. Knowing Zane loved him didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt though.



Zane’s hands slid along his skin under the water. They were crouched low, trying to keep their shoulders under water so the cold air wouldn’t bite at them. Ty could feel Zane growing harder. He adjusted the way he was sitting, rubbing against Zane to elicit a moan or two.



“Ty,” Zane finally whispered against his lips. His fingers dug into the muscles of Ty’s thighs.



“I can’t believe you convinced me to come out here with you,” Ty said between kisses. He lifted up onto his knees, letting Zane guide him back down. The head of Zane’s cock pushed at him demandingly. After the last several weeks of getting reacquainted, it would have been an easy entry. Ty lifted his face up to the sky, humming and sighing.



“Can we do this without lube?” Zane asked. His voice was strained, and every muscle in his body was hard and tight, no longer relaxed by the waters of the hot spring. “More importantly, should we do this in a mineral spring?”



“Fine time to ask now,” Ty grunted. He lowered himself back into Zane’s lap, dragging his own cock against Zane’s as he sat. “What’s wrong with mineral springs?”



“Don’t some of them have bacteria in them?”



“I’m getting out!” Ty shouted, trying to sound dismayed, but laughing too hard to pull it off.



Zane grabbed at him as he moved away, tackling him. They both managed to keep their heads above water, but Ty lost his footing. He wrapped around Zane to stay afloat, and he kissed him hungrily to combat Zane’s next attack. Zane shoved him toward the other side of the spring, slamming him against the rock wall and holding him pinned there as their kiss turned devouring, consuming.



Ty wrapped his legs around Zane, groaning as Zane’s hard cock threatened to breach him again. He flailed, reaching out for a handhold. He fingers fell on cool skin.



He jerked away, gasping and shoving Zane away from their kiss. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted.



“What?” Zane cried. He pushed away, obviously thinking he’d hurt Ty or something had triggered a flashback.



But Ty’s eyes had mostly adjusted in the moonlight, and he could make out the pale skin of a leg and bare foot against the dark underbrush. When Zane saw it, he scrambled toward their clothing, probably trying to reach one of their phones for the flashlight app. Ty pushed himself up onto the lip of the edge of the hot spring and reached for the foot again, tugging at it. He would have prayed it was a drunk bridesmaid, but he already knew he would be wrong about that.



When Zane got the light and shone it on the bushes, Ty realized he’d been half-right. It was definitely a bridesmaid.



Ty hesitated to knock on Nick and Kelly’s door for so long that Zane reached up and knocked for him. Ty glared at him until he heard the lock thrown and the door creaked open.



Kelly’s face was puffy from sleep. He was wearing just a pair of sleep bottoms, no shirt, and he had Nick’s gun in his hand. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.



“What?” he croaked.



“Another body’s shown up,” Ty said quietly.



Kelly merely stared at him, then stepped aside and gestured for him to come in.



A lamp beside the bed gave off a dim glow, and Nick sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes with one hand.



Kelly crawled back in beside him, leaving Ty and Zane standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed with nowhere to sit. Nick waved a hand at them, and Zane shrugged and crawled onto the end of the bed, sitting cross-legged like they were at a slumber party. Ty followed suit because he was past the stage of giving a fuck.



Ty showed his phone with the picture of the victim to Nick. “You recognize her?”



Nick took the phone, nodding and frowning. “That’s the maid of honor.”



Ty’s stomach dropped. He was going to have to tell Livi that her best friend had been murdered at her wedding.



“Her name was Nikki . . . something. Webb. West. No, it’s Webb.” Nick still sounded half-asleep. Ty had little doubt that Kelly had given him something to make him rest.



Ty glanced up at him, then down at the photo again, feeling sick. Notifying family of victims wasn’t normally a part of his job. Notifying his own family of deaths definitely wasn’t in his resume.



“Do you want me to tell them?” Nick asked softly. “I’ve got some practice with it.”



Ty glanced around at the three of them. All of them were frowning sympathetically at him. “No,” he said with difficulty. “Thanks, but . . . no, I’ll do it.”



Nick nodded. He and Kelly shared a worried scowl, then Kelly nodded. They were communicating silently, and it bothered Ty. Kelly and Nick had always been able to do that, though, which told Ty that he just needed to get a fucking grip here. Nick took a deep breath. “We’ve got another problem.”



“A bigger problem than a dead maid of honor?” Zane asked, incredulous and full of dread.



Nick shrugged. “Debatable, but . . . yeah, probably.”



“When we got back from the Creepy Hollow woods, I was cleaning Nick’s back up,” Kelly started.



Ty raised a hand. “If this is a sex story, I’d like to take a pass.”



“It’s not,” Nick assured him. There was no humor in his voice. “I thought I’d hit something sharp in the path when I fell, but when Doc got a look at it, we realized . . . well, take a look,” he said. Then he pulled his shirt up, twisting so Ty and Zane could see his back.



A long, narrow welt covered him from side to side, starting around chest height and then streaking over his shoulder blade and the Celtic cross tattoo along his spine to disappear into the large eagle, globe, and anchor tattoo on his shoulder.



Zane cupped a hand over his mouth, leaning his arm on his knee. Kelly’s foot kicked Ty from under the covers, and he murmured an apology as he tried to get comfortable. Ty barely heard him. “That’s a graze,” he blurted.



Nick nodded.



“Nick, that’s a bullet graze.”



“Yes,” Nick said, voice calm. He turned and let his shirt loose, shaking his shoulders so the material would settle. “We were right. Those were silenced shots we heard.”



Chapter 8



Breakfast the next morning was late in coming, mostly because no one had thought to prepare it.



Mara took over, heading down to see what she could do to cook for thirty people. As soon as she’d announced she was going to the kitchen, Zane and Nick both hustled after her, claiming they would help.



Ty knew they were going more to protect her than to use their considerable combined culinary skills. He appreciated that both men had taken responsibility for protecting his mother just as quickly as he would have.



Ty spent the morning in Deuce and Livi’s room, bouncing Amelia on his knee and breaking the news of Nikki Webb’s murder.



Deuce sat with his head in his hands, not even trying to be stoic anymore. Livi took the news a little better than Ty had expected, though. Her eyes were tearing over, but Ty had seen her sob over Milton’s demise as well. Livi was a tenderer heart than Ty was used to dealing with.



“This is awful,” Livi said. “I didn’t even know her that well. I don’t know how to get in touch with her family.”



Ty frowned, and the bouncing stopped for a second. “What do you mean?”



Amelia cooed to him, complaining about the halt in her ride. He began the bouncing again, smiling down at her.



“I mean I didn’t really know her well,” Livi said again. “I met her a few months ago when she took one of my classes. I have three really close friends, and . . . frankly I was dreading choosing one of them. I don’t have any sisters or cousins. So when I found out Nikki was a party planner, it just clicked. She became the maid of honor, she planned all the pre-wedding stuff, and I didn’t have to choose between my closer friends.”



Ty nodded, still a little confused. He was relieved, though, because he’d been absolutely terrified of making Livi cry.



Amelia latched onto his nose and giggled. Ty tried to pull his face away, but couldn’t get out of her grasp. Livi laughed shakily, still wiping at her eyes.



“Ty, what’s going on here?” Deuce asked. He sounded desperate. “Is this your shit following you around, or is this entirely new shit?”



“I’m pretty sure it’s new shit,” Ty answered, his voice nasal as Amelia held on to his nose. He almost wished he could say it was his fault, that this was about his past. But he wouldn’t lie to Deuce just to make him feel better. He was done with lies.



“But what did Nikki have to do with Mr. Milton?” Livi asked. “I understand that Mrs. Boyd was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but why kill Nikki?”



“That’s a good question. I intend to find out.”



Deuce and Livi both nodded, wearing almost identical frowns.



Amelia squeezed Ty’s nose, and he made a honking sound that set her giggling.



“Do you want to take her for a while, Ty?” Deuce asked.



Ty glanced at him, raising an eyebrow.



“I mean, when you’re not investigating the series of murders at my wedding,” Deuce said wryly. “You’ve barely seen her. I know she’s safe with you. And Maisie is running late, so we’re sort of in need of a babysitter anyway.”



“Maisie’s the girl who found Milton’s body,” Ty said with a frown. “Why is she late?”



“She wasn’t feeling well,” Livi answered. “She’s not handling all of this . . .”



Ty gave that another nod and a deeper frown. He sometimes forgot that normal people didn’t handle finding dead bodies well. He looked down at Amelia, who was reaching for the compass pendant around his neck. Her little tongue was stuck out of her mouth as she concentrated. Ty grinned. “Yeah, I’ll take her for a while.”



Deuce tossed him a tattered gray lamb. “Don’t leave home without it.”



Zane actually had a good morning, working down in the kitchen with Mara and Nick trying to get enough food prepared to feed anyone who still had an appetite. He was able to show off some of the things he’d learned to Mara, who seemed to be thrilled that “another one of her boys” had finally learned to feed himself.



He also learned a few things from Nick, who gave Zane the tip to fold his fingers in when he was cutting so he could feel the knife with his knuckles and didn’t have to look at what he was doing. He shrugged it off when Zane asked where he’d learned, saying it was nothing more than spatial recognition and the need to hurry when he’d been learning to cook. He seemed to be in an unusually evil mood, so Zane mostly left him alone.



After breakfast, Zane sat in a secluded alcove off the great hall and began flipping through the photos on Nick’s iPad, reading his notes, trying to follow the jumps in logic and make sense of the scribbles Nick obviously hadn’t felt the need to connect when he’d been taking them.



Zane could tell which interviews had been first and which had been last because, while the questions remained thorough, Nick’s notes became less legible and the scribbles devolved into pleas for someone to kill him.



Zane snorted as he read them.



He glanced up when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Ty was striding across the great hall, Amelia riding on his shoulders and gripping his hair like the reins of a horse. He had Amelia’s favorite stuffed animal stuck in the back pocket of his jeans.



Zane lowered the iPad and notebook, relaxing his shoulders and watching his lover. Ty would take a few steps, then stop and weave to the side, then stop again, making a sound like brakes screeching, and then he’d veer in another direction. Zane realized that he was letting Amelia steer him by pulling on his hair.



They were never going to get wherever Ty was heading if they kept on like that. Zane gathered his things and stood, coming up beside them and putting a roadblock in their path.



“Uh oh!” Ty said to Amelia. “Brake!”



Amelia was laughing, her tiny fingers clutched in his hair.



“Brake!” Ty called out again.



She leaned forward instead, and Ty walked into Zane, making the sound of a nasty crash when they collided. Amelia howled with laughter and crawled over Ty’s head, sliding into Zane’s arms. Ty gave Zane a quick kiss, still grinning.



“How’d you wind up with this?” Zane asked, tossing Amelia up and turning her upside down to hold her by her feet. She squealed in delight.



“I don’t know. I’m easily duped, I guess.” Ty took her back from Zane, turning her right side up. “The nanny isn’t doing too well with finding that body; she’s MIA. I took Amelia so they could have an hour to get stuff done.”



“Makes sense. Poor girl. You missed breakfast, by the way.”



Ty grinned. “Was there venison involved?”



“Actually, yeah.”



“Gross. Are those Nick’s notes?”



Zane nodded. “I’m still trying to make sense of them without asking him what they mean.”



“Where is he?”



“Probably curled up in a corner hissing at people as they pass by.”



Ty’s laugh was a surprised one. “Bad mood, huh?”