“Oh God. I was talking and moving and stuff?”
He dismissed my embarrassment with a flick of his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen worse.”
-SEVEN-
I hung my coat in the hall and followed the smell of something better than I deserved for dinner into the kitchen. Sloppy joes, or spaghetti sauce, or…I lifted the lid and peeked. Chili.
Jacob came up out the basement in a T-shirt and jeans. There were cobwebs in his hair. He opened his mouth to say something, I’m guessing something a normal person might say, like hello. And I blurted out, “I just saw Stefan. And he hypnotized me, and I remembered something about Camp Hell.”
He came over and stood in front of me, reading my body language. He was probably trying to see if I wanted to be touched, or if he should leave me alone. I hoped he’d figure right. I couldn’t tell, myself.
My elbow twinged when he ran his hands up my arms, but I ignored it. I leaned toward him, and he clasped me against his chest. He was so big. And maybe I’d been wrong, when I figured he wasn’t really my type, that I was into flashy guys. Because Stefan was all about the rock-star look, but he was also big and solid, and patient and smart. I settled my cheek against Jacob’s shoulder, and focused on the places our bodies touched. They were all solid muscle. “You feel amazing.”
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I, uh….” Actually, realizing that I’d left Stefan at Camp Hell to rot was bothering me a hell of a lot more than the scene he’d helped me dredge up. “I realized that they tested Neurozamine on me. Back before it was on the market. Way back. Before it was even called that.”
Jacob turned his face toward me and kissed the side of my head. He slid both hands up my back and wove his fingers through my hair. “Neurozamine’s side effects are a lot milder than Auracel’s.”
That was true. “It metabolizes faster, too. Just a couple of hours.”
He stroked my scalp with his fingertips. I closed my eyes. The smell. I’d smelled it plenty, since I’d worked homicide. But those first few times really stick with you.
“They figured that out by locking me in a room with a dead body and timing how long it took me to get a read on the spirit.”
His fingers went still on my scalp for a moment. He reached down to steady himself on the countertop with one hand. And then his other hand began stroking again, gentle, patient, as if I hadn’t just told him about the corpse.
I opened my eyes.
Jacob was squeezing the countertop so hard, his knuckles were white.
“I’m gonna ditch my suit,” I said. I brushed a kiss over his jaw as I pulled back, and I wondered if a real wool blazer would have felt less clammy than the SaverPlus special with the man-made lining. I slipped it off, and my shirt was still damp beneath my holster. “Um…I’m thinking it shouldn’t go back in the closet.”
Jacob stepped up behind me, and his hand closed over mine. “I’ll take it to the cleaners.” He wrapped his other hand around me and loosened my tie. “The back of your shirt is stained with sweat.”
“Nice.”
“Let me take care of you.” He dropped my jacket on the couch, then my gun and holster, and then he led me to the bathroom.
Our downstairs bathroom was big and brand spanking new, since the original owner died before she’d even finished installing it. In the eighties. I didn’t mind the pastel tiles or the whitewashed cabinets. They were the closest thing to white we had in the whole loft.
Jacob parked my ass against the sink, turned on the shower, and peeled off my shirt. I avoided looking at it too hard. At Jacob, too. He’d seen me naked for months. But tonight it felt different, somehow. Vulnerable.
I stared at a spot in the center of his chest where a partial spider skeleton had caught on his T-shirt while he was rooting around in the basement. If I looked hard, I could see how each tiny leg had been jointed.
Jacob slipped my belt off, undid my fly. My dress pants dropped. He pushed down my boxers, and I shoved down my socks, stepped out of everything in one big wad of fabric and shoes. The bathroom was hazy with steam. Jacob slipped out of his clothes, let them mingle with mine, the whole mess of it fit to be thrown out on the street, except that I really liked the way his jeans hugged his package, so maybe those could stay, spider parts or not.
Jacob climbed into the shower first, then held a hand out to me. It was a far cry from my old shower stall, which had been molded all in one piece in a factory somewhere, and shipped by the dozens to every apartment rehab in the Midwest. No, this beauty was floor to ceiling tile, bizarre shades of salmon and ecru, seafoam and wedgewood. I knew Jacob hated it. But its condition was pristine, and neither of us had the time or inclination to have it ripped out and replaced with something less weird.
I ran a fingertip over the grout between a pale green and pale pink tile. “I can get a lawnchair,” Jacob said. He put his hand on my hip and thumbed my hipbone as he said it. “That way, you can sit back and….”
Whatever he was going to offer, no doubt it would’ve been totally hot. Only my mind shifted to something completely else. Not like a cosmic hand was channel-surfing in my brain or anything. I still knew who I was, where I was, and with whom. It was more like picture-in-picture, a super vivid flash of Camp Hell.
The orderlies.
The showers.
Movie Mike, back from one course too many of experimental drugs.
Mike in a wheelchair, with his head bobbing around and weird-assed noises coming out of his throat.
A plastic chair, lying on its side on the grungy blue tiles. Water beaded on the arms, puddling under the seat. Or maybe urine.
“I can’t,” I told Jacob. I’d been aiming for a firm delivery, but I’d overshot the firmness aspect and ended up snapping.
Jacob caressed my cheek with his knuckles. “What is it?”
We all thought Movie Mike would snap out of it once the drugs ran their course. I always bounced back. So did Stefan. But Mike never did. The orderlies would strap him into this plastic chair and hose him down.
“Camp Hell. The showers.” I shook my head. “No chair.”
“Okay. We don’t need a chair. I’ll hold you up.” He eased my back against the ridiculous tiles and pushed my wet hair out of my eyes. I really needed a haircut. Jacob never mentioned it. Because he never rode me about all the little things, the shit that didn’t really matter.
He touched my shoulder. I looked down. A pattern of pale hickeys stretched along my collarbone from sternum to shoulder. Giant purple-red love bites covered my stomach where he’d sucked me hard. And my hips were dusted with smudgy green fingermarks. If I didn’t know where all the decorations had come from, I would think I’d picked up leprosy somewhere.
Jacob pressed his mouth against a hickey, and kissed it. The shower pelted him in the back. He moved to the next mark, and kissed that, too.
He moved across my chest, and placed a slow, deliberate kiss on each mark he’d made, each place he’d left me a souvenir of the fun we’d had together. He pressed firmly enough to keep it from tickling me, and yet I felt jumpy, as if I’d shove him off any second and chafe gooseflesh off my arms. I even flinched a time or two, but Jacob ignored the motion, until he’d kissed his way across my neck and shoulders, and had to kneel down to press his lips against my belly.
Water droplets bounced off my chest, and my skin flushed from the heat. I looked down at Jacob’s head. There was no Camp Hell flashback that could overlay what he was doing. It was too different, too new. He thumbed a bruise on my hip, and shook his head. I wondered if he’d be worried about breaking me now that I’d opened myself up to the brittle memories of Camp Hell. “Hey. I was having a good time. Remember?”
He glanced up. Fine water droplets beaded his hair.
I touched his brow. “A really good time,” I said, emphasis on the
really
.
His mouth closed over the crest of my hipbone. He lavished a slow, wet kiss over one finger-shaped bruise, and then the next, then the next. My nipples stiffened in the shower spray, and my cock started to swell. I decided his tongue and lips weren’t making me feel ticklish after all.
I leaned into the tile and rested my hands on his shoulders, and watched the top of his head. His hair had a mean swirl at the back, as if the hand that’d made him had finished him off there with a tweak. I touched the cowlick, and he murmured against the skin beneath my belly button. I didn’t have a bruise there. But I guess he wanted to be thorough.
His beard grazed my shaft, and he worked his way across to my other hip. One by one, he kissed each and every mark on my body. I was hard by the time he finished.
Jacob coaxed my legs apart, then wedged one of his shoulders between them. I slung a leg over him. I figured I could get away with it; I was stone-cold sober and I had two tiled walls holding me up. The water that ran down the front of me was hot, but his mouth was hotter as it closed over my balls. He wasn’t sucking and tonguing like usual, though. He was kissing.
My cock pointed toward my navel. I let my breath out slowly and determined that I wouldn’t drown in the shower spray as long as I kept my face tilted down. Better to watch Jacob that way, anyhow.
Jacob’s whiskers brushed my inner thigh, and then his lips, and the touch of his tongue. No bruises there that I knew of. But that was okay. He swirled his tongue behind my balls. I squeezed his shoulders, made a noise that told him if he wanted to pursue the tongue action, that’d be fine by me.
He kissed my taint. Sucked it. Kissed it again. I did my best not to breathe water.
I ran my fingers over the back of Jacob’s head. Water sprayed off his short hair. He burrowed deeper, reached around to spread my ass open with his hands. I slumped against the shower wall, tilted my hips. His lower lip brushed my ass. My breath caught.
He kissed me there, tender and wet, and then followed with a long lick, and another kiss.
“Feels good,” I said, which was the understatement of the year, and I think he knew, anyway. He kept on going—kissing, licking, sucking—and the leg that held me up started to tremble, but I just walked it out wide, flexed my hips toward him more so it was easier for him to devour my quivering hole.
I felt flushed from my knees to my ribs, and everything throbbed in time with the beat of my heart and the slow, steady swipes of Jacob’s lips and tongue. There was a delicious ache in my cock. I touched it, and his tongue fluttered on my ass. I groaned, and stroked myself. Jacob layered kisses over kisses, and between them, slipped his tongue inside me. I started beating off, hard.
My leg shook, and he held my ass firmly. No bruises, not tonight, just enough to steady me against the shower wall. I made a sex noise, swallowed water, remembered to tuck my chin. My wet hair tickled the bridge of my nose. The spray had gone tepid. I didn’t care. The peak was in sight.
Jacob drove his tongue in deeper, and I grabbed his head to steady myself, jerked off against the short, wet bristle of his hair. He sucked at my ass, tongue-fucked it. The water was cold now, sharp on my nipples. Jacob groaned—I felt it rumble behind my balls, and then I stiffened up all over, squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath. I shot my load, hot over my fist, then cold again as the water rinsed it away. The tip of Jacob’s tongue traced my ass, and his hot breath made me shiver. I milked another bead of come from myself, and my stomach twitched.
I opened one eye and looked at the top of Jacob’s head. He had to be freezing.
I got my leg under me again and Jacob turned off the shower. I was going to make a remark about the capacity of our hot water heater, but Jacob flattened me against the shower wall, chest to chest, and pressed his face into my neck. More tender kisses, as if he couldn’t find enough places on me to put them.
-EIGHT-
I signed off on a stack of reports that Zig had typed up. Ghost count at LaSalle was up to seventeen, none of them willing to talk, most of them probably repeaters. I was supposed to be checking Zig’s work for accuracy, but hell. I could tell after the first two or three that he’d written down everything I’d said, exactly how I’d said it. I stared at the paper and let the words blur until I figured enough time had passed that I’d look like I had actually read it, and I penned my forgettable signature on the bottom. And then I moved on to the next page.
Zig sat across from me, busy at work transcribing even more notes. We’d been at LaSalle for the better part of the week, and had zero to show for it. I don’t think I’d ever had that many ghosts give me so little information.
My cell phone rang. Caller ID said
Metro Cor Cen
. Crap. I didn’t want to talk to Roger Burke, but I was worried that I’d miss something and regret it later if I didn’t. “Bayne. Hold on a second.” I muted the phone. “I’ll take this outside,” I told Zigler. He nodded without looking up from his computer screen.
Outside was about five below. I headed toward my car, and then realized that it was possible that my car was bugged. Probable? Maybe not. But possible? Yeah. After everything I’d seen lately, yeah.
And, for that matter, my cell phone could have been monitored, too. “I don’t think you should be calling me,” I told him.
“I talked to my lawyer. He hasn’t heard from you yet.”
“It’s only been a few days.”
“I’m an ex-cop in prison. Every day is Russian roulette.”
Shit. Probably so. I tried another excuse. “I think I can get the same information out of Warwick if I catch him on the right day.”
“Hardly. He thinks he knows, but the FPMP only shows him what they want him to see. Now, me? How do you think I know so much?”
I sighed into the phone, hard. “I’m sure you can’t wait to tell me.”
“Because I was one of them.”
I felt a cold jab somewhere behind my sternum. It would explain how he knew all that he knew about Camp Hell. About me. “What’s it stand for?”
“The Federal Psychic Monitoring Program. They don’t have a website or an ad in the Yellow Pages, but they exist. I’ll even do you one better, since you’re such a skeptic, and I’m dying to get out of this fucking metal box. I’ll give you a name.”