Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings) (29 page)

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Wynhod battled his body, trying to stave off the massive erection that wanted to rise and show itself off to everyone walking past him in the well-lit corridor.  The spicy scent of his arousal made his nostrils twitch.  Fuck.  All those gorgeous welts on Krijero’s back had him imagining that long, lovely body stretched naked and bound over his punishment bench.  He could see all too well in his mind’s eye Krijero trembling as he waited for the first lash from one of Wynhod’s disciplining tools.  Maybe with the Imdiko’s hair tied back, so Wynhod could see the nervous but yearning anticipation on the man’s sweet face, his eyes rolled up to watch as the Nobek approached with a handful of stiff leather…

Wynhod took a deep breath and made the fantasy disappear from his mind.  He traded lust for a sense of irritation.  It was utterly insane that Krijero had been under his nose for the last ten years.  An Imdiko that gave himself up to the harsher pleasures Wynhod enjoyed meting out.  He’d known Krijero all this time, and Wynhod had never given him a passing thought!  He had even resisted considering him as anything but somewhat comical and pitiful.

Scowling bad-tempered at nothing in particular, the Nobek burst out, “Where the hell have I been?”  His voice broke loud over the low hum of conversation of passing officers.

Gelan chuckled.  As usual, he knew where Wynhod’s thoughts were.  “It’s awful to realize there’s been a likely Imdiko near all along.  Those marks on him are amazing, aren’t they?  It didn’t look like he bothered to have any healed either.”  The Dramok sighed with a note of pleasure.  “He likes pain.  You don’t always get that with their breed.”

Wynhod felt a shiver down his spine.  “I keep thinking about that long body under my strap … damn, Gelan.  His need for close relationships seems utterly screwed.  How do we get him to consider us?”

Gelan’s smile faded.  His lips pursed as he thought, and his steps slowed as they neared their own department.  “Someone fucked with his head at some point.  I’m guessing he usually does impersonal encounters.  Didn’t I see him go into a pleasure club some time back?  Seems to me I did.”

Their conversation paused as they entered the investigation department.  The first desks they passed belonged to Investigator Dexel and his enforcer Panow, who looked Gelan and Wynhod over.  His brow lifted as he stared blatantly at their slightly bulging crotches.

“Been kicking some ass already this morning?” the hook-nosed Nobek asked.

“Every chance I get for as little reason as possible,” Wynhod answered coldly and with more than a small threat in his tone.  He headed to his desk without another word.

Wynhod didn’t care for the man or his partner.  He’d caught them eavesdropping on a private conversation he and Gelan were having one day.  It had nearly resulted in a fist fight between all four men.  After the Delir case ten years ago, Gelan and Wynhod had become the team to envy.  Dexel and Panow were relatively new to the department and apparently wanted to make their mark as well.  Wynhod didn’t mind ambition as long as success came as a result of personal hard work.  This business of spying on others pissed him off, however.

He and Gelan sat down at their desks across from each other.  Now that they were in their own space, Wynhod picked up their conversation.  “Back to Krijero.  He’s an Imdiko who doesn’t want involvement.  Not what you usually find with the caregiver breed.  I wonder who messed him up so badly.”

Gelan tapped a finger on the surface of his desk, his gaze far away.  “Well, the damage is already done, whatever it was.  And now Krijero’s on alert, worried we’re going to chase him.”

Wynhod agreed.  That was a problem.  Neither he nor Gelan did subtle particularly well.  Gelan had some pretty good negotiating skills when it came to getting witnesses and suspects to open up, but in matters of seduction he was ‘as restrained as a starving zibger’ as one of their past Imdiko prospects had put it.  Wynhod was even worse.  He never tiptoed around the issue of sex with a lover, baldly announcing he wanted it when he wanted it.  If the subject of that affection showed signs of agreement, the Nobek put them on their backs or bellies and worked to assure them both of mutual pleasure.

The Nobek had the idea such practices wouldn’t work with someone like Krijero.  However, short of snatching the reluctant Imdiko off the street and tying him up in their sleeping room, he can’t see how they can get him in a compromising position; one in which he and Gelan could make their case that Krijero should get to know them better.

Gelan huffed an unhappy breath.  “I think we’re going to have to keep our distance for a little while.  Let him turn it over in his mind.  Maybe curiosity will do the work for us.”

Wynhod mused out loud.  “We can stay close enough that he knows we’re still interested, but not so close that he starts throwing things to keep us away.”

“Exactly.  Meanwhile, maybe we can do a little digging around in his history and see if we can find out why he’s anti-clan.”  The Dramok grimaced.  “Of course, there is the other option.”

“Which is?”

“We could just write him off.  Leave him alone.”

Wynhod thought of the marks on the Imdiko’s back.  Of the gentle face behind that unruly mop of hair.  Of the half-hopeful, half-dreading look he’d glimpsed in Krijero’s expression.  Of the exciting mix of fear and want.

He snorted.  “Fuck that.  I want to know what’s going on with that man.” 

Gelan grinned.  “I knew you’d say that.”

With that agreement made, they got to work.  Wynhod loathed desk work.  He found it hard to concentrate on stupid shit like who was trying to blackmail the territorial mayor.  The political leader had received still pics of himself in compromising situations with men who were not his clanmates, along with the missive that he funnel funds into an account to keep the affairs quiet.  It was the worst kind of investigation, one that would not end up with Wynhod punching or shooting someone who deserved it.

Wynhod found it doubly hard to concentrate on such a boring case when his head kept summoning the image of those lovely welts striping Krijero’s back.

Chapter 4

Nine months later:

Krijero looked over his private research files and sighed.  He kicked the floor with a badly scuffed traction-soled shoe, leaned back in his chair, and stared up at the smooth, unmarked ceiling.

He had the psych department to himself right now.  He’d come in early as he often did to work on the Frenzy case – or, more accurately, the Frenzy non-case.

As promised, Investigation had done a check of the men he had pinpointed as possible Frenzy users, the ones who had been locked up in mental facilities.  To a man, the results had been positive for the drug.  Half of them, once they were sane enough to talk, had sworn they never used Frenzy.  Investigators thought they’d taken less harmful, though still illicit drugs laced with the powerful hallucinogen.

More users were being brought in all the time, often leaving destruction in their wake before being discovered.  In the last nine months, it had become apparent that Frenzy was making inroads into the Southwest Mountain Territory, just as it had the rest of Kalquor.  Yet the incursion proceeded slowly.  Head Investigator Utta still ran his department with the belief that it came from somewhere outside the territory.  Krijero could appreciate the man’s desperate need to not have another Delir-type epidemic traced to his jurisdiction.  He still thought the willful blindness was akin to covering one’s eyes in the hopes that the monster standing right in front of him would simply cease to exist.

It was easy to pretend, especially when no one was ever seen dealing Frenzy to its growing cesspool of users.  It seemed no gangs were involved this time.  If the dealers who’d sold Delir had been ghosts, Frenzy’s distributors were absolutely invisible.  Not one person had been caught that could be traced back to an active supply line.  People caught in possession of Frenzy, the ones able to still string a few sentences together, said payment was made to accounts that disappeared after one deposit.  After that, they were messaged where their hit had been hidden for them to claim. 

The addicts never saw the providers.  Sometimes they were given twice what they paid for with the instruction to share it with someone else.  Then when they were invited to purchase more Frenzy, they were to provide contact information for the person they’d turned on to the drug.  Failure to do so resulted in not being able to get their next fix.  And so it went.  It was an evil but ingenious system that brought in new customers without ever endangering whoever dealt the drug.

Finding the barrier impossible to surmount, Krijero had begun investigating a new angle, one he thought might actually lead to whoever was ultimately behind Frenzy.  Unfortunately, he now had a new problem to face, one he did not look forward to.

Gelan and Wynhod.

He kicked the floor again.  It was time … hell, past time … to have a discussion with the pair.  Where his research was taking him meant he needed help, help only they could give since they were the only ones who believed his theory.  Damn it.

They’d backed off months ago as he’d demanded.  To a point.  The two men kept popping up in his department for one reason or another.  Sometimes they just peered in through the door at him.  Gelan and Wynhod were as subtle and sly as a couple of stampeding ronka.  Not only that, they seemed to be making sure Krijero ran into them on his way in and out of work.  Just this morning they were in the staff lobby hanging out and waving to him as he entered, even though he’d shown up fuck-off early to work.  Their smiles had been broad and voices warm as they wished him a good morning.

Krijero hated the way he felt around Gelan and Wynhod.  He was far too aware of how their close-fitting armored formsuits clung to their muscled bodies and of the promising heat in their eyes as they looked at him.  He visited the pleasure clubs way too often these days, to the point where the staff acknowledged him by name. 

Going into the investigation department and talking to them up close would be too good an opening for them to try to wheedle him into a more private, personal meeting.  Krijero didn’t want them to consider for an instant that he’d let them in like that.  However, he desperately needed to show Gelan his latest findings on the Frenzy issue.  It also needed to be now, since the Dramok was already in headquarters and this was an off-the-clock issue.  The bad thing about it was that few others were around, and that could lead to a much too personal conversation.

Krijero snarled at the ceiling.  Why the fuck had those two suddenly decided to find him so attractive?  Why couldn’t they stick to young Imdikos looking to clan with an established pair?  It couldn’t be too hard to find one, not with their rank.

There was no help for the situation.  Krijero ended his contemplation of the featureless surface overhead and almost savagely disengaged his file drive from his computer.  His head down, hair swinging in his face, he left his quiet, safe department and tromped down the hall towards Investigation.

He found Gelan and Wynhod sitting at their desks.  Only three other people were in the department, all seated far away from the pair.  None of them looked up as Krijero began carefully navigating his way through the maze of desks, but Gelan and Wynhod did.  It was almost as if they’d expected him. 

Their faces only hinted at smiles, yet they looked pleased to see him.  Krijero fought the warm feeling in the pit of his stomach at their obvious regard.  He needed to be professional.  This was nothing but a professional encounter, no matter what else they might want to make it into.

The Imdiko stopped a few feet away from their desks.  He kept a ridiculous amount of space between him and them, but he wanted them to know he hadn’t budged an inch from his assertion that he would not get personal with them.

“Hi.  Got a minute?” Krijero asked, managing not to wince at the higher than usual pitch of his voice.

Gelan did smile then.  “For you?  We’ve got hours.”

Krijero clenched his fists at his sides.  “A bit much, Investigator.  I want to talk Frenzy.  Nothing else.”

Gelan considered him for a moment before answering.  “Hmm.  I want to talk about Frenzy too.  But I also want to talk about other things.”  His tone abruptly hardened.  “Pull up a chair, Imdiko.”

The blatant command in the Dramok’s voice actually made Krijero shift to look for a seat.  That he had nearly obeyed without thought pissed him off.  He glared at Gelan.

The investigator’s brow lifted, but otherwise he maintained that friendly expression.  “You want me to investigate your findings?  Then you have to at least consider a proposal from me.  Otherwise, I’m not going to get my ass chewed out by my supervisor because you have some good guesses.”

Krijero fidgeted.  He looked at Wynhod, who only waited patiently for him to figure out what he would decide to do.  Gelan was similarly serene, as if he could sit there and wait forever for the Imdiko to make up his mind.

This was exactly what he’d feared, that the men would push their personal interest in him rather than respect that he didn’t want to be entangled.  And though they looked so very friendly right now, he could sense the stubborn resolve beneath it.  If he didn’t listen to whatever awful attempt Gelan made to get Krijero to let them court him, then the investigator would not listen to his suspicions about Frenzy.