Heated Beat 02 - Lucky Man (12 page)

Danny’s mouth came down on Finn’s. It was a gentle kiss, but firm and demanding. Silencing. It took Finn’s breath away and purged his mind of all else. Danny’s lips. Danny’s tongue. Danny putting his hands on Finn’s shoulders, breaking the kiss and turning him so his back pressed against Danny’s chest.

Finn arched into Danny’s touch, felt Danny hard, pressing against his spine, and God, it felt good. “But Will’s… not here…
fuck
!”

Danny tugged Finn’s hair and nipped his neck. “We’ll hear him… if you’re quiet.”

Quiet? Nope. Finn was a noisy lover and proud of it, but with Jack in the next room and the doors open, bearing Danny’s teasing touch in silence became his only option.

Danny massaged Finn’s clenched muscles until he quivered for all the right reasons, and then he pushed Finn forward and slid his lips and tongue down his spine, kissing, nipping, easing the tension out of Finn with every touch.

He stopped when he came to Finn’s waistband. “How quiet do you think you can be?”

The gravelly whisper made Finn squirm and press his face into his pillow. He raised his hips and let Danny strip him of his remaining clothes. Then he lay there, facedown and prone, at Danny’s mercy.

Danny gripped Finn’s hips and parted his legs. He blew warm air over Finn, and Finn shuddered. He could imagine Danny’s intentions well enough, but waiting for it was fucking torture. Until it happened, and then torture took on a whole new meaning. It had been ages since he’d last been rimmed. For Finn, there was nothing more intimate, and the sweep of Danny’s tongue was so light and gentle he wanted to cry. Maybe he
did
cry a little. Danny had done strange things to Finn’s heart since the moment they’d met.

Finn buried his face in the pillow, bit down, and clenched his fists. The pleasure was intense, not enough to make him come, but enough to make him scream, silent and unheard, except in his own head.

Danny kissed his way up Finn’s spine and wound his arms around Finn’s waist, naked… his skin a furnace against Finn’s. When had that happened? Finn hadn’t noticed Danny taking his clothes off.

Finn turned his head and found Danny’s lips. The kiss was rough and dirty, belying the featherlight dance of Danny’s fingertips on Finn’s chest. Finn gasped, breathless and desperate, though for what, he didn’t quite know. He just wanted… needed Danny, and he needed him now.

Danny let go and fumbled in Finn’s bedside table. Cool air hit Finn’s bare skin. Finn shivered. His body burned, but without Danny’s attention, his mind started to wander. He heard a sound downstairs, a creaking pipe, perhaps. Or maybe Will’s foot on the stairs. Finn hadn’t heard the front door, but Danny’s touch was like that… distracting, consuming.

Like he’d heard Finn’s errant thoughts, Danny coaxed Finn onto his side so Finn could see the door. “I’ll hear him.”

It didn’t escape Finn’s notice that Danny had said “I,” not “we,” like he knew Finn was beyond such things, but Finn couldn’t bring himself to care. Danny slipped into place behind him and brushed Finn’s sweat-dampened hair back from his face.

“Okay?” Finn nodded, but Danny gripped his chin and forced him to meet his gaze. “Sure?”

“I’m sure.” So fucking sure. Sex was no cure for schizophrenia, but as Finn yielded to Danny and let the burning sting of Danny’s cock seep through him, he felt the demons fade and slip away into their locked box, like Danny had passed him the key.

Danny fucked Finn slowly, his arms tight around Finn, his lips at his neck. The encounter felt sweeter than any they’d shared before, and Finn felt liquid and boneless, even as he spilled over Danny’s fist, his cry muffled by Danny’s other hand, pressed gently over his mouth.

It took Finn a while to regain his faculties. Behind him, he was dimly aware of Danny moving around, clearing up, reclaiming the duvet that had somehow found its way to the floor, and draping it over Finn.

Danny slid back into bed. “Jesus. You’re
still
shaking.”

“Mmm. Feels good.” Danny didn’t answer. Finn opened a heavy eye to find Danny staring at him in the darkness, leaning over his shoulder, like Finn was an unexploded bomb. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, mate. We’re all right.”

Finn frowned.
We’re all right.
What the hell did that mean? He started to ask, but Danny shook his head.

“Shh. Go to sleep. I’ll listen out for Jack until Will gets here.”

Chapter Ten

D
ANNY
WOKE
to Finn’s elbow in his face, and then the awkwardness of Finn trying to peel their sweat-sex-stuck bodies apart and sit up.

Finn mumbled something. Dazed, Danny rolled back and gave him some room.

“It’s buzzing,” Finn said.

“What is?”

“The bass amp.”

Danny frowned and squinted in the darkness. They hadn’t been asleep long, an hour or so, and his brain took a moment to compute. “Is it plugged in?”

“I need to jiggle the wire.”

“Okay.” Danny looked around for the errant amp. “Where is it?”

Finn didn’t answer. He swung his legs out of bed, then stopped, like he couldn’t remember what he was doing. “Why didn’t you tune it when we got here?”

“What?”

“Shit breaks. If you’d tuned your bass, we’d have known the amp was broken hours ago.”

Danny felt suddenly cold. He sat up and laid a cautious hand on Finn’s arm. “Finn?”

Finn turned his head in the wrong direction and got up. He drifted to the window and fiddled with the catch. “I’ll get them, Jack. Just stay here, yeah? I’ll get them.”

Fuck.
Danny sprang out of bed and caught Finn’s hands in his. “Finn? What are you doing, mate?”

Danny’s voice seemed to throw Finn. He frowned, and close up, Danny saw his gaze was all wrong.
Is he even awake?
Danny had no idea. Sleepwalking seemed bad enough, but the alternative… shit. A ripple of fear lanced Danny’s heart. Finn had never got round to telling him what to do if he was unwell.

“Come on.” Danny tugged on Finn’s arm. “Jack’s asleep in bed. Will too. I heard him come home. Come back to bed.”

It felt like leading a child away from a sweet shop at first. Finn planted his feet stubbornly on the floorboards, and it was all Danny could do to coax him away from the window, but then, halfway across the room, Finn’s resistance evaporated. He dropped his arms, bypassed Danny, and slid back into bed like he’d always been there.

Danny stood alone in the dark for a long moment, staring. A sliver of moonlight filtered through the half-open curtains and caught Finn’s skin so perfectly it didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real. Did that really just happen? Or had Danny’s hellish week finally caught up with him?

No answer was forthcoming, from Finn, the moon, or Danny’s subconscious, and eventually it got too cold to stand naked in the middle of Finn’s drafty bedroom. Danny retrieved his boxers from the floor and tiptoed to the bathroom. On the way he shot a surreptitious glance through Jack’s open door. He’d been telling the truth when he told Finn he heard Will let himself in and creep upstairs, and he looked at them now, curled up on Jack’s bed, Will holding Jack’s head on his chest, hands tangled his hair, and Danny felt a sudden deep-rooted need to take the quickest piss known to man and get back to Finn.

Finn hadn’t moved when Danny got back. Danny crawled in beside him and persuaded him to roll over. Finn let out a soft sigh and lolled his head on Danny’s shoulder. It wasn’t quite the tight embrace going on next door, but it was enough for Danny.

He held Finn for a long time and stared hard at him, like he could see through his skull and decipher the chaos in his brain. When that failed and sleep evaded him, he let his mind wander. Seeing Finn sleepwalk had scared the shit out of him and brought him back to reality with an unwelcome jolt. Finn had been rattled—trembling, muttering, distracted—when Danny arrived the night before, but it had faded as he’d lain in Danny’s arms, and Danny put it down to his impromptu supermarket trip. He’d never understand how something he perceived as mundane could frighten Finn so much, but frighten Finn it did, and now, even with Finn sleeping so peacefully beside him, Danny couldn’t help the nagging fear that he might have missed an ominous sign of something far, far worse.

Danny sighed. He needed to talk to Jack, but in the oppressive darkness, he could well imagine how that conversation would go.

Nice one, mate. Sex as therapy? What the fuck were you thinking?

Danny didn’t have an answer to that, and the hopeless sensation took him back to the hellish shift that had brought him to Finn’s doorstep in the first place. Body number three had brought Danny an eighteen-hour day and the near certainty he was dealing with multiple murders. Pathology results on two of the women were still inconclusive, but Danny
knew
… like every copper did: they were hunting a monster. The investigation was now the biggest he’d ever worked on, and the pressure on the whole team to produce a quick result was huge. But for Danny it felt like more than that. He’d watched over the toms since he’d joined the squad, and the responsibility to protect them now consumed him.

Only Finn held his heart more.

Danny closed his eyes and sighed. Finn needed him, he knew that, but girls were dying on his patch, and even though the DCI had ordered him to take twenty-four hours off, Danny couldn’t find rest.

Eventually he gave up. He left Finn sleeping and crept downstairs and out to his car. He retrieved his laptop from the boot and brought it inside. In the quiet darkness of the house, he considered setting up shop at the kitchen table, but the pull to Finn was too strong. Instead he slipped back into bed, rearranged Finn, and opened his computer on his lap. He logged into his e-mail and pulled up the notes he’d saved on unsolved murders in the north of England, particularly those involving prostitutes. Most of the missing girls in Manchester had turned up one way or another, but two girls remained missing, and body number one had been confirmed as a Manchester-based tom.

A few details caught his attention. He highlighted them and then came back to one that had stuck out. A Derbyshire schoolgirl in the nineties… sixteen years old, raped and murdered on her way home from a friend’s party. Her body had been found in a layby on Boxing Day, 1996, and her killer was never caught. Danny pulled up a map and traced the route between Nottingham and Derbyshire, a short buzz on the M1. The unsolved murder was fifteen years old, but something about it screamed at Danny. Was it the hair? The murdered schoolgirl had a distinctive copper bob cut. Danny pulled up the macabre images of the three more recent victims. To say they were all redheads was a stretch, but still… there was
something
about them all Danny couldn’t put his finger on.

With a bad taste in his mouth, Danny went through his mental list of local toms and began the harrowing task of highlighting those he thought most at risk. At the top of his list were Lexi and the new girl on the block, Jade. He hadn’t seen Lexi in a week or so, which wasn’t unusual, but Jade was another story. After the first time, Danny had spotted her every time he’d driven the red-light district, but he hadn’t seen her for the past few days, and though Lexi had been out of sight for longer, the absence of the young, willowy teenager bothered Danny more.

“What are you doing?”

“Hmm?” Danny glanced at Finn, surprised to find him wide-awake at 7:00 a.m., and closed his laptop, hoping Finn hadn’t seen anything that would give him nightmares. “Nothing that can’t wait. You all right?”

Finn put his chin on Danny’s chest. “Think so. Sorry for fritzing out on you last night.”

“S’okay. Do you feel better?”

“Yeah.” Finn didn’t say any more. He rolled out of bed, threw some clothes on, and disappeared, first to the bathroom and then to check on Jack. When he came back, he looked slightly nonplussed.

Danny sat up. He needed to talk to Jack about Finn’s sleepwalking, but until he found the right moment, he had to use his own dubious judgment to gauge Finn’s state of mind. He held out his hand. Finn took it and let Danny tug him down until he was pretty much lying on top of him. “How’s Jack?”

“Right as rain.”

Finn mumbled the words into Danny’s chest like it was the worst news in the world. Danny frowned and nudged Finn until he had his attention. “Why’s that a bad thing?”

Finn sighed. “Why do you always see right through me?”

If only.
“It’s your eyes. They give you away when you’ve got the hump.” Danny ruffled Finn’s hair to lighten the mood, but Finn’s frown remained. “Seriously. What’s up?”

“You won’t get it.”

“So? Doesn’t mean you can’t say it.”

Finn chewed on his lip. He was a rugged guy, but like this—half-uncertain, half-belligerent—he looked almost boyish. “When Jack’s pills kick in they knock him out for a while, then he wakes up, good as new, like it never happened.”

He’s not sure it really happened.
Finn had told Danny before that paranoia and second-guessing himself was something he lived with every day. He opened his mouth to offer some tenuous comfort, but Finn cut him off.

“When do you have to leave?”

The blunt question caught Danny off guard. The investigation felt like a ten-ton weight on his shoulders, but without access to the case files and firm orders from the DCI to rest up, for once he didn’t actually need to be anywhere else. And there was nowhere else he wanted to be either. “I’m not leaving.”

Finn’s expression brightened like a ray of hazy sunlight. “You don’t have to work?”

“Not today.”

“That’s awesome.” Finn scrambled off the bed and shut the door. He fiddled with the expensive, unobtrusive sound system in the corner, wriggled out of his undone jeans, and crawled back under the covers.

The quiet tones of Portishead filtered into the somewhat eerie early morning. Danny pulled Finn close and kissed the top of his head. He wanted to ask Finn again if he was okay, but he didn’t. What good would it do? Finn had answered the question… twice, and Danny was still none the wiser.