Jasper (5 page)

Jasper
was amazed that Trevor could eat immediately after sewing up a dead body. “What
do you want?” Jasper asked Trevor when they were seated in his car.

“Huh?”
Trevor asked, his mouth slightly open. Jasper couldn’t take his eyes off those
soft lips. He had only had the pleasure of barely tasting them earlier that
morning, and it hadn’t been nearly enough. He couldn’t stop the low growl that
escaped. Trevor’s eyes widened, and Jasper turned to look out the windshield.

“To
eat. What do you want to eat?”

“Oh.
Burgers are fine. Or tacos. There’s an Arby’s on the way back to your house. I
could go for one of their shakes.” Trevor was seriously saying he wanted fast
food. Not that Jasper had an aversion to the stuff, he just never ate it. He
preferred to have big, sit down meals like steak and baked potatoes. His
Gargoyle metabolism required lots of calories.

“I
was thinking more along the lines of Giovani’s,” he said as he turned his car
away from the hospital.

“I’m
not dressed for that. Besides, I smell like the morgue. I’d need to take a
shower.”

“I
tell you what. We’ll run through a drive-thru for lunch, and then we’ll stop by
your place so you can grab an overnight bag. We’ll go shower at my place, and
later, I’ll take you out for supper. How’s that?”

When
Trevor didn’t answer, Jasper glanced over at his mate. Trevor was worrying his
bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger.

“I
don’t mean shower together, Trev. And if I’m going to keep an eye on you all
weekend, it will be a lot easier doing it with you playing video games at home
than me watching your apartment from my car.”

“Oh.”
He almost sounded hurt.

“That’s
not the only reason I want you at home. I told you I would give you all the
time in the world to come to grips with the mate bond. I’m not going to lie; I
want you. I’d move you into my house today if you’d let me. Into my bed. I
would drive you home right now, and we would take that shower together. After
we showered, I’d make slow, sweet love to you. I’d ravish every inch of your
beautiful body.” Jasper readjusted his dick that was now begging to be
released. “But not until you’re ready for that. If you’re never ready, then
I’ll settle for being friends, but know this – I’ll never have another lover in
my bed. I’ll never have another lover anywhere as long as you’re in my life. I
plan on having you in my life forever. When I gave you the code to the gate, I
did it with the intention of you being there all the time. I want it to be your
home, too.”

Jasper
could feel the turmoil rolling off Trevor from the other side of the car. As
strong as his feelings were, Jasper would probably have felt them from miles
away. He pulled into the drive-thru and asked, “What would you like?”

“A
number three combo with a Jamocha shake to drink,” Trevor responded without
looking at the menu board.

“I’ve
never had one of those. Is it like a coffee milkshake?”

“Yes,
it’s heaven in a cup.”

Jasper
took Trevor’s word for it and ordered two number three combos. He added an
extra sandwich to his order and made everything a large. As soon as they had
their food, Jasper asked Trevor to get him a straw out of the bag. He wanted to
taste heaven in a cup. Instead of handing him the straw, Trevor pulled the
paper wrapper off and stuck it into one of the cups, handing it to Jasper.
Jasper said, “Thank you,” and stuck the straw in his mouth. The shake was extra
thick, so he had to suck really hard, his cheeks almost touching. When he
finally got some milkshake into his mouth, he moaned. “Gods, that’s good.”

Trevor
made his own moaning sounds from the other side of the car. Jasper laughed and
turned up the radio. He was glad Trevor was enjoying his shake, but Jasper
couldn’t listen to the moans without getting turned on, so he used the music as
a distraction. Instead of going home, he drove to Trevor’s apartment like he
suggested earlier. Trevor hadn’t said he wouldn’t spend the night, so Jasper
was going to assume that he would. Jasper parked, grabbed the food bag, and
followed Trevor inside. He was ready to get a look inside his mate’s apartment.

Trevor
unlocked several locks before entering his home. “Why do you have so many
locks? Not that I’m complaining, but these don’t appear to be new. Have you had
trouble before?”

Trevor
scrubbed his hands in the kitchen sink. Jasper was just about to stop him when
Trevor turned the water off. He grabbed a couple of plates and set them on his
small, two-person table. He hesitated briefly before saying, “I have some
valuable information here.” He divvied up the food between them before
continuing, “I already told you I’m a clone. What I didn’t tell you was when I
was growing up, I made friends with others like myself. As we met more and more
clones, I began keeping a journal of names, addresses, phone numbers,
birthdays, and characteristics we have in common. When we went off to college,
someone else would take the task of gathering the same information and sending
it to me for the master list.”

Jasper
inhaled one of his sandwiches while Trevor offered up this secret of his. He
wanted to rejoice that his mate trusted him with the information. Trevor
stopped talking long enough to eat part of his food. When he had about half of
it down, he continued, “The information I keep is sacred to me. I refused to
put it on a computer for fear of it falling into the wrong hands. Gordon
Flanagan was hell-bent on finding Tessa. He had more money than God and all the
technology at his disposal. I couldn’t trust the information to be out in
cyberspace. I have the journals locked up tight in my bedroom closet.”

“Now
that Flanagan is dead, are you going to transfer the information?” Jasper asked
as he wadded up his empty wrappers and placed them in the bag. He sipped the
last of his shake loudly as the straw came up empty. “Ahh, that was good.” He
leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers together behind his head.

Trevor
had just taken a bite, so he chewed and swallowed before answering. Jasper’s
eyes traveled to Trevor’s jaw then his throat. How could eating be so fucking
sexy?

“I
might someday, but not while I live here. It’s too easy for someone to break
in, even with a cop living down the hall. I doubt Dane will stay here much
longer now that he’s the chief.”

“And
he’s a half-blood. Now that he’s part of the Clan, Sixx will hook him up with
really good financial planning. Dane will be in his own house sooner rather
than later. Speaking of Sixx, can you believe he’s Desi Rothchild’s father? How
cool is that?”

Trevor
choked on the bite he was swallowing. He beat against his chest with his fist,
and Jasper flew out of his chair, dropping to his knees beside his mate. “Trev,
Baby?” Trevor waved him off and took a sip of his shake.

“I’m
good. That just went down the wrong way. I knew they looked like twins, but
damn. How is that possible? I thought Gargoyles had only become aware of mating
with humans recently.”

When
Jasper knew Trevor was okay, he returned to his chair. “He didn’t realize at
the time he was mating with his female. They were into some hot and heavy sex,
and he bit her, not realizing it would seal the deal. Now, he has a son who
looks like a tattooed version of him running around the country as lead singer
for a major heavy metal band and a mate who looks like she did when they met
twenty something years ago. I think he needs to tell her the truth, but he’s on
the fence about it.”

“So
this mate thing, if the women have a kid, they stop aging, right?”

Jasper
nodded. He was pretty sure he knew where Trevor was going with this line of
thinking.

“For
shits and giggles, let’s say you and I do make the bond official. I can’t have
babies. I’ll keep aging, won’t I?”

“Nope.
When Frey bit Abbi, they mated in that moment, and in doing so saved her life.
Frey asked Jonas about it. Jonas informed him there are a couple of Goyles who
have mated with human men and the affect was the same as if they’d been women.
He believes it is the transfer of a Gargoyle’s saliva into the human’s
bloodstream that stops the aging. They assumed it was the women having babies, because
most of them become pregnant within a year or so of having become mated. Since
that’s the case, their aging stopped without them realizing it. One to two
years doesn’t make a lot of difference in the way a woman looks when they are
that young. If you become my mate, you will live a very long, young-looking
life.”

“I’m
going to take a shower. Make yourself at home.” Trevor stood and disappeared
down the short hallway, closing his bedroom door behind him. Jasper should have
realized that was a lot of information to digest. He would give Trevor time for
it to sink in. While Trevor was showering, Jasper cleaned off the table,
discarding the fast food bag into the garbage can. He inspected Trevor’s small
home. One wall was covered with a couple of bookcases, filled with everything
from sci-fi classics to anime to textbooks on human anatomy. On top of one of
the bookcases was the vase of roses Jasper sent him. They were dead with some
of the petals lying haphazardly around the vase, but they were there
nonetheless. Trevor had kept them instead of throwing them out. He did notice
that the notecard was no longer attached to the plastic stick.

Next,
Jasper studied every single picture Trevor had hanging on the walls. There were
a lot of them. Most contained both Trevor and another man whom Jasper assumed
was Travis. He knew Travis was a couple of years older, but with Trevor being a
clone, they could pass for twins. Some photos showed Travis with a black lab
mix, and some showed Trevor with the same dog. All of the ones with Trevor were
missing something – a smile that reached his eyes. Jasper’s heart hurt for his
mate. Even with his hands buried in the black fur of the animal, Trevor wasn’t
truly happy.

Jasper
could understand that, though. Had he ever felt happy enough in his four
hundred eighty-seven years that he smiled with his whole face? Not until he met
Trevor. The first night they spent eating pizza and playing video games was the
first time in his long life he felt complete. Happy. Jasper had traveled the
world searching for that one place he would fit in. That one place he would be
able to finally call home and live without ridicule, without prejudice. Until
he moved to New Atlanta, he had been lost. Wandering. Wondering. Now he had a
Clan who accepted him as well as his mate. They not only accepted Jasper, they
made him feel like he was family.

The
shower turned on, and Jasper opened his senses. Sure, it was trespassing on
Trevor’s privacy, but he needed to gauge his mate’s feelings. Was he freaking
out about living an almost immortal life if he bonded with Jasper? The subtle
scent Jasper loved came wafting down the hall. The steam was carrying the scent
of bodywash mixed with shampoo. Trevor’s heart rate was at a normal level while
he bathed. He was humming a tune Jasper didn’t know until it turned into a
moan. Jasper leaned his forearm against Trevor’s bedroom door as he felt his
mate’s heart rhythm speed up. His shifter hearing picked up every slide of
Trevor’s hand on his cock, every breath he released or inhaled.

Jasper
palmed his own hard dick, begging it not to erupt in his pants as his mate
grunted through his release. He felt the sting of his fangs nipping his lip.
Tasted the blood on his tongue as he licked where he scratched his mouth. He
had to get his erection under control before Trevor came out of his room.
Jasper brought Theron and their past to mind. The pain from the ropes and
clamps was the quickest way to deflate his cock, and this time was no
different. No longer aching, Jasper rejoiced in the fact that Trevor had been
turned on. Maybe there was still hope for them after all.

This
body would take longer to find. The victim was a recluse who lived alone in a
secluded area. As much as Theron wanted to get Jasper alone, he would make him
pay with the lives of others until that happened. The first kill had been
sloppy, but the cut to the throat was necessary for Phelam to realize it was a
Gargoyle who had been the killer. Snapping a human’s neck was so much cleaner.
Like Craig’s. Stupid fucking human. He thought he meant something to Theron.
The male got off on being tied up and fucked. Most of the time, Theron didn’t
have to get anywhere near his hole. Just the ropes cutting into Craig’s skin
had been arousal enough.