Shadows Fall (10 page)

Then I started to dream. I was back in the abandoned building with the dead man. I stood over him and a shadow fell behind me—one that I somehow knew was the killer. Had he been there? Did he know about me? And then suddenly,
I
was laying there on the floor.
I
was the dead body, though the spirit of the dead man was by my side.

The shadow man had cut my wrists and placed each of my hands over a bucket as I bled out. He was collecting my blood, every last drop. As I lay dying, I turned my head to watch the life-force slowly ooze out of my body. There was a sharp pinch at my neck, but then heat flooded into me and I hurt no longer. He had a scalpel and he was carving something in my neck. The heat was my blood.

Shock kept me warm; shock kept me from feeling the pain but for some reason, I couldn’t move. I could see, I could hear and smell, and by god I could feel, but I couldn’t move one inch. I was paralyzed.

My vision started to gray out, my head spun. It was happening. I knew I was almost dead. Before I took my last breath, I looked up into the eyes of the
mulo
. He shook his head sadly.
See!

The shadow man, my murderer, loomed over me. I could see nothing but his evil, flashing eyes. He slowly reached up and gripped his hood, yanking it back so that I could see the hideousness that was his face—but it never came.

“No!” I jolted awake with a shriek, my hands fisted in Charlie’s shirt, my hair matted with sweat.

When I felt Charlie’s hands on me, I freaked out. Flailing wildly, I skittered to the corner of the couch-bed, breathing hard. I could still see the empty void of the shadow-man’s face. How I knew it was the killer, rather than some malevolent
mulo
sent to torment me, I couldn’t say. I just knew.

The dream eventually faded, leaving behind that sick, nauseated feeling created by altered reality. My world spun; I couldn’t quite tell what was real and what was illusion. My gaze settled on Charlie, wide-eyed and concerned. He watched me closely but didn’t move to touch me again. He probably thought I was a total psycho.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you, but you were having a nightmare.”

I huffed out a shaky laugh.
He
was apologizing to
me?
“Please don’t be sorry. I just… it was so real. I might never sleep again.”

His smile was reassuring and sympathetic all at the same time; I guess because he knew what it was like. He’d probably seen plenty of dead bodies—but whether or not they stuck with him depended on what kind of person he was. My gut told me he was the kind of person who would carry them with him always.

“It fades eventually. You never forget it, and you’ll always be able to picture him if you try, but he won’t always invade your mind that way.”

Christ, if only that were true… but I knew what he was trying to say, and I appreciated it. My way of showing it was to scoot back over next to him. By some unspoken agreement, we both lay back until we were lying side by side on the sofa bed.

“Unless you’re unlucky enough to see another one the next day,” he continued.

“Jesus, Charlie. Why do you do it?”

He reached out like he might touch my face, but withdrew his hand quickly and looked away. “I’m exaggerating… it’s not as bad as all that. Before this Queen City Slayer crap, it was all just domestics and GSWs, with the occasional drug-related. It certainly wasn’t an everyday thing.”

“But still… why?”

“I became a cop because I never could stand school. I worked through an Associate degree in criminal justice, but I had no interest in a four-year school. Plus, working for the city has great benefits. Once I started doing it, I found that I liked protecting people—and I was actually good at it.

“Sure, a lot of people have issues with cops, but they also respect and depend on us too. I’ve always been the protective type. When I got the opportunity to train to become a detective, I jumped on it. When I was in high school, one of our teachers was killed and they never found out who did it. I saw it as an opportunity to try and make sure that didn’t happen to anyone else. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as I thought back then.”

“It never is.” I’d been studying his face as he talked and I could tell he really believed in what he was saying. Despite all of the evil and death he came in contact with, he truly liked being a cop. He was so open and genuine, I didn’t think he had a dishonest bone in his body. It was refreshing to someone like me.

“Besides, doing what I do, I get to meet all kinds of cool new people, like y—”

I couldn’t take it anymore, not one more second. I pounced on him. Seizing his face in my hands, I kissed him within an inch of his life. He gave a little squeak of surprise when I hoisted myself on top of him, shoving my leg between his thighs. God, the man was solid muscle.

Sliding my hands into his thick blond hair, I angled his head so that I could take him deeper, my tongue sinking into his mouth to dance with his. He kissed me back, only just, and I thought maybe he would push me away—until I felt his hips roll, rubbing his erection against my leg.

It had been so long since I’d been with someone. Because of my particular special needs, I didn’t go many places where I could pick up men—I could occasionally go to clubs, because the music sometimes drowned out the voices, but the addition of all the spirit presences in the already loud, crowded space made me intensely claustrophobic. I also
usually
made it a rule not to hit on customers, so that ruled out work. That really only left the few men that I was able to lure back to my place for some blessed quiet.

It sounded so predatory when put like that, but it was my reality and I knew of nothing to change it. This fact made me bound and determined to enjoy Charlie’s company to the fullest while I had him here, and hopefully I wouldn’t be sorry for it later.

I threw everything I had into kissing him; I could feel his muscles shift and shiver beneath me, and it gave me a heady sense of power the likes of which I’d never felt before. It was all so
alive
—contradictory to all the things I saw and heard, certainly incongruous with what I’d seen that night. I seized the opportunity to blot out death from my mind, even for the shortest of moments.

Panting frantically, he finally did tear his mouth away, but I continued assaulting him, kissing my way down his neck with abandon, groaning at the taste of him. He gasped against my ear and whispered something I barely heard.

“I probably shouldn’t be doing this,” he said as I undulated against him, unable to get enough of the feeling of hard flesh against hard flesh, with nothing but thin clothing in between. His eyes rolled back in his head. “You’re a material witness in a homicide case.”

Oh, how I wanted to dismiss his concerns without a thought, but I knew Charlie had integrity and he took his work seriously. Keeping our bodies flush and maintaining the ever so slight pressure of my dick against his, I crossed my arms over his chest, rested my chin on them, and stared up at him.

“Riddle me this, Detective. Imagine for a moment that I was a woman…”

“Pretty hard to do when the evidence to the contrary is currently trying to burrow its way into my pants.”

I rolled my eyes at him, because here I was trying to be all noble and serious and shit, and he was joking about my hard-on. “We’ll get to that part, stud. Bear with me here. Imagine that I was a woman and, say, your wife.”

“Okay…” he said, giving me a dubious look.

“If I was your wife, and I’d witnessed a murder or found a dead body or whatever, would you be ordered to stay away from me?”

“Well, of course not. Not if you were my wife. Ideally for the brass, they’d take me off the case but the violent crimes division is so vastly understaffed, it’s possible they wouldn’t even do that… especially if, like in your case, not a whole lot was witnessed.”

“As I expected. So now I’m a man again…”

“Thank God.”

“What if I was your husband? What would happen then?”

His eyes widened and I had to work to suppress a laugh. “This is North Carolina… we can’t—”

“Fuck all of the politics and bullshit, this is hypothetical.”

“Okay, well hypothetically if we were somehow married, I would imagine it would be the same. Where are you going with this, Titus? You’re kinda confusing me.”

“All I’m trying to say is that we met before I witnessed any damn thing. I was still just a coffee shop owner and you were still just a cop-customer that I enjoyed flirting shamelessly with.”

I was pleased to be able to put the pink back in his cheeks. It was adorably endearing.

“That was flirting, huh?”

“Was I being too subtle?” I asked, punctuating the question with a much harder thrust of my hips.

He grunted in response. “I think I got the message.”

“Anyway, back to my point. We could have easily already been dating… so how can they penalize us for not having some stupid piece of paper, or for not having got our heads out of our asses and fucked already, before that guy showed up dead on my walk home?” The words had started tumbling out, the way they often did when I worked up a good head of steam. It all made sense in my mind, but Charlie had this look on his face like maybe he thought I’d lost all my marbles and the bag they came in.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Titus?”

“Yeah?”

“Stop talking.”

I could do that, talk something to death until the receiver of my wisdom no longer had any fucks left to give. Following his unceremonious, short-and-too-the-point sentiment, Charlie pushed me off of him and onto my back on the thin mattress. Then he shifted his considerable bulk on top of me and captured my mouth. I’d never been so close to coming in my jeans as I was in that moment. I was just so happy to have him touching me again.

And Jesus Christ, the man could kiss. It was an untidy, devouring kiss that curled my toes inside my socks. “
Charlie
,” I whispered as he moved down to nibble at my jaw.

He paused and caught me with a look. I could see his eyes were wide, pupils blown, and his thick hair stood on end. He looked like some kind of wild Viking berserker, and I was perfectly willing to have him toss me over his shoulder and take me wherever he wanted to go.

“I’ve never been with a man,” he murmured.

This didn’t surprise me. I knew he wasn’t openly gay; I was actually kind of surprised he was freely making out with me without more trepidation than he was showing. I guessed maybe he just kept it from the world, not himself.

“You’ve been with a woman, yeah?” I asked, kissing him on the forehead.

He nodded and blushed furiously. “Uh huh.”

I shrugged, then reached down to take two handfuls of his hard ass and tug him against me. “We’re all looking for the same things, we just get there a little differently. Don’t worry.”

He seemed to consider my words, and then I guess he made up his mind because he went back to kissing me. His hips started bucking to meet my own slow rolls. Wrapping one arm around my waist, forcing my back into an exaggerated arch, he plunged his tongue deep into my mouth as he tugged a fistful of my hair.

I’m not kidding, I saw stars—and not from pain, although the hair-pulling did pinch a little. Charlie was like a hibernating bear that I’d poked, cuddly and sweet when dormant, but intent and ferocious when awakened. While honest-to-goddess growling, he flexed his powerful thighs and drove his cock against the fly of my jeans. Okay, that pinched more than a little.

I gripped his hips to still his motion—meanwhile he was still devouring my mouth—and I snaked my hand between us and unfastened his slacks. I didn’t take anything out; I just loosened them enough so that I could slide my hands inside and grip his ass, guiding his thrusts. When he felt my hands on his bare skin, he grunted and shivered all over.

The move seemed to break down a barrier inside him, because he threw himself into the moment after that. He reached down and unbuttoned my jeans, then yanked them, and my underwear, down. This left me exposed from my shirttail to the bottom of my ass cheeks, and everything in between. He started nibbling on my neck, and I was lost to coherent thought for a little while, though I could feel him fumbling between us to free his cock.

Then he rubbed up against me, skin to silky skin, and it was absolute fucking perfection. Now I’m no slouch when it comes to keeping my body honed but I’m slender, so being up against all of that rock-hard, bulky muscle was like crack for an addict. I wanted to touch him everywhere, but we were both too worked up to undress further.

I settled for plunging my hands as far into his pants as I could reach and squeezing his ass, which was rapidly becoming my favorite spot. All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough. I needed to drive. I was the one who started this party and by god, I’d be the one to finish it. I planted my hands against his chest and shoved him off of me, onto his back.

His face registered surprise first, but then the look he gave me was so pained, I almost laughed. I probably would have if I hadn’t been so damned turned on. When I straddled him, he got the message.

I massaged his balls with mine, and I gripped our cocks in one hand, using the pre-cum as lubrication, and slowly stroked us together. He closed his eyes and thumped his head back against the pillow. This made the tendons in his neck stand out, and they called to me; I just had to taste his skin again.