L. A. Heat (29 page)

“David?”

“Chris, what are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. You’re late.”

“Yeah, well, sorry. Things came up. That’s what
happens in my work.”

“Find him?”

“No, not yet. Found where he lived, though. Turns
out he left last weekend.”

“But I saw him Monday,” Chris said. “He left
before I went looking for Kyle...”

They traded glances. Had Trevor beaten Chris out
to Santa Monica? Had he found Kyle first?

Chris didn’t ask. David figured he didn’t want to
think about Bobby or Kyle and how they had died. Fair enough. David didn’t want
to think about Chris knowing this guy Trevor.

“I missed you at supper,” Chris finally said.

David saw he had donned pajama bottoms, red silk
that slipped and danced around his taut legs, hiding and revealing his hard-on.
David could smell his achingly familiar scent. His own cock swelled and pressed
hungrily against his suddenly too tight work pants. Chris hadn’t bothered to
put on the pajama top and his well-defined chest looked like sculptured marble
in the overhead light.

David swallowed against the sudden obstruction in
his throat. “Er, why aren’t you sleeping down the hall?”

“Didn’t you miss me?” Chris looped his arms around
his knees, rested his cheek in the crook of his arm and smiled. “Did you think
about me at all?”

It occurred to David that Chris was flirting with
him. That was an entirely new experience.

“I don’t like sleeping alone. Do you?” Chris
asked.

David wouldn’t have thought a desire for anything
but sleep was possible, but now a different kind of desire pooled in his gut.
He fought it. He scooped the cat up and cradled it in his arms. When he spoke
his voice was hoarse.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea, Chris.”

“You aren’t going to pretend it was a mistake, are
you?” Chris moved around so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He could
have reached out and touched David. He didn’t. “Because we both know what it
was, and it wasn’t wrong.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I remember how good it was.” This time he
did touch David, laying his fingers over the hand holding the cat, his skin
feeling like liquid heat. “I know how you made me feel. I want to feel that way
again. Please, David. Make love to me.”

Sweat popped out on David’s forehead. He abruptly
turned toward the door, where he gently set Sweeney down in the hallway and
shut the door. When he turned back Chris was staring at him with so much desire
in his blue eyes that David could have drowned in them.

“I hope you brought protection with you,” David
said. “Because I know I don’t have anything.”

“Hey, I was a Boy Scout. I’m always prepared.”

Before he could return to the bed Chris knelt in
front of him and wrapped his arms around David's waist. He used his teeth to
tug open the buttons on David's stiff work shirt and buried his face against
the thick fur on David's stomach. He growled and bit at the soft tissue around
his navel. Abandoning his teeth, he deftly slid open the zipper of David's wool
pants and pulled them off, along with his boxers, exposing a massive erection
that rose out of its nest of thick black hair and was so stiff it bobbed
against his belly. Tiny drops of pre-cum glistened on the barely exposed head.
He shoved the foreskin back with his lips and ran his tongue down the shaft
then back up, circling the fat mushroom-shaped head before opening his throat
and taking the whole length in, suppressing his gag reflex as he deep throated
him.

Above him David moaned and rocked his hips in that
ancient rhythm of need, hands twined through Chris's short blond hair. But
before he could explode, Chris pulled back, rocking on his heels to look up at
David. He stood in one fluid motion and leaned over to kiss David gently on the
mouth.

“Keep that thought.” Then he was gone.

He returned less than a minute later with a
handful of condoms and the lube. He knelt back down and grazed the throbbing
head of David's cock with his teeth and his tongue. David jumped when he ripped
open the package and enfolded his cock with latex and lube. He scrambled back
on the bed and pulled David down beside him. David's hands were busy, exploring
every cranny of Chris's body, probing each orifice and drawing sighs and groans
from his lover.

“Fuck me, David. I want to feel you inside me.”

David rolled Chris onto his belly and raised his
hips into the air. He parted his butt cheeks and positioned his cock head at
the entrance, gently pushing past the hard muscle guarding it, then easing into
his dark channel. He gripped Chris’s shoulders and bit his back as he began to
move, first with measured, steady strokes, then rapidly pistoning in and out,
grinding his cock up Chris’s ass, one hand wrapped around his cock, the other
bracing himself on Chris's shoulder.

Under them the bed rocked, pounding into the
bedroom wall, the quilt slithered to the floor. Chris was moaning a litany of
need, begging for harder, faster, deeper. David obeyed. He bit and sucked on
Chris’s neck and Chris didn’t care if he gave him a hickey, if he was marked up
for all to see. David was branding him. David owned him.

He shouted when his orgasm shattered his last
breath into a whispered groan. David emptied himself into the condom and they
rolled apart then found each other again. David peeled the condom off and
tossed it into the bedside garbage. He pressed his mouth to Chris’s unshaved
throat where he could still feel a pulse throbbing.

Saturday,
1:35 am, Piedmont Avenue, Glendale

“You weren’t really a Boy Scout,
were you?”

Chris felt way too enervated to do anything but
drift in and out of sleep. He barely felt the towel David retrieved from the
bathroom to wipe his damp skin. David’s words were soft puffs of sound in his
ears.

“For about five minutes,” he murmured. “I’m not a
bug person. Camping just makes me itch. But I did learn how to be prepared.”
Chris played with the thick hair on David’s chest. “So, you have any luck
tonight? You and Mr. Sensitivity.”

“Besides finding out your friend split, no. We
recovered his car. We may find something to link some of the victims to it.
That would be a break.”

“I still can’t believe Trevor did any of those
things...How can someone be that way and it doesn’t
show
?”

“The experts will tell you psychopaths don’t
empathize with anyone. But a lot of them are smart enough to fake it. No one
around them catches on, at least not right away.”

“But not all people like that are killers, right?”
Chris shook his head tiredly. “God, Trevor just didn’t seem that... monstrous.
He knew Des. They were friends...”

“Guys like that don’t have friends, though on the
surface they might seem to. They’re empty.”

It was too depressing a topic to continue, so
Chris didn’t. He snuggled under David’s quilt, content to have David’s arms
around him. Soon the older man’s soft snores provided another sort of comfort
and Chris drifted off.

When he awoke the space beside him was empty. He
groped across the still warm sheets, then sat up when he heard banging noises
coming from the kitchen.

He grabbed his pajama bottoms from where he had
discarded them the night before, then found the top, and did half the buttons
up before venturing out of the room.

He found David, fully clothed, crouched in front
of an open cupboard, dragging things out and piling them around him on the
floor. A large cast-iron frying pan waited on the stove top already filled with
six slices of bacon. A bowl holding four eggs and a loaf of white bread sat on
the counter top beside a battered toaster oven.

A kettle steamed gently on the front burner.

Suddenly David sat back on his haunches,
triumphantly clutching a drip coffee pot. He handed it to Chris.

“I knew I had this somewhere. Coffee’s in the
freezer, so it should still be good. Filters are above the stove. Get that
started while I put this stuff back.”

Chris blinked at the clock over the sink. “You do
realize it’s six o’clock, right?”

“Sure, I’ve been up since five-thirty.”

David finished putting his pots and pans back in
the cupboard and stood up. He quickly found the filters and the frozen ground
coffee and poured the boiling water through.

He sat opposite Chris. “Why don’t you go back to
bed then?”

“What are you doing up?”

Chris was afraid he knew the answer, but he still
felt disappointed when David said, “I have to go in to work.” He reached out
and took Chris’s hand. “But I swear I will get off early. We’ll make an early
night of it. Tomorrow I’ll drive you to the airport.”

“What do you have to do today?”

“Talk to some of the victims’ families. We’re
still trying to link Trevor with them.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Nobody, no matter how careful they are, can interact
with a crime scene and not leave something behind. Just like they always take
something with them. If Trevor was part of this, we’ll find proof. And once we
find it, he’s ours. We were thwarted before because we didn’t have any viable
suspects. We’ll get him, Chris, don’t worry.”

“I hope so,” Chris said. He squeezed David’s hand.
“I’ll have some of that coffee, if it’s ready.”

“Pack,” David said. “Get ready for your trip. I’ll
be back by four.”

An hour later Chris was crouching over Bobby’s
Palm Pilot. He called up a list of recently accessed data and found that Bobby
kept a journal of sorts. Opening it he paged through the entries, most of which
had to do with either jobs or the assorted men in his life. By the time Chris
came across his own name his eyes had grown bleary with trying to read the
small print.

Bobby didn’t pull any punches. He liked florid
description. Lots of it. Chris would never think of his dick in quite the same
way again. Hearing a noise from the front hall, Chris quickly closed the
program and deactivated the Palm. He looked up to find Sweeney watching him
from the kitchen doorway.

“Busted.”

Sweeney crossed the floor and rubbed against his
ankles. He resisted the urge to pick the animal up. Instead he turned to his
laptop and went online. He took a look at the L.A. Times archives which gave
him a brief obit for the failed actor Robert Allen Dvorak, dead at the age of
twenty-one. Another life ruined by the Hollywood machine. No mention of the
porn. Go figure. But if Bobby had been an “actor,” had any of the others? Again
he plugged in his Tools CD and went searching the inner web that was the
Internet.

Jason Blake and Bobby Starrz. He gave both names
to his search spiders. Multiple links filled the screen.

He stared at the first link. Both names were in
boldface, along with two other names Chris recognized—Jeff Charette and Frank
Barker. He remembered Jeff from that leather bar. The guy had been into the
gear big-time. Chris didn’t gig himself out, but he liked the look on certain guys,
and Jeff had been a prime cut of meat. Frank was another Nosh Pit regular, a
party animal with a penchant for fucking in public places. Chris’s fingers
caressed the ice-cold keyboard. What would he find on the other side of those
innocuous looking links?

A fifth name puzzled him. Daniel Anstrom? Who was
Daniel Anstrom?

His BlackBerry buzzed.

He’d had all his calls from his landline forwarded
to his handheld, so it could be anybody. Somebody taking a survey. Charities
asking for more money. Even his mother checking up on him.

But he knew who it was.

He reached out and scooped up the small handheld
device. It barely had enough weight to register in his hand. The display lit
up. Unknown name. Unknown number. Not really, he thought. He knew exactly who
it was. He activated it. Took a deep breath.

“Bellamere here.”

“Chrissy,” Trevor’s voice sounded tense. “Hey,
man. Miss me?”

“Sure,” Chris struggled to keep his voice level.
“Where are you?”

“Around. Got things to work out. You know how it
goes. But you and me, we’re gonna get together soon.”

“I don’t think I can do that—”

“Sure you can.” Was it his imagination or did
Trevor sound pissed? “You owe me one, Chrissy.”

Chris tried to sound casual. “You in town, Trev?”

“Oh, I’m around. I’ll tell you all about it when I
see you.”

“Trev—why don’t you tell me where you are. I could
come around today—”

“Today’s not good, man. Not good at all. But I’ll
let you know when it’s time. You just keep thinking of Trev. We’ll be together
soon.”

Trevor hung up.

A shaking Chris immediately dialed David.

“The party you are attempting to reach is not
available—”

The officious prick who answered his call at the
Northeast station wouldn’t tell him anything. Just that David wasn’t available.
An attempt to his cell met with failure.

It was the tension of waiting. Of wondering what
Trevor was planning, of what he might already have done...Chris tapped the
enter key on his laptop and the web page opened.

The linked images were thumbnails, with just
enough detail to tease the visitor into wanting more. There was no way to see
enough detail to know who lay behind each thumbnail. But the site’s creator had
helpfully named each link. He stared at the one labeled Bobby Starrz.

He called the station back, hoping to get someone
more helpful. The same prick answered. No, Detective Laine was not able to take
a phone call. If it was important police business he should leave a message.
Someone would get back to him. He stared blankly at the laptop’s fifteen-inch
LED screen while the officious voice droned on...“If this is an emergency call
dial nine-one-one...”

Did he really want to see this? Was he a coward if
he didn’t look? David saw this kind of stuff every day. He could look at it and
still come to Chris with a gentleness Chris had only ever dreamed of in a
lover.