Monsters Under the Bed (8 page)

And I did.

I thrust my cock inside Ford’s ass in one motion, and he screamed in pleasure.

His muscles clamped down on me, strangling the life out of me, and I was practically yelling. Far in the background of my haze, I heard other noises like mine join in. The orgies went on outside too.

But then Ford relaxed, and he shoved his ass back at me, hard, demanding me to take him. It was my pleasure. I pulled out and pushed back in. The slip in and slide out made the hairs on my nape rise up, like a lightning bolt had struck me. I became an animal rutting in heat, desperate to get off—with him.

I fucked Ford as hard, deep, and fast as I could, completely out of my mind with the love and lust I felt for him. And he responded beautifully. We were in sync, harmonized, and fundamentally compatible. He was my man, my perfect lover, my match made in heaven.

There was no slow, sensuous glide toward the peak of pleasure. No, there was only the yearning that burned in my veins and the quick rush toward the inevitable climax.

There were no words to describe the feverish urgency of the mating.

I felt Ford’s skin, sweaty and hot and shivering, beneath my fingers. His breathing was shallow and forced, and he was making sharp, keening noises. His palm landed on my thigh, his mere touch inciting me to go on. I could barely stand, my knees about to give out, but I snaked my hand below his waist to his erect dick and began to tug adamantly.

“Oh, fuck, yeah,” Ford shouted out hoarsely.

Funny how that raspy comment was all I needed in the end.

My orgasm washed over me, tearing through me and taking me for a ride on the crest of the wave. I shouted out loud, deafening myself. I spilled my load inside Ford, the involuntary jerks propelling me to continue until I had spent every last drop. My hand on his cock stuttered, but by then he was coming too, and wet, sticky heat covered my hand. The smell of fresh spunk filled my nostrils, and as I collapsed on top of his back, I couldn’t focus on anything else.

Panting helplessly, I waited out the afterglow. I had nothing more to give. I doubted I could’ve lifted a finger.

Then his hand came to rest on mine that still grasped at his now flaccid cock and freed my numb, clenched fingers from around him.

“Sorry, babe,” I mumbled, my gravelly voice all but gone.

A breathless burst of laughter came from him, and my cock slipped out of him. “I’m not hurt, love. It’s all good.”

On wobbly feet I straightened myself, releasing him. “Jesus….” I honestly couldn’t remember when I had been this rough on him during sex. I had a flood of apologies on the tip of my tongue.

As if anticipating me, he hushed me by turning around and gently kissing my lips. His were swollen from my harsh love bites. “I love you, Sam. Every time I think I couldn’t possibly love you any more or my heart would explode, you prove me wrong.”

The relief that swamped me at that moment made me all teary-eyed, and I didn’t care. I embraced him, shaken to the core. I buried my face in the crook of his neck, with his sweaty hair tickling me moistly, the smell filling my nostrils. I felt his body against mine, as solid and powerful as ever. Yet he had given in to me and let me pound the shit out of him. He trusted me not to hurt him, and I was grateful I hadn’t.

“I love you, Ford. So fucking much.” It was just a whisper, but he heard me. And more importantly, he understood me. His arms tightened around me, as did mine with him.

After a few minutes, or it could have been longer, we were brought out of our shared intimacy by the rattling of the mall speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, the cupids have dispersed. The police and paramedics are on their way. Please, stay where you are and remain calm. No charges will be filed for any property damage or vandalism, and all injuries will be taken care of. Once again, stay where you are and remain calm.”

As the crackling sound system died down, I felt Ford shaking.

For a second I was worried, but then I heard his muffled giggles, and I had to join in. This was our world now that the Veil had been lifted.

What a freaking mess.

“H
OW
are you feeling?” Ford asked me when we got home. I knew he was referring to the head injury from the beating I had gotten and not the horny, primitive, near-violent mating we had experienced as a result of the cupids.

The cupids were fairy folk from ancient times, and their ethereal arrows were laced with potent pheromones and addictive aphrodisiacs. So far, there was no known counteragent. And whoever you were watching at the time was the object of your adulation for the next hour or so. The news usually gave out warnings of recent sightings of cupids, but sometimes the flying imps just came out of the blue, blew in under the radar.

“I’m fine.” I brushed the back of my head. I felt the bump there, and there was a minor ache as I touched it, but it was gone the moment I moved my fingers away. “I don’t know exactly how that happened—”

“How you got hit?” Ford sounded serious and incredulous, and with every right too.

I snorted halfheartedly. “No. I remember that. A couple of professional enforcer types knocking me about, ordering me to lay off the Chance case. I meant I don’t know why I was hurt at first, and then I wasn’t. I feel fine.”

He harrumphed as he escorted me to the bathroom. “Stand still. I’m going to check you out.”

“A full physical?” I asked, getting frisky again.

Ford laughed. “God, you’re incorrigible and insatiable.” But he didn’t push my hands away as I began to unbutton his shirt, although quite a few of the buttons were now missing.

Though I wasn’t bleeding from the back of my head or my busted lip (I hadn’t even noticed it when kissing Ford) or my left cheekbone where I had been hit. It was as if I hadn’t been in a fight at all, though technically I hadn’t done any of the work involved, consigned to being a mere punching bag.

Nonetheless, Ford made sure all my bumps and bruises were tended to before he let me get up from the toilet seat. He sighed then, rueful. “I swear, Sam, this job of yours was supposed to be a meal ticket, not a first-class ticket to the emergency room.”

“Oh, come on, Ford,” I deflected and downplayed the whole thing. “It’s not like this happens to me a lot. It’s the first time since I started—”

“Fourth.”

“What? No way, man.”

“Yes, way.” His chin jutted stubbornly. “The Pierson case? The bar fight?”

“Hey, I didn’t start it. It was just a surveillance job gone awry. How was I to know he was a mean drunk with an indiscriminate taste for bar brawling? Anyway, that wasn’t my fault, and it’s not like I got any permanent—”

“What about the Adderley investigation?”

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Ford. That woman was high, and those were bitch slaps she doled out. I’ve been mauled worse by cats. That doesn’t count.”

“And the Wyatt case? Hmm?” Ford crossed his arms over his chest, a surefire tell he was as serious as he got.

“Aw, Ford…. The guy came at me from nowhere. I’m not a fortune-teller. How could I have possibly known he was gonna ram me and throw me out the window into the bay? I mean, hell, I landed in water, and the cops got him for assault. I’m fine, babe. I’m fine.”

This time it was me trying to assure him it was all good, the way he had said before. But that had been the afterglow talking, and now Ford had had the time to really think about it. Seeing his blue eyes mist and his jaw quiver while he kept his posture rigid and his shoulders squared hurt my heart and my conscience.

“Ford, you know I love you. Just because you’re making good money, I can’t just sit on my ass all day and do nothing. I know how to be a cop. I can do this. Those guys aren’t going to get the drop on me again, I promise.”

Ford shook his head, gave a halfhearted snort, and looked anywhere but at me. “And the next time? The next case? The next thugs who decide you shouldn’t poke your nose into other people’s business?”

That gave me pause. Ford was truly afraid for me. I was devastated at the thought of causing him suffering with my choices. “Okay, Ford. Okay. I’ll talk to the lawyer tomorrow, and I’ll drop the case. It’s fine.” I went to him with the intention of pulling him in my arms.

But he backed off, looking mortified and sad and angry. “God, Sam. I don’t want you to do that. You’re committed to this. And I want those thugs to pay for what they did to you. If I know you, and I do, you’ve got an idea about what’s going on already.”

He wasn’t way off on that one. “I won’t cause you heartbreak….”

Ford smiled then, brightly as the sun. “We’ll always be together, Sam. In this world or the next. We’re bound by forces beyond our imaginings. You won’t ever break my heart.” He wound his arms around my shoulders, letting me in, and his forehead touched mine. “Don’t let go of the case, Sam. If Mo Chance was murdered, the world should know. Just… be careful.” Then he kissed me softly, and I knew my place in the world.

“Okay, babe. I’ll stay with the case. But I swear I will do all that I can to ensure—”

“I know, Sam.” He kissed me again, and our row ended on a pleasant note. Then he pushed me off, laughing. “Go do your thing, hot stuff.” He swatted my behind on the way out.

I laughed with him, and my battered face didn’t hurt one damn bit.

Later that evening, after hours of reading and research, I had learned a lot more about the Chance case. Or more specifically, about Mo’s personality.

I’d read most of the books Mo had kept in his playroom—in addition to having perfect recall and being ambidextrous, I was also a speed-reader, as I’ve said before—and it was obvious Mo had been interested in every little thing under the sun. His wealth of knowledge about sciences across the board, society at large, and literature from erotic romances to the classics was astounding.

His library consisted of classics like Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath
, Remarque’s
All Quiet on the Western Front
, Shelley’s
Frankenstein
, the entire literary works of Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dumas, Kipling, Verne, Dickens and so on. My eyes were beginning to get crossed and glazed over. His scientific interests were cutting edge: from astrophysics to robotics, from sociology to psychology, from mathematics to chemistry, from economics to pyrometallurgy, from politics to paleontology. Mo had even written papers on several topics, and his reputation was considered legitimate.

It seemed like the kid had been born asking questions. Not even the loss of his parents and brother had quelled those inquisitive instincts. Then again, one could view Mo’s diving into everything but his emotions as a stall tactic, and I had no doubt psychologists were going to write books about him for generations to come.

To learn more about him, I would need to take a closer look at Mo’s bedroom and that playroom, and speak to Cecil about Lovell, so tomorrow I planned to kill two birds with one stone.

Of course, Giulia Capello had to come first. No way was that woman going to dodge me again tomorrow.

The official statements made by the police were inconclusive as of yet, but they would soon come to a conclusion. I had a feeling that despite the weird drugs in Mo’s system, the authorities would be reluctant to rule this as a homicide. If they did, however, they would keep that on the down-low.

There was enough here to be suspicious of, but not a lot of proof to indicate foul play. And Mo had been connected high up on the rungs of society’s ladder. I wasn’t the only one who had to tread carefully.

“Coming to bed?” Ford was leaning on the doorframe, his jeans riding low on his hips to reveal his washboard stomach, and his shower-damp chest hairs glistening in the dim light.

I was hard in less than a second. “Be right there.”

He smiled and moved off. I placed all the papers back in their respective folders, all the books back in their shelves, and turned off the lights downstairs as I went. I took a scalding hot shower, and it relaxed me to the point of drowsiness.

After, I studied myself in the mirror.

I saw the bruises, but I didn’t feel them. Shouldn’t I have felt them? What’s wrong with me?

I combed my hair and felt the former thickness thinning.
God, please don’t let me go bald
. Also, what had once been a six-pack was now like a four-pack, or if I was being brutally honest, a two-pack plus the beginnings of a paunch.

When the thugs had attacked me in the alley, I had felt weak and limp. I hadn’t gotten even a single strike in. I had just let them hurt me. Maybe I was getting too old for this job, or any job that required the brilliance of a child genius, the dexterity and strength of a teenager, and the superpowers of mutants.

I sighed, feeling all my years more distinctly than ever before.

I climbed into bed next to Ford, and he snuggled right up against me, warm and solid as ever. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asked me quietly, reverently somehow.

“Have you ever wanted to be someone else?”

He looked up at me, more curious than furious. “What do you mean? Like role-play?”

“No. Like someone younger and stronger and more beautiful—”

“Only once,” Ford admitted, kissing my temple. His breath tickled me but warmed my heart, so I didn’t care about the tickling. “Listen, love. What I said earlier… I do worry about you, and I always will. But I don’t actually want you to stop. You may not be as young as you were, but the job energizes you, and you gain this sort of shine within. You’re good at what you do. I’m a mother hen, so just ignore me.”

I nuzzled his neck, smiling. “Like I could ever ignore you.”

Ford chuckled low until the sound turned into moan when I opened my mouth and sucked on his pulse point, flicking him with my tongue. His hands on me became insistent, and he took my mouth in a fiercely possessive kiss. This was different from what had happened at the mall, but no less intense.

We made love passionately but took our time. He ground against me, and I wanted him so much. My fatigue was long gone, and I let go, like I was only ever able to do with him. He smelled of the outdoors, of flowers and dirt and man and musk, and he filled my senses like no other man ever had or ever could.