“Time,” Javi reminded him succinctly as he splashed a generous measure of whiskey into his glass.
The reminder that time was running out for Drew Hartley threw a pall over them both. They were entering the fourth day. There was still hope, but it was against all the evidence and statistics. Cloister propped the glass on his thigh and felt the damp chill through the denim. He reached for a reason that sounded like something Javi would say.
His stepdad had taught him the key to convincing people. They didn’t want to hear you being clever. They wanted to hear themselves.
“If I’m right, you won’t waste any more time on the wrong suspect,” he said. “If I’m wrong, nobody can say you didn’t consider all the angles. Either way I’ll owe you.”
Javi pursed his lips thoughtfully and then nodded. “Better.” He walked across the floor toward Cloister. “But debts are only good if you can depend on them.”
Ten years since he’d been home, and the answer still growled out of Cloister’s chest like he’d never left. “Wittes keep their word.”
“Really?” Javi braced his hand on the back of the chair, leaned over, and got into his face with the dark interest that had flickered in and out since the office. “What if it’s something you don’t want to do?”
“Like what?” Cloister asked. He could taste Javi as he inhaled—soap, lemon, and a clean, fit male smell. He absently swiped his tongue over his lower lip, and Javi dropped his gaze to watch the gesture with unabashed attention.
“I bet you can guess.” Javi braced his other arm on the back of the chair and effectively pinned Cloister in place. “Towns this size, people talk.”
“You’d be surprised what they leave out,” Cloister said. Tension throbbed in his voice, dragging it down to a rough, throaty growl. He supposed it could be misconstrued, though.
Javi kissed him with a hard, impatient slash of mouth and tongue. He twisted a hand in Cloister’s hair. His knuckles pressed against his skull, and he tasted of mint under the whiskey. So itwasa seduction, Cloister thought smugly.
“Like that,” Javi said as he pulled back. He sounded so controlled that it was cold, but his hand was still roughly twisted in Cloister’s hair, and his breathing had gone ragged around the edges. “What if I asked you to do that? You still going to keep your—”
Cloister grabbed a handful of T-shirt and dragged Javi back down into the kiss. His teeth found the lush curve of Javi’s lower lip, and he tugged. He felt the tickle of Javi’s sharp intake of breath and surprise run through his lean, tense body.
For a quick count of three, Cloister was in control of the kiss. Then Javi tightened his grip on Cloister’s hair and took it back, crushing Cloister down into the chair with a bruising, claiming kiss that left him breathless and hard.
Chapter Ten
THAT WASthe problem with a bad decision. Once you knew it was there, eventually you were going to make it. Javi couldn’t even blame the liquor for it. He’d known what he wanted before he poured that first glass of gasoline Saul had been keeping in a whiskey bottle in his desk.
He shoved Cloister against the huge window, making it tremble, and bit hot, impatient kisses along Cloister’s jaw and back to his mouth. Tomorrow it would be a disaster, so Javi had to make the most of tonight. And more than once, he’d entertained the fantasy of fucking Cloister against the wall of glass.
Cloister made a rough, approving noise into the kiss, grabbed at the hem of Javi’s shirt, and tugged it up and over his shoulders. Javi dragged his mouth away from Cloister’s long enough to pull the shirt over his head. He tossed it to the side and got yanked back into another kiss as Cloister cupped the back of his neck with a hard hand.
The scrape of callused fingertips against his sensitive skin and the scrape of stubble against his jaw bled heat down Javi’s spine. It wasn’t what he’d planned, though. He liked things to go as planned.
He grabbed Cloister’s wrists, dug his fingers into the thick bands of muscle, and pinned him to the glass. Cloister flexed his long fingers and then clenched them. Javi could feel the play of tendons against his palms. They were nice hands, he noticed—long fingers, wide palms. His mother would have called them pianist’s hands and bemoaned the scars and nicks. Javi imagined them on his cock and had to bite the inside of his cheek.Wantgrabbed a fistful of nerve endings and twisted.
“You want to fuck?” he said. “We do it my way.”
They didn’t exactly get on, so Javi supposed it wasn’t so strange he’d never seen Cloister smile before. It was wide and boyish and carved a distracting slice of dimple down his cheek. It didn’t repair the nose or heavy bones—Cloister would never be a handsome man—but with that smile, he didn’t need to be.
“How’s that?” he drawled as he curled his fingers in and wriggled his little fingers. “With our pinkies out?”
Javi shifted his weight and leaned into the hard line of Cloister’s body. He could feel the hard bulge of Cloister’s cock pressed against his thigh. The contact made Cloister clench his jaw and suck in a breath through his teeth. “You seem to be enjoying it so far,” he said.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Cloister rasped, the shift of his shoulders and shift of his feet somehow turning his pinned stance into something insolent, “I have issues with authority.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore. Javi felt a passing urge to change that, but it couldn’t compete with the urge to focus on fucking Cloister senseless instead. The pulse under Cloister’s jaw jumped, the skin pulled taut by the tilt of his head. Leaning in, Javi bit him hard enough to make him jerk, hard enough to leave a mark. Stubble rasped his lips. It was faintly dusty, the way everything was when the wind picked up, and Cloister pushed against his restraining grip. Not too hard.
“You were in the army, and you’re a cop,” Javi pointed out. “Odd choices for a free spirit.”
“I got other issues too,” Cloister said. The muscles Javi was exploring with his mouth moved in a way that suggested he was smirking again. “I’m a complicated man.”
He said it as though it were a joke. It wasn’t. Javi wasn’t a profiler, but he wasn’t blind either, and he’d been watching Cloister. If you wanted to have dark, detailed fantasies about someone, you needed to pay attention.
It was a shame. If he’d been easy, Javi might have been able to justify fucking him more than once.
