Javi pulled out of Cloister and stepped back from the bed. He closed his eyes as he brought himself over the edge with two harsh tugs on his cock, and come filled the tip of the condom. His chest rose and fell in slow, ragged breaths, as he visibly pulled himself back under control before he opened his eyes.
Cloister scruffed his fingers through his hair where sweat glued it to his scalp. He wondered whom Javi was thinking about when he came. Then he winced and tried not to think about it.
“You fuck like you’re going to be scored at the end of it,” he said instead.
Javi stripped the condom off. “You fuck like you’re aiming for a C,” he said.
“I was always an overachiever,” Cloister said. Then he yawned hard enough to crack his jaw and bring tears to his eyes. He weighed the prospect of a couple of hours sleep against having to shower off the night in the morning. Sleep won. “Shower’s in there. Wake me up if you want to leave.”
“And disturb you?” Javi said. “After your considerate disappearance last night? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Up to you,” Cloister said. “I mean, Bon Bon has never bitten off anyone’s balls. Shecould, but she hasn’t.”
The bed tipped, and weight tilted it toward the wall. Cloister opened his eyes, and Javi cupped his chin in his hand and grazed his thumb over the curve of his lower lip.
“Or I could just stay,” Javi said.
Cloister didn’t know what his face looked like, but it made Javi smirk. Cloister cleared his throat. “If you want.”
Javi leaned down and skimmed a kiss across Cloister’s mouth and caught his lower lip between his teeth. He dipped his tongue into Cloister’s mouth, and he tasted himself there.
“I’ll think about it,” he said as he sat back and ruffled Cloister’s hair. “Get some sleep, Witte.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
BUCKING THEtrend, Cloister did sleep.
For a few hours, anyhow. He woke up to the wind howling through the trailer park and the insistent factory-installed ringtone on Javi’s work phone. His side was sweaty warm, and the seaside smell of Javi’s cologne was rubbed onto his skin, but Javi was already on his phone.
Javi’s voice had a rasp to it from sleep, but his words were crisp and clear—more than the grunt Cloister would have mustered at that time of the morning, even if he’d been awake.
“Special Agent Merlo,” Javi snapped. “What is it?”
Cloister stretched and scratched himself. His bladder demanded attention. He rolled out of bed, left the bedroom to Javi, and ducked into the bathroom to piss and step into the shower for a brisk, cold shower.
When he came out of the bathroom, scrubbing his hair with a towel, Bon Bon gave him a reproachful look from inside her crate. He slung the damp towel around his hips, patted his thigh, and gave a sharp whistle. She bolted up to her feet, nosed the door open, and let herself out. He followed.
She clamped her tail, sidled over to him, pressed against his leg, and sighed pointedly. Most nights she slept by his legs on the floor, close enough to touch him if she wanted. She knew she had to be good if she was put in her crate or her kennel, but she didn’t like it.
Cloister crouched down and fussed over her. He scratched under her jaw and play-bowled her over to rub her belly. She kicked him like a cat and grumbled happily with her tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth like a wet pink ribbon.
She scrambled to her feet when Javi came out of the bedroom, and she pricked her ears suspiciously.
“Get dressed.” Javi tossed most of a uniform at Cloister. Javi was already dressed, although last night had left him looking a lot less sharp than usual. Cloister caught the Kevlar vest and pinned it to his chest, but the trousers slid free and hit the floor. “Our friend ‘Bri’ just Skyped the Hartley boy. I want to be there to oversee the conversation.”
“Why do I want to be there?”
“Because you sometimes have good ideas,” Javi said. “Besides, the boy likes you, and his parents still haven’t forgiven me. So get dressed.”
Cloister dumped the armful of clothes on the table and ditched the towel. He grabbed his trousers, pulled them on over wet skin, and left the fly undone as he grabbed for a T-shirt. He was halfway through putting it on when Javi touched his ribs and walked warm fingers over the scars. It felt strange. The misaligned nerves under the knotted skin didn’t always fire in the right direction, and it gave the feeling of ghost contact where Javi’s fingers weren’t. Not bad, just weird.
Cloister tugged his T-shirt down over the scars.
“Motorbike accident,” he said. He’d had the ink for three days before it got scraped off. The remaining Rorschach mangle was more familiar than the original pattern had ever been. “I was fourteen. Still don’t know what my stepdad was more pissed off about, the ink or that I’d totaled his bike.”
He felt—briefly—bad about lying about the scar. But Javi didn’t need any more ammunition, and besides, it wasn’t even really a lie. Almost everything he said was true. He just left out the small explosive charge someone had strapped to the fuel tank. There were a lot of people who didn’t like Cloister’s stepdad, and to be fair, there were even more who didn’t like his actual dad.
His family was fucked up.
