Rick straightened, eyes drifting back to the body, then to the cigarette’s location. The angle was right—whoever stood there would’ve had a clear view of the corpse. Of their work. “He stayed to admire it,” Rick said quietly, more to himself than anyone. “Son of a bitch stood there and watched.”
“This could be our first real break,” Frank murmured beside him.
Before Rick could answer, a voice cut across the scene. “Slade! Over here!”
He turned, jaw tightening.
Declan Frost stood just beyond the perimeter tape, snapping photos with that expensive camera of his, his black pea coat flapping in the wind. He resembled a vulture at a feast. His words carried too well. “Care to comment on the city’s latest corpse?”
Rick took a step forward, fury rising. “Get him out of here,” he barked to the nearest officer. “Now!”
The cop hesitated only a second before moving to escort Frost away. The reporter didn’t resist, just smiled thinly, lowering the camera with a predator’s calm.
Frank stepped closer, muttering low. “He couldn’t have known about this so fast.”
Rick’s voice was just as muted. “Someone’s feeding him. Has to be.”
They exchanged a look. The possibility had been nagging at both of them for days—a leak in the department, someone tipping Frost off before half the detectives had been briefed. That kind of access wasn’t accidental.
Fucking fantastic. Like they didn’t have enough on their plate already.
Rick lit a cigarette, eyes returning to the body. The bridge loomed above them like a broken tooth, the blood-slick symbol shining wet in the gray afternoon. Rick felt it again—that slow crawl under the skin, that sense of something watching from behind the veil. Whoever this psycho was, something told him he wasn’t done yet.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
(5:34 p.m.)
Ash padded barefoot across the loft, the floorboards cool beneath his feet. It was one of those leaden fall afternoons in Calgrave, lightless and raw, the sky the color of an old nickel. The kind of day that pressed in through the tall windows and dulled the gold-leaf edges of everything it touched.
But it didn’t touch him. He was incandescent.
He’d showered. Shaved. Eaten. Washed the plates. Yet the fog of pleasure still clung to him like cigarette smoke. Under the silk kimono, his skin sang with the memory of rough hands and rougher kisses, of teeth grazing his throat, of Rick’s voice rasping low in his ear:‘You can take it, can’t you, boy?’He could. He had. Rick had worked him over until Ash didn’t know where one climax ended and the next began. He floated somewhere between a purr and a shiver.
When he bent to pick up a stray sock near the chaise, Poe darted out from below it, tail lashing, something clutched in his tiny jaws.
“Hey!” Ash laughed, springing after him. “Drop it, you furry little klepto.”
The cat meowed in triumph and bolted under the table. Ash followed on hands and knees, grinning like an idiot, until he managed to wrestle the stolen prize free. Rick’s underwear—what was left of it. Not completely shredded, but definitely mangled. One side was torn down the seam, caught by a claw or a tiny set of teeth.
“You little perv,” Ash muttered without heat.
Poe meowed, utterly unrepentant, and leapt into Ash’s lap. He licked at Ash’s wrist, then curled into a small, vibrating crescent of warmth.
Ash ruffled the cat’s ears. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
He sprawled over the plush rug, bringing the briefs to his nose and rubbing them all over his face. Rick’s scent stuck to them—clean skin and sweat, tangled with the wild, musky smell of his balls. It hit Ash hard, a jolt right to his cock. His whole body warmed, humming in places he never knew had nerves.
God. He could drown in it.
Eventually, as shadows crept long across the walls, he peeled himself off the floor and dressed: black jeans, fresh and snug, a white T-shirt that clung just right. When he passed the mirror propped against the wall, his gaze snagged on his reflection. There was a flush to his skin that hadn’t faded. His lips were bitten red. He’d taken some hard poundings in his life, but he never felt this way before, empty and brimming all at once. And Rick…
Ash’s brows knit. The man had taken a bullet and still railed him like a locomotive, three—no, four times—and walked away without so much as a limp. He should’ve been ill. Or out cold for a week. No ordinary man could’ve taken what they did last night and still be standing. But this one seemed wholly unaffected. Even the gunshot wound was gone, for Christ’s sake.
‘Guess we’re more alike than you thought, huh?’
Could Rick be… like him? He’d never met another, but surely there were others—creatures burdened with the same peculiar malady, the same perverse power. He couldn’t be the only one. Was that what Rick meant?
Mulling it over, Ash crossed to the rumpled bed, tugging the tangled sheets straight. Tess had texted earlier—she’d be over with lunch—and he wanted the place at least halfway decent. Not like a gangbang scene from some debauched bathhouse porno.But as he smoothed the pillows, his fingers paused. There. Five long slashes in the fabric on each side, right where Rick had braced himself.
