Chapter Fifteen
The bedroom was dark when Lamar was woken by the sound of his cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. He was still on his back, but while they slept Aeren had shifted position and was draped over the detective, his arms and legs wrapped about the larger man like a monkey clinging to a tree in a storm. One of Lamar’s hands was cupping Aeren’s butt. The other was tangled in his curls, holding Aeren’s head to his chest.
The gentle vibrations that accompanied Aeren’s breaths continued to rumble through his chest, the tiny movements shifting his weight and applying erotic friction to the hard flesh trapped between them. The room was still flooded with the warm comfort that seemed to radiate from Aeren, but there was something else. A deep, rich scent that wound around Lamar and crept up his nose, teasing his senses and stoking the arousal sparking in his balls.
Fighting the urge to press the weight atop him down, to grind the warm body against his erection, Lamar instead tried to gently untangle them without waking Aeren. Easing him onto his back on the bed, Lamar froze when the vibrations ceased and instead a sad whimper came from the sleeping boy.
“I’m still here,” he whispered gently, allowing his lips to brush Aeren’s cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Shifting to a sitting position, he grabbed the phone and squinted at the screen. Eight forty-five.
It gets dark stupid early after daylight savings time ends,he thought with a shake of his head. Thumbing over the call list to confirm that the missed call had been Vic, Lamar straightened in surprise when he saw the number to the lab instead. Bypassing the voicemail, he hit the redial option. When the department’s after-hours recording picked up, he huffed and disconnected the call to dial into his voicemail.
Hey gorgeous, Brenda’s voice greeted him.I’m emailing you the report but wanted to let you know that the unknown contribution in all of the samples are a match to each other and, if you can believe it, also to a toothbrush that Genov had checked in for analysis. The only sample that isn’t matched is the sample you had marked CLA001. Also, you were right about the source not being human, but there was one weird thing. The marker that identifies gender is completely missing. Let me know if you want me to try and run it for a species match.
“Is something wrong?”
Lamar twisted to see Aeren staring at him with sleepy eyes. “No. I was waiting on some test results and the lab left them on my voicemail.” A slight movement caught his eye. It was Aeren’s fingers twitching, almost as if he was fighting the urge to move them. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, you don’t have to call me sir,” Lamar told him, casually covering the twitching digits with his own. Aeren sighed, his lashes fluttering closed at the contact. Amused, Lamar stroked one finger along his wrist and smiled when Aeren’s cheeks began to flush. “You do like to be touched, don’t you?”
Aeren’s eyes stayed closed, but he nodded, a blissful smile stretching over his lips. “I need to be touched to stay healthy,” he admitted softly. “That’s why I do what I do at the club, but when you touch me, it’s different. Special.”
“It is, huh?”
Aeren’s golden eyes blinked open again, the smile still in place as he nodded shyly. “It really is.”
“That’s sweet,” Lamar said, patting his hand. “Now, we napped away the entire evening. Let’s go out to the kitchen and scare up some dinner.”
The disappointment that flared in Aeren’s eyes had Lamar gritting his teeth against the words that would offer him another, deeper touch.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Lamar slid from the bed and straightened his clothes with a laugh. “Good thing I changed out of my suit before our nap. I’d never get these wrinkles out of it.”
It wasn’t until he was surveying the options in his refrigerator that Lamar realized he hadn’t made it to the store the previous weekend. Wrinkling his nose, he closed it and turned to where Aeren was perched on a counter stool. “You like pizza?”
Aeren’s head bobbed so rapidly that his curls flipped back and forth.
Lamar grinned. “Of course, you do. Everybody loves pizza. What’s your favorite kind?”
“Sausage,” Aeren blurted out before clapping a hand over his mouth. “Really, anything is fine, though.”
Lamar’s grin widened. “Sure it is, kiddo. One large sausage pizza coming up!”
After placing the order, they settled onto the couch to watch TV, but it was only a few minutes before the doorbell rang.
“That was fast,” Lamar mused thoughtfully. “You stay here, okay?”
Aeren tensed but he nodded.
Reaching for his backup piece still in the holster he’d dropped on the side table when he got home, Lamar shoved it in the waistband of his jeans and pulled his shirt down over it before striding to the front door.
A glance out the narrow window next to his front door told him nothing. There was no vehicle with a cheerfully lit delivery sign in sight, and the shadowy figure keeping its back to the window didn’t appear to have a pizza in their hands.
Cursing under his breath, he eased the gun free and cocked it. Bringing it up as he swung the door open, he felt his brows twitch when the man standing there looked from his face to the gun and back before laughing.
