Javi examined the photo for a moment and then grimaced and set it down.
“I’ll get Galloway to check the file number against her records tomorrow,” he said as he pushed it away. “But I think I’ve had my fill of looking at dead men today.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Cloister said. “Macintosh made his own choice.”
“It was my arrest,” Javi countered. He got up and paced the short distance to the window so he could stare out. The line of his back was pulled arrow straight with tension. “Now Macintosh is dead, Tancredi is going to need weeks of physical therapy, and I’m still worried about how this is going to look on my record—another black mark.”
Cloister rested his elbows on his knees and studied Javi’s back. He knew a bit of the story, that Plenty was just a detour in Javi’s career and that he hadn’t been sent here as a reward. He guessed maybe the person Javi talked about the other night, the one he lost, was part of that.
“If I asked,” he said, “would you tell me?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE ANSWERshould have been obvious. Javi was surprised to find it wasn’t. He stared at his dim reflection in the salt-scored window and actually thought about what it would mean to say yes. It was still the last thing he wanted to do. The dead should stay buried, and the past should know its place.
His plan to keep his head down, work hard, and prove that what happened in Phoenix was an aberration hadn’t worked. Kincaid wasn’t about to let it. It didn’t suit him to have Javi redeem himself. Then people might wonder whether what happened was down to a flaw in Agent Merlo’s character or if it had something to do with Kincaid’s supervision.
He still didn’t want to tell Cloister, but the “Maybe” creaked out of his throat.
“Do you want me to ask?”
This time the answer was easy.
“No,” Javi said. “Not yet. Not tonight.”
That wasn’t fair. Javi knew that, but he also knew that anyone else would have asked anyway. Javi had admitted to a black mark on his record and a dead lover on his conscience. That would make anyone curious… or suspicious.
But this was Cloister, and he took what he was given. The idea that he should, that he could ask for more seemed never to have occurred to him. Although that had worked in Javi’s favor, it only made it worse.
Outside, a skinny cream-colored cat walked along the fence, mink-hued tail up and straight. Javi expected an outburst from Bourneville—his family never had pets, but he knew cats and dogs didn’t mix—but she just lifted her head, pricked her ears, and watched with interest as the cat picked its way from post to post.
That had all the hallmarks of something that would end badly. Javi just had to watch and wait.
“Sometimes just because something isn’t your fault, doesn’t mean you’re not to blame,” Javi said. “Macintosh might not have killed his family, but the sort of man he was is still why they died. He couldn’t live with that. I could.”
“I didn’t ask,” Cloister said. He got up off the bench and joined Javi at the window.
“You didn’t need to,” Javi said. “You won’t need to. Someone will tell you eventually. It might as well be me.”
“Fair enough.” Cloister curled his hand around Javi’s hip and ducked down to place a kiss under the hinge of his jaw. His lips pressed warm and wet against the spot where Javi’s pulse throbbed under his skin. “It doesn’t have to be yet, though. You’ll be here in the morning.”
He slid his hand down to cup Javi’s cock through his trousers and twisted his long, work-scarred fingers around fabric and hard, ready flesh. Javi swallowed hard, a wet click of surprised lust in his throat, and reached back to slide his fingers through Cloister’s hair.
It wasn’t that he didn’t think sex might be a good end to a bad day—not why he’d driven over here, but not unwelcome either—but he didn’t expect Cloister to make the first move. Usually it was Javi who took the step from arguably platonic to hands on cocks.
Javi liked the control of that, the fact that he could shatter Cloister’s composure just by tipping his head back for a kiss. Most people would describe Cloister as laid-back or easygoing, but Javi got to see all the hungry intensity, the want, that he kept tamped down.
What gave him pause was that Cloister could do the same to him with a rough caress and the scrape of stubble and teeth down Javi’s throat. When had Javi’s buttons gotten that easy to press? Or had Cloister just paid attention?
Everyone took Cloister at face value—the drawl, the dog, and the GED—and missed that he was a good cop and a better man. Even Cloister seemed to miss it sometimes.
“Whatever,” Javi rasped as he flexed his fingers against Cloister’s skull. He could feel the planes of bone under his thumb. “Just don’t blame me when you regret it.”
Cloister’s laugh was warm and tickling against his throat. He grazed his teeth over the taut tendons as he kissed down to Javi’s collarbone. Lust hooked tight in Javi’s balls at the way Cloister wrapped his mouth around his collarbone, the wet swipe of his tongue, and the dull pressure of his teeth. It made his cock ache with a heavy throb of impatient hunger for its turn.
“You know it wouldn’t kill you to let someone like you,” Cloister said.
That wasn’t what Javi was worried about. “If you’d let me finish, you’d know that wasn’t true.”
