Give it a month, and Javi wouldn’t need to. Either Joel or Kincaid would do it for him. It would make it easier when Javi had to leave, he supposed. That sounded reasonable, but Javi suddenly found it hard to believe. Itwouldn’tbe easy. In fact, if Kincaid hadn’t already stamped an expiration date on this, Javi would probably have panicked at how not easy it would be.
He might anyway. Later.
“Your funeral, Witte,” he said.
Javi shifted, hooked his arm over Cloister’s shoulders, and dug his fingers into Cloister’s tensed muscles. He twisted his hand along Cloister’s cock in time with each thrust that buried his cock in that ridiculously beautiful ass. Cloister braced his arms against the counter and ground back against him, his breath ragged as he panted through each thrust.
Sweat filmed their bodies as they fucked. Javi dragged his thumb over the firm, come-wet head of Cloister’s cock and briefly broke his rhythm to reach down and give Cloister’s balls a quick, hard squeeze.
“Fucker,” Cloister groaned into his forearm. He came with a shudder, his come caught in Javi’s fingers, and his legs gave under him. The length of his body sprawled across the counter, his stomach creased where the sharp edge of the Formica dug in. Javi wiped come on Cloister’s thigh and stepped back. He admired the boneless, sweaty sprawl of Cloister’s body, lewd against the summer-holiday domestication of the Airstream kitchen as he jerked off with an efficient three strokes of his clenched fist.
His orgasm squeezed between his fingers and washed honesty through him. For a second he knew exactly how he felt about Cloister, but luckily it didn’t last long enough that he had to acknowledge it.
He wiped his hands on the discarded shirt—his now, he supposed, so he’d have to buy Frome another—and peeled Cloister up off the counter.
“If you lived in a house,” Javi said as he cupped a dazed Cloister’s chin in his hand and dropped a kiss on the bitten, parted lips. “It would have taken a lot longer for us to have fucked in every room.”
Cloister smiled under his lips and leaned his hips back against the counter. He wrapped his arm around Javi’s waist and pulled him in closer. The kiss left Javi’s mouth as he trailed his lips down his jaw to his throat, then farther, to press against the pad of the gauze bandage. “There’s always the bathroom.” He rubbed a circle in the small of Javi’s back. It was sticky and sweaty and vaguely tacky, slouched in the kitchen they’d just fucked in, and Javi didn’t particularly want to move. “You sure you’re okay?”
It was one thing to fuck Cloister. Javi wasn’t going to pretend—not anymore—that it didn’t matter, but it was just sex. He could get sex anywhere. When had been the last time someone he took to bed actually gave a damn about anything other than what his cock could do for them?
When was the last time he’d wanted them to?
“I ruined a good shirt,” Javi said dryly. He absently raked his fingers through Cloister’s hair and quietly admitted, “For some reason it’s harder to be responsible for someone’s death when you didn’t pull the trigger.”
There was a pause, and then Cloister quietly murmured “I know” against his shoulder.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT WASN’Tthe first time Cloister’s nightmares had woken Javi up. They weren’t physical—Cloister didn’t flail or kick in his sleep—but they left the aftertaste of it in the air. It reminded Javi of a crime scene where the violence had left its imprint on the room. Cloister’s nightmares had apresenceto them, half the bitten, metal-salt smell of fear and half the dread that bled out of Cloister like the chill of a winter night.
“They’re going to make me see a shrink because Macintosh blew his brains out in front of me,” Javi said through a yawn as he sat up. He crossed his legs under the crisp cotton sheets—they felt nicer than before, and he briefly entertained the notion that Cloister had bought them for him—and watched Cloister’s shoulders slowly unclench as he rubbed his scarred knee as though it were a rosary. On the floor Bourneville did the same, her chin on Cloister’s knee as she waited for him to get back from wherever he’d been. “I could drive up to LA for it, but they’d probably accept the department’s psychologist instead. What are they like?”
Cloister chuckled. He rubbed his hand over his face and up into his hair. Pale hanks of hair stuck out between his fingers. “What do you want to know?” he asked. Bourneville whined and put a paw on his knee. “If they’re shit because they can’t fix me? Or if I’m shit because I can’t be fixed?”
Out of Javi’s mouth, that would have been vicious, the clear end to the conversation. Cloister just sounded amused and tired.
“I…. Neither,” Javi said. “It’s not my business.”
Cloister leaned over to bury his fingers in Bourneville’s thick ruff and give her a reassuring shake.
“Drive to LA,” he said. “Dr. Mangan is okay, but our HR department isn’t what you’d call discreet. When Green—one of the K-9 handlers over in San Diego—lost his dog and his nerve—it got out. Nobody could pin down who spilled it, so….”
He shrugged and grabbed a pair of shorts from the wardrobe to pull on, one-handed and clumsy as he hitched the waistband up over his hips. The light from the window, still dim, but closer to dawn than midnight from the color, picked out the shadows under his collarbones and down his spine.
Javi watched him and wondered whether that was an invitation to a conversation or just a heads-up.
“I’ve seen doctors,” Cloister said as he sat down on the end of the bed to pull his shoes on. He didn’t look at Javi as he hooked his finger into the back of his sneaker to unfold it. “Psychiatrists, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists. Quacks, priests, faith healers. My mom took me to all of them—anyone she thought she could fix me, could make me remember what happened that night, who took my brother. They couldn’t, but she always believed in the next miracle. My stepdad put his foot down eventually, but that only made her go behind his back.”
“At least he tried,” Javi said.
Cloister shrugged and yanked on his other shoe. “People always try. Then they give up because it’s hard.” He snapped his fingers to bring Bourneville to heel and gave a soft, humorless laugh under his breath. “Maybe it’s for the best. If you’re right, Jessie Macintosh went all out to protect her kid, faked their deaths, and disappeared, and what good did that do in the long run?”
He paused on his way out the door, an impatient Bourneville shoving between his knees, and looked back.
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
