Lethal Control, page 19
part #3 of The DuPage Parish Mysteries Series
After a long moment, he squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.
“Then we’ll figure the rest out.”
“How?” He laughed shortly and opened his eyes. “She’s got Reb. Whatever she wants, she’s about to get it. And we still don’t know anything.”
“We know she and Fen have been putting pressure on the supernatural world. We know that’s why things are changing. We know they’re both predators, in their own way.”
“We don’t know what she wants or why she wants it or how to stop her.”
“No,” I said. “I guess we don’t.”
After a moment, he let out a breath and snuggled into me. “I know you’re trying to be supportive.”
“You’re right, though: we don’t know anything. Nothing that matters, at least. And Eli—” My face heated. “Posey’s not wrong. Not entirely. I don’t know if I can keep you safe. When those things came after us last night, I was useless. Bullets didn’t even slow them down, and that one just about tore my arm off when I got in its way.”
He shook his head, whatever that meant, and then went still. Water sluiced over glass, and the sound was a pleasant static in the background of our breathing. The cotton of my tee itched where it had gotten wet and was drying now. His breath was warm on my neck. He was warm, and he was sitting on my lap, and I loved him so much.
He shifted his weight and said, “Hm.”
I fluffed his hair as my face got hot again.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s a reaction.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know what I mean. I’m saying don’t pay any attention to it; I know now’s not the time, but it’s kind of got a mind of its own.”
He shifted his weight again, turning the movement into the slow grind of his ass against my dick. I put a hand on his knee.
Leaning back to see my face, he asked, “You don’t want to?”
“Obviously part of me wants to. The rest of me thinks you’re in kind of a delicate situation.”
He took a breath. He met my eyes. If you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t have known how hard it was for him. “I love you.”
“I love you too. I can love you with my zipper up just fine, so you know.”
A tiny smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. He moved again, rolling his hips, applying pressure and friction in steady waves. I must have swallowed or moved or something because his smile got bigger. “I’ve never done it in a car.”
I squeezed his knee.
He hesitated. And then he said, “You have?”
“A little quieter, please. And not so much outrage.”
“Dagobert!”
“Oh my Lord.”
“With who?”
“Go back to what you were doing; that felt nice.”
When I put a hand on his waist, he slapped it away—playful, but only barely. “With Lanny?”
“How about I kiss you? How about that?”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Then, rearing back, his face filling with horror, he said, “In this car?”
“I think kissing you is the right idea.”
He put a hand on my chest, forcing me back. “Ok, we have to have sex. Right now. In this car. To—to exorcise the demons of the past.”
“What about the demons of the present?” I asked under my breath. “Ow!”
“Go ahead and kiss me now,” he said as I rubbed where he’d slapped my chest. “Make it really good. How good was the sex with Lanny? What are we shooting for here?”
“E, come on. It was awkward. It was cramped. I was nervous somebody was going to catch us, and Lanny ended up with the buckle from a seat belt imprinted on his face for the rest of the night.”
“It’s like you’re trying to make me jealous.” He twisted around until he was straddling me. Then he put his hands behind his back. When he saw me watching him, he looked away and said, “I don’t want to touch you. Not like this.”
“Ok.”
“Go on,” he said, licking his lips. “Ready, set, go. Begin. Racers, take your mark. Next time, I’m bringing a starter pistol.”
He was saying something else like that when I got my hands on his hips, hauled him closer, and kissed him. He held back at first, his mouth tight, his head contorted as he tried to support himself by stiffening his back instead of using a hand to prop himself against a seat. I moved my hands up under his arms, taking the weight of his upper body, and we tried again. Better, this time. The way I held him stretched the sweatshirt tight across his chest, and when I rolled a thumb, I found one nipple already stiffening. His mouth softened, and his breath caught in the next kiss.
Everything had an extra charge. Everything was outlined in lightning—literally and figuratively. He didn’t weigh hardly anything, and I could have held him like that all day, feeling his need, giving him what he couldn’t take.
“Dag,” he whispered when he broke from our next kiss.
I moved back to let him get some air, but instead, he squirmed back from my lap and down into the footwell. The Escort wasn’t exactly a big car to begin with, and with the two of us in the back seat, it was starting to feel downright small. By some miracle of contortion, though, Eli got himself onto the floor. He stripped out of my stolen sweatshirt, and he kept his hands out of sight as he stared up at me. His lips were puffy from kissing, redder where I’d chewed them, and goose bumps ran up his arms and shoulders. He was so thin, like someone had taken away everything that wasn’t perfect. I let my hand dust his collarbone to follow the valley between his pecs, and I leaned forward so that my fingers rocked over the slight definition of his stomach. He’d worked so hard for those little ridges. He whimpered at the attention.
“Dag,” he whispered in a scratched voice.
“I know,” I said. I palmed those hard, tight abs while, with my other hand, I took the dark round tip of a nipple between two fingers. I barely did anything—ran the pad of my thumb over it, around it. I let the hand caressing his stomach move up again, exploring his ribs, the ridged definition of serratus muscles, the grace of his biceps. When I tried to follow his arm back, he turned his body. He was breathing in gasps, but he shook his head.
“What are you going to do down there?” I asked, surprised at how I sounded: hoarse, the words scraped raw.
He parted his lips. His tongue darted out. He sounded like he was close to hyperventilating.
I leaned back, hands behind my head, spreading my legs farther.
He brought his mouth to the denim, and at first, the weight of his head and the heat of his mouth were the only sensation. Then he moved, adding friction, and after a minute of this, a slight dampness worked its way through the cotton. When he lifted his head, his cheek and chin were red from the rough texture of the jeans, and his hazel eyes were huge and full of tears. One of them spilled, and I thumbed it away as it slid down his cheek.
I didn’t even bother with the top button; I unzipped myself and worked my stiff dick out of the fly. It was less than what I wanted, the root of my cock still trapped under my jeans and briefs. But, more importantly, it was less than what he wanted. And tonight was about giving Eli what he needed, not what he wanted.
At first, I let him take his time. I made noises as he took the head first, flicking his tongue, sucking lightly. And then he tried to go deeper. He didn’t suck me often, and he couldn’t take me. When he choked, I couldn’t help myself; I made another of those appreciative noises. Spit dribbled down his chin. He tried again and had to pull back, hacking around my dick. I didn’t rut into his mouth, but I didn’t help him either. I watched him as he tried to put himself together again. I was sweating inside my jacket. I didn’t take it off.
He'd cleared his airway when I caught his eye and said, “Fuck your face on my cock.”
Eli’s eyes got huge. For a moment, he stared at me, his lips suckling at the head of my dick. And then he scooted forward to get a better angle and began to move his head up and down. It was sloppy. It was messy. He choked and gagged, and tears ran from his eyes. Spit swung from his chin and clung in glistening strands to his bare chest. At some point, he forgot about his inhibitions, and he braced himself on the seat with both hands. It wasn’t the best blowjob of my life—not that I had a ton of comparison—but it was so much better than sex with anyone else.
I ran my hand through his hair and when I reached the back of his head, I gathered a handful. Even with his throat being wrecked, Eli managed to moan as I tightened my fingers. Then I slid my other hand along the seat, found his hand, and wove our fingers together. The skin was clammy, and the texture was strange—almost too smooth, like touching raw chicken. His fingers were thicker and longer than I remembered. He tried to jerk his hand back, and I tightened my grip.
He reared back. I dragged his head back down onto my dick.
“No,” I said.
He twisted his head. He rolled his wrist, trying to get free. He could have done it if he wanted to, I was sure; he was so much stronger now.
I forced his head down again and barked, “No!”
He let out a despairing noise and tried to take me in his throat again. I kept my grip on his hand, and I relaxed my hold on his hair, stroking the back of his head. He was desperate, frantic now, riding the edge of desire and self-loathing and fear, the knife blade of the last few days.
“Now,” I said as I continued to play with his hair, “even though you’ve been such a fucking brat to me lately, I’m going to be nice to you. Do you think I should be nice to you, E?”
He made that despairing noise again, like the question was beyond him—or like he dreaded the answer.
“You’re going to get yourself off. Right now. With my cock as far down your throat as you can take it. Because I’m a good boyfriend. Aren’t I good? Aren’t I good to you?”
The despair was tinged with agreement. He worked his free hand between his legs. A moment later, the tenor of his sucking changed, taking on a new intensity. His eyes were slits, his joints locked, and I felt it, the moment his world flared up and went out.
Then, shuddering, he dropped himself back down onto my dick. I humped his face, holding his head with both hands, and it only took me a few more minutes to come. I could feel myself clutching him too tightly. The words that went through my head like a freight train, riding the rails of the orgasm, were, Hold on. Hold on.
And then it was over, and we drifted into that place after sex that was a mixture of reality and bliss. I helped him up to the seat, and we lay together, his head on my chest, my head on the window. The rain drummed its tattoo, and through the skein of water, the trees made a darker shadow-show against the night.
“Ok,” Eli finally said into my chest, and then he let out this weird, high, nervous laugh. “So, like, can you do that again sometime? The bossy thing, I mean. Just, you know, if it did something for you.”
I kissed his temple. “Try taking all the caps off my highlighters again so they’ll dry out. See what happens.”
He giggled. And then he was full-out laughing. And then he was crying, but a different kind of crying, and I stroked his hair and let him. When he’d finished, we cleaned up—which mostly meant wet wipes for Eli’s face and then getting Eli out of his jeans, where he’d shot his load, and into a pair of shorts from my gym bag. Commando, of course. Because he was Eli. I had a pair of work gloves in the trunk, and I darted through the thinning rain to get them for him. They weren’t perfect, but they hid the most noticeable changes to his hands, and he seemed more comfortable once they were on.
We drove out of the storm and into starlight, the cypresses like ink-and-pencil drawings against the horizon, the magnolias, when they caught the headlights, strung with hearts of glass. Bragg’s swollen bubble of sodium light grew ahead of us. Streetlights came closer and closer together, striping Eli’s face.
“How did you know?” Eli asked, the words still rough around the edges in a way that was kind of flattering. “Where to find me, I mean?”
I thought about saying, You’re not as complicated as you think you are, but that sounded cruel. Instead, I said, “I wasn’t a very good deputy, but I did manage to learn a thing or two.”
For some reason, that made him stretch across the seat to kiss my cheek.
When we got to my parents’ house, the lights were dark. I parked on the street, and as I was getting out of the Escort, I spotted the truck up the street. I knew that truck: a battered red Ford pickup. Fen drove that truck.
“Get back in the car—” I said to Eli.
“Peace.” The word was quiet but meant to carry. It came from the gallery on the front of my parents’ house, and when I snapped my head that direction, I called myself every kind of idiot. Fen sat on a rocking chair in the shadows, the Browning propped between her legs. She held up both hands and said again, more softly this time, “Peace.”
I watched her. “Get back in the car,” I said again to Eli.
Instead, of course, he said, “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“I want to talk, me.” Her grin looked yellow in the gallery’s shadows. “The word of the Lord says, ‘I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’ Thus sayeth the Lord.”
“Harmless as doves,” I said. “Sure. You don’t mind shooting anything different from you, but you’ll use magic if it suits you—whatever it takes, right?”
“The Lord says, ‘Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity.’ What is magic?” She spat. “You need my help, you.”
“Yeah, like a bullet to the head,” I said. “Eli, get—”
“Why would you help us?” he asked.
Fen started to rise.
“Stay where you are!” My voice rang out in the silent street.
She held up her hands again. Then, slowly, she used one hand to lay the Browning at her feet. She stood again, watching us—watching me—and pushed back the duster. An ugly little iron blade hung at her belt, and she lifted it from its sheath and balanced it on the gallery’s railing. Then, hands in the air again, she took a step toward us.
“Peace,” she said again, and through the thick Cajun, accent, I couldn’t tell if she was laughing at me.
“I think she’s serious,” Eli said across the top of the Escort.
“Sure,” I said. “Don’t mind if I get the Sig anyway, though.”
“Oh, definitely get the Sig.”
I retrieved the pistol from the gun safe in the car. Then, carrying it low at my side, I stepped around the Ford to get a clean line on Fen. “Ok,” I said. “You come in peace. I’ve heard that one before.”
She watched me for a long moment. Then she came down the steps. She wore work boots—big, ugly things that I bet had steel toes. They clunked on each tread.
“You need me, you,” she said again. “You want the beast. And I want the witch not to have the beast.”
“He’s not a beast,” Eli said. “His name’s Reb.”
“You don’t seem like the kind of lady who has any problem flying solo,” I said. “You’re here because you want something.”
She didn’t say anything. But the longer I watched her, the more I saw: the wasted look of her skin tight over her bones; the crook to her posture, as though she were favoring her side; the slight hint in the air, medicinal and foul, that made me think of hospitals and wounds that wouldn’t heal.
“You need us, I think,” I said quietly. “You can’t fly solo on this one, can you?”
“You want my help? My word, from now until you have the beast: no harm from me.”
“Call him a beast again,” Eli said. “Do it.”
Fen looked at him. She didn’t move. Her expression didn’t change. The flatness there, the bare, emotionless animosity, made me want to step back. Or between them. She looked at him the way hunters looked down the barrel of a gun. She was going to kill him if she could. Not today. Not now. But when she had the perfect shot. And it wouldn’t be personal.
“I know what you are,” she said. “No more hiding.”
“We don’t want your help,” I said. “Get out of here. And don’t come back—you come around my parents again, and I’ll be the one you need to worry about.”
“Twenty-four hours,” Eli said. When I glanced at him, struggle showed in his face, but he managed to add in a tight voice, “Twenty-four hours after we free Reb. You swear not to try anything against us until twenty-four hours after. Otherwise, as soon as we get him, you’re going to try to empty that shotgun into us.”
It might have been the moth-wing light of the sodium lamps. It might have been a smile. Fen said, “Twenty-four hours after you free...it.”
“Hold on,” I said. “You’re hurt. Maybe you’re still healing from last year. You’re tough, and I’ve got an idea of the damage you can do, and you know more about what we’re facing than we do. But it doesn’t matter if there are two or three of us. If we try charging into the Stoplight, we’re going to get ourselves killed.”
“Who said anything about charging in?” Fen asked. She set off toward her truck without looking back to see if we’d follow. After a moment, we did. When we reached the old Ford, she dropped the tailgate and dragged a massive steel utility locker toward her. She unlocked it, and then she set her hand on the lid.
I put an arm in front of Eli and moved him back a step.
Fen smirked. In the failing streetlights, the shadows fluttered in the hollows of her eyes. She threw open the locker.
“Uh, Dag,” Eli said. “What is that?”
“That,” I said, staring, “is an RPG.” I cleared my throat. “A rocket-propelled grenade.”
“Soviet era,” Fen said. “Bulgarian made, the best. And in the back seat, I got a fruit crate full of C-4. Surplus from Vietnam. I didn’t say nothing about charging in, me. I say we’re going to blow the motherfucker up.”
