Murder and Mayhem (15 page)

“Well, they won’t be chasing him,” she sniffed. “He’s gone straight. Okay, not like sexually straight, because you know, he’s kind of a waste for us girls, but he doesn’t do B and Es anymore. He wants to be a businessman. And he’s a good one. People call him all the time to get them some of that weird sci-fi stuff, and he knows how to get his hands on it. Kind of like a con but totally legit. You know?”

“Yeah, I know.” Dante finished up his diagram, then drew a box to the side. “So what about Pigeon and Dani? Any way they’re connected? Bad blood? Good friends?”

“Oh, Pigeon wouldn’t give Dani the time of day. Dani was in it for herself, but Pigeon isn’t like that, so they fought a lot. I don’t know if they even really talked anymore. But if Dani needed something, Pigeon would be there for her. I know it.” Charlene glanced over her shoulder when an orderly came out of the back. “Do you think Rook’s almost done? How come no one’s come out yet?”

“They needed to see if he broke his head open.” Dante grimaced. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t. It’d take a nuclear bomb to get anything through that thick skull of his. Charlene, I need you to focus for a second. Why would Pigeon help Dani out if they didn’t like each other?”

“Because they’re sisters.” The look Charlene gave him left Dante with no doubt she thought him dim. “And even if you hate your sister’s guts, if she needs you, you have to be there for her. It’s kind of what family is all about.”

“Don’t see what was wrong with the last hotel. It had walls and a bed,” Rook grumbled at Dante as the cop led him out of the elevator and onto his room’s floor.

“And roaches to hold the door for you when you came in. Maybe I just wanted you in one with less vermin.” The sarcasm in the cop’s voice barely stung, but Rook felt it just the same. He pulled a plastic key out of his jeans pocket, then paced off the room numbers, dragging Rook behind him. “Ten fourteen. Here you go.”

Unlike his previous room, this room was large enough to swing a cat in. Not that Rook would swing a cat, but the saying could only be stretched so far without seeming silly. He actually could have given a shit about the amount of space he had, cat-swinging or otherwise. The only length and width that mattered was the king-sized bed up against the suite’s bedroom area and how soon he could get to lying on it.

He ignored the view out over Los Angeles’s bustling streets and even the single-cut expensive coffeemaker on the kitchenette counter, focusing on the bed nearby, then contemplating the soft-looking couch set in the middle of the loft-style suite to break the area up into two rooms. Sure it was nice but definitely more expensive, and he felt… accessible, traceable even. One thing Rook did have to admit—to himself—the place definitely smelled better, but he’d be damned if he gave Montoya that much to hang his smug grin on.

And man, that cop’s grin was smug.

Rook ignored that too.

He was tired down past his marrow, but Montoya lingering nearby made Rook’s skin itch, chasing away any stray cobwebs he might have had in his brain. At the hospital, he’d been reluctant to hand over the cop’s leather jacket, half convincing himself it was for the warmth, but the rational part of his brain quietly informed him he was a fat liar that lied, because the moment Rook went to shuck the garment off, his heart began to pound furiously.

Because tossing the jacket aside seemed like he was peeling Dante Montoya off him. And Rook Stevens, thief and heartless con, did not want a damned husky-voiced, hot cop to let him go.

“Fucking pansy.” The room swayed, and he reached for anything to hold onto, narrowly missing a solid grab on the room’s love seat. He tumbled forward only to find himself slamming into Montoya’s back. “Shit, sorry. Fuck.”

“When was the last time you ate, Stevens?” Montoya’s hands were hot on his waist, sliding under the oversized leather jacket and over the stupidly expensive T-shirt Charlene’d brought for him to wear out of the Urgent Care clinic. “I can call up room service. The front desk said it’s staffed around the clock.”

“Nah, coffee’s fine.” He wanted to step back. Step away. Step anywhere away from the cop who’d shoved himself into Rook’s life like he belonged there, but there wasn’t a single muscle in Rook’s body agreeing with the rational part of his brain. “I don’t know if I can keep anything down yet.”

“How about less coffee and more tea? You need to get some of those pills they gave you down, don’t you?” The heat was gone, stolen away when Montoya slid him onto the couch, then left to investigate the kitchen area. “Might help you sleep. The doc said if you’ve got a concussion, it’s so mild they really can’t tell, but your blood sugar was low. Probably that, lack of sleep and adrenaline fatigue made you loopy.”

“Yeah, they gave me some juice after they were done zapping me.” Rook watched Montoya intently when the man leaned over to poke around in a minifridge hidden behind a cabinet door, and he wondered how the hell his life got so fucked-up that he was wondering what a cop would taste like in his throat. “I feel better.”

“Hah. Found something for you.” Montoya came up with a bottle of pomegranate juice from the wet bar, and Rook winced, not wanting to guess how much the hotel would charge him for it. “Don’t give me that look. I’ll expense everything out to the department if you want. They’ll pay to feed you while I ask you a couple more questions.”

He couldn’t take it anymore. Not for long. Rook’d been rolled over by life and shaken down to his core. Between the battles with his grandfather—fights he no longer even knew what he’d been fighting about—and the delectable rub of Montoya’s body near his own, Rook was tired of fighting. He was sick of running, and most of all, he just wanted a bit of
normal
in his life. It’d been the dream he’d been chasing. A chance to wake up in the morning, get some coffee, and then maybe go back to bed and have sex with someone he liked, someone whose name he remembered.

Hell, he’d even been ready to get a dog or a cat, just to make the whole domestic thing real, but the thundering arrival of police, bullets, and then a sloe-eyed man who’d been a wet dream of his for years put an end to all of that. Now Rook just wanted… he wasn’t even sure anymore.

Except for the wet dream.

His tall, bulked-up Hispanic cop he’d seduced in a club once as a self dare, only to discover the man’s kiss whispered too many promises for Rook to ignore. He’d known who he was hooking up with that evening. When the cop stalked out of the darkness surrounding the dance floor, Rook’s stomach clenched as his ass practically begged to be spread apart. Shit, he’d wanted Montoya to fuck him against the wall until he couldn’t breathe, but something broke in him then. He wanted more than a single night. More than a con or a grift. He wanted to fucking wake up next to someone and have them be
glad
to see him instead of showing him the door.

That night, Rook realized he’d never have the white picket fence and calico-curtained bungalow. Not if he continued on the path he’d been walking. That was the night he’d gone clean. It was also the night he’d seen himself reflected in Montoya’s eyes, and he hadn’t liked the disgust he’d found there.

“Answer me something.” Rook tried to work his sneakers off but gave up.

“Sure, what?” Montoya put the juice bottle on the table in front of the sofa, looming over Rook. The man was too close, too tight in for Rook to do anything but inhale him. A second later, Montoya shoved the bottle of juice aside and sat down, his legs straddling Rook’s. “What do you need, Stevens? You thinking of taking another run?”

“Truthfully, I can barely
walk
as it is,” Rook replied derisively. “Besides, if I took a run, you’d just chase me down again. That’s what you do. You’re a cop.”

“And you’ve broke more laws than a body has bones,” Montoya replied.

“Broke, yes, but once again, caught, no.” Rook tried to tease, but it went flat, stopped short by the unreadable expression on Montoya’s face. “I haven’t had sleep in about three or four days, little food, and there’s this fucking hot cop chasing my ass but for all the wrong reasons. Now someone’s tried to kill me, some asshole accidentally ran me over, and I still don’t know who dropped Dani’s body on my front porch, but all I can think about is how I think we should either fuck or kill each other, preferably fucking, because I just can’t get rid of you.”

“So you want to get rid of me?” Montoya’s smile was a saturnine blend of pleasure and sensuality, a wicked combination hot enough to tickle Rook’s tired dick awake. “After all I’ve done for you today.”

“It would be the worst thing that either one of us should do because, well… reasons. So many reasons. Like… the whole you’re a cop thing, and I am… so not a cop. So yeah, I want something, Montoya. But it’s not like you’re going to give it. So maybe you should go, you know?”

“Huh.”

Montoya was quiet, that still silence Rook’d seen in him before. When Rook was finally about to burst apart, Montoya spoke, shattering everything built up between them with a rumbling sigh.

“What makes you think I don’t want to fuck you,
cuervo
?”

The couch was their first victim.

Dante lunged forward, pinning Rook to its cushions, and their weight tipped the sofa over, sending it crashing backward to the floor. They hit the ground hard, spilling over the cushions and sliding across the carpet. Rook gasped with explosive pain, and Dante began to roll away, startled he’d forgotten about the other’s injuries when Rook’s hands dug furrows into Dante’s shirt.

“Shit, we can’t do this—”

“You fucking leave me like this, and I will hunt down your entire goddamn family and kill them,” Rook growled. “You said it yourself. I’m not a suspect. Shit, if anything, I’m just some guy you know, because I ain’t shit as a witness. So come on, Montoya. Let’s just get this thing out from between us and get on with our damned lives.”

The aggression in Rook’s voice was strong, grabbing at Dante’s balls and twisting them hard. Spread out under him, Rook looked wanton, needy almost, and Dante had to admit there was some part of the man’s helpless sprawl that flipped on every single one of his switches.

Rook looked—battered. There was really no other word for it. His T-shirt rode up over his ribs, exposing blooms of bruises and cuts, and Dante knew beneath Rook’s sleeve lay a weave of stitches and abused flesh. If he were honest, he didn’t know if Rook could survive being fucked, not with as much as Dante wanted him.

Hell, Dante wasn’t sure if he’d survive it, but he was willing to die trying.

They were wrong for one another, polar opposites of worlds and experiences, yet Rook Stevens dug in deep beneath Dante’s psyche, hooking in and holding on while burrowing down into every layer of Dante’s mind.

He wasn’t even sure if he
liked
the man, but he sure as hell wanted to be buried deep inside of him. As worn down as Rook appeared, there was something about him Dante
needed
.

“On the bed.” Dante grabbed at Rook’s hips and lifted him up from the floor. “We do this, it’s going to be on a fucking bed,
mi cielo.
Shit, condoms. We can’t—”

“Wallet,” Rook grunted as he twisted to get at his back pocket. He tossed a leather billfold at Montoya, then shucked off his T-shirt. “Don’t know how long it’s been in there. Do they go bad?”

“Is it old enough to vote?” Dante dug through Rook’s wallet, finding a pair of foil packets. “They’re fine.”

He was about to unbutton his pants when Dante caught sight of Rook slithering free from his jeans and forgot how to breathe.

Whatever—whoever—Rook Stevens was, one thing was for certain. He was everything Dante ever wanted in a man.

Probably without the bruises and cuts, but outside of that, Dante’s cock certainly took notice. His heart took in the scrapes and bandages, begging to kiss away the aches and pains plaguing the lanky former thief. His mind, however, had other thoughts.

The naked man standing at the edge of the hotel bed was prey. Clear and simple. Dante’d spent days on end hunting the man down, hoping to corner him, but each time, Rook slipped away—a mocking reminder of how sometimes justice was subverted by the cunning. His brain threw up nearly every instance he’d seen Rook in the past—being led past the bullpen, handcuffed and shoved along by Vince, to the horror on Stevens’s face when Dante’d slammed him into the cement sidewalk after running him down.

Funny how catching Rook now meant something totally different than slamming a cell door in his face.

Powerful and lean, Rook moved with a careful grace. His long limbs were more muscular than Dante’d expected them to be, stretches of pale skin marbled with strength. His chestnut brown hair lay tangled about his throat and down to his shoulders, creating shadows across the strong planes of his face. Even if he hadn’t seen where Stevens came from, the man looked… rich, expensive. As if his blood had been poured into his body through gold and emeralds, captured in an ivory-cream skin, and polished to a glistening, beautiful statue.

A statue not untouched by time and trauma.

There were little hints of Rook’s past life on his skin, old scars run white over his ribs and back. A bluish-black curl on his hipbone turned out to be an inked feather, its spine and fringe rendered so perfectly, Dante half expected it to tumble from the man’s body and onto the floor. A wider scar cut across the small of Rook’s back, inches away from the bubble of his ass, and Dante reached out to caress it, startling the odd-eyed man.

Dante took a step into Rook, pressing himself up against the man’s spine until Rook’s ass nested into his crotch. Sliding his hand over Rook’s silken flesh, he stroked at the keloid and tucked his mouth into the curved hollow between his neck and shoulder.

They said nothing. The air was thick with their breathing and heavy with their want, but they remained silent even as Dante stroked his hands over Rook’s body, exploring the arcs and dips of his torso, then his sides. A hiss escape Rook’s parted lips when his belt buckle dug into Rook’s ass and then another when he scraped at Rook’s left nipple with his fingertips, pressing the tender flesh in with a hard twist.