PsyCop 4: Secrets (2 page)

The sweat-slick pressure of Jacob’s stomach brought me off fast, and I rode the long, drawn-out orgasm while he pounded into me. I’m not generally a screamer, but there was no stopping it, the loud, desperate sound that I just couldn’t hold in. My back whomped into the futon, which slammed against the hardwood floor. The room gave off a weird echo, with all of the furniture disassembled and the walls bare. And under it all, that growl of Jacob’s, that sexy animal noise he was making, that I made him make. He grasped my hips so hard it hurt, really hurt, and his breath huffed against my throat. He stiffened, then went still.

His full weight covered me as he breathed against my neck. We reeked of sweat and cock.

I felt amazing, better than I did after an Auracel with a Seconal chaser. My hips throbbed even after Jacob let go. And that felt amazing, too.

I sighed and kissed his short, damp hair. “I meant it,” I said, and I sounded a little woozy, my voice strange in the funny echo of the room. “You can hold me down and fuck my face. It’s all right.”

“Mmnn.”

“I might even…y’know. Kinda like it.”

Jacob’s belly spasmed against me. It was either a laugh or an aftershock. I felt my own come, sticky between us, and the air chilled my sides and my shoulders, the parts of my naked body that Jacob’s bulk didn’t cover.

“Not that I’m normally into that sort of thing,” I clarified, worried that I was starting to sound like a freak. “But, I mean…I dunno. It could be hot.” Jacob peeled his chest off mine just enough to prop his head on his fist and look down at me. He looked like I felt, heavy-lidded and sated. And like he’d probably rather curl up for a nap instead of loading the rental truck. “Okay,” he said. He looked pleased.

Jacob bent his head to mine for a kiss, such a tender, gentle kiss for someone who’d just fucked me into the floor. He cupped my jaw with his strong hand as he kissed me, and ran the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone. His tongue brushed mine, then pulled back.

He kept hold of my face even as he got far enough back to stare into my eyes. “Bring all your furniture,” he said. “We’ll make room.”

And just like that, I didn’t care so much anymore. Not at the moment, anyway. No doubt I’d be disoriented and anxious once we got to the cannery, but that’s what pharmaceuti-cals were for. “Nah, you’re right. We don’t need two of everything.” Jacob pressed a lingering kiss into my forehead, then disentangled himself from me and headed off toward the shower. I’d been right. My red fingermarks looked pretty hot against his perfect ass. I didn’t think I had it in me to actually leave bruises, not unless I was really bearing down, trying to hurt him on purpose. I didn’t have the strength. Not like Jacob.

He’d been hauling around boxes so heavy that I couldn’t even slide them along the floor.

I glanced down at my bony hips. Red fingermarks covered each of them, shading slightly to purple. Bruises.

Funny. Jacob was the only lover I’d ever had who could actually overpower me. He was so strong that he could do it without even batting an eyelash. And yet, he was the first man I’d ever trusted enough to venture into territory that could turn dark and ugly if it went too far.

Maybe Jacob’s size and strength had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was more about his personality. His equilibrium. The control he exercised in every little aspect of his life, from his exercise regimen to his alarm clock. If anyone knew his limits, it was Jacob.

I heard the shower run and pried myself up from the futon, moving slowly. I felt the af-termath of our sex in my jaw and hips, and especially in my ass. The thought of it gave me a little shiver. That, and the fact that I was naked, it wasn’t particularly warm in the apartment, and Jacob’s big, hot body no longer covered me.

I ran through the kitchen and into the bathroom. I was so intent on slipping into the shower that I almost didn’t get a look at myself in the mirror. It was starting to steam up around the edges, and a quick glance at the steam pattern made me pause.

And then I saw it.

The mirror fogged over as I squinted at my reflection, and I scrubbed it with the heel of my palm. My skin squeaked against the glass, and I turned my head to the side. I peered at my reflection from the corner of my eye.

Toothmarks.

Jesus.

“You left a bite mark on my neck!”

Jacob opened the shower curtain just far enough to look out at me. He knuckled water out of his eye and grinned. “Good thing you don’t have to work tomorrow.”

“You shit.”

He grinned wider and whisked the curtain shut.

Way to go. I’d look real slick reporting for duty at the Fifth Precinct covered in hickeys like a slutty teenaged girl. Damn it. I rubbed at the toothmarks, which raised a pinkish blotch around them. “It better be gone by Thursday,” I said. I’m sure Jacob felt very chastised.

Not.

“Put a bandage over it and say you have a rash.”

“That’s really appealing,” I said. So much for Jacob’s so-called control.

Carolyn Brinkman wouldn’t have been my first choice as a moving helper, but since I wasn’t exactly chummy with my partner on the force, Jacob’s partner would have to do, all hundred and ten pounds of her. Carolyn was waiting on our front stoop, ready for business in immaculate white tennis shoes, size four jeans and a baggy U of I sweatshirt. She’d brought along her best friend, Crash, who also happened to be Jacob’s ex. Yay.

“It’s awfully late,” she said. Not the world’s warmest greeting, but Carolyn had no choice but to say what she thought. She was a telepath who could smell a lie a mile away, which made her a kick-ass investigator. But the flip side of her talent was that she couldn’t lie, herself. Not even for the sake of being nice.

Crash took a long drag off his cigarette and gave me a smug little smile. He always looked smug. His hair was dyed Kool-Aid green. Maybe that’s what he was looking smug about today, despite the fact that it clashed with his olive drab army duster. Or maybe he knew my ass stung with every step I took—either because he was an empath who got “feelings” about what everyone else was experiencing, or because he’d taken it up the ass from Jacob himself. Crash’s smirk widened and I looked away. One day I’d probably slap him.

And then I’d regret it, because he was probably into stuff like that.

Crash flicked his mostly-smoked cigarette into the gutter. “C’mon, kids. Let’s get this show on the road while we’ve still got daylight.”

The next couple of hours were a blur of heavy lifting and smashing my fingers on anything they could possibly be smashed on: between boxes and crates, furniture and walls, the front door and the doorjamb.

We emptied the rental truck first, and lined my white pressboard furniture up against the far wall. The high ceilings dwarfed it; the bookshelves looked like something out of Bar-bie’s Dream House. I regretted using up the entire stack of sticky notes. At least Carolyn and Crash didn’t give me any flak. Carolyn was probably happy she was actually able to lift something. And Crash might not have even noticed, since his furniture was no better.

The apartment at the back of his store was outfitted with mismatched odds and ends he’d found in the alley.

The folks at Jacob’s storage unit sent his furniture over in a crate that was probably about the size of my apartment. My old apartment. I lived here now, I told myself.

“Victor,” said Carolyn. “Give me a hand.”

It took both of us to lift Jacob’s bedside table. “Holy shit. Are the drawers lined with lead?”

“And this is going upstairs, right?”

I would’ve been just as happy to leave it on the narrow strip of lawn. “I guess.” Jacob and Crash steered the massive leather sofa through the front door while Carolyn planned out the order in which we’d take the smaller stuff. I’d expected to feel jealous the day that Jacob could look at Crash without scowling. But instead I was just relieved that it wasn’t me holding up the other end of that gigantic couch.

Carolyn and I were just setting down the coffee table and Jacob and Crash were halfway up the stairs with the king-sized box spring when two phones chimed in pager-mode simultaneously. “I’ve got it,” said Carolyn. She speed dialed the Twelfth Precinct, where she and Jacob work sex crimes. They wouldn’t have been called in so late unless it was urgent, possibly a suspect or a victim who’d just turned up and needed to be questioned before they could start reconstructing events in their own heads. You’d think that either something is factual or it isn’t. Carolyn tells me people’s individual truths often have little to do with facts.

Jacob came downstairs, planted his hands on his hips, and looked at Carolyn. “There was an incident at Rosewood Court,” she said.

The Twelfth district rubs up against mine, the Fifth, on one side, but I wondered if I was hearing her right. “The old folks’ home?” I said.

“I’ll get cleaned up and meet you there,” said Jacob. “Vic, find me the blue suit bag in the closet.”

Carolyn and Jacob deployed, him to the bathroom and her out the front door, leaving Crash and me frowning at the boxes. “That is so fucking sick,” said Crash.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean something happened to a resident,” I told him. I squeezed my way between an empty bookshelf and a waist-high box. Jacob could shower in two minutes if he had to, and I figured he’d need socks, underwear and shoes. “It could’ve been an employee. Or a visitor.”

Crash worked his tongue stud against the backs of his teeth like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “No, it wasn’t,” he said flatly. His hand was pressed against his stomach, Crash-shorthand for “I felt it.” I fought the urge to press my hand against my stomach, too.

“We can finish this ourselves,” Crash told me as Jacob tied his shoes. “Unless you’re too much of a wuss to lift the entertainment center.”

I did my best not to let him yank my chain. Without answering him, I headed outside to get the next box. Jacob, now freshly-showered and suited up, paused at the edge of the container to grab the back of my head and pull me into a quick kiss. “Text me if you need anything.” Which I took to mean that he was turning off the ringer on his phone. The more a crime disturbed Jacob, the less he said about it.

Jacob nodded at Crash. “Thanks,” he said. Then he climbed into his midnight blue Crown Victoria and peeled away from the curb. His tires squealed as he took the turn at the end of the block.

“Well, let’s get to work,” said Crash. “This stuff won’t move itself.” That’s it? No flirting? I probably should have felt relieved. But I didn’t, and of course I then felt guilty for wanting him to flirt with me. I climbed deeper into the storage container after him, glad that we didn’t have much more furniture to move. “What do you think?” he said. “Do you want to start with the entertainment unit, or are you going to put your back out?”

“I can carry that. Half of that.” I planted myself at the far end of the gigantic slab of solid wood and hoped that it was true. Crash let me go first. That was probably for the best. It would have been really embarrassing if I dropped the thing on him.

We brought the entertainment unit in, me leading, and then some boxes and some shelves, and a big leather recliner. Once we’d gotten the container emptied I was about ready to collapse. But I knew Jacob would be gone all night, or most of it at least, and so I hoped that Crash could do one more thing for me—with his clothes on—before he left. “Hey, you know about computers, right?”

Crash looked up from the fridge with a two-liter bottle of Coke in one hand and half a sandwich in the other. “I guess.”

“The phone guy said that our DSL line was hooked up. Can you help me set up the computer?”

Crash chewed slowly. His eyes raked my body up and down, and I wondered what kind of payment he would suggest. Then he took another slug of Coke and shrugged. “Okay.” I let out a breath, carefully, so that he couldn’t see I had been holding it.

“But you have to drive me home. I’m not taking that bus at midnight.”

“Sure. I’ll drive you home.”

Crash inhaled the rest of the sandwich and ducked back into the fridge for more. “Fine. Figure out where you want it to go.”

I looked down at the really big box marked “computer”. It was Jacob’s. I felt a little weird about going through Jacob’s things, which is funny, when you think about it. My whole apartment had been fair game for months.

“It’s just my laptop,” I said, wondering which box it’d ended up in. “I want to get online.”

“Yeah. That’s the first thing I’d hook up.” Crash’s voice was right next to me. I wondered if he was being serious, or if he was just looking for a way to shoehorn the phrase “hook up” into casual conversation. He bit into an apple way too hard. Juice rolled down the side of his hand and he licked it off. He wasn’t looking at me or making a big show out of it.

I felt dirty for noticing.

I found the laptop in a bag of textbooks from Camp Hell. I hoped it hadn’t been contaminated. I put it on Jacob’s coffee table and opened it up. “Where’s the modem?” Crash asked me, looking around the huge room.

“Uh….”

He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Where’s your phone?”

I looked around. We had a land line, right? I could call it and find out where it was if I knew the number.

Crash threw his bulky wool duster over my little plastic table, the one reserved for my keys. It nearly collapsed under the duster’s weight. He sashayed into the kitchen. “Never mind. Here it is.”

I watched the laptop power on. Crash returned to the furniture maze. “Okay. So where’s your wireless router?”

Damn. I knew I’d gotten off too easily. “I don’t…know?” Crash crossed his arms. “Do you even have one?”

“Maybe not?”

“Okay, how about a CAT-5 cable?”

I stared at him.

“Like a phone cord, only fatter.”

So it went, with him asking me for a bunch of bizarre things whose proper names I’d never heard before, and me looking like a total idiot. It took nearly an hour to hook up the cable, locate the carbonless form with our account information and password, and get everything up and running.

And then the damn laptop had to download about eight hundred virus definitions. It does that every time I go online, which is why I hardly ever use it.