Johnny Wallace's body was beat up pretty badly. It definitely looked like a hate crime to me. But that didn't take much imagination to suppose. The man had been strung up naked on a saw horse and fucked with a club nearly the size of a baseball bat before being bludgeoned with it. Divine? retribution, I thought.
I didn't spend all that much time with the body, but I did find a surprise or two that set me thinking for a couple of days.
They'd finished the autopsy and could only say a "maybe" on the question of sexual rape going beyond the foreign-object penetration—mainly because of the size of the foreign object used. But I couldn't have mustered up regrets if there had been some positive results for body fluids or something. Which brought us back to my earlier question when we were done and Pete had settled us in a faux British pub at the edge of Leesburg that was so clean and dolled up that it wouldn't have been out of place in Disneyworld.
"Those aren't all of the reasons I'm down here on this case, are they?" I asked Pete when we were settled with our Belgium beers and a bowl of gourmet nuts.
"I was real sorry to hear about Dan Roberts." was his response. "Real sorry. My condolences on that. Really."
Good old Pete. Never approach directly when you can beat around the bush.
"Yeah, well, I haven't gotten over that," I answered. "But I did get even." It hadn't been more than six months since I'd pursued the killers of my NYPD Homicide squad partner—and lover—across Europe and closed out on them. That hadn't closed out on my feeling for Dan Roberts any, though.
"But I've missed you, Clint. Missed you real bad. So, yes, there's another reason I got you liaised down here for the Wallace case. I could do that because of your earlier connection with Wallace. But I wanted to do it because of us. I need to know where we stand now. What the possibilities might be."
There, it was out. Pete Blair had been my "significant other" before Dan Roberts had come onto the scene. Pete had been the older man who took me under his wing and shared all of his professional experience with me and had wound up sharing his bed with me too. And then Dan had come along, and I drifted into being a Pete for Dan. And then one day it was Dan in my bed and Pete had withdrawn from the NYPD and headed south.
"Pete. The past, you know . . ."
"I know I took it hard," Pete said in a low, insistent voice, after taking a big swig of his beer. "I know I wasn't paying enough attention to you that last six months. It was the job. You know the job. It can just swallow you up. I can see where Dan was attractive to you. So much younger, and obviously wanting you so bad."
"Pete . . ."
"And now that you are here. I just need you so bad, Clint. Just the scent of you across the table from me. I think that's what I miss the most. Just having you here, close to me. I'm genuinely sorry about Roberts, but . . ."
* * * *
I had forgotten those moves of Pete's that had me melting to him. He was a consummate lover, closely attentive to his partner and with the small, unexpected moves that could put a man needing attention over the edge. But, if anything, perhaps too sensitive and gentle and attentive for some men. And I probably was one of those men. With me, it was variety that floated my boat. I loved what Pete did to me. But maybe not a steady diet of it. I liked to be ridden and taken hard now and again too. That was probably what had killed our relationship. Probably if it hadn't been Dan Roberts, it was destined to having been someone else. And with Dan, I dominated. That had been an entirely new, fascinating world for me. With Pete, though, there was never a question of who was going to be fucking who.
Pete's small, centuries-old townhouse was just a short ride away from the faux British pub. He still lived alone. If he had replaced me, he'd had him cleared out entirely before I got there.
Pete liked to enfold—and I liked to be covered and completely controlled. So, it didn't take us long to find our old, comfortable position. I was flat on my belly on his queen-sized bed, only my hips slightly elevated by a pillow, stroking the sheets with my cock to the rhythm of his fuck. He was on top of me, covering me closely, nipples pressed into my shoulder blades, thighs encasing mine, using his knees for leverage in the stroking of his cock deep inside me, my hips raised slightly to meet his crotch. He had his head close to mine, kissing my neck, teasing my earlobe with his teeth, whispering to me of remembrances of my smell and how it drove him crazy, and enticing me to turn my lips to his frequently for long kisses.
But what I found most melting, most intimate for some inexplicable reason, was that he ran his arms along mine and held both of my hands in his, our fingers entwined, him holding me gently in thrall to him there, a symbol of how closely we were joined as he fucked me.
