Holding Out for a Fairy Tale (27 page)

“You know, you don’t have to analyze every comment I make to find a way for it to feed your ego.”

Elliot let Ray tug him back toward the bedroom, trying not to wince at the thought of another round of rough sex. Ray pushed him down on the bed and crawled over him, rolling Elliot’s shorts down and hovering over his half-hard cock. The moment Elliot felt Ray’s breath pulse against him, his cock swelled, popping up far enough that Ray’s lips grazed him. Ray swallowed him, letting Elliot slide into his mouth and down the length of his tongue. Elliot gasped as he felt Ray’s carefully controlled breathing ruffle his pubic hair while Ray cupped his sac, massaging each orb in a teasing rhythm. Ray began to bob his head slowly, sucking Elliot in deep each time.

Elliot watched his cock slip past Ray’s dusky tan lips, over and over. When he felt his body begin to tighten, he touched Ray’s head, warning him. Instead of adjusting his throat and swallowing like he had last time, Ray slipped off his cock and palmed him, stroking him so fast that he didn’t have time to mourn the loss of Ray’s tongue. He came in Ray’s hand, shaking as Ray scraped his thumb over the head of Elliot’s cock slowly, keeping Elliot trembling. “Do you have any idea how hot you look when you come? I love watching you.”

“What about you?” Elliot asked, after he came down.

“I’m supposed to be the one bribing you, aren’t I?” In the living room, Ray’s phone rang. “Fuck. El, that ringtone’s my office. I’ve got to get that.”

“We’re in the same job, remember? I understand.” He dropped his head back while Ray sprinted for the living room. After he caught his breath, he cleaned himself off in the bathroom and wandered out to find Ray holding the phone to his ear, looking grim.

“What happened?” he asked, forcing himself to focus.

Ray held his phone out and swiped his finger across the screen. “My captain wanted to make sure I was okay. Things are blowing up.” After a few more swipes, he held the phone out to Elliot. On the screen was a series of San Diego headlines.
Sixteen Dead as Gang Violence Escalates
was the top headline. Elliot scanned the article fast, cursing. Three shootings had occurred since the mess at his house yesterday. Two in run-down residential neighborhoods and one in the middle of a busy street in the southern neighborhood of Chula Vista. The gang war Ray had warned them about was materializing on the streets, putting innocent bystanders at risk.

“I need my phone back. I’ve got to make sure Carmen’s okay.”

Elliot passed the smartphone back. He swallowed the urge to suggest they do something stupid like go back to work. St. Claire would call if she needed him to come back in, but she’d made it very clear that if she didn’t call, he would do more harm than good by being involved in the rest of this case. He listened to Ray’s conversation with his sister long enough to know that she was fine, then went into the kitchen to wash their dishes from lunch. If he let himself sit still, he was going to start fidgeting and feeling useless.

The afternoon faded into evening and Elliot cleaned most of the kitchen while Ray paced back and forth through the apartment. Elliot thought he heard the other man growling. When he glanced up from cleaning the cabinet baseboards, he met Ray’s furious glare for a moment. Ray looked more like a caged, frustrated animal than Elliot would have thought possible. He reminded Elliot of a puma or a jaguar, lazy and more inclined to nap in the sun than do any regular work, but all claws, teeth, and confident strength when something he loved was threatened.

Elliot couldn’t blame him. He wished he could go spar with someone, just to burn off the anxious energy eating away at him. The prospect of tackling Ray, which had been so damn appealing just a few hours ago, didn’t seem right. He had no clue what made Ray get off on watching Elliot spar. The adrenaline effectively killed anything approaching a hard-on for him while he was fighting, and there was just as much adrenaline coursing through his body now. He suspected Ray was worse off, because his pacing had carried him back to the bedroom for a moment, and when it resumed, Ray had found a pair of slacks and an undershirt.

“Think Hayes would care if you tried remodeling the place?” Elliot asked.

Ray froze and stared down at him. All at once the fury and anxiety faded from expression, and he flashed Elliot a goofy smile. “He’d kill me. You’re the only one I’ve ever known who’s trusted me with power tools. And that sucks, because recessed lighting would look awesome in this kitchen.”

Elliot barked out a sharp laugh and sat back on his heels, surprised at just how tightly wound they both were. “Eh, not like we can run to the hardware store anyway. I found a deck of cards shoved into the back of the junk drawer over there. We should play.”

“Cards?”

“Yeah. There’s beer in the fridge and pretzels in the pantry. Cards.”

Ray’s smirk grew into a wide smile. “What are the stakes?”

He rocked to his feet, tossed the ancient sponge into the sink, and padded toward him. “We’ll just have to be creative. But I’m not playing strip poker unless I can get dressed first.”

They spent the night playing cards and making jokes across the kitchen table. By the time they finished dinner and went back to playing cards, Elliot felt the tight spring coiled inside him loosen a bit. As he finally relaxed, he also found himself noticing the flashing lights floating across his vision that usually came in the hours before a migraine left him practically crippled. He eyed the rest of his beer, wishing he could drink it but knowing he couldn’t, and noted the time on the microwave oven. He’d have to wait at least an hour to be able to take his migraine medication. If he could take the medication before the throbbing pain actually started, there was a good chance he would be able to prevent it altogether.

He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the cards in his hand, but the floating lights appeared wherever he tried to focus.

“El?” Ray was beside him in an instant, his own cards forgotten.

“Just tired,” Elliot whispered.

Ray stared at him, fixing him with a gaze that Elliot knew meant Ray was analyzing him. Ray ran his palm along Elliot’s cheek, then withdrew his hand and left the kitchen without a word. He returned a moment later, carrying the two pill bottles Elliot had been carrying since this case began to fall apart around them. “Which of these do you need?”

Elliot huffed. “Am I that obvious?”

“Come on, El, which one?”

“I can take them both in about an hour. And the other one, it’s in a long cylinder.”

Ray disappeared again and returned with the only Imitrex cartridge Elliot had on him. “I’ve got to wait for the beer to wear off. Hell, the beer is probably what brought it on.”

“An hour?”

Elliot nodded. Nodding was beginning to hurt.

“Let’s get you to bed. I’ll set a timer on my phone for one hour.”

Elliot rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the cards once more. Frustrated by the flashing strings and dots, he tossed the cards down and followed Ray back to bed.

I
N
THE
days that followed, helpless to do anything about the series of gang shootings and murders announced each day in the news, they checked in with St. Claire and Ray’s captain by phone once a day and otherwise tried not to go insane. Ray remained the attentive, affectionate man he seemed to only become behind closed doors. They watched the same movies and television shows all over again, ordered pizza, and spent the days and nights distracting each other while the world seemed to be falling apart outside of their tiny sanctuary. Every day, Elliot tried to remind himself that the Ray Delgado who kept touching him, kissing him, and fucking him wasn’t real. Outside of this apartment in the real world, Ray was still in the closet. He might not be as conflicted as he had been a week ago, but Elliot knew the shame and fear Ray was battling wouldn’t just evaporate. No matter how warm Elliot felt when Ray touched him, no matter how much he wanted this to last forever, he kept reminding himself that Ray Delgado was still pretending.

“How long have you been getting these migraines?” Ray asked, as they worked together to clean up their lunch the next day.

“Since the war,” said Elliot, surprised by the question. “We were out on patrol, and the Hummer I was riding in hit an IED. I got thrown about twenty feet, and when we got out of the ambush they’d set for us, my neck hurt. Lots of doctor appointments followed, along with lots of tests, and they all said there was no damage, just bruising. Two days later, I had my first migraine. The neck pain went away in a few weeks, but the headaches never stopped. They’re not usually this bad.”

“Do you know what causes them? I read that it’s different for everyone.”

“Letting my blood sugar get too low. Getting dehydrated. Coffee. Alcohol. Normal stuff, as far as migraines go.”

“Are you going to need to call your doctor, get him to call a prescription into a drugstore for more of those shots?”

Elliot shrugged. “I’ve got painkillers. I can get through another one. The shots will actually stop mine, if I take them soon enough. Not having one sucks, but it’d be no worse than that first night you were with me.”

Ray nodded slowly. Elliot was surprised by how relieved Ray looked.

On the counter, his cell phone rang. He stretched across from the table to grab it. “Belkamp.”

“Belkamp, it’s Hathaway.” The other man sounded annoyed, as always.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Elliot saw Ray’s head jerk toward the living room, where a scratchy heavy-metal guitar riff could be heard. “Mine too. Wonder what blew up this time?” Ray wandered into the living room to find his own phone.

“Belkamp, listen, now that things are starting to quiet down, St. Claire needs to get a start on the report for that shit last week and all of the budget paperwork for the new site. She needs the name and address of the second hotel you dumped Delgado in.”

“Does she?” Elliot glanced toward the living room, trying to remember the details of his conversation with his boss nearly four days before. He’d told her that he’d found Ray, that he was fine, but he hadn’t told her where they were staying. She hadn’t asked, either. He’d talked to her once a day since then, and she hadn’t asked for their location then, either. “What do you mean, now that things are quieting down? I’ve been watching the news.”

“We haven’t had a single incident yet today, so she wanted to get caught up on reports. And it’s not fair to make you pick up the tab for this.”

“This isn’t going through the task-force budget. There is no paperwork for this.”

“She still needs it for the report,” Hathaway insisted.

Ray hurried into the kitchen, his face pale. He was pleading with someone on the phone to give him just another minute and making frantic gestures toward Elliot.

“Hang on a second,” Elliot whispered. He covered the microphone on his cell phone with his finger.

Ray hit the speakerphone button and frantically gestured for Elliot to be quiet.

“All right, just tell me again what you need,” Ray whispered.

“The laptop,” a frightened woman’s voice said on the phone. “Ray, he’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill all of us! Carmen, the kids, it’s like he’s gone insane!”

“When and where does he need it?” Ray asked, keeping his mouth close to the phone.

“Carmen’s house! You have to bring it to Carmen’s house! It has to be today! The FBI is all over the place. He said if he sees a police car, he’ll kill us all! Please, you have to help me!”

“Sophie, listen to me, I need more time. The laptop is in a FBI evidence locker. I can’t just walk in and get it,” said Ray, his voice calm and soothing. “I need a day, at least.”

In the background, Elliot heard the scrape of metal moving against metal. The distinct clink of a revolver being cocked. “Tell him he has two hours.” The voice was angry and familiar.

“Two hours,” the woman’s voice cracked. “You have to bring it within two hours. Please, Ray, I—” The screen of Ray’s cell phone went black as the call ended.

“Hathaway,” Elliot returned to the phone. He locked his gaze on Ray, trying to ask what he wanted to do. Ray half nodded toward the phone in Elliot’s hand and gave him a look that all but screamed for him to hurry up. “We have a location on Munoz and Holland and a potential hostage situation.”

“You’ve found Munoz and Holland? What’s their location? I’ll call out the troops.”

Ray was frantically scribbling his sister’s address on the back of an envelope. Elliot read the details back and repeated as much of the call as he had heard, word for word. “Obviously,” he swallowed hard, “Delgado’s too close to this to be involved. I know you don’t like him, but this is his family. Do you think you could—”

“As soon as we’ve got a tactical team on the way, I’ll call you back so you can keep him updated.”

Elliot sighed. “Thanks.”

Elliot watched Ray’s gaze shift wildly around the kitchen, not focusing on anything, not seeing anything. He tossed his phone onto the table and moved toward Ray, helping him back into his chair before he fell over.

Elliot set his hand on Ray’s shoulder, but he didn’t respond at all. “I’m going to get dressed. I’ll grab your clothes, too.”

Ray looked down at his clothes, as if just noticing that they were both still in boxer shorts and T-shirts. He nodded slowly.

Elliot pulled on his slacks, his shirt, and holster. He checked his sidearm, checked to make sure his ID was in his jacket pocket, and slipped the jacket on too. Ray stalked into the bedroom behind him, his eyes dark, and began to dress too.

“Ray, you know you can’t run in there.”

Ray checked the clip in his pistol, slapped it back into place, and nodded. “I’m well aware of that.”

“But we can go down to the scene and wait for news.”

Ray slipped the pistol back into his holster, then ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Ray?” Elliot cupped his jaw, not sure what comfort the man might accept, what he needed. “Holland’s a nervous, cowardly little shit. When he sees he has no way out, he’ll give up. Don’t assume things will go bad, because then you won’t be any good to your sister or Sophie. Wait and deal with what actually happens, all right?”