Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3) (4 page)

He didn’t move at all until I approached him from behind, laying a cautious hand on his arm.

He jumped, turning so sharply I flinched.

“Black?” I said. “You okay?”

For a second, he only looked at me.

I still couldn’t see his eyes because of the mirrored shades.

I was about to ask again, maybe even take the damned things off him, when he averted his gaze, smiling at me, although the smile was visibly forced.

“Sure, doc... sure.”

I watched him, feeling more on him now that I stood so close, even as I felt him trying to sidestep me, to glide out of the way of my mind’s questioning probe.

“Who was that?” I said, a touch sharper.

He made a vague gesture, pushing the sunglasses up his nose to rub his eyes, then letting them drop. Another wave of that denser emotion hit me.

“No one really,” he said, his voice even more evasive than his body language. “Just a dick client. Wants services he didn’t pay for.”

I’m not sure if it comforted me or worried me more that he was such a terrible liar.

I didn’t press him though. Mostly because I’d identified that pulse of feeling that came off him in a cloud, seemingly the instant he looked at me.

It was fear.

I GUESS I thought he’d talk to me later.

I expected him to eventually break down and admit something was wrong...
 
especially since everything he did and said for the next twenty-four hours made it pretty clear something was bothering him.

For one thing, despite his jokes earlier, he didn’t take a shower with me.

He also told me he was too tired for sex, which felt like a blatant lie.

He wanted me to sleep at his place though. When I got into bed with him, he curled an arm around me and pulled me tightly against his chest before he passed out. That was after an early lunch, an afternoon of strange silences and him disappearing into his business offices for four or five hours before he came back with dinner. It was also after he’d already ended a few make-out sessions right around when they started tipping into more than that.

The next day, he was up and out of bed by the time I got up.

He went for a run, to the gym, then dragged me to his offices with him after he got out of the shower. There, I spent a few hours online while he did––whatever.

I started by looking over details of what Kiko’s team had found in Paris, meaning about the man they’d stopped at customs with the Thai mask. They didn’t have any images of his face, which struck me as fairly curious given how heavily surveilled airports were these days, but based on the height and the body-type, it could be Ian.

I knew Black thought it was Ian.

I was still skimming Kiko’s write-up of that as well as newspaper articles on the Thai child murders when Kiko sent me and Black something else––a newspaper article of a new murder, one that just happened in Paris. One query from Kiko also got me the police files from Paris, which had already been translated into English by someone on Black’s staff.

A young couple––newlyweds, according to the police report, had been visiting Paris from Vancouver, Canada for their honeymoon. They’d been found murdered in front of the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral. They’d been set on fire, their hands tied together with wire and their bodies wired so that they lay on top of one another, their legs and arms intertwined.

It was now believed they’d been alive when they were burned.

I sent the article and the police report to Black.

He didn’t respond.

He didn’t say much when I raised the topic with him later that day either, over dinner. He admitted it had to be the same killer, but that was about it.

So far the French police were stumped, no idea of motive.

I couldn’t get Black to talk to me about it. I couldn’t decide if the murders bothered him at all really, or if something else entirely was on his mind. I knew it had something to do with the phone call at the airport. What I didn’t know was if the two things were connected, meaning that call and Ian starting a new spree in Paris.

By the time we went to bed that second night and Black again made some excuse about not being physical with me, I was starting to think that was connected too.

Meaning Black’s sudden and completely uncharacteristic disinterest in sex.

Not like I knew a lot about him in that area, given that we’d never actually done much, but up until now, he’d been the one pressuring me for sex, not the reverse.

As far as what happened later that night––in my own defense, I didn’t plan to do it.

It didn’t help at all that he was already turned on when I woke up.

When I opened my eyes, he was completely wrapped around me. His skin radiated heat, his erection pressed against my thigh, his face nuzzling the base of my neck. I was wearing one of his T-shirts and underwear, which might have been more calculated than what actually followed...
 
but my relative lack of clothes didn’t seem to interest him much before he fell asleep, at least not from what I could tell.

When I woke up at around three a.m., however, that pulling sensation and heat were all but suffocating me. I’d never felt it that intensely, not even the few times we’d gotten close to actual intercourse. It felt like he’d already tugged me halfway inside him, even as his presence wrapped into me like a physical force.

I felt him dreaming, although I didn’t read him to get specifics. I felt him fucking in his dream though, even as he pulled me tighter against his chest, pressing his face deeper into the bare skin of my neck. I felt him wanting me, pulling on me and wanting me, even as his heart slammed harder from his chest into my back.

He’d been wearing a T-shirt too, along with workout shorts of some relatively thin material.

Like I said, I didn’t plan it.

I honestly can’t explain my own thought processes, or even how I got from him pressing up against me from behind, his arms wrapped tightly around the front of my body...
 
to where I turned around to face him and started to touch him back. I remember looking at him in the half dark as he continued to hold me, his cheekbones prominent in the fainter light from the windows, his almond eyes closed as he pulled on me in that longing, breath-stoppingly sensual way.

I started undressing him. He didn’t wake up, not at first. I don’t know why he didn’t, or why neither of us really snapped out of that fugue state before it went too far.

I know when I put my mouth on him, he was suddenly wide, wide awake.

“Miri! ...
i’thir li’dare...
 
gaos...”

His shock slammed into me. His fingers fisted my hair.

“Gods...
 
Miri...
 
Miri...”

For a brief instant, I thought he’d pull me off––or tell me to stop.

He didn’t.

Instead, that shock turned into a desperate spark of urgency, so intense it blanked out my mind. He let out a heavy cry, one I felt in my fingers, then all the way down to my feet. His voice got lower, changing in tone, shifting downwards in a way that––I admit––made me completely fucking crazy. By the time he started talking to me again, I don’t think I’d ever been so turned on in my life. Unfortunately, it got worse with every word he said.

“Miri...
 
Miri...” His fingers tightened until they hurt. “Oh, gods...
 
Miri...”

I felt him force himself silent. I also felt him wanting to say more.

I felt his panic, a kind of paralysis of indecision, right before his pain slammed into me again, pure liquid sex, intense enough and hot enough to stop my heart. I let out a groan without taking my mouth off him and his whole body turned liquid too, breaking out in a sweat as he writhed on the mattress, briefly losing control.

“Gods...
 
Miri...
 
Miri...” He spoke another language, even as that pain coming off him worsened. He was saying my name again then, arching against my mouth.

For a few seconds, I don’t think I knew where I was.

I was being careful...
 
really damned careful...
 
but I still let out a startled cry, taking my mouth off him briefly when that harder part of his cock extended. When I kissed him again, curling my tongue around that same part a few seconds later, he let out a choked cry, his whole body tensing in shock. That time, the pain that hit me stopped my heart, nearly made me lose consciousness.

“Miri...” His voice got lower, heavier. “Fucking gods...
 
Miri...
 
Miri...”

Affection washed into me from him, a possessiveness that stole my breath.

He was speaking that other language to me now.

His tone had changed. It remained low, thick with desire, but it sounded loving almost, like he was speaking endearments.

“Liliere...
 
liliere ilya...
 
untielleres. Gaos...
 
Miri...
 
Miri...”

I found myself wrapping my arm around his waist, holding him as I massaged him with my other hand. His whole body arched, right before he shuddered, letting out a more drawn-out cry. I couldn’t think past what came off him now. Both of his hands were in my hair, gripping me so tightly I could barely move, but he didn’t pull me off. That pain slammed into me again and again, along with so much pleasure I couldn’t feel anything past it.

He started to move with me, showing me pictures in my mind, showing me how to angle my mouth and lips so he wouldn’t hurt me.

“Fuck...” It was nearly a yell when I started doing as he asked. “Fuck...”

He arched against me harder, and then he was flashing other images at me. In them we were fucking, hard, violently.

“Open your light...” he groaned. “Miri...
 
open...
 
gods...
 
open to me...”

I tried to do as he asked.

Some part of him collided into me, once more stopping my heart.

When I curled my tongue around that harder part of him again, I felt him leave his body. I wondered if he’d blacked out, then he was groaning, his voice lower––that maddening lower tone that made my hands clench, that made me want to hurt him.

He felt that, too, and he cried out louder.

That pain coming off him got instantly worse.

“I’m going to come,” he managed. “Fuck...
 
I can’t...
 
jesus, I can’t stop...
 
Miri...
 
Miri...”

In my mind he told me I could take my mouth off him.

Then he was groaning, begging me not to, even as...

He let out a pained cry, longer, from deeper in his chest.

He was climaxing then.

When I stayed with him, his fingers clenched in my hair, his other hand gripping my shoulder so tightly I writhed under his fingers. For a long moment he didn’t move other than to jerk against me, his whole body wrapped and pressed up against mine. He moved in short jerks, conscious of my mouth, but I felt the restraint there, even as he seemed to leave his body again, letting out a more pained cry. I found myself gripping his waist more tightly with my arm, holding him there while he groaned and spasmed, that pain flooding into me like liquid.