Crazy From the Heat (21 page)

“I
love you,” he mouthed over Grey’s lips. Grey pulled him closer and deepened the
kiss. Sweet kisses. Soft breaths.

“Tell
me about him,” Paul said out loud.

“About
who?” Grey licked into Paul’s mouth. He grabbed a handful of blond hair and
pulled his head back so that he could plunder.

“Your
foster father,” Paul whispered the words but didn’t open his eyes or move out
of Grey’s embrace. “Tell me, so that I understand.”

Grey
groaned. “Not now.” He couldn’t think of that time in his life while holding
this man.

“Was
it consensual? How old were you? Did you love him?” Paul seemed desperate to
know. He let Grey pull his hair, he didn’t flinch away, but neither did he open
his eyes to face him. “Please, Grey. I need to know.”

“Tell
me about Chicago. The secret you’re keeping,” Grey countered. He didn’t need a
play book to know there were lies between them. Lies that Paul had to tell
because of his job.

Paul
opened his eyes then, the brown shimmering in the chandelier light.

“I
killed my partner. I shot him in the head. Right between the eyes. He was my
first real lover, and I killed him. I was twenty-three. I’d just made
detective. We were vice. They used me as a drug mule, or a rent boy, or
whatever role I fit. He was older. We went in deep undercover. I fell in love
with him and I was blind. I was young and stupid and didn’t know the difference
between obsession and love. He was obsessed with me. And obsessed with
money…And drugs. The kingpin who owned him shot me when I tried to get out. He
knew what we were. My partner…well, he was handy with a knife, left me scarred.
When the kingpin was tired of playing with me, he told Jack to kill me. Jack
tried. He shot me, too. I killed him and the kingpin. And then I passed out. I
woke up alone and jobless a week later. You’re turn.” There was desperation in
his voice. An anguish that made Grey shiver again.

“I
was sixteen. Authority didn’t sit well with me and I ran. My foster father… Max
found me a week later. I was…with a…” he couldn’t go on. He’d never told anyone
about his life on the streets. “I can’t, Paul.”

“You
had to survive. Doesn’t matter. I whored myself in the line of duty. At my
command’s orders. Do what they want, whatever you have to do to gain their
trust. Jack played my Daddy. I was his good boy. I did what Daddy told me to
do. It was sick. Twisted. And in the end, he tried to kill me.” Paul didn’t so
much as blink at the admission. He stood perfectly still, as if the slightest
movement would be his undoing. “So he caught you with a boyfriend?”

Grey
nodded, still unable to admit the truth. “He dragged me back. Yelling and
screaming at me about throwing away the only chance I was ever going to get. He
took me into my room and he took his belt off….I came…Okay I can’t tell you
this…I like sex, Paul. I liked what he did to me. I never took the drugs I
sold. Sex was my drug. I sold myself for the high of it. At first he didn’t
touch me. But it became a game. I’d leave. He’d drag me back. He’d take his
belt off. Spank me. And…His wife never knew he was gay. He was so fucking in
the closet, I’m not sure
he
even realized it, and I was the spitting
image of his best friend.”

“Was
it consensual? Did you love him?”

“Yes,
and no. Maybe. I don’t know. He became my whole world. I stopped running away,
and he’d come into my room and cover my mouth. I was always ready for him. God,
it was intense. She was in the next room. I had to be quiet. I changed
everything about myself for him. I did everything to please him for two years.
I became a model student. I took advanced placement and earned almost an entire
year of college credit. And those last two years were great. I had sex and
thought it was love. After I left for school they split up. I made it through
undergraduate school in two years, I CLEPped as much as I could. As much as he
would pay for, just to finish early. I didn’t see him for two years.

"And
then I went home to him. I moved in with him again. I went to U of M and moved
into his bedroom. No one suspected anything. My foster mother never knew. They
never got along. They divorced and she left the state. I had a Master’s degree
at twenty-two and started my Doctorate at Loyola, and that’s when it all fell
apart. She wanted to reconcile. She found us together. A week later he was
killed on the job. He left me everything. The house. A huge fucking life
insurance policy. And she made our relationship public. She accused me of
breaking up their marriage. Of enticing him into lewd behavior. So I left…He
saved me, Paul. I owed him my life. I did everything he wanted, because without
him—”

“But
you didn’t love him?” Paul gripped his shirt, holding him even though he still
wouldn’t look Grey in the eye.

“No.
I didn’t love him. And I didn’t run drugs for him. I didn’t whore myself for
him. I didn’t do anything she accused me of doing. That was me at sixteen. He
saved me from that. But all she ever saw was a thug kid he forced her to take
in. Why? Why are we doing this now? Isn’t it bad enough that you cost me my
job, and my reputation.” God, he was such a sucker. “I love you, Paul. I can’t
stay away, God help me.”

Paul
finally opened his eyes. He took a step back and stumbled over the rug. He held
out his hand to steady himself. His eyes were glimmering again.

“You
have to, Grey. Starting now. You have to stay as far away from me as you can.”

Paul
leaned against a dining room chair. His shoulders slumped and shaking as if he
were trying to control his emotions. He didn’t face Grey.

“Tell
me why,” Grey said. He stayed in the spot Paul had placed him, leaning against
the wall. He flattened his palms against the patterned wallpaper and tried not
to scream. “Just tell me one fucking truth, and I’ll walk out of here and never
look back.”

Paul
spun around, his ratty Converse catching at the loose carpet. He looked so
young and scared, almost as if he was one of those kids out there selling their
innocence because they thought they were bullet proof.

“Because
I love you.” He held onto the back of the chair and once again he pressed a
finger to his ear and shook his head. “I want you to be…To be, the fantasy. The
hot professor. I don’t want you to be here. I don’t want you to be mixed up in
any of this. I want you to be safe. And that won’t happen with me. No one is
safe around me.”

Grey
nodded. The stark desolation in Paul’s eyes moved him, where his words had not.
His life, his job, Grey’s own past…They’d passed safe a long time ago.

“There’s
no such thing as safe. You should know that better than I do. One day you’re
walking down the street minding your own business. The next thing you know some
punk is holding a gun to your head just because you were in his way.”

He
walked away, every ounce of his being screaming at him to stay. He didn’t
listen. He walked away, retracing his steps to the party with every intention
of finding the hall that would take him back to the front door. He couldn’t be
here. Paul was right about that.

A
lush, painfully familiar baritone voice belting out a tune stopped him cold.
The party was in full swing now. Kids drinking and dancing, together or with
older guests. The singer wasn’t part of any band. He held a microphone and sang
along to pre-recorded music while Sarah and a tall blond made out in a corner.
The scent of something sweet drifted on the air. Something chemical.

The
hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He’d been here before. Not here,
exactly, and never in the lap of luxury. Take away the nice furniture and this
could be any seedy bar or backroom from his past. Drugs and sex were easily
had, for a price. And he’d sold both. So many times he'd end up bruised and
tossed on his ass in an alley with little to show for his work. Sometimes it
was the men he slept with. Usually it was his friend—his pimp, he reminded
himself—that what his 'friend' had really been. Sarah was the pimp here.
Befriending her students to pimp them to her rich friends. And where there were
drugs, somehow, Grey knew he’d find Cole looking for a handout.

The
music didn’t stop as he walked into the room but the singing did. Grey had
hoped to slip unnoticed from the party but that was going to happen now.

“Well,
fuck me, Doctor Talbot. How the hell are you?" Cole pushed his long black
hair from his eyes, his upper lip curling into what Grey was sure Cole thought
made him resemble Elvis. He looked like a junkie with a bad dye job with a
nervous tick. “So, Grey, tired of your new boy toy already and thought you’d
come looking for a new one?”

So
intent upon the rocker on the makeshift stage, Grey hadn't noticed anything but
Cole until whatever insult the singer was sure to spit out next over the
karaoke speakers froze on his lips. He watched as Cole’s lilac gaze drifted
from Grey to glare at the man standing stiffly beside him. Paul. The look in
those purple eyes went from amused to pissed in a heartbeat.

“You
stupid slut,” Cole spit into the microphone, pointing at Sarah. He stumbled
sideways but caught himself before he lost his balance completely. “He’s a cop.
Why is the cop here? I told you Talbot, not the…”

The
room went completely silent after that. Time seemed to slow down as all eyes
turned their way. Paul grew deathly still. Grey could feel the very second all
of this became all too real.

“Cop?”
Sarah said slowly, her voice husky with whatever drug she was on. The throaty
moan that followed told Grey that she and the blond she was wrapped around were
doing more than just making out in the corner. The way his hips moved one last
time said everything. Sarah was not only high she was engaged in a sex act, in
a room full of students, likely
with
a student. “Who’s a cop? Cole, are
you high?”

“The
blond, what is his name, Something…Spicoli…Spicoli, that was it.” Cole was off
the step that served as his stage and moving fast toward Grey and Paul.

Paul
squeezed Grey’s shoulder and stepped away from him to put distance between
them.

“There’s
no back-up here, cop.” Cole maneuvered around couples who decided now was
probably the best time to find some where a little more private, without the
potential for a special pair of silver bracelets becoming the door prize for
the evening.

Sarah’s
husky laugh cut the tension like a knife.

“Cole,
honey, maybe you should lay off the pink salts. That’s just Paul. He’s a
student.” She stopped speaking her eyes going round as the blond she was
hanging on wrapped his hand around her throat.

“Shut
up, Sarah,” he said, and Grey recognized his voice.

“Hello,
Vinnie,” Paul said his voice unnaturally calm. “What are you doing here?”

“I
was about to ask the same of you.” The young man who played Paul’s brother
zipped his jeans before turning to face his partner. The look in his eyes,
hard, dangerous, was completely unlike the affable young cop Grey knew. “I
thought you would be long gone by now.”

“I
should be. Sarah invited me. I figured it would be my last chance to see him. I
wanted to say good-bye,” Paul said as he stepped in front of him. Grey noticed
a bulge under the plaid shirt he had tied around his waist, just at the small
of his back. Strange place for a bulge.

“She
invited him for me,” Cole whined, looking from one blond to the other.

“They’re
brothers, Cole. Students at my school. And shut up. I thought Paul and Grey
made a better couple than you and Grey. He was never a good fit. We should
never have let you get involved…”

“Shut
your mouth, Sarah,” Vinnie shoved the teacher back against the wall he'd just
been fucking her against.

“Brothers…They're
brothers…" The wheels in Sarah’s head were turning. The hamster just woke
up it seemed. “If they’re brothers, and as you say, one’s a cop, then wouldn’t
our friend Vinnie be well aware of what his brother was up to?”

“I’m
not a cop,” Paul said laconically. Grey couldn’t see his face, he couldn't tell
if Paul were lying to make Cole think he was exactly what Sarah though he was.
Or if he’d never been a cop. Either way, Paul was lying and Grey’s heart sank
into his stomach.

“Not
anymore. They took his shield this afternoon. He’d fucked up one too many
investigations.” Vinnie wasn’t even trying to hide the truth. Only Sarah looked
shocked. Cole just nodded, as if Vinnie wasn’t just there for the free drugs
and sex.

“God,
Gato. You’d think you’d try to at least be a little more careful after all the
shit that went down in New Orleans.” Paul shrugged away the accusation and
walked over to the bar and reached for a bottle of whiskey. Without bothering
with a glass, he tilted the whole thing back and drank. His throat moving
quickly as he gulped the booze down. Grey couldn’t help but wonder how the fuck
someone could just down that much Jack without so much as flinching. When Paul
had drank his fill he set the bottle back on the bar and wiped his mouth with
his sleeve. He didn’t seem to notice that the bottle fell over, the remaining
contents pouring out onto the bar. Strange that there was so much left.

“I
wasn’t the one sleeping with a drug dealer back in N’Awlins, Boudreaux. That
was you,” Vinnie pointed out. He watched Paul like a hawk, and Grey wondered if
this wasn’t part of some well-choreographed dance between the two.