Jumping at Shadows Read online

  “Just looking to pick up some hot, horny man-cake to take home for the night,” T.J. answered salaciously, lowering his hands enough to pull their hips together even tighter. “Thought I would chat with Jace while I waited for you.”

  Eric laughed even as Jace grunted loudly from his place at the bar, though the blonde’s elbow jabbing sharply into T.J.’s ribs interrupted the kiss they were about to share.

  “Get a room,” Jace scolded them firmly, drawing both of their tolerant stares in his direction. “Either that, or get naked so you can put the show on right. And hey,”—he leveled a look at Eric before turning fully on T.J.—“if your man ever stands you up, just look me up. I’ll be more than happy to keep you warm on cold winter nights.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” T.J. told him with an overly cheerful smile, and then he turned back to claim the kiss he had been after, taking Eric’s lips softly and gently. Eric’s hands climbed higher under the sweatshirt as he met the kiss with one of his own.

  “Like I said, get a room or get naked,” Jace repeated loudly, effectively separating them again with a light bump. “Or at least stop rubbing the rest of our faces in it.” He snorted as he took a disgruntled swig from his own mug, seemingly unaware of the flatness of the stares he got from them this time.

  “You know, you two make us free and single boys look bad,” he continued pompously, watching them with narrowed eyes. “Not all of us have our own sweaty bodies to keep us warm and happy every night, let alone hot, studly bodies like you two keep flaunting around. You should be ashamed of yourselves for taking each other off the market. Makes the rest of us jealous as hell.”

  “As long as you’re in that group, we’re content,” Eric told him teasingly, turning back to his lover. “And by the way, you should be. Now where were we?” The last of his breath landed on T.J.’s lips, and T.J.’s soft “Right about here” was barely out before the kiss they had started earlier was on again. Jace snorted in the background.

  Jace may have been right about them rubbing other people’s faces in it, but by now everyone at the Pub was well aware of their attachment, and the few who weren’t learned of it in short order. But Eric had never spent a second worrying over what the rest of the world thought of their relationship, and he wasn’t about to start now, not when he felt T.J.’s body responding in a way that matched his own.

  The Pub was well known and often applauded for its liberal views on public displays, and so when T.J. slipped a strong thigh between Eric’s legs with a subtle sway of jeans-clad hips, Eric shifted readily to accommodate it. He wasn’t above enjoying a hands-free groping, and as long as he didn’t start blowing T.J. in public view—and their zippers remained raised against hand jobs—they weren’t likely to get thrown out. Whatever else Jace had to say was lost on them as T.J. took the kiss deeper, and the blond finally moved away with a friendly slap to T.J.’s shoulder in passing, leaving them as alone as they could be in a crowded nightclub.

  Eventually, with a brief touch of tongue, T.J. broke the kiss. “Hey, baby. You have a rough day?” he asked softly, brushing the tip of his nose against Eric’s.

  “I’ve had better,” Eric answered, feeling the weight of the day return and trying to avoid sounding surly. He sighed as he leaned his forehead against T.J.’s. “If I asked you to make the bad men go away, would you?”

  T.J. laughed softly, kissing the tip of the nose he had been rubbing. “You know I’d try. Want to get out of here? I’m ready to take you home and make you feel better.”

  “Thought you’d never ask,” Eric said with a heavy sigh, claiming another quick kiss before they separated. As he bent to retrieve the jackets that had, inevitably, fallen to the floor, he couldn’t help noting that the bald, sweaty man in his outdated wool suit was now looking anywhere but at the two of them. Better luck next time, Eric thought silently, though not all that charitably, as he slipped his arms through the sleeves of his coat.

  “Keep the change, Brian,” T.J. called over the bar, tossing the bills he had dug out of his pocket on the top as he took his own coat from Eric. He gave the bartender an appreciative once-over and ended it with a flirtatious wink. “The service, as usual, was impeccable.”

  “Best in town,” Brian agreed emphatically, sweeping the bills away with a deliberate show of muscles and pecs. “Be sure to tell your friends. ‘Welcoming’ is our middle name.”

  “In more ways than one,” Eric added, settling his jacket on his shoulders before leaning far enough over the bar to deliver a friendly slap to the bartender’s arm. “Try to keep things legal, okay?”

  “Always do,” Brian told him brightly; then he turned serious before they started moving away through the crowd. “Hey, take it easy out there tonight. It may not be snowing yet, but that doesn’t mean people won’t get stupid.”

  “Always do,” T.J. echoed him, leaving him with another wink as he let Eric lead the way to the door. A farewell salute with a half-empty mug from halfway across the room was the only good-bye they received from Jace, and they both acknowledged it with a brief wave before stepping outside.

  The icy night air was a slap in the face after the closed-in heat of the club, and Eric shivered despite having zipped his jacket to his chin. T.J.’s jacket remained open, even in the blistering cold, and the flailing edges brushed around Eric as T.J.’s arms suddenly caught him from behind. A wet kiss fell on his neck, followed by a chilled nose nuzzling into his hair.

  “We’ll take the shortcut home. Get warm and relaxed and continue that kiss we started, among other things,” T.J. murmured suggestively as his tongue swiped Eric’s ear.

  Eric turned to pull him close. “Best plan I’ve heard in ages,” he said with a smile and a kiss, and his cold hands found their way to T.J.’s ass as he pulled them together. “But we’d better go soon if you plan to make it out of this parking lot.”

  The lecherous look that filled T.J.’s face again was promising, and Eric let his lover go and turned to jog to T.J.’s Jeep, which was parked in the lot across the street. They could always come back for his truck later.

  “… Oh God…!”

  Springs screeched as Eric’s hips were lifted from the bed, and his legs scrabbled for purchase against T.J.’s sweat-slicked body. His fingers were clenched around the bars above his head, his white-knuckled grip testing their strength as T.J. reared up over him, towering between his legs. T.J.’s head was thrown back as his hips snapped forward, driving his cock hard and deep in short, powerful thrusts, and Eric’s cries came out gasping and broken as his body shuddered against the sheets wadded beneath his back. One corner had already slipped loose from the mattress, and the blanket and quilt had fallen into puddles on the floor. He would have bruises from the strength of T.J.’s fingers digging into his hips, but it was a small price to pay for the feel of his man losing control inside him, pounding out the memory of everything except how very much in love he was, and how very good T.J. made him feel.

  “God…!”

  The force of the slap of flesh against flesh nearly dislodged his grip when the headboard hit the wall, then began to beat a pattern in time to T.J.’s low, ragged panting as the rhythm of his thrusts increased. Then Eric arched wildly from the bed as the tip of that plunging cock kissed the perfect spot, and his near-sobbing exclamations grew louder and more pained as he squirmed between the bed and his lover, forcing T.J.’s thrusts into an erratic motion that nevertheless hit his prostate again and again.

  Eric’s cry suddenly turned sharp and incoherent as his body convulsed in an explosion of ecstasy, cum bursting from his own painfully rigid cock as his orgasm rocked him to the core, splattering thick streams of white over his stomach and chest without a single touch of either of their hands. T.J. continued to pound into him as the clenching of Eric’s ass took him the last few inches over the edge.

  “Jesus… baby!” T.J. growled above him, his hands pulling at Eric’s sweaty thighs as his hips shot forward and stayed, his cock pulsing deep insid
e Eric’s channel as his balls emptied in a series of strong, draining shots. Long moments passed before the waves of pleasure receded. Their bedroom slowly came into focus as their gasps softened into long, heavy breaths.

  Eric sighed exhaustedly, savoring the warm wetness inside him as much as his own release. Nothing, not even so much as a thin sheath of latex, separated them from one another. Neither of them had worn condoms in years, not since they had both decided their relationship was for life, completely exclusive and until death did them part. Laws may have kept their vows from being recognized, but they couldn’t keep them from being true. They had both tested clean when neither of them had held any remaining doubts, and condoms had become as irrelevant as a marriage certificate.

  An unsteady hand slid from his thigh to his hip, and Eric let his legs fall as T.J.’s other hand mirrored the first. He blinked the sweat from his eyes as he watched his lover crawl over him, entranced by the slow, sensuous movement as T.J. filled his vision. T.J. was beautiful in the moonlight. The faint blue streams filtering through the window outlined the damp, smooth planes of his chest and the taut flatness of his stomach as he lowered his body over Eric’s, and it illuminated the play of muscles in his arms and shoulders as he leaned forward to rest on his elbows. Half of his face was cast in shadow as he stretched farther to offer a kiss.

  T.J. was gorgeous in daylight too, with cut, strong features worthy of a sculptor and the lean, muscular body of a stripper, all topped by an easy smile and liquid brown eyes that were sexy as hell, day or night. A touch from his hands or body was welcome any moment of any day.

  Eric’s fingers released their hold on the thick metal bars of their headboard, and he tangled them in the dark, sweat-dampened hair at his lover’s nape as stubble scraped his chin amid a slow and languid kiss.

  “I need to get a towel,” T.J. said at last, pulling back just enough to get the words out, though not quite breaking the kiss. “Wait here.”

  Eric groaned a feeble protest before forcing himself to let his lover go, and he gasped just a little as T.J. carefully withdrew his softening cock. Night air tingled on his skin as he watched T.J. crawl out of their bed with lazy fascination and listened to the soft steps as he padded toward the bathroom. The sound of running water soon followed, but it didn’t last, and within minutes T.J. was back, a warm, damp cloth in hand. He cleaned them both with gentle strokes, but Eric was glad when the task was done, and he was relieved when T.J. only tossed the cloth toward the bathroom rather than leaving their bed again to take it there. Finally able to pull T.J. back into his arms, he did so with a contented sigh, curling around him the second he stretched out beside him. Great sex was one of the perks of being in a relationship with T.J., and sex with T.J. was unquestionably his favorite way to begin, end, or pass any day of the week.

  Sex also happened to be the ideal way to make him relax, something that T.J. was very well aware of. Eric knew that was why T.J. waited until after sex to ask questions whenever Eric came home tense or distracted, and Eric had to admit that the sex tactic had merit. God knew he didn’t have the energy to hedge or stall after being fucked boneless and senseless, and he certainly wasn’t willing to do either when he was pressed against T.J.’s naked and sweaty body, relishing the warmth and wetness of the cum still inside him. He leaned forward to lick a slow path across the damp skin over T.J.’s Adam’s apple, remembering vaguely how he had imagined himself doing exactly that earlier at the bar.

  “So what happened today, baby?” T.J. asked softly, sliding one hand down Eric’s back as Eric began to nuzzle. Their skin was still damp and slick where they touched, and it would be bared to the moonlight until they had cooled off enough to retrieve the blankets from the floor. T.J. slipped one thigh between Eric’s legs to nestle gently against his balls, and Eric lifted his leg to slide it over T.J.’s in a response both intimate and familiar. It was this closeness that Eric loved almost as much as sex, and T.J. had learned long ago that cuddling was Eric’s second-favorite pastime. Eric could feel T.J. smiling into his hair as he shifted even closer, and he planted a few wet, lazy kisses on T.J.’s throat before he answered his lover’s question.

  “They let him go,” Eric said softly against the heat of T.J.’s skin. He felt T.J. stiffen in surprise, and he let out a huff of resignation before leaning back to meet his lover’s frown with a weary smile.

  “They let him go,” Eric repeated. “Back out on the street with the charges dismissed. His lawyers pushed through a mistrial on the grounds of contaminated evidence, and the judge refused to set a retrial since that evidence was all we had. He dismissed the charges and purged the records of any illegal activity.”

  T.J.’s frown had deepened as Eric relayed the news, and he had grown unquestionably wary by the time Eric finished. He knew exactly who Eric was referring to. Victor Kroger, Breten City’s own version of a crime boss, had his fingers in everything from extortion and blackmail to theft and prostitution, with rumors growing about expansion into child pornography. Anything and everything that could produce tax-free income had Victor’s fingerprints all over it. As a detective on Breten City’s payroll, Eric had gained a great deal of knowledge about Kroger, even more since being assigned lead detective in the nearly year-long operation to take him down. He knew T.J. could see the weariness and defeat written on his face even in the shadowed moonlight.

  “Can he do that? Legally?”

  Eric sighed, and he watched his own fingers as they lowered to trace a path around one of T.J.’s dark nipples, one that he had bitten and teased earlier in their lovemaking; it grew hard under his fingers yet again. “I’m sure it’s legal in some instances, if the circumstances are right. In this case, I think he just paid off the judge.”

  T.J. let out his breath as he settled a little deeper in the pillow beside Eric. “Which leaves you and everyone else involved in this high and dry,” he finished for him. Eric’s answer was an indrawn breath, and T.J. caught the teasing hand and brought it to his lips to kiss a finger.

  A moment passed as he watched T.J.’s mouth move along his fingertips one by one, and the sheer tenderness stalled the bitterness that Eric felt rising up inside him.

  “It puts us back to square one,” Eric added quietly at last, watching T.J.’s mouth and the occasional flick of his tongue. “Farther back than that, really. The fact that it went to trial means we almost had him, and he’ll make sure he doesn’t make the same mistakes that got him hauled into court to begin with.”

  T.J. licked his palm with a low moan of pleasure. “So make him make different mistakes.” His hand shot out to place one finger over Eric’s lips as if to stop the arguments Eric would make, though he turned the touch into a caress of Eric’s lower lip as he continued. “That’s not being flippant or playing down how difficult it’s going to be. It’s only stating the fact of what you need to do next. Didn’t they teach you that in detective school?”

  Eric nipped at the fingers, then licked where he had bitten and allowed a hint of a smile into his voice when he answered. “You mean, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?”

  “You’re learning,” T.J. murmured softly, though plainly distracted as Eric used his tongue to stroke T.J.’s finger sensually, slipping warmly down the length, then sliding back up to swirl over the tip.

  “I just hate starting over,” Eric told him softly between licks. “I’m not even sure where to start now.”

  T.J.’s cock was already swelling as Eric dipped his tongue between his lover’s fingers again, teasing the webbing with its tip before moving to the next one. He hummed appreciatively as Eric pressed his hardness against T.J.’s thigh and continued to sample the sensitive flesh of his hand.

  “Start where you have to. Tomorrow,” T.J. answered, his voice low and husky. “Tonight, just relax and let it go. For a little while at least.”

  Eric murmured a soft assent as his tongue continued to work, and he offered no resistance when T.J. rolled onto his back, pulling Eric up
on top of him. Eric spread his legs to straddle his hips, and he moaned appreciatively as their cocks slid together. Sprawled obscenely over the naked body of his lover, Eric suddenly drew the finger he had been licking deep into his throat, and he listened to the throaty moans drawn from T.J. when he began sucking his finger like he would his cock. Their bodies began a slow grind as lust flared back to full, burning life between them, and T.J.’s free hand fumbled for the lube still open on the nightstand beside them.

  They would both most likely be sore in the morning, but in eight years the threat of soreness had never once held them back. Heat flared in T.J.’s eyes as Eric took the gel from his fingers, and his deft and talented touch as he slicked T.J.’s solid length promised tonight would be no exception.

  Chapter Two

  Timothy James Briscoe, M.Geo.E.

  The burnished gold of the nameplate had grown tarnished over the last ten years, and it sported several areas that were scratched and dull, but it still held firm on the metal plate of the locker. Good enough for an engineer, especially an engineer now in his second decade at Perlman Engineering. Working for Breten City’s prestigious water resource consulting firm may not have been T.J.’s ideal job, but it was a steady paycheck, and today he had lab work to do. Testing groundwater samples was almost routine, given the pollution that comes when a big city is intent on growing; T.J. had yet to see a big city that wasn’t. He was just glad the company was informal enough to forgo the requirement of lab coats.