Not So Innocent (Shattered Glass #2)

Chapter Eighteen

Riley barely had time to put the car in park before Kelly threw the door open and plunked herself into the passenger seat. “Seven agents at risk because that spoiled psychopath won’t go into protective custody! Seven,” Kelly snapped, pulling the door shut hard enough to knock Riley’s phone off the dashboard. “And you, agreeing with his idiotic demand to keep us out of the house!”

Now was not a good time to remind her that McCleary had been the one to agree to Cai’s demands, not him. Riley killed the headlights, leaving only the dim overhead bulb to illuminate the garage. Concealing Cai in the shadows did little to diminish Kelly’s anger. Her mouth formed a tight line as she glared daggers through the windshield.

Cai stared calmly back at her, then turned to open the mudroom door. He tugged gently at Fuzz’s leash and the dog reluctantly followed him into the house while turning to cast baleful looks in Riley’s direction.

“I’ll be with him the whole night,” Riley said. “I have my service weapon. The house has an alarm system, floodlights with motion detectors, and bars on the windows. Both teams can come in when I need to sleep. It’s not ideal but we don’t have much of a choice, unless you want to let him go.”

Kelly took out a tube of lip balm and yanked off the lid. “What I want—” she applied a liberal amount of the balm around her mouth and jammed the lid back on “—is to send him to a CIA black site!” She shoved the tube back in her purse and zipped it, nearly tearing the slider off the chain.

“I don’t need to explain why that’s a bad idea. You’ve met Angelica.” Riley agreed with her, shared her anger and frustration, but McCleary had given the go ahead. They were wasting time with an argument that neither of them could win. “Eighteen hours, Kelly. By then he’ll either agree to protective custody or I’ll have the hard drive.”

Cai chose that moment to walk back out of the house. He leaned against the doorframe, crossed his arms and lifted his chin defiantly. The overhead light turned his eyes yellow, and his breath steamed around his face from the cold.

“Murderous little demon,” Kelly muttered.

“Did the murderous demon tell you anything else?”

“Nope,” she answered, “He dropped that fucking bomb, asserted his fifth amendment right and then demanded I bring him here. He hasn’t peeped since.”

“And you’re sure he meant that he’d killed Porter?”

“Stared at me with those beady, vacant shark eyes when he said it. He wanted me to know he did it.” After a yawn that nearly broke her jaw, the anger seemed to drain out of her shoulders. “You know, most nineteen-year-olds have the fun kind of body count.”

Riley summoned a half-hearted chuckle. “Go home. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Few things. First, in four hours, the agents at the front and back doors are coming in. I give zero fucks if he won’t talk with them around. Four hours. If you so much as blink too long before that, call them inside. Second, if he steps too close to the doorknob, we will arrest him. I’m including you in that ‘we’.” Kelly pulled her purse strap over her shoulder and got out of the car, then leaned her head in. “Good luck, Cordova, you’ll fucking need it,” she said before slamming the door closed.

Riley watched her until she reached the end of the driveway, then tapped the garage remote, shutting himself in with Cai.

* * *

Another murder. Another impossible dilemma. Fucking hell!

The only way to avoid arresting Cai was for Riley to quit his job or make sure he never heard how Max Porter died.

Riley rested his head against the seat to wait until he could walk past Cai without strangling him.

Five minutes later, he still hadn’t moved.

Trying to start this relationship was like trying to light coal in the rain.

Cai dipped his head to peer into the passenger window. One look at Riley’s expression and he scurried back into the dark corner where he resumed ripping his fingernails apart with his teeth. The clicking sound added a whole new layer of irritation on top of Riley’s temper. He got out of the car with his pulse thumping against his eardrums. The beat intensified as he crossed the concrete floor. Thump. Thump. Thump. His skin sizzled from pure rage. He yanked his gloves off and crammed them into his pocket.

Cai stepped forward, speaking in a tone that was somehow both defensive and indignant. “It was self—”

“Shut up,” Riley said. He grabbed the lapels of Cai’s coat and shoved him against the door, earning a dramatically mouthed “Ow”. The subsequent exhale peppered his lips with a sugary mist. Riley reflexively licked it off. His gaze dropped to Cai’s mouth. Is that caramel? He fought the urge to find out so intently that he almost missed Cai readying to speak again. Riley snapped out of his daze. “Cai, I will lock you in the fucking trunk if you say a word about Max Porter.”

“But—”

“I said shut up.” Riley cut him off with a kiss. The taste of candied coffee skated over his tongue just before Cai gasped and reeled back. Alarm bells went off in Riley’s head, but then he felt Cai’s arms wind around his neck. Felt the rough wool of their coats abrading his knuckles and their warm breath cooling against his cheeks. Every sensation lured him further from reason. The smell of blood and gun powder should have brought him to his senses, but underneath those scents of violence, Cai smelled of oil paint and varnish. Of course, paint. This was Cai. For once, Riley didn’t flinch at the thought. He was drowning in everything that he’d denied himself for years. Not even the footsteps near the garage door could stop this reckless kiss.

“Is this real?” Cai whispered. His lashes fluttered against his cheek, like he was afraid to open his eyes.

An unbearable flood of affection broke through Riley’s walls. His chest tightened, forcing out a shaky breath. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. With his voice caught in a torrent of emotion, he grazed Cai’s lips with a kiss.

How had one shy, awkward nineteen-year-old gained so much power over him? The power to make him hard with a kiss, to make him ignore his duty, to make him feel things he’d purposefully locked away? All this time I spent protecting your heart, I never thought to guard my own.

For fifteen years, Riley had kept the promise he’d made to God and his parents, to be a good man, a moral man. But he would welcome an eternity in hell for one night with Cai.

Heedless of the dangers around them, he pressed Cai into the door using the full weight of his body. He licked the bottom of Cai’s lip, sucked on it, scraped it gently through his teeth. God, the taste of him. It wasn’t enough. Riley kissed his cheek, along his jaw, down the slope of his neck, and then returned to his lips when his exploration met the coat collar. Clothes, agents, and even the frigid night air stood between what he wanted—what belonged to him.

Cai’s tongue meekly flicked out to meet his and Riley’s pulse roared into his ears.

Fuck the job, fuck reason, and fuck the cold!

He ripped Cai’s coat open and yanked it over his shoulders. The only objection came as a faint whine when Cai had to move his arms. His fingers dove back into Riley’s hair before the coat hit the ground. He was a heartbeat away from stripping Cai naked and bending him over the car hood when muffled voices finally snapped him out of it.

Riley had enough common sense left to know that he could delay the inevitable, but he couldn’t stop it. Didn’t want to stop it.

But he wasn’t going to fuck Cai here.

He fished for the house keys in his pants pocket but made the mistake of pausing to look over Cai’s shoulder to see the lock.

“I’m participating! I’m participating!” Cai rained kisses over Riley while attacking his tie. He dug and pulled and twisted until it hung in a sad, lopsided knot.

“Sh! Opening the door,” Riley said breathlessly between the assault on his lips. Cai tore his shirt open, buttons pinging onto the concrete. The cold slammed into him. His nipples hardened against the hair scattered across his chest. He grabbed Cai’s wrists and held them in one fist between them while he listened for the agents. When he didn’t hear anything, he turned back to Cai. “Let me get the door open,” he growled.

“Don’t stop.” Cai flexed and curled his imprisoned hands as he searched Riley’s eyes.

Stop? Riley ground his hips against Cai’s. “Does it feel like I want to stop?”

“No?”

“If I let go, will you quit trying to rip my clothes off so I can open the door?”

“Um...no?”

Riley struggled between laughter and frustration. “What am I going to do with you?”

Cai’s whisper echoed like thunder. “Anything you want.”

Riley’s knees buckled and they both nearly ended up on the concrete floor before he recovered his balance. He pulled Cai’s wrists above his head, then squeezed his fist until he heard a gasp. “Inside!” Bracing a knee against the door, he attempted to unlock it again. The key slipped several times against the metal. Fuck, he was a mess.

When he finally got the door unlocked, Cai repeated the whisper into his ear, “Anything.”

The keys clanked to the floor. Riley felt the smile against his cheek and the pressure of arousal from Cai’s cock hardening against his own. Hair rose on his scalp and rippled to life along his neck and arms. Unable to resist, he turned to kiss the jagged scar under Cai’s ear, then down to the pulse hammering against his throat. Beat after beat escaped under his lips. He nipped at the skin and felt the vibration from a moan. Rapt in the taste of sugar, the husky pleas, he explored every inch of exposed skin with his tongue. Cai shivered, the tendons in his wrists contracting. They weren’t going to make it inside at this rate. Riley moved Cai to get the door open and then dragged him inside.

They snapped together again like magnets. Riley walked them backward, stumbling as Cai urgently tried to keep their lips connected. Cold rushed past them, spilling down the hallway and ebbing into the moonlit living room.

Cai’s fingers raked down Riley’s cheek to his chest and stomach, branding him with scratches. This was going to be over before they could fuck because Riley was going to come in his pants. He cupped Cai’s face and kissed him gently, exploring his mouth until he felt the melt of relaxation. “Look at me,” Riley murmured.

Cai obeyed reluctantly, as if his lids were heavy with sleep. “Hmm?”

The dazed expression would have been amusing if not for the pressure of his cock against his zipper and a building sense of dread for what came next.

How much do you want that ‘after’, Cai?

“Authentic or nothing?” Riley finally asked. He waited for the answer with a suffocating fear squeezing his chest.

“Yes.” A head tilt came with the response. “Oh.” The smirk came a split second after. “I mean, yes, sir.”

Riley pinned Cai against the wall, driving his tongue into his mouth in a savage kiss. It was a hint, a glimmer into what was about to happen. He felt fingers at his belt but swatted them off and tore away from the kiss. “This is where I do things to you, painful things, and you take it. Do you understand? Don’t nod. I need to hear your consent while you can talk.”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“You don’t need to say sir. This isn’t that.”

“But it makes you wobbly.”

Riley pushed one overall strap off Cai’s shoulder. “Not for the reason you think.” He took his time with the other strap, his gaze locked on Cai, watching his mouth quiver as he struggled to inhale a steady breath. “Every time you say ‘sir’ it’s like you purposefully take a step into the darkest part of me, like it intrigues you.” The overalls fell to the floor with a muted thud. “Does it?”

“Yes.”

“How far do you want to go?”

Cai brushed his knuckles over Riley’s zipper. “As deep as the dark goes.”

“Keep your hands at your side,” Riley said, gruffer than intended. His cock was already painfully hard, and the last threads of his control nearly snapped. He raked his gaze over Cai’s body and back up to his chest. The tight white t-shirt outlined two hoops in each pierced nipple. What was Cai’s reaction when the needle went through his skin? Had he screamed? Gasped? Riley pinched one through the fabric and twisted until he heard a sharp inhale. He waited while blood flowed to the wounded skin, making it tender and sensitive, then he flicked it hard. Cai hissed through clenched teeth, vibrating with a full body tremor.

Riley’s heart knocked against his chest. Was that too fast? Too far? Considering what Cai had gone through three years ago, anything could trigger his PTSD. The uneasy feeling in Riley’s stomach gnawed at him. They should stop this.

I should stop this or keep it vanilla.

“We will be authentic, or we will be nothing.”

“Doing okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” Cai answered immediately.

We may be nothing after this anyway, Cai. For a chance at after, you need to know who I am.

Riley unbuckled his belt and slowly pulled it out of each loop. He held it at both ends and snapped the leather taut.

“Oh.” Cai’s cock hardened in his briefs even while his wide eyes stayed riveted to the belt. “What...um...”

“Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”

The furnace roared to life in the basement and radiators hissed and clicked throughout the house.

After a split-second of hesitation, Cai did as he was told. His sneakers squeaked and the overalls buckles jingled at his ankles as he shuffled around. Moonlight shimmered over the defined muscles in his arms as he lifted them slowly, like he was fighting his own body to obey. Both his fists were clenched white-knuckled next to his arms. Tension pulled his shoulder blades toward his spine.

Riley held Cai’s hips and kissed him gently on the neck. “I am going to make you want to scream. I am going to make you want to cry.” He dangled the belt so that it brushed against Cai’s bare skin as it swayed back and forth. “We can stop any time, but if you make a sound louder than a whisper, I will stop immediately. If you can’t speak, tug on the belt and I will stop.”

“Okay.” Cai whispered. His fingers slowly uncurled, and the tension melted from his body.

Until recently, Riley hadn’t allowed himself to think beyond kissing Cai. But even in those brief unbidden flashes of fantasy, he could never have imagined how just the feel of Cai’s small ass curved into his hips would make him lose his mind. He was intoxicated by these foreign feelings of arousal for someone the complete opposite of his type. Long delicate fingers with bits of paint or blood crusted under raggedy nails. Bony knuckles. Lithe body with sinewy muscle. But an ass that was a work of art and presented like a perfectly carved statue. Riley’s fingers mapped the swell and curves as he pushed the briefs down to the top of Cai’s thighs.

“You’re shaking. Are you cold?” Riley asked.

“No.”

“Scared?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No, sir,” Cai said, then quickly added, “I mean, no, thank you.” Cai cringed in obvious frustration. “I’m nervous. Can you just get it over with? I—”

The slap echoed in the hallway and Cai’s hips shot forward. Riley barely heard him cry out over his own heart thudding against his ribcage. “No noise.” He brought his hand down again onto the exact same spot, hard enough to sting his palm. Cai crossed his arms in front of him and folded his face into the crook of his elbow, barely smothering a whimper.

“You okay?” Riley asked. The pit of his stomach knotted while he waited for an answer.

Cai nodded but didn’t lift his head.

“We can stop any time you want.” Cai mumbled something.

“What?”

“I said, you can stop asking! Can you do that any time I want?”

“Are you taunting me?” Riley's voice hid none of his astonishment.

“Yes,” Cai rasped.

When the slap landed, sharp needles of pain shot through Riley’s hand. Cai screamed and bit his own forearm to muffle the sound. They would both ache after this, Riley would make sure of it. He hit him again and again, driving the intensity of his feelings into every smack. His cock leaked onto his briefs as he fixated on Cai’s red swollen skin. After one final slap, he shook the pain from his hand. “You’re like a fucking narcotic.” Riley palmed one hot cheek and then swatted it gently.

Cai shuddered and gasped several times while his hips shot forward. His entire body was a taut wire as he whispered a litany of sobbed, “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

Fuck. Riley yanked his hand away and rubbed his palm with his thumb. “No. I’m s—” He stopped and stared, his mouth going dry. The front of Cai’s briefs had dark spots. Riley dipped his hand in to confirm, coating his fingers with warm cum. He grabbed a handful of Cai’s hair and yanked his head back. He kissed him, ruthlessly fucking his mouth with his tongue, wanting Cai to know how hot that was. When he finished, Cai’s lips were red and raw and silent. His lids hooded his eyes, and he swayed on his feet.

Riley ordered, brusquely. “Spread for me.”

Cai’s eyes flew open and he looked over his shoulder, shaking either from nerves or his orgasm. “I d-d-don’t have a c-c-condom”

“I’m not going to fuck you. I fucking want to, but I don’t have one either and I doubt I’d make it to the bedroom and back.”

“You...you want t-to look?” The blush had started even just talking about it. It crept down his face and neck.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Cai hesitated then shook his hair over his face, trying to hide that he’d squeezed his eyes shut. He used all ten fingers to spread his cheeks.

Riley licked his finger and circled around the hole. “This is part of it. The vulnerability you feel that I can do anything I want to you. That I own you and your body. And the excitement knowing that you would let me. That you would let me do anything to you.” Cai turned to look over his shoulder, cheeks red as he watched Riley free his cock from his pants. “Let me whip you with this belt. Scar you. Fuck you without a condom. Right?”

“Yes.” Cai licked his lips.

Riley belonged to Cai in this moment, with nothing hidden behind his pristine clothes, or a shiny badge, or his casual smile. “Trust that I would never do something so vile. That I would never take advantage of you in a heated moment. That I can stop, even when you make me so crazy that I can’t think properly. Do you trust me?”

“Always. I will always trust you.”

“Now turn around and wrap those delicate fingers around my cock.” Riley could feel the tremors in Cai’s hand as he did as he was told. His face was almost as red as his ass and he couldn’t or wouldn’t look up. Riley grabbed his face, fingers digging into his cheeks. “Never come without permission. Understand?”

“Yes.” The nod was almost imperceptible.

Riley kissed him again, driving his tongue into his mouth, rough but not as brutal as before. Cai’s fist moved up his cock and Riley braced against the wall on either side of his shoulders. “Faster,” he whispered. Cai’s fingers squeezed and pulled up, then he ran his thumb over the head of his cock. Riley exhaled, his breath ragged and shallow. He was getting close. “Get on your knees,” he said, his voice thick and hoarse.

Again, Cai obeyed. Without more instruction, his soft, warm mouth wrapped around the head of Riley’s cock and twisted at the same time his fist stroked and his cheeks hollowed. He looked up at Riley as if he knew the control belonged to him now.

Riley held his breath and shook with the effort not to ram his cock down Cai’s throat. It wasn’t lost on him that he was now the vulnerable one facing the wall. There was something about that power shift that pushed him over the edge. He came with an explosive exhale, his stomach contracting and cock pulsating into Cai’s mouth.

Cai coughed and spilled cum down his chin as he pulled away. He got up on shaky legs, placing his hands behind his back as he stood between the wall and Riley’s chest. “Sorry.”

Riley kissed him gently, tasting himself and Cai on his tongue, and then he rested their foreheads together.

They stayed that way a few seconds, spent and, at least on Riley’s end, pouring through recriminations. He listened to their breath and the wind and the dog whining in the next room. Then Riley looked at Cai where bruises were already forming on his cheeks where his fingers had dug in.

He mentally catalogued Cai’s injuries from his assault, trying to figure out if he’d done anything similar.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What’d I do?