A Defensive Agenda
ELLERY HAD killed the engine when Jackson stepped onto the steps leading into the darkened garage. He turned the light on and leaned against the washer as the garage door closed and Ellery got his briefcase and coat.
Jackson looked tired, Ellery thought critically, but then, he was often tired. He also looked relaxed, which was nice. Ellery had sent him home with the hopes that maybe some relaxation before bed would help him sleep. The case with the kid defending his mother had been a tough one both emotionally and physically. All Ellery had left was paperwork—maybe the time spent killing aliens with Henry helped with that ever-present coiled spring inside Jackson that just waited for him to fall asleep to release.
And then Jackson smiled, the corners of his green eyes crinkling, the grooves around his mouth deepening, and Ellery realized that the most important thing about him tonight was that he looked happy to see Ellery .
Ellery drew near and put his hand on Jackson’s hip as he leaned in for what he’d planned to be a brief kiss. Jackson, always surprising, took over his mouth, pushing forward, turning, his hands thrusting under Ellery’s suit jacket, the heat of his palms burning through his once-starched shirt. Ellery found himself pressed back against the washing machine, trying not to whimper as he thrust up against Jackson and wanted.
Finally Jackson pulled back, and now he looked insufferably pleased with himself, and kiss-mussed, and mischievous, and Ellery’s chest all but ached with love.
“Evening, Counselor,” Jackson said, still preening.
“Hi,” Ellery replied dryly. With a meaningful shimmy he stood up straight and maneuvered away from Jackson’s highly desirable body. “You’re barefoot out here? It’s freezing!” Ellery hadn’t put his coat on because he’d been planning on a brief kiss, but he shivered now.
Jackson chuckled and flexed his toes. “Well, it’s plenty warm inside.” He sobered. “John and Galen are already eating, I hope. They briefed me a little, but I think they were waiting for you.”
Ellery grunted. “John was pretty cagey when he said we needed to talk. How far have you gotten?”
“To the part right after the kid they took in said he was taken from his home to be indoctrinated by the Stepford Dragons,” Jackson said sourly. He shuddered, almost like he was trying to control something inside him. “There’s always somebody out on the streets like that, you know. I remember those people. I mean, different names, different alien shells, but always the same shit. ‘Do what our God says and you’ll be saved, loved, and fed.’” He grimaced like he wanted to spit. “Once, my mom took me there for food and warmth, and after that not even Celia wanted a free ride that much.”
Ellery had to fight to keep his breathing even. Jackson didn’t mention his mother—drug addict, prostitute, user—very often, and the fact that he did now meant he was far, far more disturbed than he let on.
“I would think,” Ellery said carefully, “that a street kid could play the game if they needed to. A lot of money goes to church charities.”
Jackson shot him a glare of barely contained fury—but not the kind personal to Ellery, for which Ellery was grateful. “Remember when we worked for Hamster, Hoozer, Pfinster, and Barfly?” he asked, getting the name of their old law firm terribly wrong on purpose.
“It was last year, Jackson, of course I remember,” Ellery said. He was trying not to shiver, but this was obviously important.
“Lyle Langdon once had me investigate two street kids. They’d been picked up for solicitation and claimed that they were just trying to keep warm. I asked them if they’d been to the shelters, and the boys—and Christ, Ellery, they were barely legal—looked at each other. They were skinny and cleaned up for court. One of them had been to the dentist and had three teeth pulled up front and not replaced. And that kid looked at his boyfriend and said, ‘They wouldn’t let us stay, sir.’ I… God help me, I was surprised. I mean, I’d been to those shelters. I knew what they wanted. But I’d been a kid then, and gay or straight or bi or trans—it hadn’t really filtered in. And then the other kid said, ‘We’re fags, mister. They don’t let fags in.’” Jackson shook his head like he was trying to shake off the rage.
“Did Langdon take the case?” Ellery asked, trying to catch his breath. So much damage, he thought randomly. They both knew Jackson had so much damage, but it very rarely opened itself up for scrutiny as it was now.
“Yeah,” Jackson said on a sigh. “You know he was good like that.”
Ellery nodded. Lyle Langdon, their former supervising partner at Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and Cooper, had been a good guy—and the one dissenting vote in the firing of Ellery himself, which had resulted in, uhm, the less-than-dignified resignation of Jackson and his sister, Jade.
“He would have,” he said with relief. Sometimes it was good to know your faith hadn’t been misplaced, although Langdon was a businessman. Who knew if he’d defend the Stepford Dragons in a lawsuit if they sent his firm enough money? But then, the group’s anti-LGBTQ stance would have been supremely distasteful to Langdon and bad optics for the firm itself, so maybe not.
Little bits of faith. They helped.
“I….” Jackson gave an evil chuckle. “I have to admit, Ellery, I’d be really excited to find a reason to go after these people. I’m in the mood to kick a little ass.”
Ellery nodded, although he couldn’t keep the trouble out of his gaze as he took in Jackson’s hollowed eyes, the slow, almost creaky way he was moving.
“Sure you are,” he said soothingly, but Jackson shook his head.
“No, seriously,” he said. “A shot of adrenaline to clear out the pipes—I’ll sleep like a baby, I swear.”
And that did make Ellery laugh.
“Then let the mayhem commence,” he said lightly and gestured for Jackson to lead the way inside.
JOHN HAD finished setting the table, and Ellery excused himself to change and wash up. He yearned a little to put on his pajama pants and a sweatshirt so he could eat at the dinner table with just Jackson and they could catch up on each other’s day. Yes, he’d been the one to show Jackson that a little bit of formality could make a mealtime special, but Jackson had been the one to show him that sometimes relaxing with the one person who could read your mind was special all on its own.
Tonight, Ellery contented himself by changing from his suit to khakis and a cardigan, much like Galen was wearing, and he got to the table in time to sit down and start eating. For a moment, there was quiet, and then Galen said, “Ellery, you need to tell him that if he’s going to cook this well, he needs to eat. It’s unseemly that we have to nag him about losing weight when I could eat enough of this soup to not move for a month.”
Jackson chuckled. “Nice compliment, Galen. Do you need some ice for your knuckles after that backhand?”
Galen glowered at him. “Unseemly,” he enunciated. Then he took another bite of soup.
Ellery noticed that Jackson was sopping his bread in the broth and eating that and was actually sort of cheered. Whatever had been gnawing Jackson alive this last month, it seemed that having a case he could sink his teeth into really did improve his hunger.
“So,” he said, as the sound of cutlery and slurping died down slightly. “Tell us what you’ve got for us.”
“It’s disturbing,” John told him frankly after wiping his mouth. “And the source is a hungry, traumatized fourteen-year-old boy. But the boy was scared, and he targeted Galen and me as we left the church precisely because we were a couple—I’m sure of it. Think about that. Whatever hells of debauchery we offered, he was thinking at least we were safer than what he’d seen in the hands of the….” His freckled face screwed up in distaste. “Stepford Dragons,” he almost spat.
“So what did they do?” Jackson asked. “The Moms for Clean Living,” he offered to Ellery, which was good, because Ellery had almost forgotten the real name of the women’s group whose claim to fame was stripping school libraries of books about anybody not straight, white, and lithium levels of happy.
“Well let’s go back to when Cowboy woke up in their place. He said his mom told ‘the lying one’—those are his words—that he should go with her, so he ended up in a van with the logo on the side. So whatever is going on, plausible deniability is right out the window. After that he said he was transported to the place near the church and thrown into a room with four beds and a window, and the first thing he did was scale down the window. The part I hadn’t gotten to was that the four other kids in the room joined him. One stayed behind, one got caught as they touched the ground, and another, according to him, was tackled by a security guard as they were running down the street.”
“And nobody said anything?” Ellery asked, incensed.
“The guard was shouting ‘Thief’ according to Cowboy,” John said with a weary shrug. “It was an easy enough mistake to make. So that left Cowboy and Caleb, and Caleb, it turned out, had been living out of dumpsters for a month before the Stepford Dragons got him the second time. He was savvy—led Cowboy toward two blocks of nothing but restaurants and nooks and crannies. The boys stayed there for a day, and they started to fret about the other two boys. They ventured back toward the compound…. Have you seen the place?” John asked suddenly.
“Yes,” Ellery said distastefully. “Compound is about right.” The building was an old Victorian style, as he recalled, with a stone facade that had probably been added in the sixties, when it was fashionable. The shaded wall was covered in jasmine, which is probably what the boys had climbed down, and the plain stretch of grass in the back was surrounded by a severe-looking but ultimately useless wrought iron fence. The grounds were big enough to cover the front and back of their strip on the block, although the block had been zoned and built to have two houses on either side.
It looked like a security compound, but Ellery had no trouble imagining a bunch of adolescent boys could escape easily.
He glanced at Jackson, who had finished his bread and was now drinking his soup broth with some unexpected zest, and thought of him as a scrawny, angry adolescent. There was no doubt in his mind that Jackson Leroy Rivers would have led a rebellion outside those walls.
John nodded. “So Caleb told Cowboy to stand back, to hide in one of the corners and get ready to run. Cowboy did, and while he was hiding, he saw a woman he called ‘Retty’ cross in front of his spot. He said he knew her because she’d been the one driving the van that brought him from his apartment to the compound.”
Galen made a sound of violence. “His mother kissed his cheek, told him he was going to camp, and they slammed the back door. He couldn’t see where he was going. Fucking . Cowards .”
Ellery had the feeling there would be a lot of rage going around that night. “Agreed,” he said. “So this Retty crossed in front of him and—”
Galen and John shared a troubled glance. “Cowboy gets fuzzy here. He started to cry and say she shouldn’t have done Caleb that way, and we asked him where Caleb was, and he… he said, ‘On the sidewalk, forever.’”
Ellery put down his spoon, suddenly not feeling so sanguine about food. “Forever?” he asked, horrified.
“Anything else?” Jackson asked. “A sound? Did Caleb say anything? Did Cowboy hear anything? A fight? A gunshot? A scream?”
“We couldn’t get that far,” John said sharply. “Jesus, Jackson—the kid was shaking. We brought him to Isabelle’s with the plan of stripping him down and shaving his head for lice and feeding him, which is all pretty fucking traumatizing, and suddenly he was practically fetal in the back of the sedan.”
“I shall have to have Henry take it to be decontaminated tomorrow,” Galen said, wrinkling his nose. “The boy… well, he’d been on the streets for a good month.”
Ellery shared his distaste. It was embarrassing to be thinking about cleanliness in the face of something life and death, but Jackson had come home often enough with clothes that should have been incinerated and not washed—and hair that had needed to be deloused—that at this point he was thinking solely of the hassle.
Jackson had set his bowl down, and he let out a long, slow breath. “So he needs to get his feet under him,” he said softly. “Let’s give him a night to decompress at least. I’ll have Ellery drop me off at Isabelle’s place tomorrow, and Henry and I can have a conversation. I’ll text him tonight.”
“This is… troubling,” Ellery murmured. “I-I hate everything about this . These women are well off, they’re white, and they’re being driven by some very powerful money for right-wing causes. Jackson, you and Henry are going to have to be… well, your most dramatic selves, I think, complete with costumes and backstories if you go sniffing around the compound. I’m going to need to get Crystal to do a computer workup—”
“And have AJ go talk to his street contacts,” Jackson said. “AJ was under for a little while. You hear more on the street when you’re buying drugs or turning tricks. AJ will know who to ask about fake rich white ladies.”
Ellery grimaced. “You may have to ask AJ to do that, Jackson. I still scare him.”
Jackson chuckled. “Naw, I think he just envies your suits.” He shook his head. “But yeah, it’s a sensitive subject. I’ll ask him.”
“I’ll call Lyle Langdon,” Ellery said. “He’s got his finger on the pulse of politics around here—he hates them, but he usually knows who’s scratching whose back.” He frowned for a moment. “Maybe Arizona Brooks too….”
“Isn’t she your sworn nemesis?” John asked.
Well, she is the senior ADA, Ellery had to concede. “Yes, but she’s also aware of politics. In fact she might know the local politicians who want the Stepford Dragons to clean up the street.”
“And I can have Jade run down missing boys,” Jackson said, and then, more soberly, “or unidentified bodies.”
They all shuddered.
John was the one who broke the silence. “You guys ever think, I don’t know, that maybe Cowboy just got scared and Caleb ended up going back to his house as sort of a failed experiment?”
Ellery stared at him, and he knew Jackson and Galen were doing the same.
Galen spoke into the shock. “Baby, I love you because you said that with a straight face. But my God—”
“Don’t say it,” John muttered, destroyed.
“I can’t help it. You are such a—”
“Please?” John begged. “We’re in front of friends!”
Galen shook his head. “Kitten on the freeway,” he muttered. “Dear God, you have needed somebody to get you out of traffic your entire life.”
Ellery watched in surprised fascination as a mottled red crept up John’s neck and over his ears, blotching unevenly across his ginger-freckled face.
“It’s a good thing I have you, then,” he managed to say sulkily, and Galen gave a complacent shark-toothed smile.
“It is indeed.”
THEY LEFT soon after dinner—although Jackson was absolutely adamant that they stay long enough for milk and cookies because, he said mutinously, they all needed to remember sweetness after that terrible conversation. Ellery insisted on cleaning up since Jackson had cooked dinner twice , and Jackson used the time to text Henry.
When Ellery came to bed, after setting out kibble and water for the two miscreants so they wouldn’t decide to wake anybody up at fuck-you in the morning, he found Jackson sitting in bed with his knees drawn up in front of his body while he texted with the phone close to his chest.
The pose was very… self-protective. Vulnerable. And Ellery wasn’t sure what to do with that. Probe and find out why? Leave it alone unless Jackson said something? Trust that it would come out?
A part of him wanted to laugh at that—the kind of laugh that sounded overhearty and sarcastic—but the part of him that loved Jackson was so impressed with his efforts to take care of himself, to take care of them as a relationship that needed constant love and care, thought that was perfectly reasonable.
Jackson got tired of being treated as though he was wounded.
As Jackson texted, oblivious to Ellery hovering in the doorway, Ellery saw his lips twist in that sort of brotherly disdain he and Henry treated each other with. It was only amusing because most of the time they really were brothers, as unlikely as that might have been when they started out. But now, after the two of them had watched each other’s backs for the better part of a year, Ellery saw the kind of partnership between them that he saw in the best police officers or military units. Give each other shit? Unquestionably. Have each other’s backs?
Until they drew their last breath.
“You wish, asshole,” Jackson muttered, his thumbs dancing on the keyboard. “As. If.”
Ellery’s lips twitched, and he went to his dresser to put on his pajamas, first removing his once-worn casual clothes and laying them in a neatly folded pile on top. He was in the process of pulling out a soft cotton T-shirt when Jackson said loudly, “Did I say you should get dressed?”
Ellery’s eyes flew open. “I beg your pardon?”
Jackson scowled at him, his fingers pausing on the phone. “Give me five minutes,” he said. “Five minutes to finish the conversation, and then you and me have to dance naked so I can keep my faith in mankind.”
Ellery was caught at a loss for words.
“I, uhm, thought sex would be off the, uhm, table—”
“Well, we’re not having it on the table, are we? We’re having it in bed!” Jackson held up a finger and texted madly before turning his attention back to Ellery. For a moment the tension of the conversation drained out of him, his green eyes grew soft, and Ellery knew for certain he had Jackson’s complete attention.
“Please?” Jackson asked, his entire demeanor in the here and now with Ellery. “I really want to touch you.”
Ellery took in Jackson’s pose, registering that Jackson was shirtless, and his legs, which he’d thought had been covered with pajama bottoms, were under the covers and very possibly bare.
“Okay,” he said softly. “But I warn you, I’m likely to fall asleep if you text for too long.”
He slid into bed then and turned toward Jackson, relieved when that self-protective crouch relaxed a little. Jackson extended his legs under the covers and scooted toward the middle, sighing happily when Ellery spanned his hand across Jackson’s taut midsection.
Too thin, Ellery thought. But still stronger than it had been. The ribs weren’t prominent. And Jackson wasn’t trying to hide his scars; he wasn’t self-conscious, not anymore.
For a moment, as Jackson’s texting went fast and furious, Ellery closed his eyes and indulged in the soft skin and the silken hair of Jackson’s happy trail, finding the scars and tracing them simply because they led interesting places.
Playfully, Ellery slid his fingers down under Jackson’s navel and along the happy trail, only to be halted by Jackson seizing his fingers from over the covers.
“Patience, Counselor,” Jackson hummed, and Ellery leaned forward enough to lick a pink nipple.
“Haste, Detective,” he countered, and Jackson’s raw chuckle was enough to make Ellery grow hard in his briefs.
Jackson’s texting increased in pace, and Ellery made another foray down south, this time tracing along the join of Jackson’s thigh. Barely, just barely, he brushed the satiny skin of Jackson’s own thickening length, and Jackson shuddered, clearly enjoying the teasing very much.
Above him, Jackson sucked air in through his teeth before letting out a long, patient breath.
“One more minute,” he begged. “I’m telling Henry what to look for when Cowboy is talking. He needs a description of this Retty nightmare and anyone with a jacket. A few more seconds, please.”
Ellery hummed in response and contented himself stroking Jackson’s thigh with his fingertips, knowing this was important. Jackson’s fingers continued to fly on his keyboard, and then he stopped, reaching out for the lamp.
As he stretched, Ellery heard his phone vibrate one last time and grimaced as Jackson checked it.
“Heh heh heh heh….”
Oh wow. Jackson’s filthiest laugh.
A few more urgent taps and Jackson set the phone in the charger on the bed stand of the darkened room.
Then he tangled his fingers in Ellery’s hair.
“That was playing dirty,” he said, his voice strong and filled with a little bit of sexy evil.
“What are you going to do about it?” Ellery asked breathlessly. He threw his leg over Jackson’s and undulated against his hip, letting Jackson feel his arousal, his need.
Jackson tugged gently on his hair, which he’d wet-combed when he’d changed for dinner, leaving the strands only a little stiff as they dried. Now Jackson cradled the back of his head, turning his face up and leaving him open for a ravaging, urgent kiss.
“This,” he muttered, before catching Ellery’s lower lip between his teeth and nipping.
Ellery let out a breathy gasp, arching his hips harder.
“And this,” Jackson promised, rolling them both so Ellery was on his back and Jackson lay between his thighs. Ellery’s knees were splayed, opening him up for predation, and he was so ready to be devoured.
Jackson didn’t disappoint. He moved his hungry kisses down Ellery’s jaw, down the hollow of his throat, down his chest. He stopped to nip and tug and lave first one nipple, then the other, and Ellery grabbed his shoulders with hard fingers and held on with all he had.
The thing about trusting your lover with his own health, his own sanity, he thought hazily, was that you could trust him to take care of your needs too.
Ellery had powerful needs, and he’d never been shy about advocating for his own pleasure.
Jackson’s firm mouth on his cock told him Jackson was up for the job.
“Ah, God, yes….” It was Ellery’s turn to tangle his fingers in Jackson’s dark blond hair, anchoring himself to the here and now so he didn’t flail when Jackson used one hand to squeeze his base as he sucked.
Hard strokes, with playful flicks of the tongue, left Ellery moaning, thrusting into the back of Jackson’s throat, widening his thighs to give Jackson access to the cleft between.
Jackson’s chuckle against Ellery’s cockhead drove him even higher, and then—oh hells, he’d gotten the lube from under the pillow while Ellery had been otherwise occupied. Two fingers, unapologetic and in a bit of a hurry, breached him, and he moaned, a begging sound, beseeching Jackson to raise himself up and thrust inside.
Jackson sucked hard along his shaft, squeezing Ellery’s bell with his lips before pulling off with a pop. “You want something?” he asked slyly, and Ellery could feel him humping the bed with his own sense of urgency.
“Could you…?” He was beyond dignity. With Jackson, dignity was never a thing. There was wanting, needing, pleading , but no dignity.
Dignity was for people who could afford to lose each other, and Ellery refused to lose Jackson, even for a night in bed.
“Yeah?” Jackson blew a cool breath across Ellery’s damp slit, and Ellery released his head to pound at the mattress.
“ Please !” he begged. “Please, Jackson, fuck me — oh God, yes !”
Their bodies knew one another now, and Jackson drove himself up, then spent a moment testing the entrance, making sure the stretching had been enough.
Ellery groaned in welcome, even to the bite of pain, because tonight that was what he needed. A nip of darkness, a hard, heedless thrust. Jackson grunted as he seated himself completely and then bent to whisper in Ellery’s ear.
“Good?”
“So good,” Ellery whispered, loving that Jackson wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t good.
Needing him to do it.
“Now?” Jackson murmured, pulling back a little and thrusting forward.
“Now,” Ellery urged, and Jackson snapped his hips forward, growling aggressively as he did.
Ellery cried out, needing, shameless, and vocal. “ Yes —fuck me! Hard! So hard! Oh God, Jackson— yes !”
And then he lost his words as Jackson’s body, feral, vital, hard, and hungry, battered at his in a frenzy, the two of them lost in the ecstasy of fucking, the haze of absolute lust mixed with a hint of tenderness, the comfort of desire.
Ellery’s climax rushed up at him almost too soon, but he couldn’t stop it. He keened, locking his heels over Jackson’s ass, his own asshole bearing down as he came, shooting come between them. Jackson’s roar of completion echoed in his ears. Ellery could feel the hot and thick of him, the scalding pump of come, and it twisted the last shudder of orgasm from the pit of his balls.
It was too much! It was too much! It wasn’t enough, and it never would be, and he found himself sobbing for more, for less, to stop, to come, to never, ever cease—
The final wave washed through him, and he gasped, his asshole, his chamber, his groin, all of it blooming, blossoming in the final spasm of a hard, frantic climax before Jackson sank into his body and groaned in his own total surrender.
Oh God.
Ellery was breathing so hard the roar of his own heartbeat echoed in his ears, and he almost missed Jackson’s helpless murmur.
“Every time,” he breathed. “I want you this badly every time.”
“Me too,” Ellery panted. “Every time.”
Jackson’s breathy chuckle sustained him as they gulped in air, tried to regain their breath after having all their oxygen sucked from their bodies in a tide of desire.
Finally Jackson slid to the side, and Ellery thought he could hear his own thoughts again over his heartbeat and a buzzing sound that kept pounding insistently against his brain.
“Oh shit,” Jackson muttered, reaching for the phone that was vibrating in the charger.
“You’re talking to Henry after that ?” Ellery protested, not sure if Jackson had ever put texting over sex before.
“I gave him an emergency code if he needed me,” Jackson muttered, scrambling into a sitting position. “This sounds pretty damned urgent.”
He paused for a moment, hair disheveled, magnificent body naked and flushed in the moonlight seeping in over the blinds.
“Oh fuck,” Jackson muttered, and Ellery stared at him in alarm.
“What?”
“Oh fuck !” Jackson tumbled out of bed and started throwing on the clothes he’d been wearing before getting in. “Ellery, call the cops. Send them to Isabelle’s apartment.” Jackson rattled off the number as he hit Call. “I’m coming, Henry! I’m coming!”
“Find them!” Henry cried, voice tinny and hollow through the phone. Then to somebody else, “Go! Go! Go!”
“Henry, I’m on my way!” Jackson was shoving his feet into still-laced tennis shoes without benefit of socks.
Ellery had grabbed his own phone from the charger and was responding to the panic in Jackson’s voice, in Henry’s, and he hit 911 as he grabbed for the clothes he’d left on top of his dresser.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the calm voice asked on the other end of his phone line.
Just as gunshots echoed from Jackson’s phone on speaker and into the sex-saturated dark of their once-safe bedroom.
There came the sound of something hitting flesh and Henry’s scream of, “Die, bitch, die !” And then three more shots, and Ellery was screaming the address into his telephone as he and Jackson went sprinting for the car in the garage.