Chapter 10
The Cautious Hunter
JOEY HAD been able to sneak out of a lover’s bed from the age of fifteen, and he’d never been caught.
Until Gideon Chadwick.
“Don’t go,” Gideon murmured, rolling over in bed and wrapping his long ropy arm around Joey’s chest.
Joey went completely still. “You’re supposed to be asleep,” he said stupidly, because they were. All his lovers were. Just because he’d obeyed the stupid compulsion to… to… stalk Gideon, to fell him, to devour him, that didn’t mean there would be conversation afterward.
You didn’t talk to your dinner, particularly not after it had been enjoyed.
But Joey should have known better.
When he’d been still mostly a child, learning those long-ago lessons of stealth and deadly intent, he’d once gone missing in the woods for three days.
He’d been staying with his grandfather for a week; the one concession his father had made to how Joey had grown up had been letting Joey go to the reservation on school holidays.
They’d gone on an outing, and Joey had simply vanished from his grandfather’s side, because that was how it had always been with them.
His grandfather, knowing Joey, had simply continued to track Joey as Joey tracked a mountain lion through the woods.
Joey had wanted to see it kill, watch it prey, study the techniques.
His grandfather, comfortable in Joey’s woodcraft, knew that he could survive for far longer. He had a canteen, water purifying tablets, a small tent, a formfitting shearling cocoon to sleep in. But old Joe would still track him, to make sure.
In the end, Joey had watched without passion as the mountain lion took down an elderly deer, quickly, cleanly, and without malice. He’d seen the thing feed, and then drag the deer by the haunches back to his den.
He’d hiked back to his grandfather’s house then, and when his father—who had been alarmed when he couldn’t make contact with his son—had greeted him with drama and fury, Joey had simply shrugged.
“I wanted to see how a real predator kills,” he said. “Not one who kills for money or show.”
His father, who had been in mid rant, hand raised as it often was in anticipation of violence, took a step back and swallowed, reassessing his quiet, wayward illegitimate son with newer, harder eyes.
“What did you learn?” he asked, chest still heaving.
“Even if you enjoy the kill, you don’t celebrate it over the cooling corpse,” Joey replied, eyes even.
His father swallowed again and dropped his hand. “When do you celebrate it?” he asked, and he was cocking his head as though trying desperately to hear something funny in their exchange.
“When your belly is full and your family is safe,” Joey had replied.
His father had taken another step back and then had simply taken Joey home to the daunting mobster’s mansion on the other side of the res.
Shortly after that, Joey had been enrolled in military school, and while he and his grandfather had written, his trips to the vast wilderness of the reservation were over until Joey had joined the military and had been selected for Special Forces training after only two years.
By then he had killed. By then he’d become good at it. And he’d learned that rule—lived by it, in fact, both in his personal life and his professional one.
He’d been scenting Gideon Chadwick for a year and a half now, since he’d been recruited for the SCTF.
At first he’d seen the tall, angular man with the hatchet-thin face and the nose like a knife blade and thought, “Deer. He’s obviously a deer.
” He’d expected Gideon to haunt the home base and radio in ops info.
He remembered how stunned he’d been on their first case, when he’d found Gideon standing, dripping blood over the corpse of a killer who’d been impaled on his own stiletto.
He felt that same sort of surprise now as Gideon pulled his body close.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Gideon asked softly, rubbing his nose along Joey’s ear.
Joey closed his eyes; the sensation was soft and sweet, and he wanted more.
“N-no.” Uncertainty? No. This was absolutely not who he was. With every lover he’d ever had, he came, he took what he wanted, and he retreated to his lair and indulged in his conquest.
He conquered you.
Well, fine. So Chadwick had topped.
Joey didn’t want to tell him how that had never happened before.
It seemed so… so inconsequential to their coming together.
But how would he know how he felt about it until he had a chance to roll the whole thing around in his head, retrace Gideon’s path on his body with his own hands?
He… he needed to think about it, and he couldn’t do it with… with….
He moaned softly.
“You still want to go?” Gideon asked, and now his hand was moving languidly on Joey’s chest. “I won’t stop you.”
“But… ah….” Joey’s cock was starting to wake up, and he realized that he must have slept, because he was clean. God, how had he allowed this man access to his body while he’d dozed?
“You want to go?” Gideon’s fingertips slid along Joey’s hardening length. “Go.” One of them toyed with the end, with the pre that was already dripping the tiniest bit. “Just roll out of bed and go.”
Joey gasped and moved his own hand down to wrap around Gideon’s, both of them stroking his cock while Joey spread his legs and pressed his feet against the mattress, arching up against their hands.
Chadwick nibbled on his neck again, lowered his mouth to Joey’s nipple and licked, and Joey wasn’t thinking about leaving anymore, about indulging in his full belly after his feast.
Oh, fuck it all, he was starving again, and when Chadwick rolled between his spread thighs and made himself at home, Joey had no option, none, but to welcome his cock—an amazing piece of equipment, that, thick and long like all of Gideon’s substance was there in that one part of his body—as it thrust inside.
Joey, who preferred his sex silent, intense, his own quiet banquet, cried out and then silenced his sounds with his mouth to Gideon’s chest.
He tried not to bite, failed, and Gideon simply fucked him harder.
And harder.
They cried out together as the crest took them, and Joey wanted to sob as he felt the slick heat of come inside his body once again.
He wanted to trap it there, keep it, stay filled with it, because even as he felt himself drop off to another unguarded sleep, he knew that hunger, that need to be filled, would be waiting for him when he awakened.
Oh God, how had he not known he was the deer?
GIDEON’S BODY had never been so sated. He lay in the predawn chill coming through the window and wondered if he should let Joey leave this time.
Sure. Why not? They would be meeting for work again. Crosby was down for the count. It was their job to show Garcia the ropes.
Nothing had changed there, although everything, everything had changed here, in Gideon’s bed.
He’d let Joey go, meet him in the office, let his eyes roam where his hands had taken liberties, and keep all his sly jokes, his dirty innuendo, to himself until….
Oh God.
Until it was them alone again. Together.
He allowed Joey to slide off the bed this time, to disappear into the bathroom, to dress. And then he waited.
Come on, Joey—what’s it going to be? The door? The window? The door? The window? One says you acknowledge this was a thing that happened once, says you’re hoping to keep it hidden, even from yourself.
So when Gideon heard that indecision, that moment of hesitation as Joey emerged from the bathroom, he knew what the kid was thinking. And when he—predictably but sadly—reached for the window, Gideon let out a sigh, thinking he’d hoped for better, for easier.
But he could keep his own counsel, right? He’d been looking at Carlyle from under hooded eyes, thinking, That kid is out of my league, but my God is he beautiful, for a long time.
A year and a half.
They could dance some more, right?
He thought he’d resolved to do that, so his own voice, coming low and imperious as he feigned sleep, surprised him as much as Joey.
“Grab my keys so you can bring coffee when you return.”
“What?”
He smiled but kept his eyes determinedly closed. “You’re not coming to my bed like that and not bringing me coffee in the morning, Joey. I like caramel.”
“Chocolate,” Joey snapped, and Gideon opened his eyes and saw that he was irritated.
“Good,” he said softly. “If you know what kind of coffee I like, next time you can just get it and come back to bed.”
He saw that lean mouth part, probably to argue, to pretend, to push back.
“Fine,” Joey said, the bafflement in his voice gratifying. “Where are your keys?”
“The bowl by the door,” Gideon murmured. “I’ll take a breakfast sandwich too. I’ll be showered when you get back. We can go in and do paperwork today so we’re ready to train Garcia on Monday.”
Gideon heard him stomp his way through the apartment and then let himself out through the front door. He left the window open, in case Carlyle was tempted not to return, though—what had happened the night before was really too important not to show his throat.