Chapter 11 #4
So Morten D. Johns had been a grotesque raping monster, but he was dead now. Very, very dead. And they would do their best to make sure his surviving victims would grow up to live their best lives. Johns would not be mourned.
Tasha, Arietty, and Greta would be celebrated.
It wasn’t great comfort at the moment, but hopefully someday it would help.
And then it was time to return to HQ and fill out their action reports. Gideon would be on desk duty for a week or two while his use of force was investigated, but Harding had sort of a magic touch for pushing that paperwork through.
It helped that he tended to recruit assassin (or assassin-adjacent) personalities for his task force, though. The odds of one more kill pinging Gideon’s conscience were slim to none. Gideon wasn’t losing any sleep over Johns’s death—he knew that for a fact.
That moment Johns raised the knife over Carlyle’s head, however?
Oh yeah. That would be waking him up in a cold sweat for a long, long time.
After a few hours of paperwork, Gideon asked to check out a vehicle and said he’d drive himself and Carlyle home. No big deal—he’d done this before.
But Carlyle knew something was up.
“What’s up?” he asked, sounding uncertain, a rarity for him.
“Nothing,” Gideon said shortly.
“Are you really going to take me to my apartment?” he asked cagily.
“Not a fucking chance,” Gideon replied calmly. He hadn’t even had to think about that one.
“I’ll walk home,” Joey said, like he was trying to be nonchalant.
“Funny you would think so.” Gideon’s voice sounded strange to his own ears. Disassociated. Detached. “I don’t see that happening.”
“Gid?”
Gideon heard it then—a tremble. An uncertainty. Knowing what he did about Joey’s father, Gideon had to take a deep breath and pull up the words to reassure them both.
“We’re almost there,” he said. His place had paid parking, and they’d left early enough for Gideon to have a spot. “I’ve got food in the fridge.” He did—lunch meat, some tomatoes and onions, pickles and condiments. Bread, even.
But neither of them was dependent on food.
Gideon was aware of the nervous glances Joey cast in his direction as they tromped up the stairs, and a part of him was thinking, This isn’t smart. This is so not smart. You were going to dance. You were going to let him seduce you. Let him choose.
He can choose. But he needs to know what he’s choosing.
They got through the door, and Joey said, “Gid?” and Gideon whirled him around, his back to the door, and held him there, their breath mingling, his hands shaking on Joey Carlyle’s shirt.
“You terrified me,” he hissed, and for a moment, he thought Joey was going to try it, that sly grin, that “The danger is the joke!” smile.
But Joey swallowed instead. “You had my back,” he said softly.
“I will always have your back,” Gideon ground out. “Do you understand? If we’re sleeping together, if we’re not, as long as I’m alive, I will have your back. That’s not what this is.”
“What is it?” Joey asked, no smile at all. Deadly serious.
“You will choose me, or you will walk away,” Gideon told him. “But you will not taunt me. My heart froze. My breath, my blood—the only thing that worked was my gun hand. If I am going to be that terrified, I need to know who you are to me. Either way it’s fear, but I need to know what kind.”
Joey tilted his head back as though he was savoring the contact, the bare hint of violence, Gideon’s fury.
“I will never walk away,” Joey said, like it was a dare, and that was the end of Gideon’s restraint.
His mouth on Joey’s was hard, furious, without mercy. His hands, ripping away the clothes, leaving Joey Carlyle’s fine golden body naked down to his boots, were hard and without hesitation.
“With my boots on?” Joey tried to tease, but Gideon, who was kicking off his own shoes—a sort of oxford/walking boot crossbreed—couldn’t return the jibe.
“On or off,” he panted, dropping his sport coat on the ground and fumbling with his belt. “As long as I’m inside you.”
He heard a small welcoming whimper from Joey’s throat, and somehow the boots disappeared.
“Where are you going?” Joey complained as Gideon stalked toward the bedroom.
“There’s lube in here,” Gideon called back, and when Joey snarled, “Fuck lube!” Gideon turned to scowl at him.
“No, Joey. We will use lube. And care. And tenderness. If you are choosing me, I’m not going to abuse that choice. Do you understand? Not even if I want to fuck you so bad I can’t breathe.”
Joey beat him to the bed, scrabbling for the lubricant as Gideon finished dropping his clothes.
He turned to find Joey Carlyle ass up, his fingers deep in his own asshole as he spread the lubricant, groaning with pleasure.
Gideon was just hard and angry enough to take him that way, thrusting inside brutally, leaning forward to pull him up by the throat and pressing his front along Joey’s back while embedded deeply in his flesh.
“You chose me,” he growled.
“Yes,” Joey gasped.
“Then don’t scare me. Don’t tease me.” He punctuated the orders with thrusts.
“No,” Joey panted. “I won’t.”
“When you want me, come in.”
“I will!” Gideon thrust extra hard. “Gid, I swear, I’ll come… come in… oh God, I’m gonna come….”
Gideon released his throat and pushed down with a hand on his back and fucked him brutally, still angry and scared and needy. Beneath him, Joey groaned, spasming around Gideon’s cock while he came, and it was almost enough, not quite enough, Gideon was going to… going to….
The sound Joey made then was not quite human, a deep groan of surrender, of giving, and inside his body, his flesh softened, relaxed, bloomed around Gideon’s cock, and suddenly Gideon was there.
His vision washed white, and his fingers tightened on Joey’s hips, and a cry that felt like it was ripped out of his chest with barbed wire sounded in the still apartment around them.
“Dammit!”
He had no idea what it meant, but his orgasm took over, shaking him hard, pouring his entire heart into Joey Carlyle whether he’d planned to hold back or not.
It didn’t matter what he’d planned. He fell forward, clutching his lover to his chest in the cool autumn chill of the apartment, their naked bodies clammy with sweat.
Their breath sounded strange in that stillness, and for a moment Gideon wanted to cry with shame. It was clear now that Joey had thought he was safe, and Gideon—God, had he just betrayed what he wanted most?
“I knew it,” Joey said, speaking into the void.
“What?” Gideon was still holding him close, praying he wouldn’t try to wiggle away, because after what they’d just done, Gideon would have to let him.
“I knew it.” With a grunt, Joey backed up against him, snuggling in, accepting Gideon as the big spoon. Gideon reached below him, grabbed the throw from the foot of his bed, and pulled it up to keep them warm for a few more moments while they were still joined.
“Knew what?” Gideon asked, running his lips over Joey’s shoulder because he couldn’t help himself.
“Knew you were the wolf,” Joey said dreamily. “Knew you were the wolf. I’ve never been the prey before. But I knew you were the wolf.”
And there they were. In the strange language of hunter and hunted, one that Gideon understood.
He licked the sweat from the back of Joey’s neck and then bit him softly, enjoying Joey’s faint, “Ah!” of pain and pleasure.
“I don’t know who you’re kidding,” Gideon whispered in his ear. “But we’re both the wolf.”
In his arms, Joey Carlyle shook hard. Orgasmic aftermath—or anticipation. As Gideon hardened inside him, he realized it could be both.
Joey grunted and bore down, squeezing him harder. “Fuck me, wolf,” he dared.
Gideon closed his eyes for an instant, now seeing how trapped he was—how trapped they both were.
And his hips started moving, and he started mating once more.
FINALLY, FINALLY, their passion eased. They may have slept, but Gideon, true to those years in the military, was immediately awake and in the present when he felt Carlyle try to slip out of bed.
His arm tightened around Joey’s stomach, and Joey grunted.
“I swear to Christ, Gid, I just have to pee.”
Gideon sighed away some of his panic. “Okay,” he conceded. “I’ll go when you’re done.”
When he got back, Joey had a bag of pita chips and some hummus on a towel on the bed. Gideon raised an eyebrow, and Joey glared at him.
“Yes, I’m a barbarian. No, I don’t always eat in bed, but….” He glanced away. “I wasn’t sure if you’d let us eat on the couch.”
Gideon shivered. “Grab some sweats,” he murmured. “We haven’t eaten all day.”
A short time later, they were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, the coffee table laden with snacks, including a bowl of microwaved popcorn, something Gideon had only begun keeping when Joey had started coming over to his place and asking for it.
After eating in silence for a few, Joey started talking as though they’d never stopped.
“I… the one time I had a girlfriend,” he said, his voice low, “my father paid one of his men to seduce her—or assault her, I never knew which—and get her pregnant. Her parents were too scared to press charges. But you… you learn really quick not to get attached. Every encounter—you stalk, you fall, you eat, you walk away.” He shrugged.
“My grandfather taught me how to hunt. He made it… honorable, I guess. I tried to be honorable.” His voice had a note of pleading in it, and Gideon got it.
“No strings, no promises, everybody knows what they’re getting,” he said, and Joey nodded, relieved. “That’s a hard way to live.”
He’d meant it to comfort, but the expression on Joey’s face was suddenly stripped bare.
“I didn’t mean to taunt you, Gid,” he said, staring at Gideon’s face with naked begging now. Please understand me. Please. “I just didn’t know how to ask for more than that.”
Gideon nodded and leaned into Joey’s space, relieved when Joey leaned back.
“We can’t do this if we don’t trust each other in the bedroom the same way we trust each other in the car,” he said gently. Joey shifted a little, but that was only to lean closer. “Do you trust me?”
“In the car, yeah,” Joey said, and Gideon nodded, thinking he’d take it. It was a place to start.
“What are you afraid I’ll do here, flesh to flesh?”
Joey made a sound then, a grunt of terrible fear. “You don’t know what he could do,” he whispered.
Gideon nodded. “I’ve been studying up, Joseph Carlyle. Believe me, I know exactly what I’m getting into.”
Joey pulled back and stared at him skeptically. “You’ve said that,” he said. “I don’t think you can get what you need from—”
But Gideon wouldn’t apologize, not for this.
“You were very candid in your interview with Clint. The DOJ doesn’t want to touch your father with a barge pole because he’s got his finger in too many illustrious asses, but we know who he is.
” Gideon regarded him compassionately, but levelly too.
Joey was too smart to jerk around. “Stevie Carlyle is a functioning sociopath, and he’s wanted for a fair number of killings, some of which we think he’s done himself.
We know. And I know who you are. You may not be great at relationships, Joey, but you are an honorable man. ”
Joey’s cheekbones and the slight cant to his sepia-colored eyes often made him seem inscrutable, but after a year and a half, Gideon could read the tilt to his chin, the sheen to his eyes, the slight—oh-so-slight—quiver to his lean lower lip.
“You believe that of me?” he asked, and the formality of the language was like a giant arrow pointing at Joey’s heart, blinking “This is important!” in neon.
“After working with you for so long?” Gideon asked, continuing to lean, continuing to treasure the heat of Joey’s body as he leaned back. “Of course.”
“I’m not always nice,” Joey whispered, still staring at the remains of their late-night feast on the coffee table.
“I know. Neither am I.”
Joey gave him a quick glance. “I won’t make this easy on either of us.”
“Just remember what I said when we cleared the door,” Gideon told him, and suddenly his heart was pounding in his ears.
“I won’t taunt you,” Joey said softly, and his lean body softened, became pliant. “I won’t betray you.”
Gideon let out a laugh that was almost a grumble.
“I had honestly never thought about you doing that,” he said.
“Just remember, Joey—I know what you grew up with. I’ve profiled men like your father before.
As much as you might think you’re damaged beyond repair, I know, you’re more human than most people parented by monsters.
I know who’s been in my car, I know who’s in my bed.
We’re both the wolf, Joey. If you will trust me not to turn on you, I will trust you with my life and my bed. It works both ways.”
Gideon felt the tremble where their arms touched, and he couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his arm around Joey’s shoulders and drew him close, nuzzling his cheek, where he found telltale dampness, and nuzzling his neck, where Joey’s pulse throbbed.
“I’m so tired,” Joey whispered. “I couldn’t sleep all month.”
Oh, baby. “Let’s clean up and go to bed,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll get up and go to work like we always do. And we’ll be us, like we always are. This is my den, Joey. You are always welcome.”
Joey let out a strained chuckle. “Maybe make me a key. I hate that you’ve been leaving your window open.”
Gideon grunted. “I hate that you wouldn’t come in,” he muttered.
“I’ll come in from now on,” Joey said. “I promise.”
Gideon nodded, and tiredly they got up and began to clean. Their bodies were replete now, and their hearts were eased.
Sleep came swiftly, and if either of them dreamed, they were wolfish dreams that needed no words.