8. Florida Man Seduces Prospective Killer
Chapter 8
Florida Man Seduces Prospective Killer
R ainy didn’t need to be told twice. He unbuckled his shoulder holster and yanked his shirt over his head. Adler’s eyes assessed him with interest, scraping hot over his body, the bullet scar on his shoulder and his tattoos—the violets on his chest, the Latin scripture on his ribs. The ring of thorns inked around one bicep, marking him as an Espinosa grunt, once upon a time. Adler picked his way neatly over the damp floor and dropped into his lap. Rainy groaned at the weight of him against his thighs. His fingers trailed down Rainy’s chest, over his abs, to rest on the tiny twin revolvers tattooed there, angled down into the V of his hips.
“Original,” he said, dry as dust.
“No one’s complained yet.”
“Well, it is Miami.”
Rainy looped Adler’s tie around his fist and dragged him in for a kiss, open and sloppy and angry. Then he pulled away, sputtering.
“You taste like an ashtray.”
“Shut the hell up.”
Adler shoved him flat on his back and rode him down for another kiss. He pushed his tongue into Rainy’s mouth, demanding. The ashy flower taste of tobacco smoke was almost enough to gag on, but Rainy found that he could get over a lot when Adler was kissing him like that. Like he was about to kill him. Then Adler’s tongue was teasing him forward and Rainy was on the offensive, pushing forward into Adler’s mouth, biting his lip. It was bleeding still, and Rainy licked it away, the hot copper of blood and burnt-sweet acridity of smoke mixing into the heady taste of sex and violence.
They were laying on the cold linoleum floor where Rainy had probably shot a dozen men. Ah, well. They had bleached it just last week.
Rainy’s hands found Adler’s waist through his damp clothes, feeling in the way he hadn’t been allowed to at the hotel. The dip of his waist, the sharp arch of his hip bones, the curve of his ribs. He was perfect. A well-oiled killing machine, lithe and precise and gorgeous.
Something frantic and hungry was surging under Rainy’s skin, driving him forward with something close to desperation. It was the culmination of this week of cat-and-mouse, the memory of Adler’s body and the adrenaline and planning, the pain and beatings and hatred, jealousy, humor, regret. Watching Adler sleep. Suddenly, it was all crashing together into this one hot, clear spike of feeling, and Rainy couldn’t touch enough of Adler at once. He needed to get down to skin, deeper even, and run his hands and mouth over everything and feel and feel and feel.
He tugged Adler’s shirt out from his belt and slid his hands up underneath. The skin of his back was warm, smooth, damp. Rainy could feel each notch of spine, the flex of his lats. He’d never hated Adler’s fancy, expensive clothes more than he did at that moment. He scrabbled at the fabric, trying to get at more skin. So many goddamned buttons. The twill vest just wouldn’t give, and his fingers were clumsy and shaking.
“Why do you have to wear so much clothing?” he grunted into the skin at the base of Adler’s neck.
Adler planted both palms on Rainy’s bare chest and pushed him back onto the floor, looking supremely unimpressed. Sitting back, he took about three seconds to get out of the vest.
“Sorry I don’t find my clothes in the thrift store dumpster like you clearly do.”
Rainy was so distracted by the deft movement of Adler’s fingers that he almost forgot to reply.
“Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me, or something?”
“This is a Make-A-Wish fuck, not our goddamn wedding night.”
Adler was actually, honest-to-God pausing to fold his shirt and tie instead of just throwing them onto the floor. Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly. Rainy pounced.
Skin on skin. Rainy rolled them over and over until they were out of the wet spot and he was pinning Adler to the floor. Adler was an inch or so taller, but Rainy was broad enough to cover him entirely—shoulders, chest, hips.
Under all those layers, Adler was pale, with a flush that spread down his chest just how Rainy had imagined it in the wine cellar. Rainy held him down with an arm across his collarbone and ran a hand up his side, admiring. Adler was trim and strong, muscular but not bulky like Rainy was. Just what was necessary and not a pound more. Practical and efficient—Adler to a tee. There were freckles, a mole at the bottom of his rib cage. And scars.
Rainy traced a finger along a thin, pale one that ran over the muscular plane of his abdomen, a silver-pink slash below his navel. The thickest was a stripe of puckered skin that climbed his right clavicle to the shoulder. It branched off, supported a satellite system of smaller parallel dips and pink marks. Like he’d been ripped open by a dozen tiny blades. IED, Rainy thought, and bent down to kiss it.
Adler shoved him away. Rainy was so startled that he sat back obediently, only to find Adler glaring at him.
“Don’t fucking do that.”
“I… sorry?” Rainy tried.
Adler’s eyes were sharp. There were spots of red on his cheekbones. Rainy wasn’t quite sure what he’d done wrong. He loved scars, loved to trace the stories of old battles and mistakes on skin. He flaunted his own with ludicrously embellished tales.
Though maybe they stopped being so fun once you got one you didn’t have the option to hide.
He hadn’t realized how pliant and relaxed Adler had been under him until he stiffened with unhappiness. Rainy pressed a kiss under his jaw and palmed at his hip, trying to get the tension to ease out of his muscles again. He lapped a drop of sweat out of the hollow at the bottom of Adler’s throat, and his eyes landed on the red marks on either side of his trachea. Finger marks, clearly delineated. Marco’s fingers. Rainy felt something hot and shifty flare inside him. He brought his hand up to cover the bruise, fitting his own fingers over the marks. Adler shivered.
Oh. So that’s how it was. Rainy tightened his fingers a little. Used the grip to hold Adler down while he kissed down his chest, ignoring the scars this time.
A trail of dark hair ran from Adler’s navel down into his waistband, right where Rainy wanted to go. He kissed it, stroked his hip bones where they angled in toward that same spot.
Abruptly, he sat back on his heels and curved a hand under Adler’s right knee. He pulled it up to rest the ankle on his shoulder, then made a big show of removing Adler’s shoe and sock and tossing them into the corner. He pressed a wet kiss to his ankle, and Adler rolled his eyes.
Once he’d finished with that, he started in on the belt. With them all wet and ridiculously tailored, taking Adler’s pants off was like unpeeling cellophane. Knowing he’d be distracted, Rainy made himself get the pants all the way off Adler’s ankles before looking down.
Distracted, he was. Like the rest of him, Adler’s dick was long and slender. It had that same rosy flush to it where it rested, fully hard, against his toned stomach. Unable to resist, Rainy reached down and wrapped a hand around it, grinning when Adler’s abdominal muscles jumped at the touch. He moved his hand in two long strokes, enjoying the way the roughness of his palm scraped over the velvety skin. Adler let out a stuttering exhale, and Rainy’s own cock pressed against the zipper of his jeans.
“You’re gorgeous; you know that?” Rainy told him. Adler huffed and turned his face away, but the tips of his ears went pink.
He tensed and writhed as Rainy kept working him, clearly trying to resist showing that he was in any way affected. Like a bad-tempered cat that had to be tricked into receiving and showing affection. Rainy had experience with those. He slicked two fingers in spit and brought them down to run lightly over Adler’s balls. Adler made a sharp noise and tried to jerk away, but Rainy pinned him down by a hip.
“Relax,” he murmured, leaning down to suck Adler’s earlobe into his mouth. “How am I supposed to fuck you if you won’t relax?”
Adler elbowed him in the ribs, earning a grunt. Well, it stood to reason that he would be just as much of a control freak in bed as he was everywhere else. When he started to roll away, Rainy grabbed him by the forearms and pinned him down on the linoleum.
Adler was quick and ferocious, but when it came to brute strength, Rainy’s flashy muscles had him far outmatched. Rainy could feel him flex and shift, testing the pin. It would hold. Anywhere else, Adler could probably beat him. But here, if Rainy shifted to brace his knees, there was no way Adler would be able to fight out from under him short of going for the jugular with his teeth. In the furious cut of his eyes, Rainy could see him actually considering it.
Slowly, telegraphing his movements, Rainy leaned down to kiss him. Adler resisted for a moment, then opened his mouth. As they kissed lazily, Rainy released his arms and reached down, fumbling blindly across the floor. He found the lube and tore it open one-handed.
Adler gasped into his mouth when Rainy pressed a finger inside him, and Rainy drank it down. Adler’s body was hot and tight, muscle clenching as Rainy slid in to the last knuckle. He drew out and back in, kissing the tiny noises out of Adler’s mouth.
“Good,” he murmured. “Just like that.”
When he drew back, Adler’s eyes were black with lust. His lips were parted, like he’d forgotten that Rainy had stopped kissing him.
He took the second finger eagerly, rolling his hips down onto Rainy’s hand. Rainy could feel his heart between his ears as he stroked into the slick heat, massaging with his thumb. He watched his fingers disappear into Adler with something like wonder. When he started to pump faster, Adler made a pleased sound and moved his hips in time, abdominal muscles flexing.
Rainy’s pants were starting to become painfully uncomfortable, but the way Adler was moving demanded his full attention. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from how his back arched, the way his hand came down to grip the wrist Rainy had braced on the floor, strong enough to break bones.
“Hurry up,” Adler commanded. Managing to sound imperious with another man’s fingers up your ass was a special sort of talent.
“What if I’m not in a hurry to die?” Rainy retorted. Though, to be honest, dodging that final bullet was rapidly sliding down his list of priorities.
With a twist of movement too fast for Rainy’s lust-addled brain to process, Adler was on top of him, wrestling him out of his jeans. Nails dragged deliciously down the tattooed insides of his thighs before shoving them apart. Rainy was still trying to gather enough working brain cells to protest the indignity of being manhandled when Adler got his underwear off and started demonstrating his impatience with a spit-slicked hand.
“Oh, God, you’re amazing,” Rainy gasped.
“I know,” Adler drawled, then shoved him back flat on the floor with a knee to the chest. One hand still working, he ripped a condom open with his teeth and leaned down to roll it onto Rainy.
“Do your worst, sweetheart,” Rainy told him.
Adler’s eyes flashed. His hands were suddenly on Rainy’s wrists, pinning them on either side of his head. “What did I tell you about calling me that?” he hissed. And then he shifted his weight back, still glaring, and sank onto Rainy’s cock.
Rainy let out an embarrassing whimper, and his body arched up off the floor. The sudden transition from the snug, uncomfortable grip of the condom in open air to being buried in the hot, bruising tightness of Adler’s body was almost too much to bear. Before he had a moment to recover, Adler was moving, shifting the angle to go deeper, grinding down with his hips. His head was tilted back and he was breathing hard, and Rainy wanted so badly to touch him.
Adler forced him back down with an authoritative hand on his chest. Then he really started moving.
He was so mind-bendingly slick and warm, moving with every thrust like a fucking professional. Every time Rainy started to get into a rhythm, Adler would shift his hips to throw him off, setting a new pace that suited him better. It was maddening. Rainy wasn’t sure that he was in control of any part of his body anymore. His mouth kept saying a lot of very dirty words in combinations that probably didn’t even make sense.
Everything inside him, that awful, confusing swirl of emotion and need, was suddenly clear as day, boiling and bubbling through him like a warm spring. This was what he’d been craving the whole time. The surge of heat under his skin was overwhelming.
Adler, of course, looked extremely pleased with himself. Rainy doubted anyone in history had ever looked so smug about riding someone’s dick before. He was just giving Rainy that little lazy expression like he thought Rainy was the biggest bumbling idiot in the world, while he kept sliding up and down with that filthy rhythm, drawing fully off before sinking back to the base slow enough to make Rainy moan.
Rainy was an idiot, he realized, for fighting Adler at all. If Adler got it in his mind to kill Rainy, he could do as he damn well pleased. Rainy would let Adler do anything he pleased to him. Ride him raw and use him up and leave him bloodied. It was just the proper way of the world, Adler looking like the cat who got the canary, and Rainy wanted to give every last scrap of it to him. He remembered what he’d said to Adler, leaning against the bar, on the night they’d met:
Sweetheart, you can have anything you want from me.
“Can I make a request?” he gasped.
Adler pulled off a torturous twist of his hips. “It is your last meal.”
“Mirror,” Rainy managed to get out. “I want to watch.”
Slowing, Adler made a big show of considering it. Then he nodded and rolled off. Rainy took several tries to get to his feet and grabbed Adler’s hand to drag him over to the chair, nearly tripping over the jeans that were still tangled around his shins. The metal was freezing on his bare skin when he sat, facing the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Adler’s skin was warm. He allowed himself to be reeled in and pulled back down onto Rainy’s cock.
The angle was devastating. Rainy had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from coming right then as Adler took him in almost eagerly, so deep it felt profane. He braced his feet and thrust up roughly, and Adler hissed.
It was a little awkward, since Adler was a couple of inches taller, but Rainy hooked his chin into the crook between Adler’s neck and shoulder and stared into the mirror.
It was obscene. Adler’s back was flush against Rainy’s chest, Rainy’s hand spread possessively over his sternum. His cock stood at full attention, looking flushed and almost painfully hard. Rainy met his eyes in the mirror and pushed up into him again and again, losing himself in the delicious, snug fit, the hot slide.
The warm sea of pleasure was rising with every thrust, filling him up, and Rainy thought, Oh, I’m going to drown. And then, Oh, yes, I’m going to drown.
Adler was shivering again, moving with him, finally submitting to Rainy’s rhythm. Their breaths echoed in the wood-paneled room, the sound of panting and the filthy, slick noises when Rainy slipped out until just the head was inside, then slid back home. Adler was flushed red, bruised and shining with sweat. There was nothing he could hide in the mirror. His whole body was on display for Rainy, who drank it down with his eyes. He slid his palms up Adler’s stomach, over his chest. Used both hands to part his thighs, wide enough that it had to hurt, to watch himself fuck up into him.
Adler’s perfect composure was falling away piece by piece, and it was so unbelievably good that Rainy thought it would honestly be fitting if he were to die after this. Nothing left for him in life could possibly top Adler writhing against him, letting out those little panting whines.
“You feel amazing, sweetheart,” he murmured directly into Adler’s ear. Adler twisted his neck abruptly so Rainy’s face was pressed into his opposite cheek, the unscarred one, and nuzzled like a cat.
Rainy’s hand slid up Adler’s belly, his chest, and settled on his neck. It was sweaty, all pounding pulse and tense muscles. But when Rainy tipped his chin back, it was so long, pretty and bruised and delicate. He wrapped his hand around it.
He could end this whole game now, if he really wanted. There would be no more need for desperate grappling, the uncertainty and fear for his life. There would be no need for the bullet on the other side of the room. Adler was in a bad position. If Rainy wanted, he could hold him here long enough to strangle him as he’d originally planned, watch his face go blue and the light fade from his eyes with Rainy still inside him.
“I could kill you, you know,” he panted.
Adler stared him down in the mirror. Arched an eyebrow. “Then go ahead.”
God, wasn’t he something?
Rainy tightened his grip, digging his fingers in on either side of Adler’s windpipe. Pressing in over Marco’s bruises, stealing the air away. Adler’s eyes widened. After a few seconds, his lips started to work, trying to draw in a breath. Rainy squeezed tighter, wrapping an arm tight as a steel band around his waist to hold him in place as he kept driving up into him, reveling in the twist and clench as Adler started to squirm. His hand was coming up, moving to claw at Rainy’s wrist.
Rainy released the arm around his middle and wrapped his hand firmly around Adler’s dick, stroking roughly. Adler gasped and writhed, thrusting desperately into his curled fingers. Rainy’s hand on his neck went tighter, tighter, impeding the blood flow, crushing his own bruises to erase Marco’s touch. If he kept it up, Adler was probably going to pass out. That was the edge he wanted to ride. He slid his hand down to where he was still buried inside Adler, slick and messy, and came back up to pump him again, hand wet with lube.
He released his grip on Adler’s throat, and Adler gasped hoarsely as he came. Rainy could feel the orgasm shudder through his entire body, wet warmth spilling over his hand. He clenched down on Rainy’s cock, and then Rainy was coming too. It was just on the edge of excruciating, the way the pleasure surged and burst inside of him, every muscle locking against the white-hot yes.
He rode it down with the overstimulating tease of Adler’s muscles twitching helplessly around him, drawing out more shudders.
“Oh, God,” he gasped, burying his face in the sweaty hollow of Adler’s collarbone.
After a moment when the only inhabitant of the room was the mingled sound of their labored breathing, Adler pushed himself up. Rainy groaned at the feeling of their bodies slipping apart from the place they were connected. He couldn’t quite summon the muscle coordination or clarity of mind to move.
He was supposed to be moving, wasn’t he? There was a reason.
He tilted his head to watch as Adler walked back to where their clothes were heaped on the floor. Made a sound of protest as Adler wriggled back into his heinously tight pants without even bothering to wipe himself off. Then the shirt, and the belt, and Rainy thought, Oh, that’s right. Shit.
Adler saw the realization in his eyes and snorted, tossing Rainy his jeans.
“Put your pants on,” he said. “Unlike you, I don’t make a habit of killing men while their dicks are out.”
Mortal-peril fight-or-flight and post-orgasmic bliss. An incredibly bizarre cocktail. Rainy was up and scrambling for the gun before he could pull together a thought, but Adler was already there, leveling it at his head.
“Pants on,” he repeated, toneless as ever.
Rainy peeled off the condom and put on his pants.
They stood facing each other, the gun trained between Rainy’s eyes. Unspent rounds littered the floor around Adler’s bare feet. Calmly, Adler bent to pick up his vest and jacket, draped them over his arm. Gathered both shoes and socks in his free hand.
“You’re going to shoot me now?” Rainy’s body was hot and cold, sore with the memory of skin on skin and the bite of adrenaline.
“I did promise you a bullet.” Adler cocked his head lazily, let the Colt’s muzzle drift down to Rainy’s heart. Rainy’s entire body was tensed, but he felt strangely detached from it. Like he was a balloon tied to his own wrist by a flimsy string, everything numb and floaty. Adler stroked the trigger like a lover.
Then he let the gun fall to his side, shrugging.
“I’ll kill you tomorrow,” he said, as bored as though he were announcing he’d take a trip to the supermarket.
A laugh startled out of Rainy’s chest. “Fuck,” he wheezed. “You’re the worst person I’ve ever met.”
Adler’s mouth had that pinned-in quality to it. “I’m still gonna kill you. Just wouldn’t be much fun if it’s this easy. You’re too interesting.”
Oh. Oh, good fucking Lord. Rainy felt his biggest, most certified-shit-eating grin unfurl across his face. It was because—
“You like me,” he said.
Adler scowled. “I don’t fucking like you.”
“You do! You like me and my delicious eggs and my comedic brilliance.”
“First off, your eggs were disgusting—”
“You did try them!”
“—and, second, you’re an irritating, uninspired, smarmy son of a bitch.”
“You li—” Rainy shut up when Adler brandished the gun at him again.
“Don’t make me change my mind.” Adler turned and walked out into the office, then dropped his shoes onto the floor to slip them on. Rainy didn’t follow.
“Bend over further,” he called. “Give me something to remember you by.”
“I will kill you.”
Rainy folded his arms, almost giddy at Adler’s tense, angry posture. “When I was fucking you, you didn’t seem to have a problem with me calling you sweetheart.”
Adler stood up straight, sharp as razor wire. His expression was murderous, and Rainy flinched back a little, wary of the sudden, definitive reappearance of Adler’s finger on the trigger. Then his posture eased, the tiniest bit. Somehow, it was scarier. His eyes flicked over Rainy, deadly and lazy. Predatory.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said. “I said I would kill you later. I’m a man of my word. I also promised you this bullet before I walked out the door.” He smiled, the most self-satisfied, vicious smile Rainy had seen on him yet. Dimpled and pretty and sharp as broken glass. “You want something to remember me by? Here you go.”
And then he shot him.
The crack was infinitely loud in the enclosed room, just like he’d imagined. He felt the bullet, the burning path it carved through the air, and then force like a cracking bullwhip. Pain exploded across the side of his head, whiting out his vision, and Rainy fell to his knees with a scream.
He killed me. He killed me he shot me in the head he killed me oh god oh fuck
His hands were bloody, hot, trying to hold his head together. He was terrified when he shoved his fingers up into the bloody pain that he might find a chunk of skull. The floor was damp, was slippery and cold. His head was on fire. God, how was he alive?
Through the pain and shock, the roar and echo in his ears, he almost missed Adler calmly gathering up the rest of his things, tucking Rainy’s gun away in his own belt.
Rainy was bleeding. Oh, he was bleeding, and he was… not dying. The pain was throbbing, red-hot, wild. Not dying. Fuck, there was so much blood, what—
He was still scrabbling around on the floor, fingers slipping in his bloody hair, when Adler closed the front door behind himself, the office echoing with his short, humorless laugh.