Chapter 4
4
ELLIOT CRANE
Any chance you’re not busy at the moment?
SETH MAYS
Yes?
I’m going crosseyed, hungry, and the hotel restaurant is shit.
Any recommendations?
What are you in the mood for?
Honestly? Pastrami on rye.
I’ve got just the place. Am I bringing it to you, or you want to go out?
A field trip sounds good.
We could always come back here after dinner. But I’ll let that be your call.
I’ll pick you up.
I promise not to kidnap or murder you.
oh shit im sorry
It’s okay.
I’d win if you tried to murder me, anyway.
Especially before dinner.
Murdering you before dinner would just be rude.
Be there in about 20?
Sure.
As long as there’s pastrami.
I grimaced. I’d been trying to be funny, but remembered a split second after hitting send on the message about not murdering him that his father had been murdered and he had almost been murdered, and now I felt like shit.
How do you make up a massive faux pas like that to someone you barely know who, now that I looked at the messages again, maybe hadn’t even been asking to have dinner with me , but just for a restaurant recommendation…
God, I’m a dope sometimes.
We’d agreed that we weren’t going to make more of this than sex, and I was already crossing lines.
I sighed. I was still at work, although I was packing up my stuff, so I’d head out to the hotel, grab Elliot, and bring him to the Secret Sandwich Society, where they had enormous sandwiches with as much greasy meat as Elliot could possibly want. And they had really good fries and a killer fish sandwich, which I loved.
And then… well, I was definitely not opposed to going back to his hotel room with him.
But this wasn’t a date. It was me providing dinner to a friend of Hart’s because Hart had abandoned him, probably thanks to the senator’s dead shifter wife. That part made sense, but I wondered what the hell Taavi was up to, since he wasn’t an FBI agent who had to keep weird-ass hours. Then again, I didn’t know if Taavi and Elliot got along or not. Probably rude to ask.
I pulled up to the loading area in front of the lobby and texted Elliot to let him know I was there.
A minute or so later, Elliot came out the front door wearing a tan t-shirt with an orange-and-brown flannel button down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing muscular and scarred forearms, one of them revealing just a hint of his tattoos.
He trotted over, then slid into the passenger seat. I noticed that today’s earrings were dangling silver and what looked like jasper. I wasn’t usually into guys with earrings, but they really worked on Elliot. The sparkle of the silver set off his coppery skin and black hair.
“I assume Hart’s still dealing with the dead senator’s wife?” I asked, forcing myself to stop staring at his profile.
“Senator’s dead wife,” Elliot corrected, almost absently.
“Right.” It wasn’t my case anymore—I didn’t get to work the big fancy federal cases. I didn’t actually want to work the big fancy federal cases. They come with a lot of pain in the ass. “Where’s Taavi?”
“A lock-in at the Youth Center.” Elliot grimaced. “I was invited, but I declined.”
“You don’t want to spend a night with a bunch of pre-teens and teens?”
“Who are hormonal as hell and likely to go full fur? No, thank you. Been there, done that, don’t need to relive the experience.”
I laughed. “You’re a shifter?” I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose it helped to explain the raw strength of his hands. I told myself to stop thinking about how they felt gripping my hips before this car ride became extremely uncomfortable.
“Is that a problem?” His tone was mild, but I knew it was probably a sensitive question from the way the muscles in his arm tensed.
“Nope. My twin’s a wolf shifter. He’d have eaten me in my sleep if I had a problem with it.” I smirked. “He still might.”
Elliot barked out a laugh at that, relaxing again. “I’ll protect you.”
I snorted. “From a wolf?”
He bared his teeth at me. “Ever gotten into a fight with a badger?” he asked.
I looked over at him. “You’re a badger?”
“I am.”
I studied him. The muscle of his arms, the heavy callus on his hands, the broad chest… Noah was buff, but this guy was solid muscle. “You could take a wolf?”
Another bared-teeth grin. “My claws are a lot longer and sharper.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” I pointed out.
“Never fought a wolf, either,” he answered. “So I don’t actually know, but Val tells me I’m a mean bastard.”
“Val?” I asked.
Elliot snorted. “Val Hart.”
I blinked. “Hart’s first name is Val? Like, what, Valencio?”
He let out a laugh that was a half-bark. “Valentine,” he replied.
It took a moment. “His parents named him Valentine Hart? Jesus. ”
Elliot chuckled. “You’ll never guess when his birthday is.”
That one took me another second or two. “They didn’t .”
“Oh, but they did.”
I thought about that for a moment. “No wonder he’s such a grumpy asshole.”
That made Elliot laugh out loud. “Right?”
It was weird to think about Hart answering to any name other than Hart. Apparently he did sometimes, but I wasn’t stupid enough to see if he’d let me get away with it, especially since I’d never once heard the elf use my first name, even though I was pretty sure he knew it.
For the record, I am not stupid enough to ever, ever call Hart ‘Val.’ Or even remotely mention that I was aware of his first name. At least not unless he asked me to.
“When’s yours?” I asked him.
“My what?”
“Birthday,” I replied cheerfully.
Silence.
A quick glance at the passenger seat told me he was looking at me oddly.
“I can go first if you like,” I offered, feeling incredibly awkward. “Mine’s December sixth. St. Nicholas day.”
“You parents were nicer than Val’s,” he observed dryly. I couldn’t tell from his tone what he was thinking—not that I knew him well enough for that.
I frowned. “Why do you say that?” I asked. I didn’t tell him that my parents most certainly were not nicer than Hart’s, even if they did name him Valentine after he’d been born on February 14th. It wasn’t a story I wanted to get into at all, much less with a guy who definitely didn’t want a relationship with me. You don’t unload that kind of shit on someone unless they’re in it with you for the long haul .
“They didn’t name you Nicholas,” he replied, his tone light, although there was a small furrow between his eyebrows.
I pushed my lips into a smile, although it didn’t go any deeper. “That’s true, they did not,” I replied. I swallowed around the past, then pushed another smile. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask,” came the response, which told me that he wouldn’t necessarily answer if he didn’t like the question. I had noticed that he hadn’t told me his birthday.
“The stripe in your hair…” I trailed off, not quite sure how to ask if he’d bleached it or if it was natural.
His lips twitched. “While I did get it when I first shifted, it has nothing to do with being a badger—I cut my scalp badly during one of my early shifts in the hospital. The hair over the scar tissue grew back white.”
“Ah,” I replied, not quite sure how to respond—are you supposed to express sympathy for the old injury? “It works on you,” is what I settled on.
He gave me that half-smile I liked so much, and I knew I hadn’t fucked up. “Thanks.”
I wanted to ask him how old he’d been, ask him how he’d decided on carpentry, what Hart had been like as a kid… a hundred different things. Things you asked someone you were on a date with.
Rule Two.
I didn’t ask any of them.
“Holy shit, this is good.” Elliot closed his eyes, savoring the taste of the Secret Sandwich Society’s pimento cheese fries. I had my own basket of regular fries, along with a side of barbecue sauce and a side of garlic mayo. I could do eggs—the mayo—but not dairy. Stupid alpha-gal.
“So I hear,” is what I said, smiling at his clear enjoyment of it.
“You want some?”
I shook my head. “Can’t,” I replied.
Elliot cocked his head to the side after looking down at my cup of mayo. “Vegan?”
“Alpha-gal,” I replied, loading up a fry with mayo and raising it in a toast. “Nothing that came from a mammal. Birds and reptiles are fine, though.”
Elliot seemed to think about that for a minute. “Is that the tick-borne thing?” he asked.
I smiled, a little impressed. Most people have no idea what alpha-gal is. “It is,” I replied.
“That sucks,” came his response.
I shrugged, pretending I wasn’t deeply bitter about the fact that I could no longer eat the pimento cheese fries he was clearly enjoying. “I can still do fish and chips, and I like chicken just fine.”
“Still. People probably sneak dairy into all sorts of things.”
I nodded. “Oh, they do. And that is not a fun time, let me tell you.”
He smirked. “Probably not as bad as when Val tried to eat a bacon cheeseburger right after he got out of St. Christopher’s.”
“St. Christopher’s?” I asked.
“The Arcana hospital in Milwaukee,” Elliot clarified.
“But elves can’t eat meat, can they?”
“No, no they definitely cannot,” Elliot confirmed. “He’d been out for less than thirty-six hours, and we had to go right back in.”
I shook my head, eating a few more fries. “To be fair, that absolutely sounds like something Hart would do, though.”
He laughed. “I guess you know him pretty well, then?”
I shrugged. “Not well enough to know his name, apparently.”
Elliot snorted. “To be fair, I think there are less than a dozen people in the world who are allowed to call him Val, and I think all of us except Taavi have known him since he was a kid. I wouldn’t take that personally.”
“Fair enough.” I smiled.
“You work together a lot?” he asked, then.
I nodded. “We used to. I’m homicide CSI,” I replied. “So I’ve worked with most of the detectives. I got pretty good at not accidentally triggering anything at the magical scenes and I didn’t lose my shit, so he started asking for me. We did a lot of cases together before he left the RPD.” I shrugged. “And he kept asking me to look at things after he moved to BTV. Not so much anymore, though.”
“Funny that the FBI would be secretive,” he remarked dryly.
“I know?” I replied, feigning surprise. “I was absolutely shocked.”
That earned me a chuckle.
The server appeared with our sandwiches—a Frances for me, and a Van Buren for Elliot. I slathered the mayo on my sandwich, looking forward to the fried fish and spicy slaw. Elliot had already taken a bite, and hummed softly with pleasure at the taste.
“Everything you hoped for?” I asked him, grinning.
He chewed and swallowed. “I asked for pastrami, and you have brought me to damn good pastrami. ”
I saluted him with a fry. “Ask, and you shall receive.”
I grunted as my back hit the mattress, Elliot bent over me, his hazel eyes bright and his skin flushed. He’d stripped me as soon as the hotel door clicked closed behind us, although he hadn’t yet pulled off my shorts. He followed me onto the bed, his hips pushing my legs wide as he ran his hands up the outside of my thighs.
Elliot was still wearing his jeans, although I’d managed to get his shirt off him before he’d thrown me down. If I hadn’t known he was a shifter already, that might have been a clue, given that I was a good four inches taller than he was and probably thirty pounds or so heavier. It wasn’t something I’d ever experienced before, but as far as I was concerned, Elliot could throw me as often as he liked.
Under my shorts, it was abundantly clear how much I was enjoying the rough feel of Elliot’s hands and the strength of his grip as his fingers dug into my hips. He ground against me, the fabric of his jeans stiff—over something stiffer—against the sensitive flesh trapped beneath the knit cotton.
I tried to get my hands on the buttons of his jeans, but my fingers fumbled as he literally ripped my shorts off me, the sound of tearing fabric loud over our panting breaths. I gasped as one hand gripped my balls, then slowly began massaging, sending a sweet ache through my cock and tightening my belly.
“Tell me what you want,” Elliot growled.
“Your cock,” I managed.
He let go of me, stripped off his jeans, and grabbed the lube out of the bedside drawer. The soft snick of the lid, and then I moaned as one of those rough fingers drove into me.
“That’s it.” His voice was almost a purr, but there was gravel in it—the sound at once pleased and aggressive, sending tingles down my spine. “Relax for me.”
He pushed in a second finger, curling and stretching. I let my head fall back, allowing Elliot to do whatever he wanted to my body, his fingers playing me like a harp, each movement sending vibrations through me.
“Are you ready for me?” he asked.
“God, yes.”
The burn as he pushed into me told me I probably wasn’t—close, but it hurt. Not terribly, although to the point that I knew I’d be sore, that walking and sitting would be awkward for a little while.
And I didn’t care.
It felt like I couldn’t quite draw a full breath, the muscles in my whole body too tense, the feeling of Elliot moving in and through me too full, too tight—and absolutely perfect.
Rule Two , I tried to remind myself, but every thrust, every brush of calloused fingers on my skin, every drop of sweat that slid down Elliot’s muscular chest, every breath I took that tasted of Elliot’s skin… It was like a drug, filling my lungs and pores. I didn’t want anything else. Anyone else.
One hand closed around my cock, and I could feel what felt like every whorl and ridge of his fingertips, every callus, every bend at the joints. I was trembling on the edge, my body wound so tightly that I could barely breathe. I could feel the throb of every thrust, Elliot burying himself all the way inside my body, his fingers tightening around me, but not moving, all but forcing me to push my hips up to get more friction out of his hand, the motion doing maddening things to the feel of him inside me .
“Fuck,” he gasped out, thrusting hard into me, the fingers at my one hip convulsing as he let out a long, deep moan as he came. The hand around my cock jerked sharply, drawing me after him as I gasped, spilling over his fingers.
God damn Rule Two .