Eighteen
The case against Cristo Liron had been dead in the water until he sent hit men after Sam and me.
There had been some internal leaks, bad intelligence gathering, and more than anything, procedural inconsistencies.
But when the two hit men rolled on Cristo, Adrian Miller broke, became a witness for the prosecution, and had frightened Adan and Paz into telling everything they each knew.
Agent Calhoun came to see Sam when we arrived home and gave him the good news that Cristo Liron was going to prison for life.
Later that night, when I was practicing in the wheelchair, rolling myself from one side of the room to the other, I asked Sam why he thought Cristo had taken the gamble to kill me instead of just walking away.
The look I got of absolute bewilderment was cute.
“What?”
“Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot,” I said with a chuckle.
“Jory, most people, when hit men come after them, they get killed. You’re lucky, spontaneous, and your guardian angel is overworked and way underpaid.”
“I know, right? My angel walks into a bar, and the other angels are like, Oh shit, that’s the poor sap who’s got Jory Harcourt. Look at him. He’s started drinking again.”
Sam was smiling.
“Look at the twitch he’s got. Poor bastard.”
“C’mere.” His smile had gone carnal.
“No.” I laughed, rolling backward. “Get away from me, ya perv. I’m in a wheelchair.”
“Not for long you won’t be,” he assured me. “In a second, you’re gonna be over my shoulder.”
I froze, and when he reached me, he knelt down on one knee, holding the chair so I couldn’t move away.
“What’s wrong?”
I swallowed down my heart. “I’m scared.”
“No reason to be scared.”
My breath hitched involuntarily. “What if you can never put me up against a wall again? What if I can’t ever wrap my legs around you again? What if—”
“Stop,” he soothed me, his voice a husky rumble. “Listen up.”
I put my hands on him because I had to—always had to.
“I love you, and I love being in bed with you, and really, that’s all that matters. We can figure out everything else, but the weight of this ain’t just on you. I wanna be here too, J. I’m invested in this, and I’m not going anywhere. So, knock it off, all right?”
I nodded.
“For now, your legs over my shoulders, like the doc said, is gonna work just fine.”
And later, in bed, after he kissed up both legs and then rolled forward, draping them into the crooks of his elbows before sheathing himself deep inside my body, I finally got it through my head that he was telling the truth. We were still us, just different.
As I yelled his name, his head fell back, and he moaned out his orgasm as he bucked hard and fast with his release. I was laughing when he collapsed on top of me, crushing me under him, pinning me to the bed.
“I think you killed me.”
“I just wanna be buried to my balls in your ass for the rest of my life,” he said, ignoring me completely.
“Lovely,” I teased him, heaving for breath. “Get off me, Kage. You’re heavy as hell.”
“So what?” he teased me in a voice I had never heard before.
When he rolled off of me, I turned to look at him and found him grinning at me.
“What was that?”
“That’s what you sound like when you tell me not to swear.”
“That’s what I sound like?” I was incredulous.
He waggled his eyebrows at me, and when I went to smack him, he captured my wrist and pulled me over on top of him.
“Now, you can crush me.”
“I’m not heavy enough,” I said softly, sheepishly, burying my face in the hollow of his neck, licking the salt off his skin, loving him sweaty and sated under me.
“No, you’re not,” he said, one hand on my ass, kneading gently, the other in my hair as he fisted his hand in it and lifted my head. “You’re perfect.”
I wasn’t, but the kiss he gave me, with lots of tongue, before he rolled me back over, told me he thought I was. It was the only thing that mattered.
There was a whirlwind of changes. Just like Dane had figured, and it was really annoying, having the man know things before I did.
Mr. Riggs and Mrs. Pearlman from Benchmark had no problem leasing the new office space they had made for Strauss and Harcourt to Harvest Design instead. We paid them, and they paid us when we made something happen. It sounded like it would work out just fine.
I moved into the spacious wood-and-glass office with Dylan and Fallon, and we made it our own.
We were ready to reopen our full-service graphic design business, for me and Dylan again, and for Fallon for the first time.
The space itself was warm and homey, and no one failed to comment on it.
And I was surprised how many people there were.
Dylan had contacted all our old clients, Fallon had brought new ones, and Aaron Sutter—who was putting up a new hotel in Sydney, Australia—wanted a new logo for his flagship, The Summerville.
It had to incorporate Australia without a hint of any traditional symbol, as well as encompass Sutter as a brand.
“Are you kidding?” I asked him. “I never have any luck creating things for you. I failed the first time out, remember?”
“Yeah, but I think that was because I didn’t really know what I wanted either.”
I squinted at him as he threw one of those squeezy stress balls against the wall in my office.
“That’s annoying, you know.”
He grunted from where he was stretched out on my couch.
“Where did you even get that?”
He pointed at the bowl of them on the coffee table beside him. Dylan had made them with our logo on them. I had just missed that she put some of the damn things in my office.
“You’re supposed to use them to release tension, not annoy your designer.”
“Who says that annoying you doesn’t decrease my stress level?” My eyes flicked to his, and he waved.
“How’s Jaden?” I asked him.
“Good. He’s enjoying school, and he met somebody, another aspiring chef just like him.”
I rolled my eyes. “That means nothing. I doubt he’s replaced you already, Sutter. He knows he needs to give the romantic part time and not jump into bed with someone else.”
He gave me a shrug. “You’re thinking I’m bothered, and I’m not. I don’t even care if we remain friends. Right now, since I’m paying for his education, we have to stay in touch, but beyond the next two years … who knows?”
“Why?”
“I don’t stay friends with my exes,” he said, continuing to play handball with something not designed to do that against the wall of my office.
“I’d like to point out that we’re exes and trying to be friends.”
“That’s different,” he told me. “You, I loved.”
My eyes locked on his.
“It’s true, and that’s why I’m trying. If this is all I can have, I’ll take this.”
I smiled at him, and his eyes were warm.
“Oh my God, Jory, can you stop with that already?!” Fallon roared as he came through my office door, having hurled it open.
We all froze.
“See,” I said, smirking at Aaron. “I told you it was annoying.”
“Oh.” Fallon’s breath caught, and he looked horrified. He had just screamed at easily one of the richest men in the state, if not in the entire country. “Mr. Sutter, I—”
“Sorry.” He gave Fallon his dazzler. “I was just trying to piss off Jory.”
And when Fallon did the slow pan to me, I had no idea why I was on the receiving end of the look until later.
“You shit!”
Such an outburst from unflappable Fallon Strauss seemed completely out of character for him.
“What?”
“You’re buddies with Aaron Sutter?”
I made a noise.
“They used to date,” Dylan said, cackling.
“Jesus,” he said, falling down into the chair in front of my desk.
“Why don’t you go faint in your office?” I told him.
He just looked at me. “I swear to God, from one day to the next, I have no idea what’s going to happen with you.”
The wheelchair had surprised him when he first saw me, but not as much, apparently, as my relationship with Aaron Sutter.
“Fun, huh?” Dylan smiled at him. “Welcome to the show.”
He looked back and forth between the two of us.
“We could go for yogurt,” I offered.
“We love yogurt,” Dylan seconded.
He just shook his head.
When Sam got home that night, having started his new job, bringing home mountains of stuff to read every time he came through the door, he was startled to see me.
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Why’re you wearing my catcher’s mask?”
Sam had played baseball on a city league with the other guys in the department, and it was nice that when he resigned from the department, they made him promise to come back and play ball.
He was surprised at the response from a lot of his fellow officers, especially the other detectives. They had not wanted him to go.
It turned out the bisexual piece didn’t really matter in the big picture of doing your job, backing up your brothers in blue, and just being an honest cop did. Sam had a reputation for being fair and hardworking and loyal, and that was all, in the end, that mattered.
His captain asked him to stay, but the Northern District of Illinois, in Chicago, was counting on him.
His new boss, Chief Deputy Tom Kenwood, had already made sure to pay Sam a visit as soon as we got home.
The marshals service wanted him, gave him a grace period for completing his marshals training since I was getting used to being in a wheelchair, and Sam had given them his word when he accepted the position. I could not have been happier.
“J?”
I lifted the mask to look at him. “Your folks are coming for dinner, and I’m deep-frying empanadas to go with the rest of the meal since your dad likes them so much.”
“Sure.”
“And since I’m lower now, closer to the stove, I didn’t want to get hot oil in my eye.”
“Oil can still splatter through the holes,” he offered logically.
I held up the round frying screen I had as well. “It’s my second line of defense.”
“Of course it is.”
He chuckled, leaning down to kiss me. I got the feeling I was being placated.
“I’m not crazy.”
“No, I know.” He continued to laugh as he walked through our loft.
“How was your day, talking to people going into witness protection and checking on witnesses?”