Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Cloister washed the two painkillers down with a swig of water and then recapped the bottle. If Javi noticed that was Cloister’s first stop in the apartment, he didn’t mention it.
“You want the honey walnut shrimp?” Javi asked as he shrugged off his coat and grabbed a menu from the side to look over. “And broccoli?”
He did.
Cloister resisted the brief urge to be contrary and ask for something else. He was a cop with a dark past. If he wanted to be unpredictable, starting with his dinner order seemed a bit sad.
“Is that the place that we got the mango pudding from last time?” he asked as he put the water back in the fridge.
Javi flicked the menu over. “No,” he said. “They do fried bananas with manuka honey?”
It wasn’t the same. Cloister hovered on the edge of spiraling out because of that. He controlled himself. Just about.
“Sounds good,” he said.
They’d split it. Javi never ordered anything sweet, no matter how much he craved it.
Cloister suspected that there was a page of family photos from around…
nine, probably, after his grandmother died…
where Javi had been stockier than his parents liked.
It was good to remember that Cloister wasn’t special just for having hang-ups from his childhood.
He sprawled out on the couch, his arm thrown along the back of it. It looked good, and elevating his wrist helped while he waited for the painkillers to kick in. Bourneville jumped up, onto the blanket per the agreement she’d worked out with Cloister, and turned twice before she lay down.
Javi paused in the middle of his order to glance at them.
His mouth quirked briefly in a soft smile, and then he flicked his attention back to the call as he corrected the restaurant that he wanted the Crab Rangoon and the shrimp.
He stripped off his jacket as he finished the order, hanging it neatly over the back of a chair and giving the shoulders a brief, fastidious dust.
Desert ruddy sand sprinkled over the wooden floors. The robot vacuum would get it tomorrow, after they left.
Javi put his phone down on the island and rolled his head from one side to the other. His shoulder blades poked sharply against the fabric of his shirt as he rolled them back until his spine cracked audibly.
“You want a beer?” he asked as he walked over to the fridge. The light from inside picked out his profile in sharp relief, cruel to the still lumpy beak of his battered nose, as he opened the door to look inside.
“Is it cheap?” Cloister asked.
“Just for you,” Javi said dryly.
He pulled out a stubby lemony-dark Modelo and held it up for approval, eyebrow raised expectantly. Cloister nodded and leaned forward, hands up to catch a toss.
“No,” Javi told him dryly. He grabbed a Blue Moon for himself and set both bottles down while he found the bottle opener.
In deference to Cloister’s soft huff of a laugh, he didn’t get glasses before he carried them over, feet bare in expensive socks and bottles dangled from his hands, to hold one out for Cloister to take.
Bourneville heaved a heavy, pointed sigh and tucked her nose in tighter under her paws, so fast asleep only a monster would move her.
Javi ignored her and nodded at Cloister’s empty dominant hand. “I thought your wrist was on the mend.”
So he had noticed. Cloister flexed his fingers and shrugged.
“Might have gotten carried away punching people,” he said. “But it’s good practice. Any Witte worth the name needs to be able to drink two-handed.”
He proved he could do just that…and only spilled a little on his shirt. He rubbed the stain in with the heel of his hand.
“Are you going to talk to your physio?” Javi asked. He didn’t nudge Bourneville to get her to move over, or—less common, more fun—settle himself onto Cloister’s lap. Instead, he hovered, his attention clearly split, as he tapped a finger against the glass neck of the bottle.
“Don’t know,” Cloister said. “Are we going to talk about the case?”
Javi’s hands went still on the bottle. He frowned down at it and then took a deep breath before he had a drink. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea if we don’t,” he said slowly as he lowered the bottle. “Not this time.”
The bluntness of the statement caught Cloister off guard. He leaned forward to set the bottle down on the floor, next to his foot.
“Why not?” he asked. “Did Kincaid say something?”
Javi’s hand tightened on the bottle, his knuckles pale as the skin stretched over them.
He started to say something, stopped, and turned to set his beer down on a side table.
There was a visible tension in the line of his back, across his shoulders and down to his spine, as he straightened up.
For a moment, he didn’t say anything, but then he reached back to rub his neck.
The tension eased, and Javi’s shoulders loosened.
“Two days ago you were about to be dragged into a federal corruption investigation,” he said as he turned around. “You were suspended. They were going to take Bourneville off you. Kincaid was going to ruin your life.”
“He was going to try,” Cloister said.
The corner of Javi’s mouth twisted up ruefully, and he shook his head. “He’d gotten off to a good start,” he pointed out. “And how long did it take him? Even if he didn’t succeed, he’d hurt you. But finding Joel made you useful. It gives you an out. Would it be so bad to just take it?”
Cloister’s instinct was a guttural “yes.”
He didn’t like Kincaid, he didn’t trust him, and he didn’t want to be in debt to him. Some of that was jealousy, though, and some resentment. It wasn’t a justifiable reason.
“The case is still open,” he said. “Miles Lassiter is still missing, and we still don’t know why or what happened to him. He deserves to come home.”
Something bitter twisted Javi’s face. He scrubbed it away with one hand and came back over to crouch down in front of Cloister. Dark brown eyes looked earnestly up at Cloister as he tangled their fingers together.
“Kincaid is a lot of things, but he’s good at them all,” Javi said. “He’ll find who he’s looking for. So why not let him? Maybe, just this once, let it go?”
He waited, his face expectant as he waited for Cloister’s answer.
Cloister looked down at their linked hands. He grazed his thumb over Javi’s knuckles, first one way and then back the other.
“If I could do that,” he looked back up at Javi’s face, “I’d not be able to sleep at night.”
Javi glanced down for a second. His mouth twisted around a resigned smile as he looked back up. One hand reached up to caress Cloister’s face, thumb tracing the curve of his mouth, and then slid around to cup the back of his neck.
“Maybe I can help with that,” he said as he leaned in.
His mouth was flavored with beer and a long day. The hand around Cloister’s nape tightened, fingers digging down into the tight lines of muscle, as Javi deepened the kiss. His teeth scraped over Cloister’s lower lip, and his tongue swiped across the bite to sweeten it.
Maybe he could.
It didn’t feel settled. Not between them. Not inside Javi. Still, a few hours of untroubled sleep was a good bribe.
Maybe he could.
Cloister pulled back from the kiss and glanced toward the clock in the kitchen.
“How long till the food gets here?” he asked.
Javi crawled up him off the floor. A hand on his chest pushed him back against the couch, and Cloister let it.
He tilted his head back as he looked up, and Javi’s hand slid up to bracket his throat.
It wasn’t tight, just there. Enough that he could feel the compression of warm fingers when he swallowed.
Javi straddled Cloister’s thighs. The soft warmth of his eyes had gone dark, hungry and hooded. He stooped down to kiss Cloister again, the kiss more deliberate this time. Cloister felt his heartbeat flutter against Javi’s fingers as he strained up into the kiss.
A groan tangled between their mouths as Cloister ran a hand up Javi’s thigh, muscle lean and tight under smooth fabric, to his hip.
“They can leave it outside,” Javi told him.
Cloister had already stopped caring.
The window was cold against Cloister’s shoulders as he sprawled back against it.
It leeched the ache from his muscles. He tipped his head against the glass as he reached down to tangle his fingers through Javi’s hair.
It was thick and dense between his fingers, the usual severe professionalism ruffled into curls.
Javi made a low, wordless noise from between Cloister’s legs, and the kiss, wet and warm against his inner thigh, turned into a bite. The sting wasn’t enough to cut through the slow pulse of pleasure-want that was building. It was just a warning to remember how well Javi took direction.
That was to say, not well at all.
Cloister laughed, a breathless sound that hitched raggedly in his chest as Javi chewed a wet, stinging trail of kisses up his thigh.
He knew Javi wouldn’t, but the muscles in Cloister’s stomach still tensed as Javi’s mouth reached his balls.
His toes curled against the floor, pressed against the wood, as warm breath tickled the sensitive skin.
“I could probably make you agree to anything,” Javi remarked. He ran his hands up the wet, bruised trail of his kisses to the crease of Cloister’s thighs, fingers slotted into the V of his pelvis as he nudged his legs wider. “Right now.”
Cloister swallowed raggedly.
“Probably,” he admitted.
Javi laughed softly and sucked one of Cloister’s balls into his mouth.
His tongue slid under it, creasing the skin, and pulled the other taut.
Anything that Cloister had been about to think scattered to make room for the hot splash of sensation.
His cock ached, a cramping tug that dragged at his thighs and stomach.