“Hi. Hey,” he said. “This is probably nothing, but I was just jogging up Longwall and heard something going on in one of the houses. A lot of yelling… and I heard someone scream. Yeah, 298? They had a big party the other week. Look, I don’t want any trouble. Just—no, I don’t want to give my name. Just check it out.”
He hung up and handed the phone forward to Ezra, who popped off the back and took the SIM card out.
“And now we wait,” he said.
***
Grade perched on the end of Clay’s new bed and flicked on the news. He sat through a story about an E. coli outbreak in schools and something about a marathon the mayor had run.
“Fucking Sweeny,” he grumbled as he sprawled back on the bed. “Can’t even get their scandals to run on time.”
Clay limped in from the bathroom. He was supposed to use crutches until his knee was better, but he mostly left them propped in the corner of the room. His knee had managed to dislocate and then snap back into place during the accident on his bike. Lots of pain and swelling, some partially torn tendons, but nothing that wouldn’t mend on its own.
He’d been more upset about the bike than his knee. It would be cheaper to get a new one, but he’d had the crushed wreck taken to a garage to be Frankensteined back together.
“It’s not even been a week,” he said. “Let it ride.”
Grade sighed. “This is way more nerve-wracking than my usual gig,” he said. “If that goes wrong, it’s on the news the same day. ‘Plastic drum of body parts dug up in desert by small child’s dog.’”
Clay lowered himself onto the bed, jaw clenched as he stretched his leg out. The black brace strapped around his knee nearly hid the black-and-purple bruises. He held out his hand, and when Grade took it, pulled him up the bed.
“She’s a judge,” Clay said. He ran his hand up Grade’s side, under his T-shirt. “They aren’t going to rush to say anything. You need to try and think of something else.”
Grade grinned as he sprawled on top of Clay’s body, careful not to jostle his knee. He tangled his fingers through damp dark-blond curls and leaned down for a kiss.
“You think I need a hobby?” He ran his hands down Clay’s arms, tracing the chaotic flow of the tattoos, and then pushed himself up so he straddled Clay’s hips. He squirmed and felt Clay’s cock thicken eagerly under him. Grade braced his hands on Clay’s stomach, fingers spread on smooth tanned skin and the rougher slabs of scar tissue. “Any suggestions?”
Clay reached up to grip Grade’s chin between his fingers and thumb.
“A few,” he said as he pulled him back down into a kiss.
It was slow and easy. Or at least it started that way. Grade straddled Clay and rode his cock, his thighs and stomach tight as the muscles did the work. Deep, steady thrusts that spread his ass wide and licked heat along his nerve endings. Clay just sprawled back, hands behind his head and lip caught between his teeth, and watched through hooded eyes.
Until he lost patience with that. Then they ended up tangled in the sheets, Clay’s hand around Grade’s cock and his breath on his neck as he fucked him roughly. Grade made choked, wordless sounds as he grabbed the headboard with one hand to brace himself.
He came first, his come smeared up his stomach on Clay’s fingers. Rather than finish, Clay pulled out of him and rolled over onto his back. He pulled the condom off and tossed it aside while he wrapped tattooed fingers around his cock to jerk himself off.
Grade lay next to him, sweaty sheets around his ankles, and watched with appreciation as he lazily caressed the rest of Clay’s body, the taut, tensed muscles in his thighs and the flat, tawny buds of his nipples. He grazed a finger along the edges of the scars and followed them down to where they curled around Clay’s hip.
“See?” Clay said, the words ragged as he came. He wiped his hand on his hip and then nodded at the TV. “A watched pot never boils.”
The anchor on the screen put on his best serious face as he looked at the camera.
“Disturbing information continues to come to light after Sweeny’s Sheriff’s Department made a wellness check on Judge Charity Parker last week,” he said. “Despite first impressions being the judge had been assaulted in her own home, it now appears that Judge Parker was somehow involved in the deaths of two people, one of whom was philanthropist and businessman, Franklin Collymore. Sources in the sheriff’s department say that evidence found in Judge Parker’s wine cellar suggests that he died there, and then his body was moved in a crude attempt to allay suspicion.”
Grade sat. “Crude?”
“It wasn’t your best work,” Clay said. “You said that yourself.”
“Still,” Grade grumbled. “Do you think that’s it? She could implicate us.”
“If she starts talking to the police,” Clay said, “Fisher will have her killed. He has enough pull to do it, and he can’t afford not to once she starts making deals. Charity’d get a lot more from the district attorney selling him out than anything they’d offer for us. Plus, she can’t prove a fucking thing.”
Grade supposed that was true. He glanced at Clay and raised his eyebrows. Usually, Clay wasn’t interested in anything but some distance after he’d come. He needed it to cool down. Not tonight.
“What?” Grade asked.
Clay reached for his cigarettes and lit one. He leaned back against the headboard and savored the first lungful of smoke. It eddied around his mouth as he exhaled.
