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Barrett slid his fingertips down Ambrose’s chest, let them catch on his belt. “Gonna let me keep doing that? Cause I can make you feel even better.”
Ambrose didn’t bother to hold back his smile. “Are we back to bad porno lines?”
“Yeah, actually I have one I wanted to try. Hold on.” After clearing his throat rather dramatically, Barrett fluttered his eyelashes. Gone was the forest ranger, the voice of authority, and suddenly there was a coquettish ingenue in bed. Ambrose raised his eyebrows while Barrett softly said, “I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t watched a pornography -”
Ambrose snorted. “A pornography?”
Goddamn bastard didn’t drop the act once. “I said what I said! I have never seen thispornography. I am a proper gentleman…”
Shit. He needed to remember how to act. Or what porn scripts sounded like. “Oh my god. It’s a cock, darling. You have one and I have one.”
“And I do not refer tothat,” and he motioned to Ambrose’s groin, “as anything other than a penis.”
Ambrose was torn between laughing and wanting to play along. “No dirty words?Ever?”
“I am untouched by such filth.”
Swift as a snake, Ambrose rolled on top of Barrett and let his weight settle solidly. His thighs bracketed on top of Barrett’s, his hands on either side of that shaggy head. “Filth, huh?” He slid down, grabbed for Barrett’s jeans. Cast his gaze up to check for the head nod and got it. Seconds later, he had Barrett’s jeans around his ankles and was mouthing at the head of his cock through his boxers. “Filthy enough yet?”
Nostrils flared, cheeks going red, Barrett fumbled for the bedside drawer. A condom packet smacked Ambrose on the shoulder. “Not enough, you cad!” Barrett said. “Oh, you dirty man, convincing me to do filthy, nasty things with you!” With a snort-laugh that ended with Ambrose wheezing for air as he pressed his forehead into Barrett’s thigh, Barrett said, “Theater practice didn’t exactly cover porn.” But he reached forward, all teasing pretense dropped.
The fingers in Ambrose’s hair felt heavenly and he let his eyes slide shut. The temptation to rub his cheek on the inside of Barrett’s palm was ruined only by the way those thick thighs were flexing under him. “Shame. We could make our own.”
“Ooo, I’m up for a lot of things, but that might not be one of them.”
“Same.” Ambrose tugged at the waistband of Barrett’s boxers. “Though I’m still half convinced you actually have a St. Andrew’s cross in the basement.”
“I don’t.” Barrett drew his face up with a soft touch, two fingers under his chin. “But if you want to work up to it…”
“Kinky bitch.”
“Yours, though.”
Later, Barrett pulled his laptop into bed and pulled up the bird cam admin panel. “You’ve got an eye for detail. Ready to help out my piss-poor vision?”
He’d told Ambrose the story about Gemma and what she’d seen and his idea. Three cameras faced Lake Honor. If they were lucky, maybe they’d catch some detail leading to a break in the case.
“I don’t know if the boat’s connected,” Barrett said as he logged into the camera admin panel and began scrolling through the archived feeds.
“Kinda feels personal.”
“Yeah, it does. Almost everyone out here has a boat and a lot of ’em are like mine. Just little motorboats for fishing and puttering around the lake. But you and I have the properties furthest south of the main road, and they would have passed ten, maybe twelve other boats just out there.” Barrett huffed and ran his hands through his hair as the system retrieved the feeds. “And anyone looking at the public reports would see I’m lead on the case. And the only reason for that is because Jacques has my back.”
Ambrose wrinkled his nose. “I know it’s very spy-movie like but did you mention anything to Jacques yet? About all of this?”
“No. Shit. Maybe I should have.” Barrett’s sigh was heavy, like lead in water. “This whole thing is so insane. Most of the department brass wants it settled, tucked away in a file and chalked up to random acts of criminal mischief. But a fire lit in the dead of a damp winter isn’t easy and the...viciousnessbehind the whole fire tower door? The bridges, damaging them to a point where two people were seriously hurt? Someone could have died.” And then he shook his head, leaning into Ambrose with an arm wrapped around his middle. “It’s a little Bond villain-esque, huh?”
Ambrose leaned in, too. “Kind of. Like the person doing it watched too many of those movies and combined it with some grudge they have.”
“Yeah. Speaking of grudges, I checked all the fired employees in the whole department. Everyone’s got an alibi and my most likely suspect did move out to be with his family about three years ago. So no go there.”
The archived feed report beeped and pulled up all three feeds from the day Gemma had spotted the person in the fog. With the feeds set to start an hour before the sighting and end an hour later, they had a solid place to start.
“Which one’s first?” Ambrose asked as he dug his feet deeper into the covers. Barrett never minded his cold toes.
“The goshawk camera sits just off Gemma’s property. But it points more north, so if the fog’s too dense, we won’t see them.” Barrett started the video, cracked open a wide yawn. “You sure you wanna sit here for hours and do this?”
“Yes.” Ambrose grabbed his phone from the bedside table and pulled up the natural history podcast he’d just found. “There’s no sound on these videos, so I thought we could at least listen while we’re watching.”
