AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When my good friend Zane called to tell me about a new job offer he had, I said yes before he even finished explaining. I’d been in a rut. I worked as a private bodyguard, and before that, I did a short stint as a police officer. I was having trouble figuring out what the fuck I wanted to be doing in my life, so Zane’s offer came at the perfect time.
I packed up my bags and moved to New York City, where his agency was headquartered at.
I spent two years training with him alongside the other guys he had brought in for his new “Elite” division. Zane was one of the best detectives in the business. Learning under him gave me the confidence I needed to take on Tristan’s case. I’d already worked a few others before this (saving a famous actor from an unhinged stalker, protecting a senator after he received some horribly homophobic threats), but Tristan’s case felt like it had the highest stakes yet. If I could keep him safe and solve who the hell was behind these killings, then I could be saving more than just one life.
It wasn’t going to be easy, though. Not at all.
I’d already met with local law enforcement and tried to get everything they had on the case, which amounted to a whole stack of nothing. Next, I went to the FBI, an organization that wasn’t exactly well-known for being open and forthcoming with what they had.
It was another dead end. Frustrating but not case-ending. I would just need to start from scratch. So I compiled a list of the victims first and tried to pull a common thread through them: all of them were gay, not all of them were single, some were women and some were men, and each one was found to have died at exactly midnight from being injected with a rare and complicated mix of deadly chemicals. The victims were then placed in the bathtub with the sink faucet left on. An odd touch that appeared to be some kind of calling card from the killer, but why?
The only solid lead was a phone number we were able to connect to a Grindr account. When Tristan started getting weird vibes from the person on the other side of his yellow and blue chat bubbles, he reached out to Zane, and we were able to link the phone number with the account. Unfortunately, the number was on an untraceable burner phone, so we couldn’t use it to hunt the killer down, but it did give us the ability to go into the account and read through the messages.
Sure enough, all of the past victims were on there, along with many who stopped talking to the killer right before meeting up with them, unknowingly saving their own lives by ghosting the account. It wasn’t easy to read through, knowing that six of these people were now dead because of these very chats, but it was necessary. I went through that account with a fine-toothed comb, analyzing the way the killer spoke, trying to pick out any little details that might help me figure out who was behind this.
I pumped a handful of the coconut shampoo into my palm and soaped up my hair, dipping my head back and letting the water wash it all away, warm beads dropping down my back and easing some of the sore muscles in my back after this morning’s workout. I could hear Tristan walking past the bathroom, laughing at some dumb video he had pulled up on his phone.
When I’d taken this case, I hadn’t prepared myself to meet a man with a golden smile and a charming wit, two things that I was very attracted to. It absolutely didn’t hurt that Tristan had plenty of other qualities that I was attracted to: his big hands, his perfect teeth, his nice lips, his sexy legs, his suckable toes, his—
Fuck. Thinking of my charge just outside the bathroom door made my cock twitch. I ran a soapy hand over my hardening length.
Tristan was the kind of guy I stayed away from, only because he was the kind of guy I knew could destroy me if I let him. And I didn’t letanyoneclose enough to wield that kind of power over me. That’s why I liked having a handful of no-strings-attached hookups I could reach out to whenever I needed to blow off some steam. Keeping my dick separate from my emotions made my life easy. I’d seen firsthand what kind of trauma and pain a relationship gone wrong could inflict, so I decided at a pretty young age that I never wanted one to begin with.
I shook off the chill that climbed up my spine, battling with the warmth of the water. I continued to fist my now fully stiff cock. I squeezed around the head, slowly traveling down to the base, imagining my hand as Tristan’s instead. I shut my eyes and leaned against the wall, opening my legs, my grip getting tighter. I couldn’t let him close, so I had to make sure I wasn’t a horny mess the second I stepped out of the bathroom.
I had to let go. I had to empty my balls. I palmed them as they pulled up toward my body. A low sigh escaped my lips as I picked up the pace, jerking off faster, feeling my core tighten as my release came rushing toward me.
I bit my lip and blew, come shooting out onto the glass screen, mixing with the water and sliding down into the shower. I sucked in a deep breath, my body shivering from the momentary blast of pleasure and endorphins.
There. Now I could look Tristan in the eye and not worry about lust turning me feral.
At least for the next few hours.
I finished washing up, my still-swollen cock dripping as I stepped out of the shower. I grabbed my towel from off the wall and ran it up and down my body. Tristan’s bathroom wasn’t exactly the most organized and definitely needed a good deep cleaning, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. It seemed like he was already wilting under the pressure that came with being the target of a sadistic serial killer, along with whatever else he had going on in his life, and I didn’t want to add on to that in the slightest. My job here was to protect Tristan and to figure out the identity of this Midnight Chemist. Nothing more and nothing less.
But… well, I could at least wash the sink and toilet while I was in here. I crouched down and dug through the half-empty bottles of cleaning supplies he kept under his sink. I grabbed the Lysol and a scrub and got to work.
After about thirty minutes, Tristan’s bathroom looked brand-new. It smelled like lemon Pledge and bleach. I pushed open the small window that was above the toilet to let in some fresh air.
This may not have been part of my job description, and I typically hated having to get on my hands and knees to clean behind a toilet, but I had to admit it felt good knowing I’d helped him out a bit. There was something about Tristan that made me want to see him smile twenty-four seven. I’d realized it pretty quickly after meeting him. It was the way an entire room seemed to light up when he flashed those pearly whites. That smile should never be tamped down.
I finished getting dressed, putting on a black tank top and gray basketball shorts. My hair was no longer wet, allowing me to mess it up a bit.
Outside, I could hear Tristan watching TV in the living room. He greeted me from the couch, lying down with his feet on a pillow and his focus turning back to his phone.
“I thought you drowned in there for a second,” he said, his eyes floating back to me and lingering for a moment.
“I’d make a pretty shitty bodyguard if I drowned in your shower. Just staring up at the shower-head with my mouth open.”
Tristan chuckled. “Turkeys do that, you know. They’ll look up at the rain with their beaks open and end up swallowing too much.”
“Good thing I’m not a dumb bird, then.” I went over to the love seat and plopped down. “I was just cleaning up in there.”
Tristan shot up on the couch, nearly dropping his phone. “What? Seriously?”
I nodded and looked at the television, trying to keep my smile down. He looked so surprised. I kind of liked throwing him off like that.
“Oh, that’s so embarrassing,” he said, standing up and walking down the hall to the bathroom. He came back, looking shocked, his hands in the pocket of his khaki shorts. A silver bracelet glittered on his wrist, matching the silver necklace that peeked out from the collar of his shirt.
