Page 17

After the heavy make-out session in the supply closet earlier, Calix was less surprised by the knock on his door this time.

He’d been going over his notes—again—piecing together Rhett’s whereabouts on the nights when the murders had taken place. It was starting to seem like he was a really good suspect, but he’d cooperated with Troya earlier, and the Inspector said there’d been nothing suspicious about his behavior.

Cal knew that didn’t mean anything, but still. Either this orderly really had flown under everyone’s nose all this time, or there was more going on here. All he knew for certain was they had four dead guys, and if they didn’t come up with something concrete soon, he was going to get an earful from his commanding officer.

“Hello, Detective.” Aodhan grinned at him as soon as he opened the door. “Mind if I come in?”

“And if I said I did?”

Aodhan chuckled and then brushed past him, entering the hotel room with confident steps. Like the first time, he set a paper bag on the kitchen table and began fixing them a meal. “I’m guessing you didn’t eat lunch even after we parted ways earlier?”

“That would be a good guess.” Cal ambled over and smiled at the pizza and garlic knots pulled from the bag.

“Brain food,” Aodhan explained.

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” he drawled. “Not very heart-healthy either, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I’m the doctor here, and I say it’s good for you.” Aodhan came around the table and settled his hands on Cal’s waist. “I figured you could use some stress food after what I told you today. Come on, I swear by G’s Red Hot Slice. They’ve got the best pizza in town. Got me through some of the worst double shifts at the hospital.”

“I actually love G’s.” He hadn’t had it in years, but recalling how good the slightly sweet and tangy homemade sauce was with the gooey cheese had his mouth salivating.

“Perfect. Looks like I chose correctly again.” Aodhan glanced at the blank wall across from the couch where Calix had the notes from his tablet projected. “Working hard, Detective?”

“I don’t know why I bother. It’s not like I give a fuck about this job.” Cal went still. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re a doctor who saves lives and cares about people, and I just confessed I don’t. Can we pretend this didn’t happen?”

“I do save people,” he agreed, “and so do you. You don’t have to enjoy doing your job to be good at it.”

“Yeah, well, apparently I’m not that either.” He motioned toward the projections. “It’s been a month, and I still don’t have any answers. The only upside is that there hasn’t been another murder, but that’s also a downside, because it means we won’t be getting any more clues.”

“The killer knows you’re here,” Aodhan surmised. “They’ll lie low until you’re gone.”

“Or jump planet, if they haven’t already.”

“Unless it’s Amory.” He shrugged when Calix scowled. “Do you really like her that much, Detective?”

“It’s not that…” Although he didn’t dislike her. “I told Bruce about it earlier and he had the same reaction. Amory is a hard worker and, unlike me, she’s not only good at her job, she also likes it. I just can’t see her being a murderer.”

“What about me?” Aodhan took a single step closer, his gaze turning intense. “Can you see me being one?”

Cal felt his heart leap in his chest and tried to get it to calm down. Considering the topic of conversation, the last thing he should be experiencing right now was lust, and yet… “You do something odd to me. I can’t put my finger on it, but whenever I’m around you, I feel…”

“We have a similar energy pattern,” Aodhan said, smirking when Calix’s brow furrowed at that. “It doesn’t matter. We can talk about it later. What I’m really saying anyway is that we’re compatible.”

It took him a moment, but then it clicked. “Ah, you mean sexually.”

“We definitely have great sexual chemistry.” The doctor moved closer. “I haven’t stopped thinking about what you felt like gripping my cock since that first night. The way you cried for me and begged…”

“Did I?” Cal couldn’t remember. A lot of the smaller details were admittedly a blur, the pleasure having been so overwhelming and unexpected that he’d blacked out practically everything but the way it’d all felt.

“How’s the mark on your ass, baby?” He tipped his head as if to look, then asked seductively, “Can I see it?”

“Right now?” Calix expected him to laugh it off and say he was kidding, so when that didn’t happen, a rush of arousal flooded through him straight down to his dick.

“Take off your clothes,” Aodhan’s voice dropped low, the order clear and leaving no room for arguing.

Something inside of him snapped at the command, his hands going to remove his white jeans with only a split second’s hesitation. Wordlessly, Cal stripped for him, right there in the middle of the kitchen.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Calix said, even as he tugged his shirt over his head and dropped it to the pile at his feet. “You’re a respectable member of the community, and I’m—”

“You forgetting that party I took you to?” Aodhan asked.

“You said you didn’t go that often.”

“And if I lied?”

Cal considered it. “I already know you’re a liar.”

“Do you?” he didn’t seem worried; he sounded intrigued.

“If I tried to tell the nurses at the hospital that you carved your initial into my ass, there’s no way they’d believe me.”

“Are you trying to say I pretend to be a good person when I’m not one, Cal?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I’m saying there’s more to you than meets the eye. Do you…” He nibbled on his bottom lip nervously and then forced himself to ask, “Do you go to those parties for the…You know?”

“The orgy?” Aodhan grunted. “Can’t even say it?”

“I’ve never…Not with multiple people before.”

“That something you’re interested in?”

“No.” He frowned. “I don’t think so, anyway.”

“Don’t like being shared, or don’t like sharing?”

“This seems to have taken a dangerous direction.”

Aodhan quirked a brow, silently urging him to elaborate.

Calix sighed and ran a hand through his blond hair. “I’m leaving. I’m not sticking around.”

“So you’ve claimed.”

“Talking about whether or not I’m comfortable being shared sounds too…exclusive. Let’s just focus on the present, yeah?”

“You mean,” Aodhan undid the first three buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves, “the present where you were trying to say we shouldn’t be doing this?”

“We shouldn’t.” And yet Calix couldn’t seem to look away from that swath of golden flesh that now peeked from the dress shirt. “Didn’t it disgust you? When I asked you to hurt me?”

“What gave you that impression?” he drawled. “Did you feel that way before or after I slashed you open with a scalpel?” Aodhan rolled his pink eyes and set his hands on his hips. “Cal, you’re insulting us both right now. There’s nothing wrong with craving a little pain in the bedroom, and I don’t mind being the one to give it to you. In fact, I actually insist.”

“You do?” That should terrify him. Calix should stop this and use his head—the one on his shoulders and not between his legs—to assess this whole crazy situation. He was a detective, for gods sake. The last thing he should be doing was partaking in fucked up sexual fantasies wherein someone hurt him. But… “Will you do it again?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask him to make sure to carve the A in deeper this time, but Aodhan gave a single shake of his head before he could, dashing those hopes.

The doctor chuckled. “Don’t look so forlorn, baby. I only mean we won’t be playing that hard tonight. There’s a lot going on for both of us, and I wasn’t supposed to come here. I only did so we could take the edge off, so to speak.”

“What does that even mean?” He couldn’t help the way his spine straightened. “Are you not going to fuck me?”

Aodhan gave a shocked laugh. “You’re cute when you’re dirty and blunt, Detective. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get yours before I leave. And,” he reached down and undid his belt, sliding the leather suggestively through the metal buckle, “I’ll make sure you get it the way you like.”

Cal’s eyes stared at the belt as the doctor wrapped one end around his hand, hating the small prick of disappointment when it was the side the buckle was on.

He didn’t want to be beaten to death or anything like that. Wasn’t keen on the idea of broken bones or any long-term or permanent damage—aside from the occasional discreetly placed scar, of course. But Aodhan was right; he was stressed and feeling anxious over everything that was going on, and Calix could really use a release.

“Something is seriously wrong with me,” he murmured, only to have the doctor snap the belt in the air.

“Nothing is wrong with you, Cal,” he growled, losing some of his patience. “Now, go to the coffee table and bend over. If I have to whip self-acceptance into you, I will, and I’ll enjoy every moment doing it, too. Want to tell me there’s something wrong with me as well?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that.”

Aodhan stared at him with an enigmatic expression and then shook his head. “You’ve got terrible instincts for such a good detective, Detective.”

Cal bristled, but before he could come up with a reply, Aodhan pointed to the living room area.

“Go.” He took a threatening step closer and that, along with the sexy authoritative way he spoke the single command, was enough to get Cal into motion.

Calix stopped at the end of the coffee table, glad he’d left it mostly clear aside from the remote, and then lowered himself until his palms were flat against the smooth, polished surface. From between his parted thighs, he could see Aodhan’s lower half as he approached, and his breath hitched.

“Embarrassed, Cal?” Aodhan asked. “I can see everything from this position. Everything you have to offer. Everything you have to take. You mentioned the nurses earlier? What about you? How do you think Bruce or Troya would react if I told them you’re a natural born sub who likes to ride my cock while I make you bleed for me?”

He winced and squeezed his eyes shut against the image. “They can never know.”

“Why? Worried they’ll judge you the same way Sister Grace used to?”

She’d only caught him the once, when he’d been sixteen and most of the other kids had been asleep. Most, but not all. Cal had gotten up to use the bathroom and overheard Felix and Bella fooling around in one of the stalls in the girls' room.

He’d listened for a bit even though he knew he shouldn’t have. At that age, his experience with sex was limited, and Felix and Bella were both older than him at eighteen. She’d pleaded with him to stop.

Cal, thinking she was being hurt against her will, had barged in there and yanked Felix away.

Only to be told in no uncertain terms by both of them that he was out of line and she was into it. Bella had explained in a rush of jumbled terms and phrases that he’d only partially been able to process what consensual nonconsent was, how some people liked to pretend to be forced to do sexual acts.

Even though he’d been trying to do the right thing, Calix had left them that night feeling like the one who needed to be embarrassed. The next day, using the school computers in the library, he’d searched CNC up.

That’s when the idea was planted. For weeks, all he could think about was the desperate sound of Bella’s voice, how scared she’d seemed.

How it hadn’t been real.

His research had introduced him to other aspects of kink play he hadn’t been aware of, like that some people enjoyed hurting or being hurt during the act. He’d been whipped dozens of times by that point in his life, and he couldn’t fully process how anyone could find that a turn-on. But he was curious enough to want to see if a fresh perspective and a new mindset could allow him to.

At first, it’d been mostly because he’d wanted an escape from the pain of the beatings. The idea of being able to turn that horrible sensation into a pleasurable one had been appealing. He’d stepped out of line more frequently at the orphanage, pretended to be remorseful and forlorn when Sister Grace called him into her office and took out the cane.

It took more than a few attempts, but eventually, Cal figured it out. He thought about the grunts and groans Felix had made in that bathroom, the scared ring in Bella’s voice. He imagined it was Felix behind him instead of Sister Grace, beating him not to hurt him, but to get him ready for what was to come. To get him ready to take his cock.

Calix already knew he didn’t have a preference when it came to gender at that point, so it wasn’t really a shock when it’d been Felix that came to mind and not Bella, though, he’d thought at first he’d like to be the one delivering the punishments instead of the other way around, as a change of pace from reality. That simply just wasn’t the case.

He’d been wrong about something else, too, or, rather, he hadn’t had the foresight to think it all through.

Because the moment he got an erection while Sister Grace was tanning his hide was the moment he made things infinitely worse for himself. Before that, he was merely an unruly youth who needed sorting out. But after?

After he became a sinner.

“Good boys don’t dishonor Light by giving in to morbid appetites,” he repeated the words she’d spoken to him then frowned, recalling where he was and the man he was with. “Did I…mention her before?”

“Troya told me where you grew up,” Aodhan said. “I know the place. Sister Grace still believes in beating religion into those under her charge. Their schools bring them into the hospital now and again, but not often. Medical bills aren’t cheap, and orphans aren’t known to have much coin.”

Cal didn’t know how to reply to that. He wanted to defend her, but logically knew that was programming more than anything else. She’d brought him up, made sure he was clothed and fed when no one else gave two shits about what happened to him. Allowed him to go to school and even made sure he didn’t have to go in rags or covered in filth like some of the other orphans from other locations.

And if she sometimes beat him harder than necessary? If he’d felt wronged, and like the punishment perhaps didn’t fit the crime? So what? No kid, especially a teenager, believed they deserved to be reprimanded.

“Were you into her?” Aodhan asked then, an edge to his voice Cal hadn’t heard before. “Is that where these morbid appetites come from? Some compulsive yearning to be slapped and pushed around by your caretaker?”

He made a face, grossed out by that notion. “Ew, no. She’s three times my age.”

“You don’t like older people?”

“I didn’t have the hots for my forty-year-old guardian at sixteen,” Cal snapped.

“That when you first had your sexual awakening? Cute.” Aodhan moved closer so that Calix could feel the heat from his body, but he didn’t touch him. “Who was it then, if it wasn’t her?”

“Just some other kids. They were older. I caught them.” He blew out a breath. “It’s a dumb story.”

“You’re right, we’ve gotten a bit off track, haven’t we, baby? It’s your fault. You should pay the price for it, don’t you agree?” Aodhan took a single step back, clearly not expecting an actual answer.

The snap of the belt in the air had Calix twitching even before the hit came. He hissed at the sharp sting, adjusting his hands on the table to better secure himself.

“Stay still,” Aodhan ordered, letting the belt fly again, this time with more force than before. He hit the backs of his thighs and then slapped his ass again across both cheeks, not letting up even when Cal’s sounds turned to cries and his entire body shook.