Page 8

Chapter 7

A dler was waiting for Maxim and Gordon outside the door to the morgue, and the smell, which normally upset his sensitive werewolf nose, wasn’t as annoying today. His brain wasn’t really focused on it, rather it kept trying to pick up even the subtlest hint of rose. Even the lack of chairs in the hallway, while it only encouraged Adler’s pacing, was not a huge bother.

I can’t wait to see Gordon smile again , Adler thought. He’d gone for that run last night, which had been good, but the better part had been the shower after, long and hot, and with his imagination making him envision a few scenarios of what he might do to Gordon if the vampire was willing.

The first thing Adler had imagined was how he would start: he would kiss Gordon’s lips raw, claim the vampire’s mouth until there was no mistaking what he wanted to do with Gordon.

In Adler’s shower fantasies, Gordon had allowed all of it, had moaned and trembled, had gone all soft in Adler’s arms. He’d demanded more, then begged for it. The vampire had been aroused in the best way, all needy and wanting Adler. Because it had been a shower fantasy, Adler had imagined taking Gordon standing up against a wall, purple hair tickling his nose. Adler wanted to gently close his teeth around Gordon’s earring and pull, lick, all while he was inside the vampire, rocked in and out of him.

I wonder what he sounds like in ecstasy, Adler thought and licked his lips, his shoes making tiny squeaky noises as he walked up and down the hallway.

Under the shower, Adler had just been getting himself off. It had been a desperate, quick thing, and fuck, it hadn’t been enough.

It’s just the full moon. That’s the problem. I wouldn’t be this horny any other time of the month. And I wouldn’t normally be thinking about this while waiting for an autopsy to start.

Adler once more recalled Gordon’s scent, more potent even than the weed cookies in the vampire’s office. In his memory, the scent grew stronger until Adler realized this wasn’t a memory after all.

He stopped his pacing, turned, a humming wolf noise echoing deep in his chest, not a growl, but almost.

Gordon and Maxim turned the corner, daylight making Gordon’s pixie-purple hair shimmer. Maxim was his usual suave self, but Adler couldn’t have cared less. Gordon gave a shy little smile when he saw Adler. I want to melt like butter when he smiles like that, I want to run my hands all over him, and I want to undress him and lick every inch of his skin and mark his neck with my teeth.

“Good morning, Detective Adler,” Maxim said.

“Hi,” Adler said, cleared his throat, and made himself look away from Gordon and meet Maxim’s eyes to uphold a modicum of manners. “Good morning, Maxim.”

The hunter grinned. “Well, well, well. You certainly look very well rested, detective. Doesn’t he, Gordon?”

Gordon blushed, and Adler thought again how he wanted to dissolve, seeing Gordon like that. If he were in his wolf form, he’d want to show his belly to Gordon, less submission and more...intimacy. That deliciously flushed color, so faint on the vampire’s cheeks, made Adler want to fantasize again, made him plot all the ways to get Gordon to blush and blush and keep on blushing. Adler was beginning to realize roses and purple hair was an aphrodisiac, so long as it came in a Gordon-shaped package. I want to make his skin sweaty and his eyes go wide and wild. I want my scent on him, in him, I want his scent all over me.

“Uhm,” Gordon said. “Yes, I mean, I hope you had a good night.”

Adler nodded. “You too. Paperwork, right? And research, wasn’t it? How was the research? Good?”

Maxim groaned. “Oh, for the sake of all the saintly saints and sullen sinners, I cannot watch this. I will introduce my charming self and my selfless charm to this human expert of death.” Maxim strode off into the morgue, his golden braid running down his back. Before he pushed through the door to the morgue proper, he turned and added, “Do something about this tension. If you need to hide in the gentlemen’s restroom for a few minutes, I shall make excuses.” And in he went.

Adler grumbled. “More than a few fucking minutes.”

Gordon chuckled. “Noted.”

“Oh. Sorry. Wait, I’m not sorry. Just meant that for him, not you. Well, also you. In the event that you ask for it. For more than a few minutes, not the fucking bathroom, because, sweetheart, I will not be fucking you in some bathroom.”

Gordon’s eyebrows rose, and his jaw dropped, which was bad, given that it made Adler want to claim Gordon’s mouth. The wolf was all for that.

“I’m sorry about him,” Gordon said. “And again—noted. So very, very noted.”

Adler could have cried. Howled. He wanted to be anywhere but here, and he wanted to have this man all to himself, no homicide investigation, no crazed killer. Just the two of them with the lights dimmed and nothing to distract them.

To give himself some physical if not mental distance, Adler took a small step back. “No point in being apologetic about Maxim. It wouldn’t do much good.”

Gordon looked at his feet, projecting more of that extremely sexy shyness and something that came close to a sign of submission in werewolves, something that never failed to have an effect on Adler. “I suppose. I just wouldn’t want you to think all of us vampires are like that. Did you know he was apparently trying to set us up, uh. Before. At the bar.”

Adler felt his brows creep up his forehead. “You’re joking.”

Gordon shook his head. “Nope. He just told me in the car. To which he dragged me before noon, I might add. I don’t do mornings, you know. I’m traditionally nocturnal.”

“Good to know.” Adler’s eyes went to the autopsy room. “Maxim and his fucking scheming though.”

That small step Adler had taken vanished to nothing when Gordon came closer. “He schemed, but...I’m not really mad. I’ll only get mad if you botch our first date.”

And fuck, Gordon had the kind of smile that could make a horny werewolf hard, especially so close to the full moon. Adler tried pacing himself, tried controlling his own body. It didn’t do him much good, especially since it involved breathing, and breathing, in his current circumstance, involved breathing in the delicious scent that was Gordon.

“I’ll be good to you, sweetheart, really good. Uhm, so I have a confession to make. I never got your number. That’s why I called Maxim first thing today when I heard the ME was going to do the autopsy,” Adler said. “Maxim said he’d be happy to drag you out of bed. I’m sorry.”

Gordon showed a touch of fang. “Oh. You know, my corpses never did that, wake me before noon. But I will let it slide on account of the fact we are here to see another corpse. And I told Maxim I’m a professional.” Gordon pulled out his phone. “I’ll text you. What’s yours?”

Adler recited his number while pulling out his own device and staring at the screen until he saw the text from Gordon, like a digital peck on the cheek.

Next time you force me to be awake this early, I expect coffee, the vampire had texted.

“I’ve got you,” Adler said.

“And I you.”

“We should go see about saving that medical examiner from Maxim and his selfless charm,” Adler said.

He inhaled Gordon’s scent before turning and holding the door for the vampire, who stepped into the morgue as if it were a spa, a place made to decompress and relax. Adler knew how quiet even seasoned detectives got around the dissection table, but Gordon showed no sign of that. Stupid of me to be surprised. He is a doctor and not some rookie cop. He’s good at this, probably been doing it for decades. It’s still sexy. Then again, he could be brushing his teeth and I’d think it’d be sexy at this time of the month.

“Oh, there’s more guests,” said the ME, Neela Jackson. “Did you tell people I was putting on a show, Adler?”

“They’re just consulting, doc. This is Gordon, erm, Dr. Morris, your counterpart at the Forum.” Gordon nodded to Dr. Jackson, who was already in gloves, gown, and face shield. “Maxim introduced himself I’m sure.”

“Please, Adler,” said the hunter, “I have a reputation, especially among the discerning medical crowd, don’t I, Dr. Jackson?”

Maxim chuckled. Dr. Jackson chuckled right back. Adler got exceedingly worried and wondered what the two of them had talked about while he’d been getting Gordon’s phone number.

“Don’t look shocked. We were just discussing anatomy while we waited for you to...finish.”

Dr. Jackson rolled her eyes while Gordon had stepped up closer to the slab on which the victim lay, completely unfazed by the exchange.

“I hope you don’t mind me being here,” the vampire said, eyes on the corpse.

“Of course not. Observe or assist?”

“Observe,” Gordon said. Then looked at Maxim. “Right?”

The hunter nodded. “Yes, that would be preferable. I’m not signing any forms just because you enjoy digging through the wiggly bits.”

Dr. Jackson nodded. “All righty. Let’s get to it.”

Maxim beamed at her. “That’s appreciated, Dr. Jackson. So would you concur the victim is quite dead?”

“He gets silly like that,” Gordon said to the ME. “Ignore him. Do you have COD?”

Dr. Jackson cocked her head. “Strangulation would be my best guess with the wounds being peri- and postmortem. At least from what I can tell at this stage. There is no doubt about the manner being homicide.” Jackson looked at Gordon. “You agree with COD? I’m aware your senses are more acute.”

Gordon nodded. “I do, but I mostly say that because from the blood pattern at the scene, I don’t think she was alive when she was mutilated. And for the wounds, no surgical training, but book learning. That’s my guess.”

The ME nodded. “But I would bet you, some kind of experience. The cuts are decisive enough for that. See?” She pointed out a cut, and Gordon nodded.

“Or they have done something like cutting up people before,” Maxim said, the joviality gone. “And if not people, small animals. Or they butchered animals. There are so many ways to practice cruelty.”

Gordon nodded. “Possible, but as I told you before, and I’m sure Dr. Jackson agrees, the whys and whos are yours to answer. Our profession deals in observable facts, not conjecture.”

“I like that,” Dr. Jackson said. “I should remind Adler of it more. All right, I think we should get started. Does anyone get squeamish and need to leave now?”

“No,” they all said, though oddly, the doctor’s words made Adler’s wolf take note, made the wilder part inside him want to protect Gordon from sights both cruel and unusual.

He doesn’t need that. And he’s a doctor himself who doesn’t need a wolf to protect him from some blood and...ah, whatever that is.

Regardless, Adler took two steps closer toward Gordon, just to be safe.