Page 11 of The Devil's Embrace

“But I upset you.”

“Yes.” It hadn’t been a question, but he answered anyway.

“And why is that?”

“Could you…” He inhaled through his nose and exhaled slowly out his mouth. “Could you remove your hand first?”

Aodhan pulled away and took a pointed step back. “Apologies, Detective.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, mostly because of his swift reaction to the doctor. It’d been a long time since Cal had been physically attracted to someone.

There’d been that one person during the incident, brief and going nowhere. After the incident, all of his attention had gone into proving himself at the Academy. The three years since graduation had been no different. Because of his record, he’d always have something to prove.

He couldn’t even be mad about it. Even if it’d been an accident, he’d still cost someone their future.

It was only right that he pay the price for that.

“Will you explain what it is I said that upset you now?” Aodhan was watching him closely, and then observed, “You blush a lot, did you know that, Detective?”

“No, because typically that isn’t the case.”

“So you’re implying I’m the cause?”

“No, that’s—” Shit. Calix squeezed his eyes shut and then tried again. “I got upset because it sounded like you were dismissing me.” He recalled how they’d gotten here in the first place. “Since you were at the reunion—”

“Where I found you in the midst of getting raped?”

“Yes, well—” He froze. “Wait. No. No, that’s not…”

“Don’t worry,” Aodhan reassured. “Whatever your reasoning, I won’t tell the police you lied. They can’t do anything without your permission anyway.” Something interesting flickered in his pink eyes, but Cal couldn’t place it. “Is it because you know your attacker? Are you trying to protect him?”

“You know why I don’t want to say anything.” Cal stared him down, but when the other man didn’t waver, doubts started to creep in. “…Don’t you?”

“How would I know that?”

“You were at the reunion,” he repeated. “Everyone knows what happened to me at that school.”

“Oh, I wasn’t a student of Gradient High. I was there last night for someone else.”

Calix almost didn’t want to believe him. “How old are you?”

“We’re the same age,” Aodhan said, smiling when Cal gave him a funny look. “I pulled up your medical chart, Detective. I had to in order to treat you. If what you’re really curious about is how I seem not to know what horrible crime you could have committed as a child that would lead to you deserving to be raped, there’s a simple explanation for that.”

“Could you stop throwing that word around so cavalierly?”

“Why? It’s what was done to you. Do you feel pity for the victims you have to seek out justice for whenever you’re handed a sexual assault case? Is that it? You pity them, so naturally you assume that’s what I’m doing with you now, and you’re moreembarrassed because of it? Does that emasculate you, Detective? The fact that another man—”

“Stop,” his voice firmed, taking on an edge of authority. He typically only used that tone when he was interrogating someone, only able to call on that part of himself when he was deep into work mode, but it slipped out of him now, along with a twist of indignation he wasn’t aware he was even capable of feeling. “It’s got nothing to do with the person’s gender. Or even the act itself, for that matter.”

“No?”

“No,” he snapped. “And if you knew the story, you wouldn’t be so clueless.”

“So fill me in.” Aodan leaned back against the counter that lined the wall on that side of the room, crossing his arms as though they were about to have a casual conversation and weren’t discussing something as atrocious as rape and assault and battery.

“You want me to tell a complete stranger all about the worst moment of my life?” Calix asked incredulously.

Aodhan shrugged. “I’ve already seen you naked and…in a compromised position. I’d hardly call us strangers at this point.”

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