Page 81 of Three
“Someone gave it to Loretta, then.”
“And she gave one to…him! Fuck!” He grabs my face and gives me a hard, quick, tongueless kiss. “Serena, find links between Malcom Bindy and Loretta Jefferson.” He taps on his bracelet.
“On it,” the AI replies.
“You think they were friends?” My mind is working hard to capture every angle.
“Best friends.”
A few minutes later Serena starts talking, “Loretta Jefferson and Michael Bindy attended the same elementary school, middle school, and high school until they both dropped out at age sixteen. I transferred to your phone pictures of them together from school albums and social media.”
Ramiel grabs the phone from the table and holds it so I’m able to see the screen as well. In the first picture, two small kids are playing in a park. One is definitely Loretta with her blond hair and sweet brown eyes, the other one could be Malcom. In the second, they are older, sitting next to each other on a sofa. She’s reading a book, and Malcom is writing something in a notebook, his head on her lap. Loretta is wearing the best friends bracelet.
“Look!” Ramiel zooms in on Malcom’s wrist where a bracelet almost identical to the one I have is.
I stroke a hand over my face. “So, it’s true. This is all connected to my past. But how?”
He moves away from my lap and starts pacing the room. “How did you get the bracelet?”
“Loretta took her life a year after I was convicted. And a few days later, I received a small package, and inside it was this bracelet and a piece of torn paper that said, ‘I’m sorry.’” I always thought that the pain had been too much for her. It turned her into a different person until she decided to end it.
“She must have sent it to you before committing suicide. Some victims of abuse, especially young ones, take responsibility for what they suffer. They partly blame themselves, especially if the abuser convinces them of their bad behavior. Your cousin was a Catholic priest, and he must have used his position and the whole original sin and moral culpability thing to instigate kids to do his perverted, despicable bidding.”
Ramiel seems to know a lot about victims of abuse. My eyes fall on his burned hand. He said that he did it to himself, just like his own mind turned him numb to protect him. But from what? What happened to him?
“We need to find Malcom and try to understand what’s going on. Why was he on a hit list? And…wait. He recognized you.” Ramiel suddenly stops and looks at me.
“What?” I ask him.
“When we found him, he was scared of you because he recognized you. He was Loretta’s best friend. She must have told him about you. Or he saw you before.” He lifts his phone and starts tapping. “Malcom was an average student. Never attended St. Joseph’s. He lived in a trailer park until he went missing at sixteen. A week after you were arrested.”
“Loretta turned to drugs and prostitution around the same time. I asked my cousin, Opal, to keep an eye on her while I was in. She let me know when Loretta took her life,” I tell him. Did I do everything wrong? If I had done things differently, could I have saved her?
“So maybe Malcom tried to help her and was sucked into that life, or vice versa. And now people are trying to kill him and you. Fuck! I’ve been so obsessed with you, I?—”
I interrupt him, my brain needing a break from all this shocking new information. “You’re obsessed?”
His cheeks turn from pale to crimson red. I fucking love it. Love how his white skin changes color so easily, especially under my hands and mouth. “Is it because I make you feel?”
He must hear the uncertainty in my voice because his tone turns sweet. “My obsession started before that. One look at your bear-self, and I was hooked.”
“It’s mutual, Red. That hot mouth of yours was my undoing, and I’m not only talking about your deep-throating skills.”
Mischievousness enters his eyes, and his lips tip into a crooked smirk. “My boyfriend's chocolaty cock is so delicious.” He licks his lips.
“I’ll give you all the sweetness you want. Want to hear you calling me your boyfriend next time I fuck you.” I let my dark order fire the air between us, and he straddles me once again. “Love to put this look on you. Fucking hate when the twink did it as well.” I start bouncing his ass on my growing dick.
He groans. “I was thinking about you, pretending his hands were yours. Don’t like when other people touch me.”
I growl, the possessive feeling inside me growing. My phone beeps with an incoming text, and Ramiel freezes on my lap. His blissfulexpression drops.
“We need to concentrate on the case, Hunter Bear. I’ll give your big cock a ride it’ll never forget when this is all behind us.” He kisses me and once again leaves my lap—and my throbbing dick.
He can inflame me with a few words and a dirty look. I’m the one obsessed.
I turn to my phone, and see it’s Hector. “I reached out to an ex-con who served time with me. He deals in illegal guns.”
“The ones we saw at Malcom’s had the serial numbers scratched off,” he reminds me with a frown as he takes off my sweats and pulls on his shirt and jeans again—with no panties. He didn’t take a shower, and the idea that he likes my cum inside him fills my balls with more.
