Page 114 of Under Cover
Harding rounded on him, grabbing the cuffs at his side. “You don’t know what this is about?” he asked, some of his fury coming to the fore. “Why, Mr. Cavendish, this is about drugs, and about redneck racists trying to infiltrate the police department, and about unscrupulous suits like you who don’t really care one way or another, capitalizing on ignorance, greed, and addiction. This is about how you are going to spend the rest of your natural life in prison and not learn another fucking thing.”
Cavendish gaped at him, and Harding swung him to the boardroom table where he bent him over to cuff him before he kicked his feet out and read him his rights.
Crosby called the ambulance for McEnany, enjoying every bitter word of recrimination the man made, and Garcia glanced from the dead to the wounded and back up to Crosby.
“You, uh, still hungry after this?”
Crosby grinned at him. “God yeah. You?”
Garcia started laughing then, and Crosby followed, and the rest of the guys picked it up. By the time the bus got there, and the FBI to take their statements and deal with the bodies, SCTF was unofficially done. Just fucking done with the entire affair.
Officially there were statements and reports and fuck all the all, but nobody still standing in that room was going to do another productive thing for at least a week.
Harding told them all so even before the feds arrived.
And then there was breakfast.
And the Walls
Two Months Later
GARCIA LIKEDto brag extensively about how many improvements he’d made to his Nana and Pop-Pop’s house in Queens, but one of the best things he’d done, Crosby could freely admit it, was completely renovate the HVAC system.
This was important because in July, when the heat and the humidity had everybody in the office surly and angry and pissed off, Garcia and Crosby’s house was a gorgeous, serene oasis of cold air, cold beer, and one very large, very cool cat, who had enjoyed his can of tuna that one night and decided never to leave.
That air conditioning was particularly blissful when the sun was high and light was flooding the windows from the skylight Garcia had just installed in the living room, and their heavily shaded bedroom window was cool and breezy, and they were naked, sweaty, and unashamedly fucking each other’s brains out.
Garcia straddled Crosby, his ass milking Crosby’s cock slowly, so slowly, every movement, every gasp and moan, triggering a response in the other person, until they were caught in an exquisite loop of almost painful arousal, their pleasure building and building and building, until Garcia cried out, his head tilted back, his fine muscular body arching even as his ass muscles rippled, squeezing Crosby until he absolutely had to close his eyes.
Climax washed over them both, blasting through their bodies in slow, sensual waves until Garcia gave another little cry and fell forward onto Crosby’s chest, sweat dripping from the little lock of hair that had swung over his squirrel-bright eyes.
Crosby gave a luxurious sigh and embraced him, although they were both wringing wet, and Garcia met his mouth in a long, sloppy kiss that would have ignited another bout of lovemaking if that had been round one, or even round two. But this was their day off, and they’d awakened and showered, and then Judson Crosby had seen Calix Garcia frying bacon in his boxer shorts and a tank top and had been absolutely, positively required to take him back to bed.
Garcia hadn’t objected—just took the bacon off the burner. They’d eaten most of it with toast after round one and had then gone for a quick smoothie after round two. Feeding Crosby had quickly become as important as feeding Garcia—the ulcer was under control and healing slowly, but going without food was still a no-no, even considering all the wonderful endorphins he was releasing with the sex! After the smoothies, Crosby had stood up to wash their dishes in his briefs and nothing else. Garcia stood behind him, kissing his way down Crosby’s spine, pausing to tease the cleft of his ass with absolute intent.
They barely made it to the bedroom, and rounds three and four kind of blurred together until it was now three in the afternoon and Garcia insisted on food.
“Are we done?” Calix asked, his breathing still a little elevated.
“For now,” Crosby said. “I mean, you know, we’re gonna have to do this again after we break another big case.”
Garcia chuckled. This had, indeed, been a celebration.
The day before, after two months of depositions, of lawyers, of filing paperwork, of more lawyers, and of testifying in court, they’d finally wrapped up the last of the Cavendish/McEnany/Beauchamp trial. The Grand Jury had indicted, the lawyers had copped pleas, and the three ringleaders of what was now known as the Sons of the Blood drug ring reallywerein prison for the rest of their lives.
It was a hard win. The body count at the warehouse that night had been pitifully high—an entire neighborhood in Brooklyn had been wiped out, and drug users or not, they’d been sons and husbands and fathers. The drugs that had flooded the streets of that neighborhood suddenly dried up, but the addictions hadn’t, and the resulting crime wave would have overwhelmed Iliana’s precinct if the SCTF hadn’t stepped in to help with screening, recruiting, and emergency hiring over the last two months. The SCTF had been bolstered by their two honest cops from the Twenty Fourth, Doba and Henderson, who had attended FLETC and been full-on instated in Crosby’s absence. Henderson was still better used in research and tracking, but Doba and Henderson had been on some calls together, and Garcia said they were doing okay.
Crosby had gone back to the Forty Third for a month as a flatfoot, to help with training and simple manpower, and while he’d missed working with Garcia and the SCTF for that month, he’d gotten to come home to the house in Queens every night and share his day with Garcia, and that had gotten him through. He started to understand how Harman Blodgett could have learned to care for all the members of Harding’s team just listening to Clint Harding talk as they shared their lives together, although Crosby’s hunger to hear about his team was even greater because he knew them, had fought beside them, had shed blood.
They had a weeklong vacation planned for the beginning of September. Garcia wanted to go to California to try surfing and Disneyland, and Crosby was down with that. But that was in September. Now, in July, they were celebrating the fact that Crosby was walking into the SCTF on Monday morning and they’d get to be partners again.
Crosby had missed it—had missedGarcia—in ways he didn’t think he could miss another person when he’d thought of sharing his life.
But lives turned out differently than planned, and his final conversation with his father had proved that. On his last day of sick leave, two weeks after the showdown at the warehouse, he’d been sitting in his chair, wrapped in a blanket, reading a Tom Clancy novel with the cat on his lap. Garcia had been at work, and he was getting ever so slowly used to the idea that he was no longer under assignment—he coulddothis, with nobody looking over his shoulder, nobody to account to, nobody asking him how he spent his time.
There was no more Creedy. McEnany was in the hospital. The team—well, what they did was dangerous, but nobody was stalking them to actuallykillthem, and they were relatively safe, and he could… he couldbreatheon his own. He’d fielded a call from Toby that morning, and they’d been planning to get together later in the week to compare battle scars, and he’d been looking forward to telling Calix (as he thought of him more and more when they were at home) about the promise to go to Toby’s apartment for dinner.
And just then, in that moment of contentment, his phone rang. It had been his father.
