Death to Blonds

Clint woke up--in his own bed--with the feeling of pressure in his head and across his chest. And then he realized he was awake because there was pressure down further too. His cock was being fisted and slowly worked. The pressure on his chest went away when he realized it was a chocolate-brown, brawny arm that was weighing him down. He pushed it off him with a mutter of "Oh fuck." The pressure in his head, he knew, wasn't going to start going away until he got to the medicine cabinet in his bathroom. The fisting of his cock he tolerated until he got his bearings better. He was rather enjoying that particular pressure. He turned his head. The beefy black guy in bed beside him had his eyes open and turned toward him. They had a questioning look in them. Clint didn't have any difficulty deciding what the guy wanted.

Clint didn't have the foggiest notion who this guy was. He could guess, though, what he had been doing in his bed, although fuck knew how he'd gotten there.

"Has anyone ever told you you look like--?"

"Oh, fuck fuck," Clint growled, not letting that sentence finish. He rolled away from the black guy and stumbled out of bed and to his bathroom. Sun was streaming through the gauzy curtains of his bedroom window and he could hear the street noise coming up from below the window. He'd lived better than this when he'd been with Brad and he could live better than this now if he wanted to--he was a regular million-dollar-baby. But going back to the way he'd been living before he'd won, and then lost, Brad was part of his punishment of himself for being alive when so many others, including Brad, were dead. So, what he had here was a main living room with kitchen L on the third floor above a neighborhood grocery closet and a bedroom small enough that it only took him three steps to reach his bathroom.

Once in the bathroom and having turned the lock on the door, he took a quick piss, flipped the top off a Listerine bottle, poured a slug into a glass, and swished it around in his mouth to try to get rid of the sour taste. The he leaned over the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. How the black guy out there could come up with him looking like any kind of movie star in this condition was beyond Clint. He did sort of like the swarthy look of the day's growth of beard, though, and thought maybe he'd keep that for a while. It would be classier if it was darker, of course, but he was cursed with being a natural California blond.

He reached for the bottle of Tylenol--what had he been doing that had him hung over like this?--and then reached over and turned on the shower to let the water heat up while he brushed his teeth in another effort to get rid of whatever that taste was in his mouth. It was a slightly musky taste, and that told him maybe he didn't want to dwell on what he'd been swilling around in there.

The door rattled and there was a knock on the door.

"You takin' a shower in there?"

"That or someone turned on Niagara Falls," Clint called through the door.

"You let me in and I'll shower with you. Show you more of what I can do inside you."

"I'll bet. I'll just be a minute. Meantime maybe you can find the front door."

"Ah, come on man. You were hot for it earlier. God, you were a good fuck. And, come on, let me in. I gotta take a piss."

"I'll be just a minute." Clint groaned. He wondered how many times they'd done it without him remembering any of it. The guy was a chunk; he didn't mind doing it with him. He just would have liked to have been there for it.

And he wasn't much more than a minute. As he came out of the door, holding a towel around his waist, the black guy, standing a good foot taller than Clint and a whole lot beefier, grabbed for the towel and whipped it off the smaller man. He pulled Clint close with one arm around his waist and reached for Clint's cock and held both Clint's and his together in his fist.

"Shit, you have a body to die for," the black guy muttered. "Come on into the shower."

"I've just showered and you said you needed to piss," Clint answered, but he gave no resistance when he was pulled into the shower, the water was turned on, and he was pushed up against the back wall, facing the black hulk, with the guy pressed against him.

"I'm gonna be good to you again," the black guy growled as he palmed and spread Clint's buttocks; raised Clint's feet off the wet floor tiles, sliding Clint's back up the soapy tiles of the back wall; and settled Clint's channel on his cock. The cock was as beefy as the rest of him, and yet he slid right up into Clint as if he'd already reamed the space he needed. And, of course he had.

Good to me again, Clint thought as he sucked in his breath, lost now to the possessing cock as he always was when one slid inside him, especially when it was this thick. Wonder how many times he's already been good to me? And I don't even know who the fuck he is and what he's doing here.

He did, though, know what the black guy was doing here right at the moment. And he was doing it very well. Clint hooked his ankles around the small of the black guy's back, took the guy's head in his hands, and pressed their foreheads together, his not throbbing as much now as when he got out of the bed, thanks both to the Tylenol and the attention his body had transferred to his channel. Resigned to what came next, he established and maintained eye contact with his master. That's want Clint wanted when he got into this position--to be mastered.

"Oh, shit, yes. Fuck, fuck. Deep in. Oh, fuck, yessss."

The eye contact told Clint the guy was really, really enjoying being inside him. This was about as good as it got. The pumping stopped and the guy was trembling slightly. So was Clint. Then a long slide out. And in. And out. Clint began to pant.

"Now, dammit," he hissed through clenched teeth.

"Got chu now. You're all mine now," the black dude growled, slammed deep, and jerked twice as he filled up the head of his condom.

Clint started to lower his legs, but the black dude growled, "No, don't. Jus' gimme a minute or two. I do doubles."

"Oh, God," Clint whispered.

Afterward Clint left the guy finishing his own shower and went into the bedroom. He picked his towel up from the floor, dried himself off, and then pulled on fresh briefs from a bureau drawer and a pair of jeans. As he pulled on the jeans he looked down at the floor next to the bed and saw the three spent condoms, thick as slugs from the wad of cum inside them. God, he hadn't remembered that. If those fucks had been anything like what the guy had done in the shower . . . Why couldn't he remember? He shook his head, zipped up the jeans, and padded out to the living area.

Guess he'll expect a breakfast for his efforts, Clint thought as he moved into the kitchen area and opened the refrigerator. Not knowing what they'd done earlier, he'd been prepared to send the guy on his way--in fact, he'd already tried that. But after knowing now what the guy could do, the dude at least deserved breakfast.

He took a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator, extracted three, put them in a bowl, and returned the carton to the shelf. He scrounged around in the refrigerator and came up with some cheese and butter, a carton of milk, and mushroom slices. He'd make them an omelet. He was going over in his mind how to get that done as he started the coffee going.

Swinging up from under the counter with a frying pan, his attention was arrested by the black guy standing in the bedroom door, leaning up against the door frame--posing for him, naked and smiling knowingly. Knowing he was hung and cut and knowing that he had fucked Clint thoroughly, putting some meaning behind that "You're all mine now" comment. Declaring with the open ease of his stance that he had marked territory.

Clint took one look at what was swinging between the guy's legs and remembered how hard and long the guy had taken him in the shower, the second time harder than the first, the two of them moving against each other just like long-time lovers. They had wound up sideways in the stall, with Clint's feet leverage off the glass shower stall sliding door and the two pounding against each other to get the black guy as deep inside him as possible in a rapid-fire pumping. And Clint had been impressed at how the guy's muscles bulged in the effort and how much grunting he could do in the process. Near the end, Clint had just collapsed in ejaculation and exhaustion, and the black guy had turned him on his cock, Clint held in front of him like a loose rag doll, his feet and arms dangling, and the black guy had finished him by gripping his waist and slamming him back and forth on his cock. Clint begging for mercy but not wanting any; both of them knowing he didn't.

Three eggs wouldn't do for that performance. He opened the refrigerator again and took out two more. Then he began breaking them against the side of the bowl and letting the contents slip into the bowl while butter sizzled in the frying pan.

"Fixin' somethin' to eat?"

Were all of this guy's brains in his balls? This was the second dumb question he'd asked, and the guy was the silent type. He hadn't said much else other than that. But he cocked so well, Clint would be forgiving.

"Breakfast. I figured we both could use that before we both shoved off--in our separate directions." The guy was good. Well, better than good. But he wasn't anything permanent. Clint wasn't taking any of this "You're mine now" crap.

"Breakfast? It's three in the afternoon. But, yeah, I could use some grub. After that, it's back in the bedroom. I haven't finished balling you good yet. You're one of the best pieces I've ever had."

"Three in the afternoon?" Clint asked, shocked. The sun had been shining, but it came up early this time of year. "What happened to the morning? And why are you even here?"

"I'm here because you wanted to be fucked. Couldn't get enough of me. Blew me as soon as you got in the truck and then begged me to ball you. Didn't have any rubbers on me, so you said we should come here."

"I . . . I don't remember any of that."

"Maybe not--at least fully. You acted like you were on drugs. But you sure remember my cock, I'll bet."

Yeah, Clint did, but only as long ago as the shower. The drugs reference rang a bell, though. He'd been in the back of the limo with the Sicilian guy and his driver. And they'd been using poppers on him while they worked him over good, wanting him to be awake for it.

"Where was this you picked me up?"

"Out on Long Island, next to a cemetery. You were stumbling down the road, just in briefs, with the rest of your clothes under your arm. Don't you remember this?"

"Vaguely. It's coming back. And you stopped for me?"

"Yeah, and you wanted to give a blow job right off. And then you wanted to be fucked, but you kept saying you wanted me to take you home because we needed rubbers. Good thing we did; I don't carry around enough to satisfy you. Listen. You ain't gonna say you didn't want to do this, are you? You ain't sayin' you don't want me to take you back into the bedroom and stuff you good after we eat?"

"It's three in the afternoon. I've got to get to work. You've probably got to get to work too." Then Clint remembered that he'd been told to take the whole day off because they'd worked through the night looking for the body that had been found in the New Jersey landfill.

"Yeah, yeah, I want you to fuck me again after we eat. But then I've got to get to work."

"To work after a couple of hours?--'cause if I get to start fuckin' you again, it ain't gonna be in cut time--and I like to do doubles. What kinda work do you do?"

"I'm a cop. A homicide cop."

If a black guy could blanch, this one did. But Clint didn't see him do it. He was working on getting the omelet set and not burned. When he looked up the guy had already returned to the bedroom, quickly pulled on his jeans, black athletic T, and sneakers, and then, in a silent flash, the door from the living room to the outside hall was hanging open.

Seeing that he was alone, Clint looked down at the five-egg omelet and wondered how he was going to eat all of that himself.

"Shit, he never even gave me a name." And then he thought, because he couldn't bear to say it out loud. I'm such a slut. I blew him and he fucked me who knows how many times and I don't even know who he is. And, fuck, I'm already mad that he's not going to fuck me again after I eat this--or at least try to eat all of this.

* * * *

"Thought you were sleeping this day out."

The first one--practically the only one--Clint saw when he walked into the squad room was Danny Thompson, his most-of-the-time partner and his off-and-on-again lover. Danny was black and a big bruiser, and it wasn't until Clint walked into the squad room that he realized that it had been Danny he'd been associating the black guy in his apartment this morning with. If anyone alive could be said to have marked his territory with Clint, it was Danny. Pairing the black guy in his apartment with Danny, who he closely resembled, had probably been why Clint hadn't been set off by finding a man in his bed when he woke up.

That thought gave Clint some comfort. He'd been berating himself all the time he was eating that five-egg omelet that he'd gotten so loose he'd bring a man home with him even when he was semiconscious. He was familiar enough with murder cases in the gay community to know that this wasn't safe behavior.

The squad lieutenant, Burton Kahn, was in his office too. But then, Kahn always seemed to be on duty. Danny had been returning from a vacation out of town the previous day, so he hadn't been out on the street all night like the rest of them were. So he was at work, while most of the rest from the Special Homicide Unit were off catching up on their sleep. That's what the police squad Clint worked for was called--the Special Homicide Unit. But he was in even a smaller squad of that. The special unit combined Vice cops with Homicide cops because so much of the crime in New York city was sex-based. But Clint and Danny's little unit was more specialized than that. They were assigned to gay male homicides. And to help in the investigations of these--to let the cops go where they needed to go and do what they sometimes needed to do to get the bad guy--all of the guys except for the lieutenant, Burton Kahn, were gay themselves.

Danny and Clint had been lovers for some time, starting shortly after Clint had been assigned to the unit. Danny was the forceful kind. Already knowing Clint was gay and a bottom, he just cornered Clint one day in a room in the tombs and fucked the wadding out of him. Like the guy from earlier today, he'd made it clear he was marking his territory with Clint, making sure all of the other guys in the squad knew that he had. Clint liked it that way, so they'd melded, and the other guys had kept away, some more willingly than others. They'd even commandeered that room in the tombs so that Danny could conveniently relieve Clint's need for sex.

But then along came Brad Roberts from Vice in a combined operation, and Clint was hooked. Brad was handsome and all finesse. He too showed Clint who was boss from the beginning, meeting him in a club in Chelsea, paying the cover, ordering the drinks, and, after paying the tab, just telling Clint they would go back to his place, where he fucked Clint three ways from Sunday on his queen-sized bed, on the thirty-fourth floor in front of a full-wall glass window with a panoramic view of the city.

It turned out that Brad--secretly--was as rich as Clint was, also secretly. The difference being that Brad had great taste and style and knew how to spend his money. Brad was well trained in the martial arts, and he taught so many things to Clint in the short time they were lovers, quite a few of them sexual positions in which Clint was powerless to Brad's invasion. He knew what to do with Clint even better than Danny did.

Clint moved in with Brad, but they were looking for another place they both would consider they'd picked when, during a combined operation trying to trap a gay mobster with murderous appetites, Brad had become a victim. Clint followed the mobster to Europe, relentlessly pursuing him until Brad's death was revenged. But Clint needed more than revenge to assuage the guilt of having lost Brad and having, he thought, permitted him to be lost.

Danny, who had not given Clint up to Brad quietly or willingly, swept back into Clint's life. Wounded and scarred, Clint hadn't given up full control to Danny the second time as he had the first, so their relationship was a bit rocky now. Strangely, it was at its best when Danny sensed Clint was antsy in his sex life and just hunted him down like a warrior and a stag, jumped his bones, and rode him to the ground with his cock.

"I couldn't sleep," Clint said to Danny. "And we've got this case. It was knocked out for a day by the call to search for that witness' body found in Jersey. With a serial like this, a day goes by without work and it could be another life."

"Couldn't sleep? You need some? You want to go down to the tombs? Or we could go to the break room. No one much is here." Danny was giving Clint, sitting across from him, the backs of their desks pushed together, an intense look. The "some" he was referring to was a fucking, and Clint understood it to be. Danny knew that Clint was a satyriasist, a guy who needed sex almost constantly, and Danny was more than happy to oblige.

"No, I just need to get into some work."

Danny gave him an even closer stare. If Clint was out canvassing the city over the previous day and a half, he would have been a day and a half without getting any. So who had given it to him in the meantime? Clint looked entirely too calm and sleek now not to have been screwed in the last day--and screwed good too. "I called you last night. No one answered."

"When I want sleep I plug in earphones," Clint answered, "listen to waves crashing on the shore. The neighborhood I moved into is too noisy at night without the earphones." He was looking down at papers he was shuffling around on his desk.

Danny didn't like it. If there was a scale for jealousy and possessiveness going up to ten, Danny was like a twelve or thirteen.

"Cruising. You been--?"

"Anything breaking on the Santora case?" Clint broke in.

Danny paused. Clint was being assertive today. So, yeah, he'd been screwed good in the last few hours. But he'd drop that in another couple of hours. Another couple of hours and Danny would be begged to do him. Danny could wait.

"Autopsy should be done. I was just about ready to go to the morgue. You wanna come along."

"Yeah, of course," Clint said, standing up from his desk again.

Dix Santora was a blond stockbroker last seen alive in the Splash bar on 17th Street in Chelsea. The next time he was seen was between two sea containers on the docks below Christopher Street. He'd been beaten to death. He was the third guy found like this in the last five months. It looked like a serial killing case, but there was an irregular length of times between killings, which was a bit odd for a gay male serial. All three were good-looking blonds in their early thirties cruising gay bars for tops. And witnesses were indicating that all three of them liked it a little rough. All three of them certainly had gotten what they got more than a little rough. The first two had been last seen in Christopher Street bars and had had sex before they died. But their bodies had been washed and no fingerprints or DNA had been found. The first two had been beaten badly and the witness hadn't, but the cause of death of all was asphyxiation, possibly by a plastic bag held over their heads while they were being choked. The autopsy on Dix Santora would be determining whether he'd had sex too. The speculation was that perhaps circumstances surrounding the death accounted for why the witness wasn't also beaten; maybe for some reason there hadn't been time for the full routine.

Clint was particularly into this case, as it had been the Splash bar where he'd first hooked up with Brad.

* * * *

"Yes, the same as the others. Anal sex before he died. A bit of swelling, indicating unusual size--that's what determined it was before death. But he was quite active; there's no reason to believe that it wasn't consensual. This time was a rough-sex encounter."

The doctor had raised the sheet so that Clint and Danny could see the victim. He was, as had been reported, quite good looking. And blond. Danny had remarked how similar he looked to Clint--"but not as good looking, of course."

"So, if we get enough leads, you think I could go as bait for an operation on this?"

"Yes, I'm sure you could," Danny answered. "They were all blond lookers of about your age, so appearance might be part of the MO. But you know how I feel--"

"It's part of the job, Danny. It's a big reason they put gay guys in the squad."

Danny didn't say anything. They were both thinking of Brad Roberts. That's what he was doing when he was murdered--by sexual assault. He was being bait in an operation--an operation that didn't get help to him before he was murdered and the killer had vanished. The kicker is that he had gotten ahead of his backup--fatally ahead. And it was exactly Clint's propensity to do the same that had Danny on his tail about participating in such operations. It turned out that the killer of Brad wasn't who they fingered for the murders, but that's who Clint went after, and in running him to ground he'd also uncovered--and brought to justice--the real murderer.

"He's got bruise marks on his ankles and wrists," Clint observed as he looked down at the body of Dix Santora. "He had been bound, I take it?"

"Yes, and before he died."

"So, whatever it was, he didn't take it willingly," Danny said.

"Not necessarily," the medical examiner answered. "The bruising elsewhere, as I said, indicated rough sex. Bondage that left marks could have just been part of the package."

"There's a body on the other table. What case is that?" Clint was anxious to change the subject. This was an overworked discussion between Danny and him. Along with being highly jealous and possessive, Danny also was highly protective, and he'd berated Clint for liking rough sex himself regularly. Clint was having none of that. He'd do his job as fully as any of the other detectives--in fact, because he had failed Brad in his own view, he was willing to take more risks. This too was habitually part of their argument on this topic.

"That's Will Trent. From the mobster trial case," the doctor said. "That's the missing witness who was pulled out of the New Jersey landfill yesterday."

"Can we take a look?" Clint asked.

"If you want. I haven't started on him. I will as soon as you are finished here."

The doctor lifted the sheet. Clint audibly sucked in breath and Danny frowned.

"He's blond and good looking and looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties," Danny said. "Not beat up quite so bad, though. Could he maybe be part of our case--maybe just a coincidence he's connected to the mobster case?"

"Or maybe that our case is tied into the mobster case," Clint said under his breath--but both Danny and the doctor heard him, and it was Danny's turn to suck in air this time. "And look, he has bruise marks on his wrists and ankles too."

They stood in silence for a few minutes, processing that similarity between the circumstances of the two corpses.

"Will he be tested for anal sex, Doc?" Danny asked.

"Of course."

"Can you refer your findings to the Special Homicide Unit?"

"Certainly."

* * * *

Clint was drawn to the Splash bar in Chelsea. The reminders today were just too much. Danny had pressed him for a hookup, but Clint said there was a movie he wanted to see--and that he really wanted to be alone this evening. Danny knew that Brad was a touchy subject with Clint and that Brad still existed as a wedge in their relationship, so he didn't press. Clint had already seen the movie, so he was prepared to talk to Danny about it the next day, if Danny asked. And being possessive and a good cop, Danny undoubtedly would work it into the conversation.

Clint didn't really want to be alone. He wanted sex. But he didn't want it from Danny. Danny would be at him again about taking risks and wanting it rough. That's not what he wanted to hear tonight. That would kill the heights of arousal he reached when the sex was dangerous and rough.

No sooner had he settled at the bar of Splash than he was breathing ragged, and hardening up--because he was taking a risk.

The big bruiser was standing at the door of the bar, looking intensely around the place in a sweep that didn't miss a face. Clint had already sensed a couple of guys, either of which was acceptable, circling him, ready to press in.

But the bruiser--the driver from the previous night, the Sicilian's chauffeur and bodyguard and, apparently, gofer--saw him and cut through the crowd to reach him.

"The boss wants you again. The limo's outside."

As soon as Clint had seen the guy at the door of the bar, he realized that he wanted more of what he'd gotten the previous night--from the same guy, the guy this bruiser had called "the boss." He pushed away from the bar, gave an apologetic look in turn to each of the guys who were zeroing in on him--there would be other nights and other opportunities if their paths crossed again--and followed the driver out of the bar.

He was expecting the Sicilian to be in the backseat and that they'd fuck there again, but he wasn't there. They drove for more than an hour.

"I hope I won't just be dumped out somewhere like last--" Clint started to say, striving to strike up some sort of conversation with the silent guy who could at least give some sort of reaction. He'd been interested enough to join in fucking Clint the previous night.

"Shut the fuck up, blondie," the driver growled over his shoulder. "You wanted it rough and you got what you wanted. You're lucky the boss liked what you had to give and wants it again. Otherwise you might have stayed permanently where we dumped you--in a graveyard somewhere."

There wasn't much Clint could say to that. He was hard just at the sound of the driver's growl.

They cruised out of the city and onto Long Island, where the limo stopped in front of tall metal gates in a cushy residential area of large-acreage estates and hilly, forested land. The gates opened for them without the driver getting out of the car. Clint saw two mean-looking guards in camouflage, with machine guns at the rest, on the edge of the drive as they drove in.

The Sicilian's party room was in the basement of a large, Spanish-style house. They entered through a door into the basement in a sunken patio at the side of the house, not directly into the main house. Two more armed guards stood on the walls above the sunken patio. Clint ruminated on how big an army it would take to get at the Sicilian in this compound--and hoped that it would be as easy for him to get out as it was being for him to get in.

At first appearances the room looked like it was a gym. All sorts of fancy equipment that looked like it was for exercising. But Clint quickly could see that the equipment was for sexual pleasure, not for exercising--although some of it looked like it would give the receiver a total workout.

The Sicilian already was there when Clint and the driver arrived. So too was the blond bartender from The Dugout, Greg.

The Sicilian--naked and looking massive, hairy, and dangerous--was carrying a drooping Greg across the floor. Clint had no idea what apparatus Greg had been on, but whichever one it was, it looked like it's use had drained the fight from him. He too was naked. And in this light he looked slightly older than he had in the bar. It wasn't lost on Clint that he looked like he was in his early thirties, that he was blond, and that he was very, very good looking. Clint's detective antennae went rigid. However, so had his cock. This was exactly the sort of danger and risk he'd been looking for when he came out to the bars this evening.

He couldn't help himself. He wanted what he knew was coming.

In the brief moment Clint had stood there, taking the room and its occupants in, the driver had stripped. The Sicilian handed Greg off to the driver. Greg didn't seem to like the transfer and was wiggling around in the driver's arms. The driver manhandled him over to the side of a padded platform, lowered Greg's feet to the floor, and pulled Greg's buttocks into his crotch. Clint saw him lift Greg's body so that his hardening cock went between the blond bartender's thighs. What he saw that was surprising, though, was that the driver brought an arm around and palmed Greg's belly. The transformation was immediate and dramatic. Clint heard Greg moan and lift one arm to encircle the driver's neck. He turned and raised his face and their lips met. He also arched his back and lifted his buttocks. His free hand went to under his ball sack and he was helping the driver position his cock at his hole and pretty much climbed on and swallowed the cock in his channel.

The driver pushed the blond's torso down on the top of the padded platform and, maintaining his palming of Greg's belly, began to pump him. Greg was moaning and docilely taking the cock.

"Erogenous zone. We found the young man's erogenous zone," the Sicilian said in the way of explanation, having noticed Clint's perplexed look. "Do you have an erogenous zone too, Mr. Movie Star? If you do, we'll find it, even if you try to hide it."

"Just about anywhere you want to lay your hands," Clint answered.

The Sicilian laughed. "Have you ever been fucked in a sling?"

"Yes, of course."

Clint had, but he hadn't been fucked often with his legs and arms running up the suspension chains and cuffed tightly while his oppressor used various dildos and graduated-sized beaded and balled strings inside him before fucking him hard.

"The session must be short, I'm sorry to say," the Sicilian said after he'd ejaculated. "Our other guest has agreed to stay the night and I would like another crack at him before Jocko uses him all up. Perhaps you will come for a night soon."

"I can do that, yes," Clint said. "It would be nice I was given a ride back into the city and not just dumped out here, though."

"I have enjoyed you and my special guests get special service," the Sicilian answered. "Like this."

Clint hadn't noticed the Sicilian picking up the metal rod. But he felt it go into his ass, and when the Sicilian turned on the electricity, he screamed and his body lifted off the sling. His come shot straight up out of his erect shaft. The Sicilian laughed.

The driver dropped him off two blocks from his apartment. Clint had given him a false address--but one close enough for him to hobble home. He wanted the ride, but he didn't want the Sicilian to know precisely where he lived.

Once more he was completely satisfied sexually. The Sicilian had done things to him he'd never experienced before--and promised that there was more they could explore. His channel was still tingling from the electric prod. But his ankles and wrists were sore.

Hmm, he thought, as he pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. Bruise marks just like those that were on the bodies of the two men in the morgue.