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  Transcend the pain, my ass. I took a few gasping breaths, hoped Carl hadn't cracked a rib, then sank my teeth into the silk. I almost had it tugged loose. A key rattled in the door. Already?

  “Shit.”

  Amazing how the sound of a key in a lock could be so loud. For a split second, I hated myself for the way I scrambled back down flat on my back on the bed, like a frightened puppy, tired of getting kicked. Then the ache of the awkward movements spread through my ribs and stomach, and the burn of the lash across my chest let me convince myself there was nothing wrong with self-preservation.

  I clamped my lips around the urge to tell him to fuck off, to leave me alone. He wanted me to speak up, wanted to hear my anger. It turned him on. I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction. I didn't even look to watch the bedroom entrance, but stared up at the ceiling as the apartment door opened and footsteps clomped through the entry. Never mind the way my heart raced, pounding against sore ribs from the inside. Never mind the cold sweat. Fuck. I wasn't afraid of the fucker.

  “Paul? Dude, you still here?”

  Brian. Perfect. I kicked at the sheets, trying to hook them and draw them up with my toes. The bed creaked under my shifting weight.

  “I saw Carl's car leave. Just wanted to...Jesus.”

  If I thought I felt sick before, now I didn't think I could speak without hurling.

  “See you're okay,” he finished, his voice low and shaking, skimming the edge of fury.

  I looked away, clamping my teeth down on the sick as he strode across the room and knelt on the bed. He had me loose in a few seconds, and I bolted for the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

  I didn't lock it, though. I should have. He came in as I was still leaning over the toilet, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Paul—”

  “Don't.” I reached and pulled away the torn shirt, tossed it in the trash, and thought about getting up.

  He touched my shoulder, but I slid away, getting to my feet and snatching up a pair of jeans hanging over the edge of the vanity. I didn't bother with underwear. Oh, the irony.

  “He left you tied up!”

  “No shit!” I shouldered past him, grabbing a tank top from the floor to throw over the evidence of what else he'd done to me. “There's a duffle on the shelf in the closet.” I yanked open the dresser drawer and gathered up all the clean underwear and socks, then moved to the next for t-shirts. He had the duffle out by then and tossed it onto the bed for me to fill. I grabbed everything I thought I might need for the next few days, stuffing a few suits haphazardly into a garment bag and shoes and jeans into the duffle.

  “Um...you do realize this is your apartment?” Brian said.

  He was in the bathroom, tossing hair gel and my toothbrush into a toiletry bag, though, and I silently thanked him for understanding. My apartment, maybe. My happy place? Not even close. Not anymore.

  “He'll be back. Sooner or later. And he knows exactly how long he has to stay away for me to forgive him.”

  “Forgive him?” Now Brian stopped helping me pack to stare at me from the bathroom, though the weight of it, he might have been standing over me. “This isn't just rough sex anymore, Paul.”

  My jaw tightened so much it ached, and I had to wiggle it loose before I could speak. “I don't need you to tell me what this is, thank you very much.”

  “It's fucked up is what it is,” he muttered, and I wondered if he thought I couldn't hear him.

  “Asshole.”

  He glanced at me, but thankfully didn't say anything. I didn't exactly need him to tell me I was being a jerk. He just handed me the bag, and I threw it on top of everything else in the duffle, zipped it up, and slung the handle over my shoulder.

  “That everything?”

  A heavy sigh escaped, and I shook my head. “Probably not. Come on.” I hauled my stuff out to the entry and opened the drawer of the hall table. “Fucker!”

  “What?” Brian peered over my shoulder into the empty drawer.

  “He took my wallet.” I slammed the drawer, and the front clattered to the floor under the force of my anger. I'd planned on finding a nice, anonymous hotel where he couldn't find me. Without my credit cards or I.D. on a Saturday night, I didn't have access to my money until I could replace them on Monday. He was probably racking up my bill as I stood there cursing him.

  “Bri?”

  “Yeah. Come on. You can sleep on the couch.” He paused, clapped me on the back, and sighed. “I'm sure Lil will have something to say about it. You ready for that?”

  “Lillian can stuff his fat cock up in his big girl panties and suck it up.”

  “Hey!”

  Brian stepped back, but not before I felt the vibration of his anger in the air. It was a vibe I knew intimately and shied away from.

  “Sorry.” It was a nasty thing to say. “Carl's crap rubs off on me sometimes.”

  “Well, take a fucking hot shower and scrub it off, because Lil takes enough of that from people we don't call friends, and if you piss us off, you can take your chances with the asshole.”

  I nodded. “I'm sorry.”

  “You're my best friend, Paul, and this is a shitty place to be in, but I won't choose you over Lil. Don't make me.”

  “I know. I won't.” The last thing I needed was to piss Brian off. He was helping me, and if he and Lil had gone through some nasty shit, they were solid now. I didn't have to like the guy who'd made Brian's life hell for so long, but I didn't have a right to judge him, either.

  We walked to his car in silence. He had a right to be annoyed, and I wasn't in the mood to make him feel better, even if it was my fault. He lived closer to the bar district than I did, and had to drive around the block a few times before he found a parking spot close enough to his apartment to satisfy him. The quiet had lost most of its strain by the time he killed the engine.

  His hands dropped from the wheel, and he turned a bit to face me. “I get it, you know. How you feel about Lil. All the fights and drinking, and everything else, and I know there was a lot you had to watch me put up with. I know why you don't like my lover. Especially now, with Carl, I get it. But Lil isn't a Carl. There was a lot of shit we went through, a lot of soul searching, and not all of it was constructive, but the search is over. Lil's happy now. We're happy.”

  I nodded. His little speech wasn't meant to rub in my idiocy, or my mistakes in keeping Carl around for so long. He wasn't trying to fuel my anger. It just worked out that way.

  After a minute, when I didn't say anything, he just sighed and got out of the car. I only hesitated a second before following him. Where else was I going to go?

  I wasn't even inside before Lil was there, pulling Brian in the door and wrapping him up in a tight embrace.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  His voice was tight and hard, and I couldn't help but flinch at his unveiled emotion. Demonstrative didn't begin to describe Lil. When he noticed me, the light in his eyes went from fierce to cold, and I instinctively backed against the closed door.

  “Who let him and his issues in here?”

  “Nice to see you, too, pot,” I muttered, angry at myself for how easily I let myself be intimidated by a big man. It never used to be my default, and Lil wasn't even huge. He was tall, sure, willow thin and sculpted, probably strong as an ox, but for all his vices over the years, one thing he'd never done was raise a finger against anyone. I pushed passed them as Lil gently set Brian aside and turned to me.

  “Don't get comfy, sugar. I don't know why you're here, but you can bet your silly, bruised little bottom you are not staying.”

  One probably couldn't die of a tongue lashing, but Lil never got tired trying to flail me. This time, the too-accurate jibe hurt. Damned if I was going to let him know that. I sneered.

  “Lil, please—” Brian put a hand on Lil's arm.

  Lil shook him off. “He's only going to go back, Bri. How many times you gonna save him before you understand? He doesn't want
to be saved.”

  “What would you know about it?” I shot back.

  “I know if you had any balls,” Lil whispered, “you'd have hit him back.”

  “Rich, coming from the guy in the skirt.” I had tossed my garment bag on the couch, and now fumbled with the strap of my duffle. I'd slung it across my chest, and the quick motions of trying to get rid of it reminded me exactly why I was not going back. “I don't need saving. I certainly won't be hiding under your petticoats!”

  “No. Nothing to tie you up with under there.”

  “Guys!” Brian stepped up, finally, shot a look at Lil, who glared, and Brian softened. “People. Please. He left, Lil. Do you get it? He left. Even you have to support that move.”

  Lil's lips tightened to a thin line, but he gave a curt nod. “Fine.” He shifted his weight and the slight lean toward Brian drew his lover a few steps closer, into his orbit. “He can stay, but I don't have to like it.”

  Brian smiled at him, and he softened a little more, touched Brian's cheek, and nodded his acceptance.

  Brian grinned at him, and a white-hot flash of jealously spiked my heart rate up.

  Then Brian was turning to me. “Take your coat off, Paul. I'll see if I can find something to eat.”

  “I'm not hungry.” I did remove my jacket, though, and tossed it on the chair.

  Lil grunted, curled his lip, and stared at it pointedly, arms crossing over his chest. I reached to pick it up again. It wasn't worth listening to him bitch.

  “Well, shit, honey. Don't those bruises go deep.” He stopped my reach by grabbing my wrist. I tried to twist away, but he held tight. He was strong, and damn it if the panic didn't set in and I strained a little harder. “That goes beyond a little chafing, honey.”

  “I am not your honey.” I managed to yank free and grabbed up my coat, hugging it to my chest and feeling like a fool.

  “But he is a nurse, Paul. Let him clean you up.”

  “I don't need—”

  Lil's hand on my wrist, just above the raw, painful skin, stopped me talking. There was not a bit of force, a light touch, only two fingers that gave anger no target. Even his voice was soft when he spoke. Nothing to be afraid of.

  “Let someone be nice to you for a change, honey. I promise it feels way better than this shit.”

  “Someone like you?” But I couldn't muster anything more than petulance, and Lil didn't even rise to that.

  “Someone like a nurse. Why not?”

  “Only if you stop calling me honey.”

  He actually smiled. “Sure thing, sugar. Get on in the bathroom. I have got to get out of this get-up.” He ran a hand down the front of his scrubs. “I won't be a minute.”

  Space. Blessed space, and no one in it but me. I sank onto the stool set in front of a tidy dressing table and mirror. It took a long time to get my breathing calm and my heart rate back to normal. I was tempted to just jump in the shower and let the hot water wash it all away, but a more careful study of the raw skin on my wrists made me think it might be better to let the professional do his thing.

  He knocked before he came in and smiled at me. I recognized the nurse mask he'd put on despite the change into his own clothes. The veneer of polite care kept me calm. And of course, he was right, and letting him wash me up and put ointment and bandages on the bleeding leather burn relaxed the tension some. I didn't even mind the pink leopard print mini skirt so much. He had nice legs.

  “It takes a lot of force to break the skin like this,” he commented at one point.

  It seemed like an obvious comment, so I didn't respond.

  “He's escalating.”

  That made me look up, and I didn't expect the concern I saw in Lil's dark eyes. “Escalating?”

  “I've been on the wrong end of a fist or two in my time, and more than one belonged to an aggressive boyfriend.” He smiled, but it was a short, grim flash of bitter memory. “Who'd love a cross-dressing freak? I took what I could get. They put you in the hospital eventually, Paul. It doesn't get better.”

  “It does if you have Brian.”

  Now his smile was real, dazzling. “Then it does, yeah. Eventually. I didn't believe in him for a long time. People like Carl are easier to believe in, and that's sad.”

  I nodded. You couldn't not believe in Carl and his power to do anything when you saw the way the anger turned him. It was easy to want to believe you'd imagined the wild, the ugly, the terrifying. When he turned soft, when he apologized, that's what I wanted to be real. I couldn't deny the bruises or ignore the blood anymore, though.

  “Guys?” Brian stuck his head in the doorway just as Lil was taping up the last bandage. “You should see this. It's happened again.”

  Lil stiffened, his fingers going still and strong against the pulse on my wrist, but I could feel a tiny tremor run through him.

  “It's all over the news,” Brian went on.

  “Where this time?” Lil's voice had gone flat.

  I couldn't read the expression on his face, but that flat, controlled voice chilled me.

  “Back of Jilly's.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” I knew Jilly's. I'd been there enough times before Carl came along. I might even have met him there.

  “You have to have had your head up your ass not to know,” Lil snapped.

  “Lil.” Brian came in a put a hand on his shoulder. “This is the first time it's even made the news. We know about the others because of Vic.”

  Lil nodded and pinched his lips. He took a deep breath before asking, “Was it anyone we know?”

  “No idea. Family notification and all that. Vic will call.”

  “Who's Vic?” They might have forgotten I was there. Whatever they were talking about, it had turned them in on each other in their own brand of self-protection.

  “Victor Bradley. He's a cop.” Lil patted my wrist lightly and stood, the taffeta under his skirt rustling as he moved to the cabinet to stash away the first aid kit. “My brother Jason was his partner...”

  His shoulders were stiff, straight, held like any sudden movement might break him. Brian watched him with worry.

  “About eight months ago,” Lil's voice only carried because the hard tile surfaces didn't soak it up, “I called Jason. I wanted to talk to him. Would have been the first time in three years I saw him. He'd tossed me out on my ass, and I wanted him to know...” He sighed. “Wanted him to know I was cleaned up. Wanted him to meet Brian.” A little glance at his lover shored him up a bit. “I should have gone to him, but I thought The Anchor would be a safe, neutral space.” His fingers tightened around the sink bowl, and his breath heaved.

  Brian sidled close to him, just touched his fingers, and continued for him. “He was killed before we got there. No idea what happened. Just that we arrived, he wasn't there, and Lil was devastated. I brought him home, and an hour later, Vic shows up at the door, talking about murder. Stabbed seven times and left to bleed to death in an alley behind the club.” He shook his head. “Someone walked away from that alley covered in blood, and they never even had a suspect.”

  Lil shook himself, straightened, and turned. “The cops keep looking, but Victor is convinced they'll never find the guy because they're looking in the wrong place. There have been four murders...five, now, and all of them gay victims. All but Jason, and that was just him being in the wrong place at the wrong time, since he was only at The Anchor to meet me.”

  “So the police are looking for a cop killer, and Vic's convinced this is something else entirely,” Brian added.

  “No one is looking for whoever is luring gay men into filthy allies to die,” Lil said bitterly.

  “Vic is looking.” Brian ran a soothing hand down Lil's back. “He's doing his best.”

  Lil nodded, but his expression wasn't forgiving. “What kind of person does it take?” he wondered. “I was angry for a long time, at everything and everyone, and I don't get it. How much do you have to hate the world to do something like that? Over and over,
like once couldn't possibly be enough?”

  For all he sounded confused, Brian was the one who leaned on him, settling against his lanky form and under Lil's protective arm, and for the first time, I thought maybe I understood Lil: his drinking and his problems, even the skirts. The man knew who he was. It might have been a nightmare for him figuring it out, but now he knew, and I suddenly understood how Brian found that attractive.

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  * * *

  Chapter Three

  * * * *

  Carl sat in his car and brooded. It hadn't taken long for the wail of sirens to split the air and the blue lights of police cars to slice through the darkness. Three cop cars sped past him, and he'd put his head down as though searching in his glove box. Now, he stared ahead, spatters of rain plopping on the windshield, and his thoughts turned to Paul.

  He'll be needing a piss right about now.

  He laughed, loud and hearty, and covered his mouth with his hand. Biting down on the pad to stop the laughter didn't work, so he gave it free rein until tears wet his cheeks. He ought to be getting back to Paul's really, but a ball of spite knotted hard in his gut. Who was he kidding? His relationship with Paul was all but over, yet he couldn't let him go. And if he did, he couldn't stand to let someone else touch him, need him, possess him.

  Rage built inside Carl, and for the first time since he'd allowed himself to act on his violent urges, the need to kill again goaded him. He usually went a while between murders, but tonight something had snapped. A new level had emerged—one that burned through him, bringing whispering voices that told him to take action now while the police were occupied with the last body.

  He thought of Paul pissing the bed and laughed again. Opening the car door, he got out and locked the vehicle, surveying the area for any nosey bastards who might be watching. No one was about, so he walked toward town once again before stopping abruptly beneath a streetlight.