Speed Dating Read online

  Slowly.

  Dizzy with pleasure and moaning nonstop, at first Dillon didn’t even notice the leisurely pace of the assault that was driving him straight to the brink. His cock shot from semi-erect to Man of Steel in a matter of moments. Between Kaz’s mouth and hand, he thought he might blow his load right there.

  Well, it had been a long, dry stretch between lovers. Far too long.

  Kaz released him briefly. “Careful, love. You don’t want to come too soon. We’ve got all night. Slow down.”

  That right there was enough to momentarily shake Dillon off the summit of Mt. Ecstasy. “Did you just say, ‘slow down’?”

  “Surprised?” Kaz grinned. His tongue flicked a drop of pre-cum from Dillon’s slit, sparking fresh gasps from the human. “You’re different from the others, love. You’re my mate. This first time demands to be savored. You deserve to be savored.”

  He put his words into practice with a lingering lick up the underside of Dillon’s cock, while his blunt nails softly scraped over Dillon’s tender balls. He ended back at the head, his lengthy tongue seeming to coil around the huge knob like a serpent. Dillon rocked back with a roar. “Shit, man, I can’t—”

  He exploded, right into Kaz’s waiting, eager mouth. The shifter swallowed every drop before he licked Dillon clean. His eyes held a feral, ravenous glow that matched the growing flame in Dillon’s breast. Normally after a hard, healthy orgasm Dillon was ready to tip his hat and move on. Not this time. Not tonight. Their gazes locked, and he knew the race was far from over.

  Reluctantly, he eased his spent cock from that glorious, talented mouth. “I need to—”

  “Drawer.” Kaz gestured at the nightstand. Inside, Dillon found a box of fresh condoms and an unopened bottle of lube next to the Gideon’s Bible. “You didn’t think I’d go on a date unprepared, did you?”

  “Wipe the smug off your face. I have some in the car.” He’d taken five minutes away from his investigation to stop at the local pharmacy. Not that he’d been hoping for—make that expecting tonight. But just in case.

  That playful smirk on Kaz’s lips grew even deeper. “You want me. You walked in here planning to have me.”

  “No. But, since you offered…”

  Kaz moved swiftly, caught Dillon and flipped their positions, Dillon on his back on the bed, Kaz on top. Dillon didn’t resist. “Okay,” he agreed. “Me first. Then you.”

  “Switchy, are you? Perfect. That makes for even more fun.” Kaz fished lube and condoms out of the drawer. He unrolled a condom onto his straining, narrow cock. “Lube me up,” he ordered Dillon. “Then I’ll return the favor.”

  Dillon complied, though he got distracted when Kaz started working first one, then two lubed fingers into his hole. “Tight,” Kaz said on a hiss. “It’s been a while for you, yes?”

  “Too long.”

  Kaz’s fingers found his sweet spot, and he moaned and tried to fuck himself on those slender fingers. Kaz eased his hand away and immediately positioned himself for a frontal assault. The head of his cock was poised at Dillon’s entrance.

  Something flashed in Kaz’s eyes. Just for a moment, Dillon tensed. But the look wasn’t hostile. Kaz was dangerous, sure. All shifters were. However, he wasn’t a leopard. Not a born killer with a hatred for humans. Even though he was a spotted cat. Dillon’s spotted cat.

  His mate.

  He saw the signs, Kaz’s sudden trembling, the instinctive bunch of muscles in his limbs. Prelude to the brief explosion of speed. “You promised me slow,” he reminded him.

  “And I’ll keep my promise.” Kaz eased himself into Dillon’s channel. An instant’s pinch, then growing pleasure as they fit together as if they’d been designed for one another. Kaz purred loudly and started to move. “You’re worth it.”

  His strokes were long and smooth, every strike a winner. Dillon ground against him, taking him in as deep as he could go. He could feel the bond between them taking shape, a slender but rock-solid tether that joined their souls even as Kaz’s dick joined their bodies. This was no slap-and-dash in a dingy motel room. Dillon knew those days were now done for him. This was forever.

  Kaz couldn’t hold to the pace, of course. His inner cheetah took over, and he started pounding, fast and hard. Suddenly he was shooting jets of sweet cum into Dillon’s hole. “Oops.” He sounded embarrassed. “That wasn’t supposed to happen yet.”

  “No problem.” Dillon hadn’t come. He hadn’t expected to so soon, not after that spectacular blowjob. But his cock had risen and showed signs of readiness. He sat up and eased Kaz out of him, with a sweet little kiss of forgiveness. Then he slanted for a better angle and turned the kiss into a crushing demand. Kaz turned boneless and melted against him, purring once again.

  “Let me show you how us monkeys do it,” Dillon said.

  They switched positions. Dillon sheathed his cock in a condom and let Kaz lube him up, while he applied a generous helping of lube to that lovely gaping hole. “No need for stretching,” Kaz told him. “Shifter. My body’s built to adjust.”

  “What happened to slow?”

  Kaz growled at him. “You’ve got me going now. No stopping a runaway train.” The growl deepened, and he licked his lips at the sight of Dillon’s cock, easily twice the girth of his own and clearly ready for battle. “Give it to me good. You gorilla, you.”

  “You’re going to get it, all right.” At my speed. Dillon eased inside him. Kaz yipped a little, just for a second. His tunnel was tight but not insurmountable. Dillon set a casual pace of short strokes, easing out and easing in, a little deeper with each return thrust. Kaz’s growl took on an irritated edge.

  “All aboard,” Dillon said with a wicked grin, and put on his own burst of speed.

  Perhaps a bad move, in retrospect. All of a sudden, Kaz came to life, a writhing, clutching and incredibly limber mass of electric sexual hunger. Dillon could barely hang on. He tried to time his thrusts, gave up, and gave Kaz what he clearly wanted—a breakneck, near-brutal pounding. He found a rhythm they both agreed on and, to his surprise, was able to keep it up. The bond between them clicked firmly into place and cemented for all time.

  Even though he was expecting it, his own orgasm took him by surprise. So did Kaz’s second eruption. Dillon hadn’t even gotten the chance to fist Kaz’s cock before it was shooting blasts of cum all over his chest. Kaz made a noise that was barely human and went, well, not completely still. He could never go completely still. His body continued to vibrate, even when Dillon collapsed on top of him.

  Dillon sucked much-needed air into his lungs, too spent to even attempt the kiss he wanted to give his mate. Now he knew what that flash had been in Kaz’s eyes. Pure joy.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Kaz murmured, with a big, goofy grin on his face. His body took one last, hopeful clench around Dillon’s softening dick. “Screw patience. It’s overrated.”

  “There’s no way I can keep that up all the time. I’ll burn out.”

  “You’ll be fine. Once or twice a night won’t kill you.” He laughed at what Dillon imagined to be his own panicked expression. “I’m joking.” His teasing mood faded. “Did you feel it?”

  “The bond? Yes.” It thumped within his breast like a second heartbeat. He gazed into Kaz’s eyes and saw the love there. It sparked a similar flame within him that he knew beyond doubt would only grow. “Looks like we’re stuck with each other. Hope I can keep pace.”

  “If not,” Kaz said, “I’ll wait until you catch up.” He sealed his promise with a tender kiss. Then without even a pause he turned brisk. “Damn, I’m starving. Hope there’s takeout left.”

  ****

  They cleaned each other off in the shower, an episode that quickly turned playful and ended with Dillon pressing Kaz up against the tile and filling him with an unprecedented third load. At this rate, Dillon thought, I’ll be dead in a week. Oh, but what a week it would be. To prolong his lifespan, he distracted them both with the other Chinese platter. Fortunatel
y, the room had a microwave. They dispensed with the chopsticks and used their fingers. Kaz’s tongue—Holy Mother of God. Dillon revised his life expectancy to days, but decided it would definitely be worth it.

  Afterwards, as he dozed with Kaz comfortably cuddled in his arms, he couldn’t help thinking about Coblentz. He’d questioned the staff at the luncheonette. At about the time Kaz made his call and said he spotted a figure by the body, Coblentz had been at a booth by the register, in plain sight, having a cup of coffee.

  ****

  The buzz of his phone jarred Dillon awake. He cracked his eyes open to predawn gloom. Kaz twitched restless limbs and mumbled irritably. Dillon picked up. “Yeah?”

  “Dillon?” Barrows said. “Wherever you are, get over to these coordinates. We’ve got another one.”

  Chapter Six

  Body Number Four turned out to be a whole new chapter. This time, they had clues.

  Dillon moved in carefully, so as not to disturb the crisscross of tracks surrounding the body. All the same kind, pressed deep into the dirt so they couldn’t be missed. Not the pawprints he was expecting, but the twin points of cloven hooves. He covered his nose against the piercing stink that practically drenched the latest corpse. “Not killer sheep again,” he said sardonically.

  “I know,” Barrows murmured. They stopped well back from the body, leaving the medical team and the officers to deal with it. A game ranger, no one Dillon knew, stood close by. “We go from no prints at all to prints, and a smell, all over the place. What’s your judgment?” he asked the ranger.

  “Javelina,” the ranger said, without hesitation. “This fits their temperament. Hair-trigger tempers and they’re not afraid of squat. I’ve seen boars practically gut people. And a sow with young…”

  “Could do that?”

  The ranger swallowed hard. Throughout the investigation he’d kept his eyes studiously averted from the wreck between the corpse’s legs. “I’ve never seen that before, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  “They eat meat?”

  “They eat anything.” The man’s face lost color. “Excuse me.” He hurried away.

  “Guess that answers that.” Barrows glanced over at Dillon. “So why don’t you look happy?”

  “Because I’ve dealt with homicidal herbivores. They’re extremely rare. And now, after three next-to-godliness bodies, suddenly they get careless? This looks like a setup to me. Like someone’s trying really hard to throw us off the track.”

  “Your buddy Kaz?”

  Dillon kept his face expressionless. “It wasn’t him.” It couldn’t have been. They were miles from Dillon’s motel. Kaz couldn’t have slipped out of the room, found a victim, killed him, then returned before daybreak to slide back into Dillon’s embrace, all without waking him. Kaz was fast, but nowhere near that fast. Even he couldn’t have possibly had the energy for it anyway, not after their dance last night.

  Nor had he smelled of sweat and blood. Sweat, yes, and sex, which stirred memories. His dick twitched—Dillon’s larger head made a tiny shake. “I know where he was last night. He has an air-tight alibi.”

  It wasn’t him. He was telling the truth. About everything.

  “He’d better,” Barrows said. “I know this one. His name was Jerald Pullman. He was Avery Ayers’s husband. Victim Number Two.”

  Another gay victim. “It wasn’t a cat. Not if he was run to ground like the others were. Cats stalk and put on a burst of speed. Especially cheetahs. They work in spurts.” Kaz had told him that. “There’s another shifter breed out here. Who knows? Maybe it was a javelina.”

  “Just don’t tell me it’s a cow. I like cows.” Barrows glanced over when Dillon moved forward. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking pictures.” He angled his phone for a better shot, one without a cop in the way. He moved off to the side to take shots of the hoofprints, which led off into the cactus before they abruptly disappeared. Like that wasn’t suspicious.

  “You have access to police evidence, you know.” Dillon went on snapping photos. Barrows grunted and moved away.

  After the body had been loaded up and the cops, Barrows, and the ranger departed, Dillon stayed behind. Nothing remained at the crime scene except some smudges of blood and the cloven tracks and the silence of the early morning desert. Until that silence was disturbed by a low, rumbling growl.

  “I told you to wait in the room,” Dillon said.

  Kaz stalked forward, in his cheetah form. He looked exceedingly grumpy. “I don’t care if you got bored.” Dillon sighed and shook his head. “I’ve got pictures.” He showed the images to Kaz, who pulled back his lips to display full fangs and hissed at the phone. “There were tracks this time, but I don’t believe what they’re telling me. I see you’ve noticed the aroma. Tell me what you think.”

  With an arch huff Kaz trotted over to the spot where the body had lain, and snuffled gingerly around the tracks. Almost immediately he reared back, shaking his head. Bolting back to Dillon’s side, he shifted back to human. His sneeze began in one form and ended in the other. “Gak! That’s vile.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pig urine. Everywhere. If there’s any other scent, I won’t be finding it. And I agree with you, about the tracks. They’re too deep for this hard earth, for one thing. Like they were pressed or ground in, so we wouldn’t miss them.”

  “That’s what I thought. Any chance a pig really did this?”

  “A real one, possibly. They’ve certainly got the inclination. A shifter? Doubtful. They’re not that stupid. Besides, I couldn’t find any evidence of pig shifters in your delightful town. I’ve been investigating.” He beamed proudly at his own initiative. His cock began to swell. “I told you I could be useful.”

  It took a huge effort on Dillon’s part to keep his eyes off that rising cock. “What kind of shifters do we have on tap?”

  Kaz shrugged his entire naked, wiry body. “The usual. Coyotes. A rather grumpy puma. A buffalo who told me to go fuck myself. There were rumors of others, but I couldn’t confirm them. Though I did get the impression I’m not the only exotic shifter in this part of the state. Sadly, those I was able to talk to weren’t forthcoming. I suspect they didn’t know the species.”

  “Let’s try another angle. Who has access to javelina piss? And a fake or real leg with a hoof on it?”

  And who would need to chase their prey long distances to catch it? A drawn-out chase, one long enough to exhaust the victim to the point of death, would take…

  “You’ve got that look in your eye,” Kaz said.

  “Of course,” Dillon answered, even his cock forgotten. “We’ve been coming at this from the wrong direction. It’s not a sprint, or even a marathon. It’s a relay.”

  ****

  Dillon had to give him credit. Drew Coblentz’s expression went from confusion to carefully bland in the space of a pair of eyeblinks. His mouth twitched, as if he were about to add a disarming smile but decided against it. “Mr. Coblentz. Talk to you for a second?”

  The kid peered past him. He seemed somewhat surprised to see Dillon was alone. “Is this about the killings?”

  “It’s related. May I come in?”

  “Sure.” Coblentz stepped aside and threw the front door wide. Dillon resisted the urge to glance back. He’d have to trust that Kaz was there, concealed on the other side of the street. Trust that the cheetah had his back, as he’d promised. Dillon stepped inside.

  His trained eye scanned the interior of the tiny rental unit. Coblentz didn’t appear acquainted with the concepts of dusting or vacuuming. Or laundry, as suggested by all the clothing scattered around. Dozens of empty takeout boxes hinted at his eating habits. “Been here long?” Dillon asked.

  Coblentz cleared pizza boxes off the sofa and gestured for Dillon to sit. Dillon declined. “About four months. Since Game and Fish assigned me. How’d you find me?”

  “Your office gave me the address, along with your shift hours. Mind if we cut to the chase?�
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  Coblentz shrugged. Loose, relaxed. The all-American kid. “Sure. What can I do to help?”

  “What is it you do out there in the desert?”

  Muscles in the kid’s legs went tight. Fight or flight. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” He kept a close watch on the ranger’s eyes. Up close, the flecks of amber in the brown were far more noticeable. “C’mon. That most recent body? Those fake pig tracks didn’t fool anybody. Neither did the piss. But it did get me to thinking. Who’d have access to javelina urine, or a leg with the hoof still attached? Bet it’s not that hard to find when collecting samples from dead animals is part of your job. At least, that’s what they told me at your office.”

  “Well, yeah.” The kid relaxed again. “We collect samples for testing. Make sure no diseases are spreading through the herds. That’s part of the reason I’m out there.”

  “You’ve got a big territory to cover. How do you find one dead pig out in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Heck, that’s easy. Just follow the buzzards.”

  “The buzzards that never led you to four murder victims? You’re out there in the early morning, keeping an eye on the ground and the sky. And you never came across even one out of four? When every killing happened in your assigned patrol area? They told me that at the office, too. One of the bodies sat there for almost two days. Buzzards all over the place. You never noticed that?” He took a step closer. “Unless that was the point. Keep the body from being found too soon. Give someone a chance to clean the site.”

  Coblentz’s upper lip lifted, showing off heavy teeth. “You’re nuts.”

  “No. I’m thorough. I ran a background check on you. Public records, birth announcements, Facebook page. Interesting pics on there. You and your two brothers.”