“You are so beautiful,” Matty whispered.

Shaw bent forward, a garbled, inarticulate warning trying to come to his lips, but it was too late. It was tetanic, the force of the orgasm tightening every muscle, arching Shaw’s back, curling his toes, and then Matty took Shaw’s dick in his mouth and that, that, that was the entire fucking world, just that wet heat, and Shaw exploded. He was vaguely aware of his hands in Matty’s hair, of rutting, of screaming.

And then it was over, and he was falling back against the couch, struggling to capture air, his hands drifting down from the haystack of Matty’s mussed hair. Matty pulled back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m—” Shaw was crying again, and he put a hand over his eyes because he could feel everything breaking and tumbling apart inside him. “I’m sor—”

Matty was there, perched in his lap, peeling back his hand, kissing him, the taste, kissing him, that taste, kissing him until Shaw stopped crying.

Then, somehow, they were looking eye to eye, and Shaw was surprised to see the fear in Matty’s face. The terror. And Shaw’s mind, even sleepy with the powerful undertow after sex, understood immediately. Matty was wondering if this would end the same way as his first encounter: taken advantage of, rejected, humiliated.

So Shaw wrapped both arms around him and kissed him. He felt the hot dart of heat where Matty’s dick poked his stomach, and he rocked forward, getting them both to their feet.

“Are you—” Matty whispered.

Shaw kissed him and walked him backward, toward the bedroom.

“Shaw, I shouldn’t have—”

Shaw kissed him again; they stumbled, Shaw’s shoulder checked the doorframe, and they both laughed as they spun and staggered and caught their footing.

“I should have asked, I should have—”

They hit the bed, and Shaw found his hands flying all on their own, unbuttoning Matty’s slacks, shoving down his boxers, taking Matty into his hand so that the blond boy moaned and thrust up. With another kiss and a soft laugh, Shaw shoved him down onto the bed and crawled after him.

“Stay,” Shaw whispered as he took Matty in hand again, as the boy groaned, as Matty thrust up and fell back so hard that the whole bed shook. “With me. Right here. All night.”

Matty managed to raise his head. His voice was thick, drunken, as he said, “All night?”

Shaw tightened his grip, and Matty whimpered. “Let’s see if we can set some new world records.”

Chapter 20

The shower upstairs had been running for at least an hour.

Listening to the steady thrum of water, North sat in the corner of the office. A few months ago, he had put the chair there. He had shoved the desk up against the wall, dividing the office—not down the middle, but into two parts: detective and not detective. He had done all this after his license was suspended, after the Marvin Hanson case had been settled, after he was sure Shaw still wanted him coming to work. But shuffling seats and rearranging furniture and putting himself in the corner, those were all just physical things. Precise spatial adjustments that were supposed to reflect where everything stood for North: close but not too close; friends and colleagues but, temporarily, not professional equals. From this distance, North could clock Shaw right in the forehead with a crumpled piece of paper. At exactly this amount of yards and feet and inches, North could watch every smile, hear every hummed note to every bizarrely obscure opera, smell the spiky musk of whatever hipster-boutique-bespoke product was in his hair—and, of course, smell the pot on him too. North could sit where he was and take it all in without giving himself away, without altering where they stood. And knowing where they stood was a matter of life and death, for North, when it came to Shaw.