Secret Men: a Hunter Dane Investigation (Hunt&Cam4Ever Book 6) Read online

  Secret Men

  Hunt&Cam4Ever Book 6

  Adira August

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 Adira August

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only.

  for

  Suzan Brooking

  with my since thanks

  The Players:

  DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT HUNTER DANE:

  Homicide Detective. Mid-thirties. Tall, dark, part-Hopi, brilliant gamesman, analytical. Head of a special unit handling cases involving the rich, famous or politically-sensitive.

  Bisexual Switch: m/f Dom - m/m sub

  CAMDEN CAULFIELD SNOW:

  Seven-time Olympic Winter Games medal winner. Mid-twenties. Blond, powerful, millionaire, driven. Forced from competition. Has worked with Hunter on homicides as internet research specialist.

  Gay: Called the “Full-Metal Dom” at the BDSM club where he allows no safewords.

  THE SERIES:

  On His Knees

  Matchstick Men

  Dancing Men

  Snowed In

  Psychic Men

  Secret Men

  Three may keep a secret,

  if two of them are dead.

  Poor Richard's Almanac

  Friday, May 26th, 2017

  The Farmhouse

  Jimmy Dobbs dragged Frannie Gardia through the student parking lot to the field and the old railroad ditch, beyond. They hurried in case some teacher came out looking for kids getting high in their cars. But once he and Frannie were in the eight-foot deep railroad cut, they’d be hidden from view. All anyone would see beyond the lot were the skeletal limbs of ancient apple trees against the darkening red sky.

  Jimmy helped Frannie down the embankment where he stopped to feel her up. But when he pushed her against the prickly wall of dirt and weeds, she pushed back.

  “I don’t wanna do it here,” she whispered.

  “We’re not. We’re waiting for it to get dark.” He moved in again, pulling up her shiny polyester skirt to get at her pantyhose.

  “No!” She hissed, shoving her skirt down. “You want us to have sex the very first time in the Ditch? With the disgusto used rubbers and beer cans?”

  Jimmy Dobbs was willing to have sex on the tracks, in the dying trees or under a parked car if he could finally get his perma-boner into Frannie’s plump little twat. But she’d been adamant. Even his car fell below minimum romance standard, being as how it was her first time and she was not a slut.

  Everybody Jimmy knew was fucking—or said they were—going on about girls scratching their backs and screaming when they came. Undauntable in his quest for warm, wet pussy—and Frannie’s got very, very warm and slick when he fingered her—Jimmy had formulated a plan for this very night. A plan that ended with Frannie Gardia screaming his name.

  It was Junior Prom. That was romantic. He had condoms. He had advice from a sex site. He had lube stuff he bought at Walmart. He whacked off in the lav just before he took Frannie out the backdoor of the gym, so he wouldn’t come too fast.

  And he had the Farmhouse. Or at least the utility porch on the back.

  Growing up, the borders of Jimmie’s world were landmarked. The Store—mostly candy, cell phones, lotto tickets and cigarettes—was on the corner of two streets you didn’t cross. Along with the Store, the Park, the Cemetery and the Ditch were the adult-defined boundaries of Jimmy’s childhood.

  The Orchard and the Farmhouse were just barely outside the lines drawn by streets and an abandoned railroad track. On a tree-lined avenue of post World War Two ranch homes sat the old clapboard house a hundred feet from the curb.

  Behind the Farmhouse was its Orchard—dead and dying. They were both seriously and irresistibly haunted.

  Parents acted like they didn’t believe the Farmhouse was haunted, but they did. They said the kids shouldn’t go there because it was dangerous with broken glass and loose boards. But the surety the neighborhood felt that something evil resided in the Farmhouse had kept even the rock throwers away.

  The windows were intact. The doors were locked. No one knew if boards inside were loose or not.

  The property had been abandoned when Jimmy’s parents were his age. Since the last murder victim was found. His own mother remembered seeing the police leave for the last time, pulling the door shut behind themselves, making sure all was secured.

  The doors had never opened again. Everyone knew that.

  Jimmy remembered August evenings when he was nine, sneaking along the Ditch with his friends. August rated prime surveillance time because the sun set so early they could be out until after dark. The weeds were tall and thick by summer’s end, providing good cover. When they crawled up over the edge and wriggled in amongst thistle and feathery Medusahead, they were well-concealed from whatever thing possessed the abandoned house.

  Then they waited. When the sun threw last rays from the west, they could see straight through from the window in the front door to the window in the back door. And once in a while—a very long while—the Spectre would appear, backlit, moving. It was no ghost that the light went through, it was solid and black as a hole to hell.

  It was a demon.

  Jimmy never could describe it better because they were five-hundred feet away, but he had seen it. He was dead sure.

  He was thirteen when he realized the Spectre was likely some high school kid who spotted them in the weeds and snuck around to walk by the kitchen door window on the utility porch. He was almost seventeen when he realized the Farmhouse utility porch was the perfect private spot to get into Frannie Gardia’s pants.

  It was enclosed and empty and no one else would get near it. And since Frannie’s family had only moved to the neighborhood a few years before, she only had a vague notion that little kids said the Farmhouse was haunted.

  Jimmy wasn’t nine anymore. He didn’t believe in the things he still thrilled to in movies and TV shows. He made a Plan.

  On the day of the Junior Prom, before dawn, way before he’d ever gotten up before, he snuck the double sleeping bag and air mattress from the garage. He slung them over his shoulder and hefted a backpack he’d filled after his parents were asleep.

  The gray pre-dawn found Jimmy Dobbs making the familiar trek along the Ditch to create a space so romantic Frannie would finally open her legs.

  SO IT WAS THAT Frannie followed Jimmy on his very last trek along the Ditch. They threaded their way carefully through the trees of the deadfall-littered Orchard because they didn’t dare show a light.

  At the back of the Farmhouse, he led her up the three sagging board steps to the porch. Opening the creaky screen door with a flourish, he bowed her into the twelve-by-twelve foot space and flicked on a small camp lantern.

  “Oh, Jimmy!” she gasped. “It’s beautiful!”

  The open double sleeping bag on top of the queen-sized air mattress looked like a real bed. The silky gold-colored lining shone in the lantern light. He’d swept out the dead leaves with his hands and feet and killed the spiders in the corners.

  “I really wanted it to be special for us,” he told her, almost believing it.

  Two scented candles in glass jars glowed on the kitchen doorsill. He thought they looked really good. But mostly they masked a dank smell that hung about the place
that was more than a little like baby diapers.

  He shut off the harsh lantern light to avoid attracting attention. So close to the floor, with flames so small, he bet the candlelight wouldn’t be visible from the strip of orchard across the Ditch where kids got high and got off.

  He kissed Frannie and lowered her without dropping her to the plushy softness of goose down stuffing. It wasn’t long before her skirt was up, her pantyhose down, her dress unzipped and her bra unhooked.

  She was wet and hot and calling him “darling.” He lined up, held onto the head of his dick the way it said on the sex site he’d consulted, and fed himself into her.

  The expected resistance didn’t materialize. Neither did the expected insta-come. The unexpected wonderfulness of the feeling was so much better than he ever imagined. He knew with absolute certainty that nothing in his life would ever feel better than this. But while it didn’t stop feeling that amazing, after a while Jimmy realized he couldn’t seem to figure out how to shoot.

  He pumped harder. Grunted. Frannie stopped writhing around and calling him “darling.” He pumped faster. And managed to slip out. He poked her in the underside of one plump cheek and ricocheted off to the side.

  She rolled her eyes and looked away. “Away”—as she was on her back—meant straight at the window in the kitchen door. The reflection of the candle flames licked at the dirty glass.

  Something moved inside. Frannie blinked. But Jimmy had his thing in her again and was kissing her. She closed her eyes, determined to make her first time a romantic encounter she’d tell her granddaughter about someday. She ignored the feeling that Jimmy’s thing was smaller and the toilet smell seemed stronger and candlelight made smudges on old windows looked like moving things.

  She pulled at Jimmy’s shoulders and tilted her hips. He slid into her more and made a strangled noise that Frannie felt in her pussy. Her vagina spasmed.

  Jimmy moaned Oh, God. Ripped his mouth away from her mouth. He shouted Oh, fuck! and gave a hard jerk.

  Frannie’s eyes opened.

  A fleshless white face grinned at her from the window.

  Jimmy finally heard Frannie scream.

  Words may show a man’s wit

  but actions his meaning.

  Poor Richard's Almanac

  The A-Frame

  Camden Snow paused his attack on the huge white pad fixed to his easel, the charcoal stick a nub in his blackened fingers. He ripped off the sheet, repositioned the easel, and started in again.

  Hunter Dane was naked except for several yards of one-and-a-half inch jute rope. The ends were wrapped tightly in black leather cord to keep them from unravelling. It was more cable than cord—heavy, raw, unfinished, rough-textured. The stiff fibers pricked at Hunter’s skin. Its weight made his arms and back ache.

  Hunt had once remarked on the uncomfortable tedium of posing for Cam. He’d shortly thereafter found himself squatting on a posing dais with a chain around his neck attached to a firmly seated anal hook. After locking Hunt’s handcuffs to an eyebolt between his feet, Cam had driven off.

  It was later Hunter learned Cam had left his car at the end of the driveway. He’d snuck back inside to keep an eye on his sub via his laptop and one of several video cameras in the studio.

  For two hours.

  When he came back he gave Hunt the world’s slowest and most agonizing hand job, accompanied by some rather rude treatment of his testicles until his sub was weeping and begging and quite apologetic.

  When Cam had finally allowed Hunter to come it had been glorious. But Hunter had not complained about posing again.

  This day, it had taken Cam over an hour to pose him. He’d put the rope in Hunter’s left hand to hold, then wrapped and draped the rope up and over the shoulder. He circled Hunts’ neck and criss-crossed his torso, binding his right arm to his side. Running the rope between his legs, Cam tucked it up between Hunter’s scrotum and his thigh, feeding it along his buttcrack, spreading his cheeks.

  Draping Hunter’s right thigh—easily accessible because he’d made Hunt stand with one foot on an orange crate—Cam allowed the coil to drop to the floor.

  Moving around his subject, he adjusted lights and tweaked the thick cable as it crossed Hunter’s torso. He picked up the rope pile and dropped it again. Untangled it and coiled it and fed it slowly to the ground. Bent down and stirred it. Plucked at it. Walked away and eyed it critically.

  Then he’d begun to work, slashing and stroking the huge pad of paper with charcoal and lead. Dragging the easel around, getting Hunt from every angle, he carpeted the floor in white stained with black and gray.

  Hunter bore it. The heat from bright lights that cast the harsh shadows Cam preferred sheened Hunter’s skin and sent rivulets of sweat down his face and chest, sides and back. The rope’s coarse fiber chafed him and the salt burned him.

  Cam stopped and set up video cameras on tripods aimed at Hunt’s strained face. His soaked hair clung to forehead and cheeks.

  Taking a stance in front of Hunter, Cam brought a lube packet from his pocket and emptied it into his hand. Sliding his hand over Hunt’s good, thick cock, he palmed him, wrapping fingers around, spreading the lube.

  “It’s nice and cool, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Cam,” Hunt grunted, focused on holding the pose. He lengthened and thickened. Cam smiled and used both hands, slowly jacking him.

  “Are you suffering?”

  “Yes, Cam,” Hunt replied, because it was true and it made him harder. The thick cable next to his balls seemed to swell and he groaned and his head fell back, mouth open, panting.

  “You’re allowed to move your head and neck but nothing else.” Cam’s hands tightened. “At all. Don’t thrust, don’t pull. I’m going to milk you slow and hard until you come. Your job is?”

  “Don’t move,” came Hunter’s hoarse whisper.

  “Suffer for me,” Cam corrected and Hunter’s slick shaft jerked in his hands.

  Cam slid four fingers between Hunter’s sac and thigh and pressed him against the rope on the other side. He insinuated a finger between swollen testicles and Hunt’s rough cry of pain and need was like a hot mouth on head of Cam’s already throbbing cock.

  “That’s it, sub. That’s what I want. Fuck, that’s good.”

  Cam knew a wet spot bloomed on the worn fabric of his jeans next to his zipper where he’d positioned his dick before he started. But it was nothing to the flood of precum over the fingers wrapped around Hunter’s rock-hard member.

  There were no limits to Hunter’s acceptance of the torments his Dom visited on him, or his desire to give Cam exactly what he wanted. Now, he fought to stay in the moment. Surrendering to an endorphin-induced haze meant he could lose touch with his body, allow his arm to drop or his quivering legs to give way. Or simply feel less.

  His body was awash in bright streams of pain and need that ran and mixed and created feelings more intense but less identifiable—an exquisite tapestry.

  Now Cam used both hands to slow-piston his sub. The need to come built like acid eating Hunt from the inside, spreading through and up and along tight-strung webbing.

  A harsh keening forced its way from his chest with the urgent need to shove his cock into Cam’s grasp harder and faster.

  “I know,” Cam said. “A few thrusts, just a few and all that pressure would be gone. You need it. You need so much to feel it shooting out.” He tightened his grip, but slowed his movements. ”But you aren’t allowed. Head back, now. Open your eyes to the light until I let you come.”

  The intensity of the lamp he’d positioned overhead was bright enough to make Hunt’s eyes water and redden. But it wasn’t bright enough to harm him. Hunter obeyed, head back, eyes open. He blinked and fought to keep them open, yielding himself. And Cam fought his own battle not to throw Hunter to the floor and fuck them both to an explosive release.

  But the artist in him needed Hunter to do this for him. And Hunt was his most compelling this way—tendons stretched
and muscles bunched, hair sweat-soaked and mouth agape. The sounds of his suffering wound Cam tight. His own body rigid with lust and the totality of power.

  And he wondered—as he always did—if there had ever been a man as magnificent as Hunter Dane? His long body elegantly muscled—sheen and shadow, power and surrender, suffering and arousal, all given for Camden Snow, whose love for Hunt was consuming. Unequivocal. Terrifying.

  Hunter was acutely aware of Cam’s hands, the skin toughened by the torque of ski pole handles wielded over mountains of snow and ice. Hunter loved the rough feel, the strength and control. He was vaguely aware Cam had come closer, putting one foot next to Hunt’s on the crate. Hunter knew his Dom, knew precisely the moment Cam decided to make him come.

  Cam’s grip tightened and his strokes lengthened. The edge of his hand connected with Hunt’s body at the base of every stroke. The pace increased slowly, harsh breaths come faster and louder in time with the movements. Pain and need concentrated. The brilliant light faded.

  His hands went numb. He’d drop the rope. He couldn’t stop it he was goingtogoingto…

  “Cam!”

  The thick stream of perfect release from agony and need, longing and helplessness surged through his cock until he was… empty.

  Hunter wondered, as his sight returned, how he had not fallen?

  “It’s okay, Hunter, let go now. Open your hand. … That’s it. You were perfect. So perfect. Good. … Let me get this off.”

  Cam had caught him.

  Cam freed Hunter from the rope, murmuring praise and instruction. Leading Hunt to an old, overstuffed armchair, Cam opened his jeans. He ripped them down, dropped onto the chair and Hunter went to his knees. Hands clamped around Hunt’s wrists, Cam pulled him forward, forcing his forearms into the seat cushion so his sub must use his mouth, alone.