School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,56

about it. “No. We knew he would be when we worked his own case in June. And you’ve been dealing with him for the last two months. If he’d really pissed you off, you would have said something.”

Ellery took a bite and laughed. “This is true. And Henry’s good. He’ll do anything you ask him.”

Jackson frowned. He heard the “but” in there. “And….”

“No, he’s just not you. You have a way of reading my mind, that’s all.”

Jackson couldn’t help it. He preened. “That’s because you’re mine,” he said, puffing his chest out a little. “That’s not Henry’s fault. If he could read your mind like I do, I’d have to kill him.”

Ellery rolled his eyes. “You would not.”

“No, no. I definitely would kill him.” Jackson nodded. “I work for the best criminal defense attorney in the world. He’d totally get me off.”

Ellery laughed at his foolishness and retorted, “I think he just did!”

Jackson slid into bed next to him, only a little surprised to find Ellery had put his boxer briefs back on while Jackson had been doing dishes.

“I texted you the list of people,” Ellery said, taking a bite of ice cream. “You might be surprised at two of the names.”

Jackson looked at his phone and frowned. “Siren Herrera. Well, that makes sense.”

“Yes,” Ellery confirmed. “She’s the ADA. She’d need to know she was working with me.”

“So I need to find out who she told, who her paralegal is, who kicked the case up in the evaluations department. Yeah, we need to know who knew.”

“Yes, and do you see that other name?”

Jackson scanned his phone and raised his eyebrows. “S. Mayer, Bailiff.”

“Yup,” Ellery said. “Think that’s any relation?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jackson murmured. Ellery offered him a bite of ice cream, which he took absently, eyes widening in surprise as the whole cold mass made its way down his throat. “That is a very coincidental name right there.”

“Your nipples just got hard,” Ellery said clinically.

Jackson looked up from his phone. “What? Augh!” Ellery used the spoon to put a tiny dollop of cold ice cream on one of his exposed nipples. “What are you doing?”

Ellery bent his head to Jackson’s chest and looked at him wickedly. “Eating ice cream,” he said before sucking the ice cream off.

“Nungh—”

Thirty minutes earlier, Jackson would have said he was all sexed out and guessed that he and Ellery would have done a little case work and then turned off the light, spooned a little, and gone to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, Ellery slid out of bed to put the ice cream back in the freezer—a little depleted and a little meltier—and Jackson was a sloppy, gooey puddle on the sheets, with a pleasantly sore backside and the happy realization that he was never so glad to be wrong.

IT WOULD have been great if the good sex meant he slept until morning, but even after a doubleheader and a long day, Jackson’s nightmares were still bound to come.

This one started as a memory of that afternoon. Of Ellery recoiling from the sloppy blow to the chin, but also of the blows not stopping. Jackson stood, paralyzed in the way of dreams, helpless as that monster of a man sat on Ellery’s chest and beat him and beat him and beat him; not like a movie beating, but a real beating, with blood pooling from the skin and the sound of crushing bone as his nose gave and—

“Jackson!” Ellery snapped, his voice irritated, calling to him in a way that nothing else could have, penetrating through layers of the dream until Jackson was abruptly lucid.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, rolling over and engulfing Ellery in his arms, pulling him tight while he shivered, keeping Ellery safe and himself warm with Ellery’s whole, healthy body in the night.

“Bad one?” Ellery murmured.

“Paralyzed by love,” Jackson said, shaking, burying his face in Ellery’s neck. “Terrifying.”

“Shh… it’s okay, baby. You can move. I’m okay. Everyone’s okay.”

Jackson nodded, allowing himself to be comforted, but as he closed his eyes, sliding back under, he wasn’t thinking about Ellery or any of the people who made up his family.

He was thinking about Tage Dobrevk, in jail because he couldn’t speak for himself for fear of harm befalling his brother and sister.

Paralyzed by love. A nightmare of the first order.

They had to find a way to fix it.

THE NEXT morning Jackson and Henry met up at the office at 8:00 a.m. and went over their list again. Helped by the info the PD had