Love. Love and hate. They were both non-judgmental, weren’t they? Maybe, really, not so very far apart, although he couldn’t quite say. He didn’t think he’d ever really hated anyone, the way some were said to do. Things, surely, he could hate: homophobia, for instance. But to hate another person, it seemed so, he couldn’t think what, so utter. He thought that it must devour you, that kind of hatred, in a way even more utterly than love did. And that, certainly, he knew about.

  Otherwise, why would he be so miserable now—and so addled by it?

  Eleanor Steber sang softly in the background. Dove Sono.

  Where have they gone, the happy hours? Stanley watched the gules of light dancing on the white stone of the hearth, only half listening to her, his senses attuned instead to the sound of a key in the lock. He stiffened slightly when he heard it, but did not immediately look up as the door opened.

  § § § § §

  Tom was not surprised that Stanley was still up when he arrived back at the apartment. Was more surprised, in fact, that the door wasn’t bolted from inside, the way he’d half expected it to be. He was both relieved and sorry. It was human nature, he supposed, to want to avoid, or at least put off, unpleasantness. The accessible door meant that he wasn’t going to be able to put off the upcoming scene. He wanted to, and he didn’t, and he had no idea which prospect he wanted more.

  The scene, at the start at least, was calmer than he would have expected. Stanley generally listened to opera when he was upset, but the fact that he was upset now was hardly big news.

  Tom stood just inside the door, despite all his mental preparations, not sure what exactly he should do, hoping Stanley would provide him a clue.

  102 Victor J. Banis

  After a long moment, Stanley looked up. It was difficult to read his expression. Tom found it wary rather than angry.

  Tom had rehearsed a long scenario of what he wanted to say when he got here, but what he blurted out instead, standing just inside the door, was, “Stanley, I’m sorry as hell. I’m the dumbest shit in the whole world.”

  “I hope you’re not expecting an argument from me on that score,” Stanley said.

  Silence fell. Tom looked away, looked around the room as if he might find some help somewhere, and back to Stanley. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Depends. What exactly do I have to forgive?”

  “The whole damned thing. I shouldn’t have gone with her. I know that. Hell, I knew it at the time, I was just… you know what I’m like when my dick gets stiff.”

  Stanley did know. It had worked in his favor a time or two, in fact. Even when Tom had been protesting, at the beginning of their relationship, that he couldn’t, with Stanley, his dick had been making other plans. King Kong had proven a useful ally in the past but, clearly, the beast wasn’t to be trusted.

  “And now,” Stanley said, “here you are home again, jiggedy jig. I’ll skip the part about the pig.”

  “Yes. Here I am. To stay. If you’ll let me.”

  “Which is to say, you decided to stick with the horse you’ve been riding. All the oats you want to eat and no rent to pay for the stable.”

  “I didn’t fuck her, Stanley. I give you my word.”

  For the first time since Tom had come through the door, Stanley was surprised. Once Tom’s dick got aroused, it generally had its way.

  “Why on earth not?” he blurted out, for all the world as if he were disappointed—and maybe, he thought fleetingly, he was.

  Because if nothing had happened, really happened, what did he have to be sore about? Maybe, in fact, it should be the opposite.

  DEADLY DREAMS 103

  If Tom, as tempted as he so obviously had been, had managed to resist the temptation, well, then…

  “Because I didn’t want to.” Tom sighed and shook his head.

  “No, that’s bullshit. I did want to. I wanted to very badly.”

  “Well, then, why didn’t you?”

  “Because you’ve put some kind of old gypsy curse on me, is why,” he said with an embarrassed laugh. “I was in a clinch with this woman, I’d been thinking since I laid eyes on her of getting her in the sack, of getting into her and… fuck, this is embarrassing…”

  “Please don’t tell me King Kong fell asleep on the job?”

  “No. He was willing, but the rest of me… ah, man, I don’t know.” Tom gave him a rueful smile. “All I could think of was you. How I would rather be here with you, be holding you in my arms. I just gave it up finally, told her I was sorry, and came home. Boy, talk about dick whipped.”

  There was a lengthy silence while Stanley considered this, considered what he should do about the situation. He could have a major hissy fit, which would get him… what? Tom fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, trying not to look too hopeful.

  “Well,” Stanley said thoughtfully, “you could be dick whipped… if you’re so inclined.”

  Tom took that for forgiveness—of a sort, and at the moment, that was all he had hoped for. He came to where Stanley was seated, leaning down. They kissed, gently, as if afraid they might damage something terribly fragile between them. Still, it was a good, a very good kiss, Tom thought. He dropped to his knees beside Stanley and kissed him again, longer, more confidently.

  It was going to be all right. Something blossomed unexpectedly inside his chest. He felt like jumping up and down, shouting, fucking. Especially, fucking.

  “Do you ever pray?” Stanley asked after a moment.

  Tom, his thoughts about as far as they could get from the subject of prayer, almost said, “I’m not the praying type,” and 104 Victor J. Banis

  thought about that fragile peace. He said, cautiously, no more than the tip of a toe in the water, just to try it out, “Yeah.

  Sometimes.”

  “What kind of prayers?”

  Tom considered for a minute, rolling his eyes up at the ceiling. “Lord,” he said, “Cleanse me of these evil lusts, free me from my desire for this man beside me.”

  “Huh?” Stanley reared back, gave him an astonished look.

  Tom ignored that, continued to stare ceiling-ward. “Only, not tonight, Lord, okay? Starting, oh, sometime next year, or maybe the year after. Oof. For a pansy, you’ve got a wicked right.”

  The kiss this time was considerably less fragile, the interruption to the conversation considerably longer. They didn’t make it so far as the bed, just stripped naked before the dwindling fire.

  Tom had given considerable thought, on the way home, of how he would make things up with Stanley. There were things he knew he should do, some of which he was not yet ready for—but there was one thing he had made up his mind that he would do, or at least, give it a try.

  And no time like the present, he told himself, and scooted down, running his tongue over Stanley’s chest, down across his belly, and lower still, till it touched the silky-wiry hair below. He took Stanley’s rock hard dick in his hand, brought his face down to it, and put his lips on the swollen head. Above him, he heard Stanley gasp in excitement and surprise.

  He didn’t know quite what he had expected. Not much, really, having never actually contemplated doing this until an hour or so earlier. Even then, he’d thought it would be repugnant to him, even when he had made up his mind that he was determined to do it.

  The sensation of having something big and hard in his mouth was mostly new to him, though he had the odd image of himself sucking on hard candy when he was a child. This wasn’t so far different from that, really. Not as sweet, but not sour and DEADLY DREAMS 105

  acrid, either, as he’d imagined. It was musky, a little sweat salty, altogether animal. And in fact the taste was less strange to him than he would have expected. It occurred to him that it wasn’t, really, all that different from pussy, a taste he was plenty familiar with, had always much enjoyed.

  The experience wasn’t the same, though. The big difference, the thing he flashed on as he lay there for a long moment, just holding the head in his mouth, is that this was Stanley he was tasting, Stanley in his mouth, Stanley he was experiencing in perhaps the most intimate way it was possible to experience a man.

  Stanley misinterpreted the pause. He put his hand on Tom’s head, ran his fingers lovingly through the dark curls. “Tom, you don’t…”

  Tom, however, didn’t hear the rest of it. He brought his head down quickly, before he had a chance to change his mind, took the full length of Stanley’s cock into his mouth, down his throat. Gagged, drew back slightly for a deep breath, and swallowed it again.

  This time, it stayed down. Tom took a long moment, to get used to it, decided it wasn’t at all repugnant. After a bit, he sort of found himself savoring it—that, no doubt, because it was not just a cock, but Stanley’s cock—and, when he slid slowly upward on it, he could feel Stanley’s pleasure and his excitement, seeming to vibrate right through his rock hard dick.

  That, Stanley’s excitement at having his dick sucked, turned Tom on in a way new to him, taking the greater portion of his pleasure in the pleasure he was clearly giving Stanley.

  Tom held the head between his lips, finding its velvety smoothness pleasurable, and slid back down again. Sucking cock, and to his immense surprise, enjoying it.

  Sucking Stanley’s cock, he quickly amended.

  § § § § §

  All in all, Tom thought it was the best sex he had ever experienced. The giving of head had been a bit of a challenge, especially the part where Stanley had shot off. He’d had to give 106 Victor J. Banis

  up on the idea of taking his load, had let it instead run down his chin and onto Stanley’s belly. Maybe the next time…

  Apart from that, though, the entire session had been the sweetest he’d ever known. Certainly, the emotional part of it, he guessed, the making up part, repairing the damage he knew he had done. Not just that, though. He’d had plenty of hot sex in his life, with women in the past, but he had never before experienced the sweetness of making it with Stanley, hadn’t even known until Stanley that there was anything missing from the act.

  They were lying naked, entwined, savoring the afterglow of fire and good fortune, when Tom said, “I’m sorry about Danna.

  About leaving with her the way I did, skipping out on you. You can’t know how sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You needed something, something you couldn’t get from me. I understand that. In a way, I think it didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “It didn’t, actually. It has nothing to do with the way I feel about you. It’s just… oh, fuck, I don’t know, I’m not good at all the psychology stuff. But, I made you unhappy, and for that, I’m truly sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s okay.”

  Tom raised himself on one elbow to look down into Stanley’s face. “Are you trying to tell me you weren’t unhappy?”

  “No, of course I was unhappy. What I’m trying to tell you, Tom, is that it’s my problem, not yours. Nothing ever goes right all the time. Life doesn’t work that way, for anybody. The ocean’s power isn’t just in the surge of the tide, you know, it’s in the ebb as well. Relationships are the same. It isn’t just the ups, the good times, that make a relationship special. Probably, they’re the least of it.”

  Tom sighed and held him close. “How did I ever get so lucky?” he wondered aloud.

  Stanley thought it tactful not to answer. And in any event, something else had flitted across his mind, come and gone before he’d really spied it, but left a shadow behind. He closed DEADLY DREAMS 107

  his eyes, searching the last few minutes in memory. It came at once, like a faithful friend.

  “What did you call her?”

  “Who? Daniella?”

  “No, you said…”

  “Danna. That’s what her friends call her. So she told me.”

  Stanley found himself thinking back, to Petaluma, to the house, and a book with a name scrawled in it. He closed his eyes again, tried to visualize. Donna, he’d thought at the time—

  but, it might have been Danna.

  Danna—and Andrew?

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Stand up.”

  Tom was seated at the kitchen table, reading the Chronicle.

  He stood obediently, and Stanley tied an apron about him. It matched the one Stanley was wearing, frilly and covered with pink flowers—and little. Tom looked down at it.

  “Baby, this doesn’t even cover my dick.”

  “After last night your dick ought to be sleeping. I’m surprised it hasn’t turned blue.”

  Tom grinned and took Stanley in his arms, kissing him lightly. “I was smokin’, wasn’t I?” He ran his hands down Stanley’s back and squeezed his butt—the sweetest butt, he had decided, in the whole wide world. He was thinking, it would be worth the occasional disagreement if making up was going to be like this—but he also thought it wiser not to say that aloud.

  Stanley gave him a quick peck and stepped back. He took a bowl of eggs and a wire whisk from the kitchen counter, and shoved them at Tom. “Here, make yourself useful.”

  Tom took the bowl, made a face. “What do I do with these?”

  “You whip them up, with that. Not a lot of skill required, just a little muscle.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got the strength.” Tom made a halfhearted swish with the whisk through the eggs.

  Stanley slanted him a look before turning back to the coffee grinder. “I wasn’t the one who kept rolling over in bed.”

  “Rockin’ and rollin’. You didn’t roll away, either.” Tom grinned to himself in self-satisfaction. “You know, I think that was a personal record for me, last night.”

  “Times? Or, what, intensity? Volume?”

  “All of the above. ‘Course, you were no slouch either.”

  110 Victor J. Banis

  Stanley was saved the necessity of a rejoinder by the ring of the doorbell.

  “I’ll get it.” Tom set the bowl of eggs aside with evident relief.

  He found San Francisco Homicide Inspector Bryce at the door. For a second or two, seeing Bryce there, looking downright sheepish, Tom thought of what he had interpreted at his farewell party as a hesitant attempt at flirting, and wondered if Bryce could possibly be so tactless as to pursue that possibility here, at the apartment everyone now knew he shared with Stanley.

  In the next moment, though, he saw that Bryce was not alone. His partner Carlson stood just behind him, looking not so much sheepish as triumphant. Carlson had never liked Tom, and had made it clear he liked him even less when Tom’s relationship with Stanley had become common knowledge.

  “This does not look like a social call,” Tom said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Bryce said. “Can we come in?”

  Tom hesitated for only a fraction of a second. He felt embarrassed for them to see him here, ensconced with Stanley.

  Not that they didn’t already know the truth, but somehow, meeting here seemed to underline it. And the next moment felt guilty for his embarrassment.

  He quickly told himself he was being an ass. What did he care what they thought? He stepped aside. “Sure, come in,” he said.

  “Who is it?” Stanley asked and came in from the kitchen.

  “Oh.” He paused in the doorway, the bowl with Tom’s eggs in one hand and the wire whisk in the other. He was suddenly all too aware that he and Tom were wearing matching aprons, dainty ruffled things, Tom’s looking ridiculously inappropriate for his burly physique.

  “Maybe we should talk to you alone?” Bryce said, blushing.

  Carlson smirked, looking from one pink-flowered apron to the other.

  DEADLY DREAMS 111

  “No, this is okay,” Tom said, face kept resolutely blank.

  “We’re partners.”

  Bryce seemed to search for the words he wanted, chewed at a lip, finally asked, “Daniella Bentham. Name mean anything?”

  “Yes,” Tom said, his voice carefully noncommittal.

  “You were with her last night.”

  “I was…” Tom started to elaborate and instead said again, simply, “Yes.”

  “We both were,” Stanley added. “There was an art show at her gallery. Bentham Gallery on Bayshore. We went together.”

  The look Bryce gave him was unhappy, but Carlson was quick to say, directly to Tom, “You were seen leaving the party with Daniella Bentham. Several witnesses have told us the two of you disappeared in the direction of her apartment over the gallery. Without your partner.” He managed to invest the last words with the suggestion of something ugly.

  Tom thought carefully, wondered exactly where this was going, but two homicide inspectors at his doorstep? That pretty much narrowed the possibilities, didn’t it?

  “Yes, I did go up to her apartment with her,” he said.

  “There was some talk of a job she wanted us to do.”

  “And you couldn’t discuss this downstairs?” Carlson asked.

  “There was a considerable crowd, pretty noisy. It was her suggestion that we go upstairs.”

  Carlson looked at Stanley. “But not you.”

  “I went to get a glass of champagne.”

  “Hey, let’s skip the tap dancing, why don’t we?” Tom said.

  “Where exactly is this headed?”

  Carlson looked altogether pleased with the question, but it was Bryce who answered. “Daniella Bentham was found this morning in a dumpster a few blocks from her gallery. She’d been murdered.”

  Tom, only recently a homicide detective himself, asked a detective question, “Murdered how?”

  112 Victor J. Banis

  “Strangled. A scarf, tied around her neck. A man’s scarf. A cashmere scarf. The killer left the scarf with her.”

  For a fleeting second, Stanley flashed on his thoughts of the night before—that he would have minded less Tom’s murdering Daniella than he did Tom’s fucking her. He chased that thought resolutely from his mind. That hadn’t happened.

  Neither had, in fact. He trusted Tom in that.