32. Lachlan
32
LACHLAN
“ A NY WORD YET?” Cooper asked from where he sat typing on his laptop in the business center the next day while I checked in virtually with my staff.
It was that in-between time, when all we could do was wait for Mick to reach out about the shipment and twiddle our fucking thumbs.
Although my thumbs—and the rest of my fingers—had found their way into some pleasurable crevices I didn’t regret at all. In fact, the only reason I’d left the penthouse was because I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off Cooper. It was becoming a problem.
Fuck. And now I was hard.
Choosing to ignore that, I answered, “You’ll be the first to know.”
“Ha. More like the last.” Cooper stretched his neck from side to side. “Doesn’t that news have to go through King, then you, and trickle down the pipeline first?”
“Okay. How about this: you’ll know when I tell you.”
He chuckled. “That’s what I figured.” With his fingers drumming against the keyboard, Cooper chewed his lip and seemed to be willing more words to come.
Or whatever it was writers did.
“Stuck?”
“No. More like there’s nothing else to say until something happens. Although…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“ Cooper .”
He sighed. “I mean, if you had just let me follow you to the warehouse, I’d have a visual I could describe.”
“So if I’d put you in danger, there’s a chance you would’ve made it back intact to be able to write what you’d seen. Got it.”
“Oh, come on.” Pushing his chair back, he stood and came over to the workstation I’d commandeered, and I failed at trying not to notice his slightly swollen lips, or the bruise forming on the side of his neck. It made my dick throb, seeing the evidence of where I’d marked him. As he came to rest his jean-clad ass against the edge of the desk, he nudged my knees apart with his leg. “You’d never let anything happen to me, Lachlan. You said so yourself.”
“It would be wise not to push your luck.”
“Oh yeah?” Cooper smiled with wicked intent, and I grabbed the back of his thighs, pulling him in closer. “I think you like it when I push the boundaries.”
“Push? You mean ignore. Bust through. Leap over.”
He laughed, resting his hands on my shoulders.
I liked that—his touching me so freely, cameras be damned.
“Hold on a sec, I do know my limits sometimes. Like now. I’m behaving, not running off to take a look at things myself.”
“Because you know I’d follow you.”
Cooper screwed up his nose like it wasn’t true but then rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. You caught me.”
“Yes, I did.” I gave his legs a squeeze, bringing him forward, and nipped at his lower lip, taking it between my teeth. It wasn’t the right time or place, but it never was. I just didn’t give a damn anymore. Cooper was mine, and anyone watching who had a problem with it could say that shit to my face.
And they didn’t want to do that.
Something occurred to me then. “So you still need more information for your story, right?”
“It would be helpful, but impossible, since I’m stuck here.”
“What if there was a way to get you what you wanted without boots on the ground?”
Cooper’s eyes narrowed. “What are you cooking up in that head of yours?”
To that, I only smiled.
“THE ROOF? WHAT, are we busting out the binoculars?” Cooper joked. But then the elevator doors opened, and his jaw hit the floor. “No way.”
He didn’t move, and I took his hand and tugged him out onto the roof, where a helicopter waited on the helipad.
“Isn’t this against the rules?” he asked, but there was an underlying eagerness to his words that betrayed his caution.
“I’m offering you a way out and you’re worried about rules?” I lifted a brow, and Cooper broke into a grin.
“You’re right. Fuck the rules.” He climbed inside the cabin and buckled himself in, and after greeting the pilot and reiterating the flight plan, I joined him.
Minutes later we were off, hovering high above this city I loved, moving toward the river that would lead us to the docks where Mick’s warehouse was located.
Would King kick my ass if he knew I’d taken Cooper for a little joyride in the company helicopter? Yes. Did I care? Not even a little bit. Not when it had brought the biggest, brightest smile to Cooper’s face.
From the second he’d landed in New York up until now, he had only ever witnessed the dark side of this city. But as the pilot banked to the west and followed the Hudson, the afternoon sun sparkled off the water.
“This is incredible,” Cooper said into his headset, never taking his eyes off the spectacular view. “I’ve never done anything like this.”
That wasn’t hard to imagine, considering the size of his shoebox apartment. But being up here, my sharing this experience with him, was something I knew he’d remember beyond getting a glimpse of the location of Mick’s warehouse.
“Is that where we’re going?” he asked, pointing toward the docks coming into view.
“Yes. It’s quieter than any of the ports, a lot less security and traffic in and out?—”
“So the perfect place to smuggle in drugs if you know the right people?”
I nodded. “Or pay off the right people.”
“Gotcha.”
“There it is, coming up on your left.” As the helicopter made the turn, Cooper peered down at the empty docks.
“It looks abandoned.”
“Exactly. Little to no foot traffic.”
“And that’s the warehouse behind it?”
“Yep.” And from what I could see, at least two guards. This wasn’t nearly as close as I would like to be for surveillance, but I was going to have to trust Alessio with that. I wasn’t about to risk Cooper’s following me and putting himself in danger again.
“Wow. It’s hard to believe that something so dangerous and illegal can be so close, and yet so out of reach.”
He shifted in his seat, and though he was wearing sunglasses, I could feel his eyes locking on to mine.
“I have a question.” My lips curled, and he chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But seriously, if you know where Mick’s warehouse is, why not just call the cops and tell them?”
Of course that was where his mind went. It could never just be an easy question with Cooper, like: what’s your favorite part of the city?
“If we called the cops now, all they’d find is an empty warehouse. Mick’s waiting on a shipment, remember? We haven’t gotten the call yet.”
“But why do I get the feeling you won’t tell them even when you do get the call? The other day when you guys were talking, it sounded like you were going to go in and handle it, sooo…are you working with, like, the CIA or something?”
That was a new one, and I could see why he might go there. The CIA were notorious for keeping their agents and assets as ghosts. They were excellent liars, but then again, so were us Kings.
When I didn’t respond, Cooper held up a hand. “Got it. You can’t say. Just that you’re the good guys.” When I looked at him over the top of my glasses, he added, “Most of the time.”
I smirked and gestured out the window. “You done here?”
Cooper wrote a couple more notes into his phone and snapped some more pictures of our surroundings, and when he nodded, I gave the pilot the go-ahead to continue on.
We headed farther up the Hudson, giving Cooper the best possible view of the Statue of Liberty, and with the sun setting behind the famous landmark, it was the perfect time of day to see it.
“That’s amazing,” he said, taking a few more photos. “I hadn’t even gotten a chance to go see it yet.”
“It wasn’t the first thing you did when you arrived?”
“I mean, I was kind of preoccupied. I haven’t done all the fun, touristy stuff yet, but it’s on the list.”
Of course he hadn’t. I’d been right in thinking Cooper was so focused that he hadn’t allowed himself a chance to see all the good parts of the city that had raised me. There was a reason I’d chosen to make my home here after graduating, though it’d been more of a grow-to-love than an insta-love thing for me.
“Oh wow, that’s the 9/11 memorial, huh. What do they call the big tower?”
“One World Trade Center.”
He nodded, going quiet for a long moment, and then we came up to Midtown and his face lit up at seeing the Empire State Building up close.
“The city doesn’t look so big from up here,” he said after I pointed out a few other sites I thought he’d want to take photos of. “I mean, obviously it’s huge, but you don’t really get a sense of how damn big every block is until you’re down there. Oh shit, is that Yankee Stadium?”
I nodded, his enthusiasm so appealing. It’d been a long time since I’d looked at anything with such joy. Hell, I couldn’t even remember the last time, but it felt as though I was living vicariously through Cooper’s eyes. Everything was exciting to him, a never-ending chorus of gasps and photos being taken.
He leaned in suddenly, holding his phone up, and pointed it at us so we both featured on the screen. “Smile,” he said, grinning broadly at the camera. I wasn’t an easy grinner, but his mood was rubbing off on me, and I could see the faint amusement on my face as he captured several photos in a row. Then kissed me quickly before looking back out. The helicopter was circling back in the direction of Central Park.
“This is by far the coolest thing I’ve done since I’ve been here,” Cooper said. “Thank you for this.”
His reaction only justified the decision I’d made on where we were going next. King wanted Cooper to stay at Libertine so he’d be safe, but more than that, he wanted me to keep an eye on him.
I reached over to tighten Cooper’s seatbelt before the helicopter began its descent to our destination.
And then I waited for the questioning to begin in three…two…
“Wait, this isn’t Libertine,” Cooper said, staring out at the building below.
“No, it’s not.”
“Where are we?”
We landed with a jolt, and as the pilot cut the engine, I unbuckled both our seatbelts. The door was pulled open, and I reached for Cooper’s hand and said, “Home.”