Chapter Twelve Razor #2
We left the Velvet Lounge behind us, the danger still clinging to my skin like sweat.
Baron’s Court was too far. Too exposed. Too risky if he puked, passed out, or tried to wander.
My place was closer. Quieter. And alright, fine, I didn’t want to leave him.
Didn’t want to drop him off and pretend it didn’t matter that he came to me.
Needed me. So I pulled up outside my converted warehouse in the Wick and killed the engine.
Tristan’s head had slipped against the passenger window, breath fogging the glass.
“Oi.” I brushed my knuckles over his cheek. “Tricky.”
Nothing.
Then a soft groan, a flutter of lashes.
Good enough.
I got out, went around, and opened his door.
He slumped into me, deadweight, all expensive cologne and too-warm skin.
And yeah, I carried him. Didn’t think too hard about why, either.
Nor care if anyone saw. Most round here would assume he was a body I was disposing of and mind their own fucking business.
I got him up the metal stairs. Across the landing.
Into my top-floor place with its heavy lock and darker corners.
I took him straight to my bed.
Laid him down.
He stirred, eyelids fluttering, then drifted again.
I sat next to him. Watching the way his chest rose and fell, how his mouth parted, how the tension in his brow eased the longer he rested. He looked younger when he slept. Softer. Not trying to be something he wasn’t. His father, probably.
He shifted suddenly, turning towards my warmth, and slid an arm across my stomach, pulling himself to me as if he belonged there.
Fuck.
I brushed his hair back without thinking.
Indulging myself for a handful of stolen seconds.
Then another handful. Eventually, guilt or self-preservation made me move, and I carefully slid out from under his arm.
I couldn’t leave him in all that gear. Not only was it an expensive suit, but it smelt as if he’d had more than a few drinks spilt down it.
So I got him out of it. First: shoes. I unlaced his dress brogues, slipping them off one by one.
His socks followed, pale ankles warm in my hands.
Then I took off his shirt, buttons clumsy under my fingers because he kept muttering little broken words, reaching for me even half-asleep.
“Richie…”
That one knocked the breath out of me.
“Shhh.” I whispered without meaning to. “I’ve got you.”
I eased him upright enough to peel the shirt off his shoulders, then grabbed one of my old tees from the dresser. It would drown him. But I pulled it over his head, guiding his arms through the sleeves. He blinked awake, eyes glazed but focused, tongue flicking out to wet his lips.
That was my undoing.
I kissed him.
Quick. Firm. Almost rough.
Because yes, I wanted it. But also because if he opened that mouth and said something stupid, I wasn’t sure I could survive it.
“Get some sleep.” I laid him back down on my pillow.
My pillow. Where I’d never put anyone. Never let anyone share it.
He sank into it as if he’d always meant to be there.
“Stay,” he mumbled. Same word he’d breathed at his flat. Soft, pleading, dangerous.
What I should’ve done was leave. Go back to the club, wipe the CCTV, handle the fallout, be the man Cormac paid me to be. But the way he looked at me. The way he reached for me even in his sleep…I didn’t stand a chance.
I stripped down to my underwear, lifted the covers, and slid in beside him.
He found me immediately, tucked himself into my chest, breath warm against my ribs.
He slept like that.
Eventually, so did I.
And for the first time in years, I didn’t dream of blood or fire. I dreamt of something worse. And far more dangerous.
Something I couldn’t admit I wanted.
* * * *
I woke before the light properly settled.
That was instinct. Habit. Years of coming up in places where sleeping too long meant losing ground. Even here—top floor, steel beams, thick walls—I came up sharp, heart ticking through threats that weren’t there.
The first thing I registered was weight.
Warm. Light. Curled into my side.
I didn’t move. Didn’t really breathe properly either. Because Tristan was in my bed.
He wasn’t sprawled, nor flung across the sheets the way he’d been last night, stripped of dignity and Rioja in equal measure.
No. This version of him was folded into himself.
Knees drawn up, mouth parted, lashes dark against skin still warm with sleep.
Soft. Open. A living, breathing liability.
Yet lying there beside him, watching the light bleed in as another brutal June sun rose without mercy, the only thought that lodged in my chest was: Mine.
It hit harder than it had any right to.
But how could it not? He wore one of my T-shirts. Black. Softened by wear. It drowned him, collar slipping low, sleeve twisted so I could see the hairs under his arms. The sheets were wrecked beneath us, smelling like smoke and sweat and him. Too clean, too sharp, too expensive for my life.
I stared at the ceiling and counted to ten.
It didn’t help.
The urge to touch him was a problem. The urge to stay was worse.
So I did the sensible thing.
I got the fuck out of bed.
I moved quietly, practically tiptoeing in my own bloody gaff, careful not to wake him.
Then I grabbed my lighter and cigarettes, poured a glass of water from the kitchen tap and set it by the bed with painkillers.
I paused, staring down at him again as if checking a body for breath. He frowned in his sleep. Shifted.
Fuck.
I got out of there. Walked straight through the open plan flat out to the balcony.
Humid heat hit first. Then air. Then the view.
Canal water thick and sluggish, sunlight catching oil sheens and floating rubbish like it was art instead of rot.
I leant on the railing, elbows locked, then lit a cigarette and inhaled it.
Last night replayed in fragments.
I’d brought him home.
Because apparently, I was a fucking idiot. One who had a death wish.
I exhaled smoke and watched it vanish into the morning. This was how it started. This was how things went wrong. One night turning into a morning. A body in my bed that didn’t belong in my world. A man with a future I could only fuck up by proximity.
By the time my cigarette burnt down to the filter, I heard movement behind me.
Soft. Careful. I didn’t turn, but I felt the air shifting, awareness snapping sharp into place.
Tristan was awake and the sliding doors whispered open as he stepped onto the balcony, better covered than I was, wrapped in my T-shirt while I stood there in nothing but boxers. And fear.
I didn’t look at him. I kept my head down as I said, “You good?” I didn’t know if it was sleep, smoke, or the fact I was bracing for impact that made my voice so damn rough.
“As good as I deserve to be.”
I flicked the cigarette into the canal and watched it die.
He stepped out beside me. “This your place, then?”
“Yeah.”
“S’nice. Good view.”
I snorted. “Better than tennis?”
“Depends on your views on thwacking and grunting.”
That got me.
I turned.
And faced the problem in human form.
He looked wrecked and soft and stupidly beautiful in my clothes, hair flattened, eyes too bright, mouth still tasting of regret. My chest tightened, sharp and unwelcome.
“Sorry, by the way.” He winced which just made him all the more fucking pretty. “I was a disaster last night, and I fully appreciate your… chivalry.”
“Chivalry?” I arched a brow, shifting to face him properly.
He dragged his gaze over me and okay, fair enough, I let him.
Eventually he met my eyes. “Or whatever the East End term is for ‘man who doesn’t take advantage of a drunk idiot.’”
“You seen what you’re wearing?”
He glanced down at himself, at the T-shirt hanging off him.
“If this is you telling me you stripped me, fucked me, then put my underwear back on and wrapped me in your top…” His mouth twitched, but there was a fragility underneath it.
“Points for effort, I don’t feel a thing this morning.
And I appreciate you letting me keep a shred of dignity by not waking up naked. ”
There it was.
The assumption.
That last night had been about one thing only.
I exhaled and stepped closer. Just one step. Enough to erase the air between us. He tilted his face up without thinking, instinctive as a reflex, and that nearly undid me. I caught his chin between my fingers, not rough, not gentle either. Making him look at me.
“I only fuck fully conscious, consenting men.” I held his gaze.
“Might come as a surprise to you, I know. Considering where we started. But it’s not something I bend on.
” I let him go before he could reach for me, before either of us mistook the moment for something simpler than it was.
“And don’t come to me that gone again, thinking I will. ”
“That’s not…” He stopped, words failing him, looking away as if he couldn’t quite decide where to put the truth. And I was oddly grateful he didn’t finish. I wasn’t sure I could take hearing it framed as a misunderstanding, or worse—as pity.
So I turned back to the canal, braced my elbows on the railing, giving us both the space to breathe. The water slid past below, indifferent, relentless.
“You wanna tell me,” I peeked over to him, “how, and more importantly why, you ended up in my club off your nut?”
He glanced away, and my chest loosened and tightened at the same time.
“Well, I realise now…” he said as if stepping around a crack in the floor. “Because of your… lines of questioning, and now I’m sober…that perhaps the reply you sent to my message last night wasn’t an invitation to invade your personal space. Unlike my reply to yours on Sunday was.”
I inhaled slowly. Held it. “Right.”