Chapter Fourteen Razor
chapter fourteen
Razor
I didn’t think I’d see Tricky again after that.
Whatever had been simmering between us should have extinguished once he’d seen who I truly was. He’d walked away, and I’d let him. That should have been the end of it.
But life never did stay tidy in my hands.
So when I finished the job and came back to my car around one in the morning, the last thing I expected was to find him there.
Head bowed, shoulders hunched in the rain, leaning on the back door of my Audi as if it was the only thing holding him up.
For a second, I thought it was a trick of the dark.
Then he lifted his head, and the streetlight caught his face, fine rain drifting down to distort his features.
Fuck, he was a handsome bastard. A pretty, beautiful thing sent to test me.
Tristan Hale-Fitzroy.
Did I know what that name meant?
No, course not. I had a feeling I was meant to find out.
And my stomach did a stupid little twist, traitor that it was.
It didn’t matter that my hands still smelt of blood and diesel.
Or what was in the bag slung over my shoulder.
Seeing him there, dripping rain, hair stuck to his forehead, lips parted as if he’d been holding his breath, hit something in me I didn’t want to know was there.
I hated that.
Because I knew what he was. A risk. A weakness. Temptation getting men like me killed. He was everything I couldn’t afford to want. Clean. Golden. Out of reach. Beauty that didn’t belong anywhere near my world. And I’d already spent too long lying to myself that wanting him didn’t matter.
And yeah, okay, Lennon had tried to give me an out earlier.
Told me I still had choices. That I could still take the things I’d always wanted.
Maybe I could have once. But I was too far gone now.
Too deep in the dirt, too soaked in filth that would stain him forever, to even entertain the fantasy of someone like him waiting for me in the rain.
Whether I cared about that… that was a fight for another time.
I approached him. He stirred, head tilting up, eyes glassy under the amber glow of the streetlamp.
I took a drag from the half-smoked cigarette bobbing between my lips, then clutched it between my fingers and dropped it to the ground to crush it under my heel.
I then opened the car door, shoving the bag inside, all the while his gaze stayed on me.
Questioning, maybe. A little scared, too.
I blew out the last curl of smoke, watched it vanish between us.
Tristan gave me a weak smile before dropping his head again, hiding that too-pretty face from me.
So I stepped closer, close enough to smell the rain off his skin, and hooked a finger under his chin, tilting it up. “You’re soaked.”
“The car was locked.”
“You could’ve gone home.”
“Yeah. I could’ve.”
“Probably should’ve.”
“Yeah.”
I let my hand fall, exhaling a slow, heavy breath.
Christ, I shouldn’t have cared. Not about him.
Not about anyone. But there he was, standing in the rain for me.
And the thought of him choosing this cold, wet, filthy gap over the polished sanctuaries where he belonged lit a stupid, ugly heat in my chest.
Hope and self-loathing knotted together.
“Sorry you had to see that.” I meant it.
Because I hadn’t wanted him to. The blood.
The rage. Nor to get a real taste of what I was beneath the swagger.
I wasn’t some noble avenger cleaning up the streets.
I was a thug. White-trash muscle keeping order where I had no real power.
Proving, for anyone watching, that I was exactly what the world had decided men like me were from the moment we’re born into the council estate.
“Guess I would’ve seen it eventually.” He sighed, breath fogging in the air. “Should’ve seen it sooner.”
For a beat my chest clenched, because I’d been talking about me.
Sorry that he had to be brought face to face into my world.
But the truth slid over me cold and sharp: he was talking about the video.
The thing mattering to him was the proof of his boyfriend’s betrayal, not the junk I hauled in bags or the cut marks on my knuckles.
He didn’t care who I was. I didn’t matter to him. It should have been a relief.
Instead, it hollowed me out.
“What did you do to him?” Tristan’s voice was small, braced.
“What needed doing.” The words were flat, practiced, sounding better in my mouth than the truth.
He nodded, eyes dropping back to the ground.
In that small motion he accepted what I’d told him, and I realised I’d given him the reason he should’ve walked away from my car and never looked back.
I hadn’t pulled him in. Hadn’t even asked him to stay.
But the truth was, I hadn’t finished Ollie.
I’d held back. More than I would have for someone who’d crossed me and badmouthed me and thought they could get one over on me.
Because of this pretty thing in front of me.
Because of this soft, ridiculous pull making me pause when I should’ve finished the job, I’d let the danger live.
“Is the debt paid?” he asked.
“Yes.” In both cash and information.
He looked up, met my gaze for a second. “So that’s that.”
“Unless he crosses me again.” The threat came out easy, but it tasted hollow the second it left my tongue. I meant it, and I didn’t.
But before I could say another word, he lunged at me, catching me off guard, smoothing his mouth onto mine.
Tentative at first, as if testing what I’d do.
Then it turned into a kiss that was all heat and ache and a desperation filling my hollow chest. And he hooked his hands around the back of my neck, dragging me closer, as if afraid I’d push him away.
I should have.
But I kissed him back. Hard. Because why the fuck not?
I didn’t often kiss. The paid ones didn’t expect it, and I never offered. Even the nights stretching till dawn, the ones I could barely remember after, kissing was a formality. A signal that business had started. Nothing more.
But this—
This was nothing like that.
It was like it had used to be.
Tristan’s lips were soft, trembling with an honesty he couldn’t fake.
He tasted like rain and nerves, and when his mouth opened with mine, I forgot what keeping distance even meant.
I slipped my hands on his waist, sliding around his soaked shirt to the heat of his back, and felt sweat-covered skin as I hauled him away from the car door and into me.
He pressed closer, and I deepened the kiss, tongue meeting his in a rhythm burning straight through reason.
If he hadn’t pulled back, I could’ve stayed there forever.
Lost in a danger I hadn’t learnt how to fight.
But he did, resting his forehead on mine, breaths shaking between us, eyes closed as if trying to hold himself together.
Then he said the words that struck me like a match to petrol, “I want you to fuck me.”
Don’t get me wrong, I knew what this was: punishment, rebellion, some way to scrub out that bastard who’d hurt him.
Anyone else and I’d have let it stay that way.
A transaction. A fix. Nothing leaving a mark.
But with him, it wasn’t that clean. I wanted him to feel it.
To know what it meant when I touched him.
So doing it like this, now, after all that felt wrong.
Didn’t matter. I was gonna do it anyway.
Especially when he turned in my arms, grinding his arse back into me, making me hard and willing, and toying with his belt. He then tilted his head so I could catch the shadow of a smirk, offering himself up like a sweet he knew I couldn’t resist.
“Jesus, pretty boy,” I breathed. “You’re gonna get me killed.”
He looked back at me through the wet strands of his hair, and the streetlight hit his skin in slanted gold, rain tracing over his neck like it couldn’t help itself.
Whatever self-control I’d been clinging to snapped.
So I yanked open the driver’s door, rummaged for the stash of condoms and lube I kept for occasions such as this, then made quick work of wrapping and slicking myself up.
Then with one hand on his shoulder, I bent him over the car, shoved his jeans and briefs low, the city’s hiss our only witness to our depravity, and he splayed his hands on the roof of the Audi for me to line up and push in.
I took it slow at first, the heat of him swallowing the cold right out of the night.
And he was tight, perfect, taking me like he meant to, as if this was where we’d always been heading.
The sound tearing out of me as I eased myself inside him wasn’t normal. It was feral.
Then he moved, pushing back, straightening and wrapping an arm around my neck from behind, tilting his face towards me.
And as I buried myself deep, my breath caught in my throat, waiting for him to feel me.
Know me. And Christ, he was poison. So fucking pretty and so fucking mine in that moment, I knew I was in danger of never crawling out of this.
Especially when he met my gaze, and I saw a flicker of surprise.
Shock. Raw hunger with nowhere left to hide.
Fuck, I wanted it. Wanted it all. So I kissed him. Claiming his mouth as my own. And I eased my cock out of him to the tip, then thrust back in, finding a rhythm making the world fall apart around us. And he clung to me, body liquid heat, melting into every drive of my hips.