Chapter 3 #2
Vaughn shoots me a look. “Would you like a drink?”
“Depends. Is it nauseatingly expensive?”
“Extremely.”
“Then yes. Obviously.”
My brother shakes his head, then pours me a glass and walks over to hand it to me.
“How do you think tonight went?”
I frown. “Is this a rhetorical question, or do you legit want my input?”
I can never quite tell with him. Sometimes, it truly does feel like Vaughn is trying to bridge the gap between us that twenty years apart created. Other times, I wonder if he feels guilty when he looks at me, knowing he left me to the foster care system while he went on to…well…this.
I’m not one to hold back on what I’m thinking—shocking literally no one—so I’ve point blank asked him about this, and I’ve made sure he categorically knows that I understand he did what he did twenty years ago because he truly wanted to give me a better shot at life.
But he never quite answers the question—in fact, he’s hellaciously good at sidestepping it entirely whenever I bring it up.
So, like I said: I can’t quite tell.
“I’m genuinely asking,” Vaughn says, bringing the crystal tumbler in his hand to his lips and taking a slow sip.
“As my brother, or—”
As my employer.
That’s a slightly awkward aspect of our relationship that the two of us dance around.
Ballet—unsurprisingly—pays shit. But I’ve made it work for years: I’ve bartended, walked dogs, sold weed on the side, even go-go danced in a cage at a greasy, retro-themed gay bar in the village. That gig was pretty fun, actually.
My financial situation has never really bugged me, because at the end of the day, I get to dance professionally. But since my brother re-entered my life, things have changed. And this is where the awkwardness between us comes into play.
Vaughn immediately wanted to move me into some insane penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. But I’ve spent my entire life knowing with brutal clarity that nothing comes for free. Yes, that’s a fucked-up way to look at a gift from your own brother, but it is what it is.
So instead, we found a middle ground. Well, sort of a middle ground.
I said no to the Central Park penthouse, but I did take Vaughn up on the Soho loft. It’s still disgustingly expensive, but nowhere close to a billionaire’s row penthouse. Also, it doesn’t come for free—at my insistence.
Vaughn doesn’t let me do anything hugely dangerous or illegal.
But I do odd jobs for him and the Syndicate at times.
Tonight, for example, I wasn’t just here for the food.
My job was to “assist with attending to some of the evening's “more select, VIP guests”.
Which is a nice way of saying I was babysitting the youngest daughter of Diego Torvallés, Claudia, who was coked out of her fucking mind all night.
The Torvallés family, as Vaughn explained to me, is one of the oldest and most powerful in the European underworld, dating back to the Spanish Inquisition.
And obviously when my brother decided to throw a dinner party with Cosimo Sangrini as the guest of honor they were included on the guest list, including Claudia Torvallés and the full eight-ball of narcotics dusting her nasal cavities, whom I babysat all night.
…Well, not all night.
My pulse twitches and a throbbing, gnawing hunger pools low in my stomach.
Roman.
Roman, with scowling eyes and outrageously hot grunting sounds that rumble in his chest like thunder. Roman, with forearms that make me fucking drool and a jawline that makes me want to take a fucking bite out of it.
Full disclosure, I’ve been lusting after Evie’s older brother for almost as long as I’ve been aware of his existence.
But I wouldn’t classify it as a crush or anything emo like that.
I don’t really know Roman Nikitin. I just know he’s got a mouth that is begging to be wrapped around my dick and an ass that makes me hard as steel whenever we’re in the same general vicinity.
Like, I’ve never wanted to write syrupy poetry about his eyes. But I have jerked off to the thought of bending him over and pounding the fuck out of him.
That makes sense…right?
Tonight, though, things went further than anticipated.
My attention was first caught by the guard who kept slipping into shadowy corners up on the mezzanine level and sipping from a metal flask.
Red flag number one. Then I started following him with my eyes and could not help but wonder why his suit was practically painted onto his mouthwatering frame.
It wasn’t until I tackled him to the ground, pinned his hands above his head and saw the tattoos on the backs of his hands that it all clicked.
What can I say? Those hands and their tattoos may or may not have starred in several late-night fantasies of mine.
Yes, I have many questions, including “what the fuck was Roman doing here”, but that’s not the one that’s been blaring like an air raid siren in my head ever since I told him to get the fuck out.
No, that honor goes to “why the hell did touching him ignite something in me”. Not just lust—I know lust. This was wild, untamed, and shockingly raw.
Again, I’ve had jerk-off fantasies about the guy since the first time I laid eyes on him. He’s hot as fuck, and has that growly, surly, hyper-masculine thing going on that makes my dick ache.
But tonight was the first time I’ve ever seen deeper than that. Tonight felt like I peeked around a curtain I’m not sure I was meant to see behind.
But fuck me, I liked what I saw.
Beyond the alpha-energy, hyper-masculine sex appeal, the gruff roughness, the muscles hewn from rock, and the tough guy fuck-you attitude…
Tonight, I caught a brief glimpse of something vulnerable, soft, and breakable in that man.
And it’s done a number on me.
Which is…concerning, for two important reasons.
One—this is, or at least should be, a big one—is that I don’t go after straight guys.
I don’t do the whole “down low” crap, I don’t do “I just want to experiment”, and I definitely don’t do guys who make it abundantly clear how straight they are.
Except there’s just one little problem with that argument in this case.
Roman Nikitin sure as shit ain’t straight.
I mean, obviously he thinks he is. But I know what I heard when I had the fucker pinned to the ground.
A goddamn whimper.
It might have been hidden, caged behind confusion and uncertainty. But it was there. And that’s not even getting into what I felt when slid down his body and my cock, swollen and leaking precum, throbbed against his.
…It fucking throbbed back.
Hard. Thick. And fucking big.
Straight guys don’t get rock hard when another man pins them to the ground. They don’t moan, either.
“We had company tonight.”
When I hear Vaughn's voice I blink away my lurid fantasies of Roman on his knees, hands bound behind his back and my cum painted on his lips.
“What?”
“An uninvited guest,” he says quietly, taking a sip of his drink and turning to look out the window at the stars over the Adirondacks.
“Oh?”
Vaughn nods. “One of our men was discovered after our guests left, tied up in a closet, missing his suit and mask. He’d been chloroformed.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I knew that I should be curious where the hell Roman got that too-tight but oh-so-hot uniform and the mask. But I was distracted by…well…him.
Him, and his telltale erection rubbing against mine.
“I had my people check the highway security cameras near here,” my brother continues. “We caught a few frames of a car heading back to the city with plates registered to the Nikitin family.”
My pulse skips as a whining sound fills my ears.
This would be the second reason it’s concerning that just one close physical encounter with Roman Nikitin has me so disjointed: his family and mine are about to be rivals in a race in which there’s only one winner.
“Did you notice anything off tonight? Anyone out of place?”
I take a moment, sipping the absurdly expensive scotch in my glass.
“Nope.”
Fucking hell, what am I doing?
“I was too busy babysitting Claudia Torvallés,” I shrug. “Who, by the way, should probably see someone about her drug use. That girl legitimately snorted more coke tonight than—”
“Okay, thanks,” Vaughn grunts, cutting me off. His brow furrows as he turns to me. “Nothing else? I think we almost certainly had a Nikitin spy here tonight.”
I take a long pull from my drink. “Is that a problem?”
My brother smiles coldly, his mouth twisting devilishly up at the corners. “The opposite, actually. All part of the plan. I’m just mildly curious who Pavel sent tonight.” He shrugs and turns back to the windows. “Ah well.”
For a second, I almost tell him.
But then…I don’t. And it’s not until Vaughn wishes me good night, reminds me what time his helicopter will take me back to the city in the morning, and leaves me to my thoughts in his study, that I realize that pinching sensation I’m feeling is one of being caught between my hard-on for a self-professed straight guy and loyalty to my criminal mastermind brother.
Fuck.
I don’t have the first idea what the hell to do with any of that.
But by the time I head to bed, I know one thing for sure: I need to find out what Roman was doing here tonight.
I swear, that’s the only reason he’s on my radar now.