Chapter 25
I could still hear the command center. Too many voices in that concrete box, all talking over each other. Too many eyes on me when I shoved back from the table. The adrenaline had my skin shrinking around me.
Diego locked the door behind us. I crossed to the far side of the room and dropped into a crouch by my go-bag.
The stitches in my shoulder pulled. I'd been ignoring them since Diego tied off the last suture.
I pulled out spare magazines, a med kit, wire cutters and lined them up.
The katana leaned against the wall beside me.
I reached for my cigarettes. I got one between my lips and flicked the lighter. The flame danced away from the tip. I tried again and missed again. The third time I gave up and threw the lighter across the room. It hit the wall and clattered to the floor.
"Jasper."
I ignored him and dug through the bag like I needed something specific. I just needed something to do with my hands.
"Look at me."
"We need to go through the intel," I said. "Vihaan sent the compound layout, guard rotations, and entry points. We should—"
Diego's boot appeared in my peripheral vision.
He gripped my shoulder and hauled me up, right on the wound.
Pain flared white-hot under the bandage, and I sucked air through my teeth.
He let go fast and shifted his grip to my arm instead.
I let him pull me the rest of the way. Fighting it would cost more than giving in.
He turned me around. I looked at his chest instead of his face.
"Zeus is going to say things about me," I said. "When we get there. He's going to tell you what I was. What I did for him."
Diego kept his hand on my good shoulder. He breathed steadily in the quiet.
"And he won't be lying."
I forced myself to look up and meet his eyes. "I killed a lot of people for that man. More than you know. More than I've told you. Some of them deserved it. Most of them didn't. I was good at it. Really fucking good. That's why he kept me."
Diego rubbed his thumb against my arm in small circles, careful to stay below the bandage.
"He's going to call me Hephaestus," I said.
"He's going to talk about the things we did together like we're still partners.
Like I'm still his. And part of me—" I choked on the rest. I had to force the words out.
"Part of me is going to want to be that again.
Because it was easier. Because I knew who I was when I was his weapon. "
"And now?" Diego asked.
"Now I don't know what the fuck I am."
Diego cupped the back of my neck with his other hand. "You're Jasper. You're Eight's father. You're mine."
"What if that's not enough?" I swallowed hard. "What if I go in there and I can't come back from it? What if I become him again and I can't—"
Diego kissed me before I could finish the sentence. He tightened his grip on the back of my neck and pressed into me like he was trying to prove something. When he pulled back, I had to remember how to breathe.
"You want to know if I'll still want you after I see what you can do?" he asked.
I nodded.
Diego stepped back. He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. The bandage along his ribs caught the light, a white strip taped across the gash from the tunnel fight. "Then show me."
"What?"
"Show me what you are. What you were. Whatever you think is going to make me walk away." He kicked off his boots and unbuckled his belt. "I'm not going anywhere."
I went taut all over. "Diego—"
"I trust you, Jasper. Do you trust me?"
My heart hammered in my throat. “Yeah, I trust you.”
Diego looked at the katana leaning against the wall. Then he picked it up and held it out to me. “Prove it.”
The weight settled into my palm, and my shoulder screamed in protest. I knew this grip better than anything else in the world, better than my own heartbeat.
I'd held this katana since I was fourteen and killed my first man with it at fifteen.
The balance was perfect. The edge was sharp enough to shave with.
Diego stood there naked. The blade trembled until I tightened my grip.
I brought it up slow. The wound in my shoulder burned with every degree of elevation, but I'd held this position through worse.
The tip found the soft hollow under his jaw where the skin was thin and the carotid pulsed close to the surface.
One slip and Diego would bleed out on this concrete floor.
I forced my hands to remain steady and pressed just enough for Diego to feel the edge. He pulsed against the steel. The beat traveled into my palm like his heart ran directly through mine.
He kept his eyes on mine and trusted me not to kill him.
My cock thickened against my thigh. I held a blade to the throat of the man I loved, and the sick heat of it spread through me like poison. My stomach clenched around it and my hand tightened on the hilt.
"My cigarettes," I said. I could barely get the words out. "In my jacket pocket. Light one for me."
Diego reached for my jacket without breaking eye contact. The blade tracked with every movement. If he moved wrong, if I moved wrong—
He pulled out the pack, shook one free, then brought it to his lips and lit it with my lighter.
The flame caught and made his face glow in the dim room. He took a drag to get it going, cheeks hollowing, and fuck, even terrified I wanted him.
He held it up between two fingers.
I leaned down and let him put the cigarette between my lips. The filter was wet from his mouth, still warm, slick with his spit. I could taste him on it and I went fully hard.
I straightened up and took a drag. The smoke filled my lungs and the nicotine hit. My hands steadied.
I kept the blade exactly where it was, right against his pulse.
"Now get on your knees for me," I said.
Diego sank down. He hit the concrete with both knees, and the sound echoed in the quiet. Then he just looked up at me, jaw set, eyes wide. The dare in it was worse than fear. I knew what to do with fear.
I kept the blade at his throat with light pressure. "Take out my cock."
He worked the buckle with swollen knuckles, skin torn from the tunnel wall. The metal clinked loud in the room. He unzipped my jeans slowly and carefully. I strained against my boxers, fully hard and aching. When he freed me, the cold air hit, and I sucked in a breath through my teeth.
"Open," I said.
Diego opened his mouth.
I stepped closer and fed my cock between his lips. The heat of his mouth shocked me after the cold, wet and so fucking hot. I had to lock my knees to keep standing.
He started working me with his tongue, slow strokes along the underside that made me tighten all over, made my breath catch. He knew what he was doing, and the control undid me more than the sensation. When he bobbed his head, I pressed the blade harder against his throat.
He froze.
"I didn't tell you to move," I said.
Diego stayed perfectly still, mouth wrapped around me, tongue pressed flat against my cock. He held everything, even his breath.
I took another drag off the cigarette, held the smoke in my lungs until they burned, then blew it out slowly while I looked down at him.
Diego knelt there with my blade at his throat and my cock in his mouth, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.
I gripped the back of his head with my free hand and threaded my fingers through his hair.
"You're going to stay just like that," I said. "And I'm going to use your mouth however I want. And you're going to let me. Aren't you?"
Diego moaned around my cock. It was surrender. The vibration went straight through me, and I had to bite back a groan.
The blade stayed at his throat. I pulled out slowly and fed back in, shallow at first, testing. Diego relaxed his throat and opened for me.
I went deeper. He took it. The wet heat of him tightened around my cock and I locked my jaw so hard my molars ground together. He just knelt there and let me use him while the blade held steady against his throat and my hips took over the way my hands did when I held a weapon.
My shoulder burned with every thrust, the stitches pulling against swollen skin, but the pain just folded into everything else. It all blurred together: heat, ache, the taste of smoke in my throat, and under all of it the want to hurt him so bright it scared me.
I ashed the cigarette onto Diego's shoulder. The gray smear landed on bare skin, and he took it without flinching.
"Good," I said. "That's good."
Diego knelt with my cock down his throat, my blade at his neck, tears tracking down his face. He stretched around me, cheeks dark with flush. I needed to wreck him worse. I needed to keep him exactly like this forever.
I could feel his pulse hammering through the steel, fast, desperate. My own pulse matched it. I was already too close.
"Touch yourself," I said.
Diego wrapped his fist around his cock and started stroking slow.
The blade trembled in my hand for just a second.
A thin line of red appeared on Diego's throat.
I froze. The cigarette fell from my fingers.
I'd cut him.
Diego kept his eyes on mine, kept his mouth around my cock, kept his hand moving on himself.
Blood ran down his throat in a thin trickle that disappeared into the hair on his chest.
"Diego." I cracked on it. "I cut you. I fucking cut you."
He pulled off my cock just long enough to say, "I know." Then he took me back into his mouth, deeper this time, all the way down until his nose pressed against my stomach and I could feel him swallowing around me.
I throbbed so hard that it hurt.
I gripped his hair tighter and stopped thinking. I just took what I needed while the blade pressed against his bleeding throat. Diego stroked himself faster, rocking forward into his own fist.
"I'm going to come down your throat," I said. "And you're going to swallow every drop."
Diego whimpered.
I buried myself in his throat, and he swallowed around me, and that was it.
The orgasm tore through me. I locked my knees, locked my grip on the blade, locked everything down while my cock pulsed and Diego swallowed.
The only thing holding me upright was the muscle memory of a man who'd been trained never to drop his weapon.
He took all of it. He took everything I gave him while I held a blade to his bleeding throat and came apart above him.
When it was done, I pulled out slow. Diego gasped for air, lips swollen and slick, blood still running down his throat.
I brought the cigarette to my lips, but it had burned out. I dropped it and ground it under my boot.
The blade was still at his throat.
"Stand up," I said.
Diego stood, legs unsteady beneath him. He winced when his ribs stretched under the bandage, but he kept his eyes on mine. He was still hard, still flushed dark, and desperate for it. He had tear tracks on his face and blood on his throat. He looked at me like none of it mattered.
I took the blade away from his throat and stared at the thin line of red. It would heal cleanly. I'd still have done it.
"I hurt you," I said.
"I know."
"I could have killed you."
"But you didn't." Diego cupped the back of my neck and pulled me closer.
"You had complete control the entire time.
Do you know how much strength it takes to hold a blade that steady while you're coming?
With a sutured shoulder? Most people would have slipped.
Would have pressed too hard. You didn't."
He brushed his thumb across my cheekbone. "You're not him. You're not Zeus's weapon. You're not Hephaestus."
I kept looking at the blood on his throat. The words jammed up in my chest.
"What if I go to Kiev and I become him again?"
Diego opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He worked his jaw and the steady front cracked, something rawer underneath. He swallowed hard.
"Then I'll come get you," he said. He broke on it. "However many times it takes. I'll come get you."
He said come get you. He could have said bring you back, but he said come get you, like wherever I ended up, he'd be there too. I grabbed onto the difference because the alternative was falling apart.
I kissed him hard, tasting blood and cum and salt. He kissed me back. For a second he shook against my mouth before he steadied himself. That tremor did more than every brave word he'd said all night.
When I pulled back, we were both breathing hard.
"You still need to come," I said.
"Yeah." He sounded wrecked. "I do."
I set the katana down on the table, then stepped back into him and wrapped my hand around his cock. He was hot and hard, slick with pre-cum. When I stroked him he made a sound that went straight to my spent cock.
"Jasper—" He fisted his hands in my shirt. "Fuck, I'm close."
I stroked him faster and tighter, the way I'd learned he liked it.
Diego jerked forward into my fist. He breathed harshly against my neck.
"Jasper," he said again, different this time, softer. "I love you."
I stopped. Fingers locked around him. Neither of us moved.
"I know the timing's shit." He laughed, rough and wrong, the kind of laugh that lives next door to crying. "I know that. But we're going to Kiev tomorrow and I might not—I just needed—"
He couldn't finish. Diego, who always had the words, who talked his way through everything, who'd held a roomful of fighters steady with nothing but his voice. He couldn't finish.
I started stroking him again, slow. He dropped his forehead against mine.
"Say it again," I said.
"I love you."
I stroked him harder. He gasped and bucked into my fist.
"Again."
"I love you." He choked on the last one. "Jasper, I love you—"
He came saying it. He came with his forehead against mine, his torn-up hand on my face, the word still breaking out of him. He shook through it and made sounds I wanted to keep somewhere no one could touch them.
We stood there. He kept his hand on my face, and I kept mine wrapped around him, and neither of us moved.
"I love you too," I said. Every word cost me something. "I love you and I'm terrified."
Diego pulled me in. I pressed my face against his neck and held on.
We stayed like that until my legs gave out, until the adrenaline wore off and exhaustion hit.
"We should clean up," Diego said. "Get some sleep before we leave."
I nodded against his shoulder.
"We're going to get her back," he said. "You and me."
I pulled back. "Mila," I said.
Diego looked at me. "What?"
"Her name. It isn't Eight. That's the number they gave her." I swallowed hard. "I always thought if I had a daughter, her name would be Mila."
Diego stared at me. Then he pulled me back against him and pressed his face into my hair, and his whole body shuddered once, hard, like something had broken loose in his chest.
"Mila," he said into my hair. "We're going to bring Mila home."
"Yeah," I said. "We are."