Chapter 6 Donovan
I’d heard a friend arrived at Sanctum earlier, but before I could even finish up with the training session and get a word in with him, he was busy in the cage, fighting someone for cash.
He was named Reaper, and he lived up to it.
Although he was definitely pulling his punches with Dina, the woman who’d been in the cage with him—she was a sharpshooter, expensive as an assassin, but she did the job and got away cleanly.
Pouring a barrel of water over his body, two workers were on step stools over Reaper as he laughed to himself on his knees.
Artemis was stood right behind me, almost clinging to me, which I might not have minded so much, but we weren’t together.
And I hadn’t been over the rules with him just yet—so I couldn’t be mad.
“Donovan you sick bastard!” Reaper said, pushing up off his knees, the cuts on his face dripping blood down his cheeks and neck. “When the fuck did you get here?” He locked onto Artemis. As we were on the edge of the spotlight, he was very visible. “This one yours?”
“Yeah, he’s mine,” I said, sidestepping to show him off.
The two workers were already cleaning Reaper’s wounds, like silent fairies, it was one of the perks here, these fairies could bring you back from the brink of death—and they might have done so for me on a number of occasions.
“Artemis,” he said, extending his hand.
Reaper revealed his hand with his bloodied knuckles. “Probably best we don’t,” he said as one of the worker bees took his hand and poured a liquid over it that had Reaper wince. The first time I’d seen that. “I’m Jaques, people call me Reaper, you probably know why.”
“Because you kill people?” he said.
We laughed. It was such a funny statement to say aloud, especially since it was so obvious. “You a trainee then,” he said. “How many bodies have you dropped?”
Artemis’s face recoiled into a pinched expression. “A few,” he said. “I didn’t keep count. I took down a trafficking ring.”
Reaper looked at me with a cocked brow and then back to Artemis. “I think you mean, you took out the head of an operation,” he said. “You know things like that aren’t just taken down because you removed a head.”
“I did more than that,” Artemis fought back. “I disrupted the entire thing.”
“Well, you should probably get medical attention,” I said. “I’ll take my trainee to make sure he’s better acquainted with the rules.”
Reaper smirked. “If you trainee wants to get to know some other things that you can’t teach, you can always send them to my room.” He grabbed his crotch inside the soaked shorts.
My eye twitched and my jaw tightened to think he as trying to get with Artemis.
He was mine. “Don’t even try it,” I told him.
“Get your own.” Reaper was bigger than me, he didn’t binge alcohol as much as me either, so he’d take me in a fight any day.
I was surprised people still took him on in the cage.
In the elevator back to the apartments, Artemis sighed in a way that I knew he wanted me to ask him what was wrong. Of course, this was from the old habit of our dynamic. We were very different now.
As we walked back, he continued to huff a little right up until we were standing in the hallway between both of our apartment doors.
“He’s your friend,” Artemis asked.
“Colleague, friend, yeah,” I said. “He’s someone I’d trust to have my six if we’re under fire.”
“Would you—”
I shook my head. “You don’t want my answer to that now.”
Artemis rolled his eyes. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“I don’t, but it’s probably not going to be helpful,” I told him. I had to be a teacher now, but I couldn’t shake the core affection and love I had for him. It came first, and I was protecting his feelings. “Your place or mine?”
“Yours,” he said. “It’s bigger.”
I wiggled my brows then turned aw, but he’d definitely seen me. It was just a flirtation that shouldn’t have happened. “That happens when Mercy trusts you and you’re bringing in the big bucks.”
“We never spoke about money much, other than you saying you have a lot in offshore accounts,” he said as we walked into my place. “But how much does she pay you?”
In my room, I grabbed two waters from the fridge.
My room came with a loveseat sofa, which I lead him to by holding the bottle of water over it and taking a seat.
“You’re never gonna get the jobs that pay if you don’t learn some general rules of professionalism,” I told him.
“And since you’re mine, it’s only right I teach you. ”
“I’m not yours,” he said, taking the water and struggling to open it. “I mean, once upon a time, sure I said stuff like that to you.”
Opening his water for him, he tried staring me down. It was like a bunny trying to stare down a fox. “I want you to address me as Sir,” I told him.
He pouted. “If we’re going Sir, I might as well just go back to calling you Daddy.”
My tongue rubbed against my top teeth, swelling in my mouth at the word. It was a relic of our past—and if he hadn’t joined Sanctum, perhaps we could’ve gone back there. “Whichever you prefer,” I said. “As long as you know I’m in charge of you, that means you do what I say, and you don’t say no.”
“What about red?”
“If we’re engaged in something sexual, I’ll accept red.”
He was chugging down the bottle of water like he was on fire. “Ok,” he finally let out with a deep gasp. “But you want to be professional about all of this,” he said, nodding like he was trying to coax a definite response on how I felt towards him.
Ignoring it, I jumped back into it. “We’ve been doing this for a week, and I’ve been pushing you, but I know I shouldn’t. I know better.”
Art’s eye twitched, that inner brat was trying its hardest to come out. “I knew you had.”
It wasn’t as hard as I could’ve been pushing him though, there was much more I could’ve done in an attempt to get him to quit.
We’d punched training bags, lifted the heaviest weights, and I’d even wrapped his knuckles a whole bunch with the wooden weapons during drills.
“Starting tomorrow we’re going to do some breath control exercises,” I said.
“You were shaking a lot, you need some more mental resilience.”
turning his head slightly as if I couldn’t see him roll his eyes.
I palmed his knee, my fingers outstretched into his inner thigh, gripping him.
“You’re gonna tell me your hands weren’t shaking?
” I asked, my other hand at his chin, pulling his view back to me.
His mentor. “If you’re going to be out there, holding a gun, waving a knife around, whatever it is you decide is your poison.
You’ll want your hands to be still doing that. ”
“I will,” he said.
“You need to learn your place,” I whispered. “You remember how I took care of you, I was soft and sweet, but I could be a bit mean. Well, we’re switching that around. I’m going to be a whole lot mean, and you can work towards my sweet side.”
“Or else?”
With my hand slipping under his thigh, I squeezed tight. He flinched his knee up only forcing the grip on his thigh tighter. “No or else,” I said. “Or I’ll squeeze harder.”
Art couldn’t look menacing even if he tried—at least not in my eyes. I just wanted to cup his cheeks and tell him to undo this mistake. I wished I could’ve done it to myself as well, for leaving him, but I wasn’t in the business of thinking on my mistakes. “Ok, fine.”
“Good boy,” I said, releasing my grip on him. “Now that’s called a cow bite, it’s when you pinch someone’s muscle with the entirety of your hand. Hurts, doesn’t it?”
He rubbed at his thigh with his knees tucked in at his chest, his chin on his knees, as if that stopped me from finding more of his pressure points—it opened more of them up, specifically in the groin. His ass stretched out his sweatpants in a way that I didn’t need to be staring at.
We went over more rules and protocols he had to follow while he was under my training at Sanctum.
If he was going to control his urges to be a brat and sass people, and if he was going to learn how to act, then we’d have to change how we saw each other.
Not as ex-partners who had recently fucked, but as trainer and trainee, although I definitely preferred Boss, Master, and Sir.
* * *
I met up with Reaper in the wellness bar. Sanctum didn’t officially sell alcohol, but they sold a lot of herby drinks which gave you a high. Mercy was strict on a no drugs and no alcohol policy—except on the medical bay.
The lights were dimmed to a purple and pink as we sat on comfy bean bags, sipping our green smoothies. Reaper’s arm was in a sling and his face all bandaged up. We were going through those drinks like they were endless, they were delicious, but oh-so bloating.
The bean bags made for perfect relaxing seats, especially as I pushed my stomach out from the bloat and made it look like I was heavily pregnant.
“You wanna tell me about the kid,” Reaper asked, licking at the cut on his lip.
Glancing around, I thought he was talking about Artemis being here. “He’s—”
“Your ex,” he said. “We know. Everyone knows.”
“Shit. Really?” This place was hell for gossip, mostly the workers. They traded in gossip. It just sucked being the one gossiped about. “I think it’s Mercy’s sick joke.”
“Nah, I think she’s being smart,” he said.
“And why do you think that?”
“She’s making him your responsibility. She’s forcing you to take accountability.”
I kicked at his beanbag. “Shut up. You’re one to talk accountability.”
“Hey, I rehomed those folks when I got it covered in bullet holes,” he said, shifting his weight around strangely, wiggling almost since he only had the one arm free to help position himself on the bean bag.
“And it could’ve been worse, they could’ve been home when it happened.
But I made sure they weren’t, so double accountability win for me. ”
“They still brough that legal suit against you.”
“Me?” he laughed. “They sued everything they could. At one point they even tried the gun manufacturer.”
“Was that before or after you bought them a new house?”
“That’s—” he scoffed, shaking his head.
“Exactly what I thought. You did it because you were told,” I said, now struggling on the bean bag. “Fuck, who decided on these things.”
A worker approached with a tray and two fresh smoothies.
“There are actually many benefits to bean bags. You’ve got ergonomic support, pain relief from pressure, improved circulation, they also act as stress reduction from the sensation of sinking,” he said with that signature Sanctum smile. “Anything else I can get you?”
“A shot of a whiskey in my next smoothie,” Reaper chortled.
“Sir, Mr. Harlan, you know the rules on that,” he said.
Once he left, I kicked at Reaper’s bean bag again and laughed. “Mr. Harlan,” I snickered. “I can’t imagine people ever full naming you. Jacques Harlan, you sound like you’ve got a house on the Upper East Side that looks out over the city.”
“I do,” he said. “I’ve got investment properties all over the city.”
“Next, you’re gonna tell me you’ve got a kid,” I laughed.
“Definitely not,” he said, almost recoiling. “And if I did, I’d like to know about it. I think I’d be a pretty good dad.”
I looked at him my eyes narrowing. I’d been friends with Reaper for year—as acquaintances, we knew each other, but not well enough to be seen hanging on the outside of this place.
Out there, letting your guard down was sometimes a death sentence.
And I’d had mine down a lot, drinking and ordering taxis to drive me around as I get drunk because a moving target is always harder to catch.
“Training is the next best thing,” he added. “You’ve got the power to mold their little brains into a weapon.” He tried demonstrating molding but with only one hand, that was somewhat a difficult task. “You think I should settle in here for a while and train someone.”
“I’d offer you mine, but Mercy appointed him to me specifically,” I said, like it was news—everyone knew.
“Would I get to fuck him?”
I booted the bean bag and Reaper went backwards. “Don’t,” I let out in a whispering growl.
Two workers were on him to push him back into his seat as he laughed it off. “I’ll have to get you in cage,” he said, shrugging his shoulder in the sling. “But the two of you are screwing still, right?”
“No, I’m being professional,” I said, taking my smoothie and sipping to do anything to take my mind off this conversation. I wasn’t going to let Artemis get attached to me like that again, I felt like I’d already taken his life from him because he was down here.
“You’re a better man than me, Don,” he said. “I’d be—”
My glare said it all.
“Fine, he’s off-topic,” he laughed. “But it could help with the training.” Shuffling forward, he leaned in as much as the bag and his back would allow.
“Orgasm denial, one of those vital rings, he should already have one of those, but you should be hooked into it, make sure you don’t see any after hours activity. ”
I leaned in as well, the bloat in my belly making it a struggle. “We’re not fucking, I’m not going to tell him he can’t masturbate.”
“I’m just saying, if you want to take control over his training, you should take control over him,” he said.
I scraped my tongue across my teeth as they bit down. The gossips in this place were hard at work. “What do you know?”
“I know he’s combative, a brat,” he said. “I’m just saying, if it was me, I’d be dominating every aspect of my trainees life to make sure they were pressed into the sharpest asset. Or do you want Mercy to keep you in this training limbo forever?”
Laying back again, Mercy was dangling money over my head for this, my money, but it was under her control until I withdrew it. There were so many caveats and clauses, but it was all worth it to put up with some of the bullshit.
“Orgasm denial,” I finally repeated back to him.
Reaper chuckled. “Dominate it all.”