Chapter 22
Artemis was in the computer lab looking for his next job, something violent, vicious, and able to satisfy the rage inside him.
I’d sat with the thought that perhaps the rage came from a place I’d let him see, that it was something I could’ve stopped, or at least shaped.
I thought letting him sit at the desk would help him see how much more fun it would be than getting your knuckles busted and bloody.
But part of me knew that he would never succumb to that, he would just keep fighting.
I’d seen that anger and pain, that need to commit violent acts.
It wasn’t easy to notice at first, in fact, I hadn’t wanted to accept it.
This life was dangerous, with death working alongside you, and one day, it would come for you instead of the people you were targeting.
I sat beside Reaper in the medical wing. He was getting a vitamin infusion. He’d been in the cages again, making extra cash. He called it his training ground, and I couldn’t be further from wanting in on it.
“You two made it official then,” he said.
“Yeah, and now I just have to worry about him,” I grumbled. One of the fairies came over with their thick fibrous green shakes. It was placed on the table in front of me. “Thanks.” It was like mixing cement, and would harden in an instant.
“It’s why I don’t date,” Reaper said. “I don’t want to be sat thinking someone is going to get hurt because of me. And then, there’s the obvious weak spot in my life. You know how many fuckers would come out of the woodwork if I decided to get a partner.”
“Work or life?” I asked, finally giving the straw a big suck to taste the smoothie.
“You know I ride solo in work,” he said.
“And if I did have someone, I wouldn’t tell you, and I wouldn’t say it here.
” He glanced around. There were hidden cameras everywhere.
The place was bugged up to the eyeballs—but that was to be expected.
Mercy’s biggest pull over people was the information she held.
If it ever got out, the world would crumble. “I did join a dating app though.”
“Shut up.”
“Just to get laid,” he said. “I’ve started being super honest with people on there.”
“Ok, saying what?”
He snickered. “I hope you’re not hitting on me,” he said. “I think I’d destroy you and that twink.”
I leaned back, sucking more of the smoothie through the straw.
“You’re not my type,” I mustered through the intense taste hitting my tongue.
Almost choking on it. Reaper laughed, followed by his own round of intense pain as he clutched his ribs.
I hadn’t seen the fight he’d gotten into, but I assumed since it was in the cage, something intense had happened—and he won.
Five minutes and half a smoothie later, we’d stopped laughing.
“You should try date someone here,” I told here.
He shook his head. “Mercy told me I wasn’t allowed.”
“Was that before or after Kael?”
Reaper leaned back in the comfy chair, the IV fluid almost empty as he looked at it. “Kael Sinclair,” he grumbled. “We don’t talk about Kael.”
“We talk about me a lot,” I said. “I figured it was time you spilled something.”
Kael Sinclair an illegitimate kid and heir to the Sinclair fortune. From memory, he was the only person who’d ever actually hurt Reaper. He continued to shake his head and screw his eyes, as if object permanence would kick in and I’d leave.
“Do you still speak to him?” I asked.
He shook his head a little faster. “We were never compatible,” he said. “Two tops don’t make a bottom.” Laughter started up again, as did whatever pain he was going through as he pushed a hand under his pit and keeled slightly.
* * *
The computer lab was on whichever floor the elevator decided it seemed. I never got used to the lack of numbers, or the motion in the elevator. Up or down, for all I knew we could’ve been going side-to-side as well.
It was a quiet place with the soft, creamy finger taps on keyboards. It was lulling almost. I walked around. Some of the fairies were directing through comms, giving advice and information.
I spotted Jinksy, and beside him, Artemis. There were three of them. The other one was Finley, it was a guess. In the mostly dark room with the cool-toned computer screens lighting up their faces from beneath, almost casting menacing shadows.
“I take it you’ve found something,” I said, approaching them.
All three of them looked at me like lemmings, startled by my presence.
“It was all Artemis,” Jinksy said.
His big eyes stared at me, with the biggest smile to match. “I love this system. Everything is here. I can search anyone and find out their entire life.”
“Ok, so what did you find?” I asked.
“An operation in Long Island City,” he said.
“The Ashford family have these safe houses dotted around the city, they bring people in, store them almost, training them to do—whatever it is they’re being forced to do, and then they’re shipped off again across the country.
” He shuddered and in the light, I swore I saw the fine hairs on his body stand. “I want this to be my first op.”
“Ok,” I said, looking at Jinksy and Finley all quiet. “Can we speak alone?”
The fairies left and I pulled a seat in close from the empty computer terminal to his left.
There was still a lot that he had to learn, and I didn’t want it to be a difficult lesson, but I knew neither of the fairies would’ve told him—they were probably just glad to have someone else around to talk to IRL.
“You’ve got to send everything through Mercy,” I said, quietly. “If she doesn’t sign off on it, as in, you go against her, it’s basically a death sentence. So, make sure you’ve got an airtight job before you do it.”
“We’re getting bad people off the streets, why would she not approve it?” he asked. “It’s not like she has shared in it, does she?”
I bit my tongue slightly and shrugged. “She might. She doesn’t have them in Ashford, but competing companies, she could be working with. She might not approve of them with certain things, but it doesn’t mean she’s going to let you go in there killing their people.”
Artemis’s shoulders deflated. “These are Ashford, so, it should be fine.”
“It should, but you can’t get your hopes up,” I said. I wanted to coddle him, to keep him from actually finding people. I thought sending him up here would have him using their computers and getting distracted—but instead, one-track mind, he was just here to find someone to make pay.
“You don’t have to crap all over my research,” he said, frowning and pouting. I hooked a finger under his chin, pushing it upward for his lips to reach mine.
“I wasn’t shitting all over it,” I said. “I’m just trying to let you know, if something is easy to find, and nobody else has taken them out, there’s probably a reason for it.”
“Someone else is protecting them?” he asked. “Well, this seems easy. I’m going to ask Mercy.”
* * *
I admired Artemis’s tenacity, it was hand-in-hand with his sass and often brattiness, but I knew the softness, the sweet, the gooey, the center of him that was mine, all etched and scribbled on with my cock. Mine.
There must’ve been favoritism happening since Mercy didn’t hear much and she approved the hit.
It was a low level boss, not even on her radar, on nobodies radar, and the payout for it wasn’t much since nobody was asking for it.
It came out of a much larger budget assigned for additional jobs—this was like a job that would’ve been attached to a much larger hit.
“I’ve got a good eye for things,” Artemis said as we walked back to the apartments together. “You wanna be on my team for this one? Or should I solo?” he giggled.
I remembered my first solo hit, and it hadn’t gone as smoothly, I was sucker punched in a bathroom, my head bashed through a stall.
All because I took a job. Safe to say those two guys were removed from Sanctum, and blacklisted from almost every other global agency.
“Obviously, I wanna be on your team,” I told him.
“I need to make sure I don’t lose you again.
” I pressed a finger to his lips before he could speak.
We weren’t going to get into the whole debate over who lost who—I knew I would always lose thar argument.
Artemis went to his apartment with his file of information as I went into mine. It was as far as I was comfortable letting him be right now. “I’ll come over later,” he said. “I want to make notes on this action plan.”
“Ok. Spend the night with me?”
“Duh, your bed is comfier,” he said.
“Haven’t they upgraded your bed?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe we could check it out.”
“I like the sound of it,” I said. “I’ll let you work a little before I come over and destroy your focus.”
We kissed before letting our bodies leave each other.
My apartment was a reminder of the dynamic the two of us had been in when he was training. It was intense, but consensual, and now that our dynamic had changed once more, the leash I had on him was a lot more subtle—in the form of jewelry.
I could only last so long in my apartment here before I would inevitably go crazy, and since I had no work contracts currently on, I had nothing to focus my mind on.
I walked around Sanctum for what must’ve been hours, I went by the medical wing for a quick check-up, to the training cages where Reaper was throwing money down on bets, and then to the climbing wall where I free climbed all the way to the top—rang the bell, and didn’t feel the same level of happiness I usually got from it.
Until I saw Artemis’s face, staring up at me. It made me realize I didn’t like being left on the outside, I wanted to be in on all his decisions, and actions. But at what cost? The cost of letting him on all of mine? By now, he’d worked for it. He deserved it.
On the floor, he gave my arm a punch—holding back a real jab. “You said you were going to be in your apartment,” he said. “But I figured you’d be here.”
“You needed me?” I asked, lifting my t-shirt up to wipe sweat from my face. “Because all you had to say was that you needed me and I’d be right there.”
“No, I didn’t need you,” he said, biting his lip and blushing.
“I wanted you. Your door was open, so I went in ready to attack your—” his eyes dipped to my crotch, already bulging from the intense beating and rush of blood around my body.
“And to my surprise, you weren’t there, so you blue ballsed me. ”
“Oh, this was about sex, I thought you might’ve needed help with your job,” I said. I didn’t mind being used in either case, I just wanted to be used by him. In fact, it was a need. “You wanna finish what you started then?”
Art shrugged. “Nah, I’m over it now. I realized I can do whatever I want, so I think I might go try that ice cream place we passed by all the time in the canteen.”
I hugged him in a sweaty embrace. “I did promise you ice cream if you were good, didn’t I?”
“And have I been good?”
Planting a kiss on his cheek, I pushed his face against my lips, really forcing an impression to be made.
It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, he was getting my wet sloppy cheek kisses whether he liked it or not.
And I knew he liked it. Even with people looking, I knew he wanted more.
We weren’t exactly the only couple in Sanctum, there was Mercy and Marzia too, but as a rule, people didn’t see them kissing or holding hands.
I’d been known to break and bend rules—if Artemis’s name had been Rules.
* * *
In my apartment, we showered together, and Artemis was on his knees once more. The gold chain around his neck glistening as the water rolled off my body and onto his. I washed my torso and he washed my legs.
After our fingers and feet had become all pruned, we finally left the shower to lay on the bed, in the expensive bathrobes we’d taken from the hotel.
We laid in each other’s arms as Artemis flicked through the channels on the TV screen.
He got to the information about how much money I had and whacked a hand against my chest.
“You have millions,” he said. “We could retire. We could go live off this forever.”
“There’s no retiring,” I told him, but I don’t think he believed any of those times I’d told him at all. “All there is in this world is deteriorating and dying.”
He rolled on top of me, straddling his legs across my waist. “There’s got to be some form of retiring,” he said.
“Why are you even thinking about that?” I asked. “You’ve only just started.”
“And I had one goal in mind, kill the people responsible for trying to have me kidnapped,” he said. “I’m sure in a year or two, I’ll have done that.”
Up on my elbows with my knees now against his back, I stared at him. Analyzing him. “I know that’s what you want, and you also want that picket fence dream. But that’s a dream, the people you kill will seek revenge, and do everything to demolish that dream.”
“Not with you by my side,” he said. “And these fists.” He held them up in the defensive stance by his face, ready to guard and jab at a moment’s notice.
“That money will go fast,” I said with a weak finger snap. “You know this.”
“That’s why I said, in a year or two.” He shuffled his ass back against my knees, trying to find my dick behind the bathrobe. “Make a nest egg, together, then I don’t know, buy a house together, get—” he blushed.
“I know what you were going to say, and I’ve not proposed.”
He tugged at the coin medallion on the chain. “I figure this is the next best thing.”
At this rate, marrying each other was a given, the ultimate form of togetherness—and foreverness. “Enough sap,” I said, wrapping my arms around his back and holding him to my chest. “I’m fucking you.”