Chapter Eleven
Liam
“Sir, you look like shit.” Bev spins the chair across from me and straddles it, folding her arms across the back. “Same thing still eating you as before?”
I drop the piece of label I’ve been peeling from my beer bottle and meet her curious gaze with a “back the fuck off” glare.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” I add for good measure.
“Your face is too pretty for such an ugly look, boss. You’ve been extra edgy lately, and everyone’s starting to worry.
” She gestures to the room behind us, where the rest of the team are either playing or betting on a game of darts.
My friend and business partner, Zed, has for some reason taken his shirt off and is circling it in the air like a lasso.
“After you beat a man of God to death in our warehouse, we figured you could use a night out to decompress,” she adds with a humorless smile. “Doesn’t seem to be working.”
I take a healthy swig of my beer. “Can’t call him a man of God when he was trafficking his own followers, if you ask me.”
She shrugs and tips back her IPA. “If you ask me, God doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t matter what you call him.”
Thirty seconds into this conversation and I already want to go back to being left alone. “You didn’t come over here to discuss whether or not God exists.”
“No, sir. I came over here because you’ve spent the day biting everyone’s head off. The little boys are all too nervous to talk to you about it, so somebody had to woman up. Since I’m currently the only woman on the team, here I am.”
A shout comes from the far wall, where Reece has managed a bull’s-eye. Zed pumps his fist and holds his hand out to Yannis, who forks over some cash. Fred and Callaghan keep glancing over my way, trying to act as if they’re minding their own business.
“They placing bets on why I’m in a bad mood?”
“Odds heavily favor your boy, Ravi. Reece said you were ranting about him at your last job together, and Callaghan said—I want to be clear that these are his words, not mine—last time he saw the two of you together, the boy looked at you ‘like he’d crawl naked over glass if you asked him to.’”
“I think Callaghan needs to keep shit to himself before I cut out his tongue.”
She continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “Sal and Marcus called in from Mexico, and they’re thinking this goes back to months ago when that recovery job went tits up. Yannis has fifty on the fact that none of us did anything for your birthday last month.”
Fuck that. I never celebrate my birthday. Why do I need to, when I’ve got a college freshman in my life to remind me exactly how old I am? Besides, birthdays are hard for Ravi. No need to put him through that shit.
“Yannis should stop betting on things. He’s already broke from two divorces.”
Bev raises her eyebrows but says nothing.
“That recovery job is done and buried. We don’t win them all. Can’t change the past.”
Honestly, Bev’s an amazing hacker but she could pull the truth from anybody with nothing but her eyebrows. No fillet knife needed.
I’ve had interrogation training. Twenty years in the Army, ten of them in special forces. Nobody can break me with the power of a stare.
Usually.
I’m tired as fuck. I’m strung out from that spontaneous spanking session in Ravi’s bedroom.
Still sensing the smoothness of his ass under my palm, the way he orgasmed from the lightest brush of my finger on his hole.
The moans and cries he made when I touched him won’t leave me alone.
There’s this ugly thing pacing and thrashing inside me since it happened.
I’m trying so hard to keep the beast on a leash.
It’s not working. Not when every time I close my eyes I see his tearstained face, flushed with a mix of confusion and sated pleasure. Hear his voice, rough from crying out, asking to discuss what happened between us. I hate myself for what I did as much as for the way I keep wanting to do it again.
“He’s not my boy,” I growl.
If I could just convince the beast inside me. The one who took over when I grabbed him and threw him over my lap as if he very much was mine. I still can’t believe the way I lost control.
“But…you…want him to be?” There’s no judgment in her face. Only interest.
“Of course I fucking don’t.” I rip the rest of the label off my bottle, crumpling the foil-stamped scrap in my fist. “I’m supposed to be protecting him. It’s what I do. Protecting people is what I’ve spent my entire life doing. I’ve also never been more certain that I’m failing.”
She regards me silently, spinning her empty beer bottle in little circles. The repetitive sound has me wanting to stab somebody.
“Sir, you know my ex was an alcoholic?”
Where is this going? “I think you’ve mentioned it before.”
“Spent years trying to fix him. Years. Dumping out his booze, trying to keep him in a good mood, placating him when he was on a rampage. He’d agree to go to a meeting once in a while but never made it more than a few weeks sober before it all went off the rails again.
He was set on killing himself, and I kept trying to save him. ”
Ah. I see now. “This is a teaching story.”
“Damn right it is. See, I learned the hard way that you can’t help someone who isn’t interested in taking it from you.
Whatever you think you owe this kid, or owe his parents, you’ve done your job.
When you were his age, you were dodging missiles in Afghanistan.
If you ask me, it’s time to let go before you drive him away. ”
After locking him in his room and taking his phone?
“Not that I did ask, but I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.
” Hell, it’s halfway to the Kamchatka Peninsula by now.
I try to shake the earlier memories from my head.
“The whole thing’s thoroughly fucked at this point.
I tried to help him. He pushed back. Then I pushed harder, so he sneaked out, and I lost my shit and padlocked his door and window. ”
Her eyes fly open wide. “I’m sorry. You did what now?”
“Didn’t work. He picked the lock on the window and climbed out.”
When I went home to change, I found him gone.
Found his watch hidden under the cover of the fucking barbecue grill.
“I’ve spent all day wondering who’s more screwed up.
Me for trying to lock him in his room, or him for constantly sneaking out with the apparent mission of putting himself in harm’s way.
So, you can go tell everybody who won the bet.
You can also let them know I intend to get my shit together ASAP. ”
Not a clue how I can promise that when I feel so far out to sea, but Bev seems to accept it. I don’t like the way she seems to be mulling over everything I just said. Mostly, I don’t like that all of it was true.
She turns her chair and props her feet on the table. Our waitress, Annie, comes by and swats the back of Bev’s head with a bar towel. Bev only grins and swats Annie on the ass as she walks past.
My chair scrapes on the floor as I push it back. “Time for me to go. Don’t think I’m in the mood to stay and watch you get laid.”
I’m drowning in prickly, itchy shame since what happened in Ravi’s bedroom, but probably not enough. Hasn’t stopped me from jerking my dick raw. My balls are still so blue they’re on the way to purple.
I can’t even stand that I’m thinking of him this way.
By the time I came back to myself in the middle of spanking him, I was already in the midst of crossing the line.
My shrieking conscience hadn’t been able to stop me from that dangerous moment when I let my finger wander into territory I couldn’t explain away.
My control has been shredded into tiny pieces of confetti. I never should have let things go as far as they did. Never mind the way I can’t stop…craving him.
The kid’s phone pings on the table in front of me, where it’s still sitting next to my own. A notification about an upcoming test from one of his teachers.
I’ve told myself a dozen times to quit looking at the damn thing. The group chat, the messages from Brennan, have all gone silent. The abrupt lack of communication from the people he talks to most tells me they’ve probably been informed Ravi doesn’t have his phone.
Any further monitoring is pointless. Like the guilty jerking off, I can’t seem to stop.
“Why don’t you get yourself laid, then?” Bev’s question snaps me out of my thoughts. She tips her head to the side, flicking her gaze over toward the bar.
When I follow the path of her attention, I realize there’s a man there who isn’t doing much at all to hide his interest. He’s close to my height, a little leaner. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Nervous.
No chin dimple, no full lips, no tight, barely legal ass. Probably doesn’t use bubblegum-scented bodywash.
Most importantly, he’s not half my age. I can see the gray at his temples from the weathered table where Bev and I sit.
Yes, I could probably have some fun with him tonight. I could probably even call up my buddies and get a group together. Zed would be happy to come over and help me escort the guy home. Seems like the type who wouldn’t mind being shared.
“Not in the mood right now,” I tell Bev.
“Aaand this is because of the kid?”
“He’s not a fucking kid.”
My brain flashes back to the day he arrived at my house, wide-eyed and silent, with a Jujutsu Kaisen anime backpack slung over his bony shoulders.
No. As much as I try to ignore it, the young man who defiantly called me Daddy and climbed through his bedroom wearing spandex shorts is not a kid anymore.
“You’re the one who keeps calling him a kid.”
“I’m keeping this insubordination in mind at your next review.”
She responds by giving me the finger.
“Fuck.” I run a tired hand down my face. “He’s been living with me since he was almost sixteen. It’s a little…”
“Weird.”
“Twisted. Incestuous. Fucked up.”