Chapter Fifteen
Liam
I’m stationed outside the building where Ravi’s literature class takes place, bright and early on the Monday before the auction. The second I see him, I want to throw him over my shoulder and drag him out of there. That fucker he’s with is big, but I can take him. I’m certain.
By the time Ravi notices me standing here, the big guy behind him is already glaring. This must be the security Daniel mentioned.
“What are you doing here? How did you know where my classes are?” Only seconds before spotting me, Ravi had been chatting with the large man next to him and laughing. Laughing. I haven’t seen him laugh in at least a year.
“Wasn’t easy.” Bev hacked admissions to get me his schedule. She wasn’t thrilled about it, but some situations require creative solutions. “I’d have tracked you down earlier if you hadn’t left your watch at home.”
“You mean the GPS tracker you put in my watch without even letting me know? That was pretty fucked up, Liam.”
A frustrated breath punches its way out of my chest. “Ravi, I’ve told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, your responsibility to babysit the little orphan because of your ancient friendship with my dad, blah, blah. I’m not your job. You can stop.”
My heart’s fucking aching right now. Doesn’t he understand? Protecting him is the one thing I’ve done sort of right in all the fucked-up shit I’ve been part of. I need that rightness, especially now.
“Everything okay here, Rav?”
Rav. His fucking security guard is calling him Rav, as if they’re pals. He’s walking around with one of Daniel Corvus’s oversized goons on his six, but when I try to protect him, I’m an overbearing asshole.
To my surprise, Ravi rolls his eyes and says, “Everything is fine, Channing.” When he turns back to me, his expression hardens. “Seriously, Liam. What are you doing here?”
I hand over the bag I’ve been holding. “Since you haven’t come home and you haven’t been back to your dorm, I thought you might need some things.”
He takes the bag and briefly inspects the contents. Some clothes, his phone, his watch, and a couple of his sketchbooks, because I know he likes to draw when he’s having a tough time. A ghost of a smile crosses his face, but he quickly wipes it away.
Ravi spent days on end drawing when he first came to live with me.
Wouldn’t talk much, but he’d have his pencil scratching on paper for hours.
Days. I found the old ones in his room when I gathered his things.
Mostly pictures of his folks. Some animals.
A new book had pictures of me. Fantasy images of the two of us together, entwined and sleepy.
I’m not proud of it, but that particular sketchbook found a new home in my dresser drawer.
“Thanks,” Ravi says. “But…you know I couldn’t stay. Not the way things have been.”
Once again I’m assaulted by the memory of my hand striking against his ass. The heat of his skin. The way I made him—
Dammit. As much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. Things would have gone berserk if he’d stayed. They’d already departed wildly from anything resembling sanity.
“Last time…” His cries and moans. The way his hips bucked every time my hand came down on him.
The truth is, that night opened a door I’m having a hard time slamming closed.
“I went too far, Ravi. I don’t know what got into me. I’m sorry.” Every time I see him sitting on his bed crying, asking me to talk to him, the self-loathing digs its claws deeper.
The way he’s looking at me now, I think it’s supposed to be a hard stare. Mostly it comes off worried and wary. When the kid first came to live with me, he trusted me. I know he did. In spite of how oppressive his trust felt at the time, I’m cold and empty now that it’s gone.
Now that he’s gone.
“I know you don’t believe me, but I really am trying to keep you safe.
” I gesture at the bag he’s holding. “Your phone is in there. Check your emails, if you don’t believe me.
You’ve been getting messages from an anonymous source and they’re legitimately worrying.
Some guy asking you to save yourself for him.
Calling you creepy shit like ‘pretty’ and ‘precious.’ They’re unhinged, Ravi. ”
“I already know about the emails,” Ravi insists. “Channing dragged me out of brunch yesterday so I could go down to Mr. Corvus’s office and hear all about the fact that some insistent potential bidder is pushing really hard to get the auction canceled. I told him it was probably you.”
What Ravi doesn’t realize is that I was at Gil’s yesterday when he and his friends were there.
While I stood in the crowded restaurant pretending to pick up a mobile order, Ravi chatted with his friends and looked at pictures of someone’s kid.
The only thing that stopped me from barging in was that I counted at least a dozen people in the room, along with Ravi’s fucking guard dog.
They would have circled the wagons, and I wouldn’t have gotten near him.
Whatever I may think of that group, they protect their own.
What pisses me off most is that Ravi is one of their own.
“I’m not sending the damn emails,” I growl. “I’m not that stupid.”
What the fuck does he take me for?
When I see him inching along the wall to get to the entrance of the building, I soften my tone. The last thing I want is to make him run again.
“Look, kid, I’ve made it crystal clear I don’t want you to do this auction. You and I both know your parents wouldn’t want it for you. I’ve already tried to get both Doyle and Corvus to cancel by speaking directly to them. I don’t need to hide behind some anonymous email address.”
He chews his lip. I can see the moment he believes me. Thank fuck.
“Did you look into them? The emails?”
Some of the tension leaks out of my shoulders. For this small moment he’s speaking to me the way he used to, before we were always at each other’s throats. Not that I appreciate having to talk to him with a bodyguard standing two feet away, but I’ll take the win right now.
“My tech guru, Bev, she’s looking into it. So far all she’s found is a dummy account, which are easy to set up these days and hard to track.”
Ravi only chews harder on his lip. “You really think I’m in danger?”
I pull on his lip with my thumb and forefinger, forcing him to stop biting before he draws blood.
It’s alarmingly difficult to take my fingers off his damp, plump skin.
“Ravi, those emails made my blood cold. In my line of work you take every threat seriously. Blowing something off is how you get killed. I can’t have something like that happen to you. ”
He fidgets a little, glancing around before saying quietly, “Channing said some guys were probably just trying to, uh, get me at a discount?”
Jesus, I can’t stand the mental image that gives me. “You’re not a dented can of peas at the grocery store, kid. It could be a hell of a lot worse than someone who’s bargain hunting. What if this is some delusional shithead who thinks they have a right to you that they don’t have?”
There’s an ugly whisper in the back of my head that the right should be no one’s but mine. I do my best to shove it way down into the seething pit where the rest of my ugly shit lives. It swirls in my stomach, threatening to rise up and choke me.
Ravi raises his chin. “I know this might not make sense to you, but I don’t actually care too much about being objectified. Whoever wins the auction, they will have a right to me. For twenty-four hours. And I’ll be getting a payout in return.”
My morning coffee curdles in my stomach. “Ravi.”
“In fact, I gave Daniel a whole list of things I didn’t mind someone else doing to me. I don’t care if you have a problem with it. I am an adult, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.”
Lately I’ve been doing nothing but acknowledging how adult he is.
Somehow I’m drifting closer. His puffy, wet, chewed-up lip shines under the morning sun like a homing beacon. Yes, I know he’s an adult. What I wouldn’t give to forget.
“You said you’d seen what goes on in my garage. Were you spying on me? Hoping to get caught?” Some wicked force has gotten hold of my tongue. “Tell me how you know.”
He lifts his chin. For a second, his lip gets caught between his teeth again. “Yeah. I came back early one night and there was a light on in the garage. I checked it out. So?”
“So you should realize it’s not your…interests that I have a problem with.”
He seems surprised. “Then how come—never mind. I think I get it. It’s not about the auction. It’s about the fact that you still see me as a child and you can’t handle thinking of me doing something like that.”
Ravi’s hard cock thrusting between my knees while I spanked him. His tight virgin pucker winking at me. His—
“You have no idea what it’s about for me.”
We’re so close now, my toes pressing against his, his back against the wall. I bring my lips close to his ear, whispering so nobody else can listen, including his nosy fucking bodyguard.
“Do you honestly believe I can’t think of you as an adult?
I can’t get what happened in your bedroom out of my head.
It’s turning me goddamn inside out. If one of my employees was going out of their minds the way you’ve got me, I would have forced them to take a leave of absence by now.
Of all the people your parents could have assigned to take you in, they chose the one with a checkered military record and a higher body count than the I-4 strangler.
Always thought it was fucked up of your pop to want me to have you. ”
Have him. Lord help me, I’m sick.
Forcing myself to take a breath, I step back.
Or I try. The morning has a hint of chill with fall on its way, and Ravi’s heat is heaven.
What interests me, as I study Ravi’s face, is the lack of surprise.
My military career isn’t something I’ve discussed with him, but he’s simply expectant after my little bomb, waiting to hear more.