Chapter 6
LOCKE
My thoughts were all over the place. How did this guy manage to get under my skin the way he did?
Maybe he was right. Maybe I saw him as a charity project. But it wasn’t pity I felt when I looked at him. It was anger.
I wanted to salt the fucking earth.
He was a completely different Jett than the one I’d known. Skin and bones, weary and exhausted, when he should be smiling and dancing unabashedly. How dare the man he’d been with treat him like shit?
If I had someone under my protection, I’d make sure they had everything they needed. More than that, I’d make them feel special. Precious. Any man who could afford to bring an escort halfway around the world could also afford to treat him right.
Jett would eventually give me the guy’s name. And then I’d make sure the asshole rued the day he ever laid eyes on this kid.
“You’re welcome to shower,” I said, trying hard not to scare Jett off. I could tell he was on the edge of bolting, and the very idea that he’d have to find another man to charm into a free room for the night made me sick to my stomach.
Clearly, he’d needed food and sleep. Not sex.
Not that I didn’t want to fuck him. I did. In fact, when I was with Jett, my sexual attraction to women was nonexistent. Like smoke suddenly ripped out of the air by a vacuum—there one minute and gone the next.
I’d thought of sex with Jett Davis many times in the months since I’d seen him last. Getting hard for him twice now had made me question my sexuality, but in almost a year of looking for any sign of any attraction to other men, I hadn’t found it. At least not enough to want to act on it.
It was just him.
Just this stripper—pardon me, dancer—and paid escort.
Which meant it wasn’t his maleness that intrigued me. It was something else.
Hell, maybe it was the fact that he challenged me. Most of the women I’d ever been with did whatever they thought I wanted. Jett should have done whatever I wanted, but instead gave me attitude—and that teasing, smirky smile—at every turn.
Jett lifted an eyebrow at me. “Are you saying I stink?”
I glanced at the sofa, which was definitely not large or comfortable enough to give him the rest he needed. The man needed to sleep in a bed, and mine was plenty large enough for the two of us.
“I’m saying I don’t want to share a bed with someone who could still be covered in another man’s jizz,” I snapped. “Get in the fucking shower.”
He snickered as he headed back to the bedroom. Within moments, the clear sound of the shower spray turning on indicated he hadn’t closed the bathroom door.
My curiosity got the best of me, and I wandered into the bedroom to catch a glimpse of him.
He was softly singing the lyrics to what sounded like a German pop song under his breath as steam billowed out of the glass cubicle.
His eyes were closed and face tilted to the ceiling as the water cascaded down his hair and onto his back.
The rounded shape of his ass drew my attention, but then again, all of him was like a magnet for my eyes, including the cock hanging from a thatch of dark pubic hair, moving a little against his thigh as he swayed to the tune.
As my eyes roamed and he turned to put his face in the spray, I noticed bruises along his sides and back in various shades of yellow, brown, and purple.
What the fuck kind of danger was he putting himself in? Accepting money for sex made people vulnerable to abuse. Had his sugar daddy put hands on him? Or had something happened while he was practically homeless here in Amsterdam?
I knew if I asked him about it, he’d likely leave, so I kept my mouth shut. But the anger in my gut ratcheted up several notches. When I found the asshole responsible for this, I would rip his life into tiny pieces.
I forced myself to move away and stop staring at him like a creep. Jett had been badly used. I refused to be another person who took from him, even if all I was taking was a glimpse of his gorgeous body.
I moved around the room, pulling off my clothes and changing into a pair of sleep shorts.
I grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge in the main room of the suite and put one on each nightstand.
When Jett was finally out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, I joined him in the bathroom to brush my teeth.
“There’s an extra set of everything there if you need it,” I said, gesturing to the toiletry kit I’d requested be sent up with the food. There was no telling what was in his ratty backpack.
He thanked me softly and reached for the kit, yanking out the toothbrush and toothpaste before attacking his teeth like he was trying to rid himself of mouth demons.
“Onion soup,” he garbled when he caught me staring at him in the mirror. “Thank me later.”
I thought back to the kiss he’d planted on me in the bar. Wholly unexpected and raw. Desperate.
All-consuming.
I’d never kissed a man before, so I’d been caught completely off guard. And then I’d been surprised to… not hate it.
Fine, I’d liked it. Very much.
But maybe that was simply the passion he’d put into it. It was hard not to respond to that kind of energy.
It didn’t matter, though. I shouldn’t have kissed him back. And I definitely shouldn’t have been thinking of all the other things I wanted to do to him.
I was dating someone. Two months ago, my grandfather had insisted on setting me up with the very beautiful Kalliope Andros. To my surprise, we’d been compatible—meaning she was as insatiable in bed as I was and remarkably unsentimental, a rare combination.
I hadn’t promised Kalliope exclusivity—that wasn’t something I did, ever. But I knew after two months of seeing each other fairly regularly, she’d consider it a betrayal if I had sex with someone else. Unlike my wastrel father, I was capable of controlling my urges so I didn’t fuck up a good thing…
Even if being here with Jett made it hard to remember why my arrangement with Kalliope was a good thing.
Even if Jett was temptation incarnate.
The man was a mystery. After discovering he’d given my driver a false address, I’d tried to track him down. I’d even gone so far as to have my assistant get our security company involved to run a background check on him.
There was no “Jett Davis” to be found. But we’d found plenty on Jethro Benjamin Davis.
Which meant Jett had been telling the truth when he’d given me that name, even if Jett was the name he chose to go by.
He was from Charleston, South Carolina, too, just like he’d said, and the only child of a single mother who worked at a Waffle House.
Since moving to New York almost two and a half years ago, his job history read like holes around a dartboard. He’d been an “entertainer” at the Candy Bar for four months, a DoorDasher for a year before that, a promotional event greeter, a cater-waiter, and various other temporary, low-paying jobs.
But the most interesting piece of information was that he was only twenty-three. This somehow seemed decades younger than my thirty-one. But between the two of us, he seemed to be the one with harsh life experience.
I’d grown up in luxury, with every wish granted and every privilege imagined. My parents hadn’t been supportive or caring, even before my father’s death, but I’d always had my grandfather, Maris Holdings, and a legacy to uphold.
I stepped slightly behind Jett to floss my teeth after finishing brushing.
My eyes caught a drop of water sliding down the back of his shoulder and over the sharp peak of his shoulder blade.
It paused for a moment as he leaned over the sink, then continued down his poor, abused spine, before dipping into one of the dimples in his lower back just above the edge of the towel.
I imagined tracing the droplet’s path with my tongue. Kissing each bruise, each knob of his vertebrae. Then I imagined my thumbs finding those divots over his ass while I held his hips and drove into him.
My heart rate picked up.
Fuck. What was it about this guy that made me consider fucking another man? Especially when I had a willing woman waiting for me back in the city.
My eyes met his in the mirror. His cheeks and neck were splotchy red.
“You like what you see, Locke?” he asked softly.
I ignored my thickening cock. “Who did this to you? The bruises.”
He blinked, the wet, dark lashes tangling before revealing eyes a faded denim blue.
“I need his name, Jett,” I said. “I know people who can give him a dose of his own fucking medicine.”
He turned to face me and stepped into my personal space, wrapping his arms around my back and hugging me. His nose pressed into the side of my neck.
I froze, my arms down by my side. “What’s happening right now?”
“It’s a hug,” he said with a smile in his voice. “We’re hugging.”
“I don’t hug,” I insisted, wrapping my arms around him. If there was something this man seemed like he needed right now, it was a little comfort.
It took me several long moments to realize I’d been had.
I pulled back and put my hand on his chest, holding him away from me. “Tell me who caused these bruises. And no distractions this time.”
“That’s not going to happen. But I appreciate your concern. I promise I’m fine.”
He moved toward the bedroom, pulling his towel off and dropping it on the floor as he went.
I stared at the pale globes of his ass. The dimples above it. The long, slender stretch of his back.
My heart thundered in my ears. My neck. My face.
My cock.
Calm the fuck down, Locke. It isn’t any different than seeing Kalliope’s naked back and ass.
I sucked in a breath.
Lies.
Jett moved out of the bedroom and past the small dining table, then leaned over to rifle through his backpack, presumably in search of clothes.
As my eyes went straight to the cleft of his ass and the drop of his balls between his legs, I realized I’d been had again.
That rosy-pink hole caught my attention and held it tight. It seemed his mouth wasn’t the only thing I was interested in.
My dick hardened painfully at the sight of his body, his vulnerability.
His unexpected need for comfort and protection.
Something about Jett sent rational thought skittering away like a handful of pebbles tossed into gale force winds.