11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Benji
T here was a body.
A dead body.
On the floor.
It smelt like he’d probably died a few days ago and he looked like he’d been mauled by a bear.
“Is this a normal occurrence for you?” I asked. “To have a corpse delivered with a bow?”
Damyr stood and turned towards me, uncertainty crossing his features. “You shouldn’t have to see this.”
I snorted. This was not the first time I’d seen a dead body and I’d seen worse injuries than what this poor guy had been through. “Oh, honey, I worked in the emergency department. I’ve seen worse.”
He frowned at me and clenched his jaw, as if the thought of me seeing something so distasteful pissed him off.
“He shouldn’t be here, Boss,” Vlad the tank said, his deep voice carrying as he eyeballed me intently from behind Damyr’s shoulder.
“Let the little bird stay,” Byron said as he ruffled my hair with a grin on his face that was a little unsettling. I didn’t think it was with affection, judging by the playful glint in his frigid eyes.
“Don’t call me that,” I said as I elbowed Byron in his chest.
The maniac huffed a laugh and swatted my ass. “Careful now, or I’ll think you want to play.”
I saw Damyr’s left eye twitch as he watched Byron. Interesting.
“Maybe later,” I said with a waggle of my eyebrows.
Byron’s manic grin widened. “Are you sure—”
“Benjamin.” Damyr hissed my name with a sharp warning. “Come here.”
“Looks like someone’s in trouble,” Byron crooned in my ear.
“Fuck you,” I muttered, and stepped towards Damyr.
Byron latched his fingers into my hair and twisted the strands, pulling me to a stop. My head was yanked backwards, and Byron’s breath tickled my ear. “I’m not into that. I’m more like the kind of guy who will chase you and fuck you where I find you.”
I gulped. That sounded… intense. And a little scary and definitely not my cup of tea.
Maybe teasing the maniac wasn’t the safest thing for my health.
“Are we seriously going to watch Byron hump this guy’s leg?” Vlad drawled as he turned his attention back to the dead body.
“I wouldn’t mind watching,” Damyr’s wife said, her eyes trained on Byron with a hunger that looked a little dark.
“Enough!” Damyr growled. “Byron, let him go.”
Byron immediately released me, a soft laugh tumbling from his lips. “Sure thing, Boss. He’s too pretty for me anyway.”
“Byron, go and find me Acheron,” Damyr ordered. His fists clenched at his sides and he looked like he was one second away from murdering someone. Probably Byron. I wondered why Damry kept the guy around if all he did was wind him up.
“No one ‘finds’ Acheron,” Byron said, tucking his hands into his trouser pockets. He looked far too casual considering the way Damyr was looking at him. “But sure, I’ll see if I can find him. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Well, that’s not a long list,” Vlad scoffed. He was crouched over the body, his shirt and waistcoat stretching tautly across his broad shoulders. He looked like he’d been on a night out. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been dressed in black combat gear.
“Benjamin,” Damyr said quietly, drawing my attention back to him. “You should go.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Benjamin, the more you see, the more you’re at risk.”
“Well, I guess you should have thought about that before you kidnapped me.”
Vlad sniggered before trying to hide it with a cough but when I looked down at him, he was completely focussed on the body. Probably wise.
“Benjamin—”
“Damyr, you can growl my name all you want. I’m not leaving.”
His lips pinched into a tight grimace and his nostrils flared. Damyr was probably used to everyone doing whatever he wanted at the drop of a hat, but I wasn’t going to fall in line. I wasn’t one of his little minions he could bend to his will, no matter how many times he said my name with a growl. Although, I did happen to quite like the sound of it. All deep and throaty. It made goosebumps ripple along my skin.
“Fine,” he eventually said.
“Fine,” I snapped. “Besides, your victim here didn’t die of his wounds.”
“What?” Vlad asked, his chocolate eyes finding mine.
Yeah, I might have had a bit of a smug look on my face as I stared at Damyr. “There’s a slight blue tinge on the lower half of his face and you can just about see the petechiae in his eyes. Those point to asphyxiation. I’m sure if I got a closer look, I could probably tell you that most of the wounds on his body were done postmortem.”
“Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make this look like Lavaeux killed him.” Vlad’s brows were drawn down in a sharp arch as he stood next to Damyr. “This smells like trouble.”
“It seems personal,” I added. Damyr raised a brow in question. “It was clearly delivered to your address, and it came with a bow. You seemed to know who the guy was which suggests you’re being targeted for a reason.”
“Not just a pretty face then,” Damyr’s wife said sweetly. I’d forgotten she was there. Well, tried to. It was hard to ignore the gloriously beautiful, well-dressed supermodel that was married to the guy who’d recently had his tongue down my throat. The wife he’d failed to mention. Still wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the guy was a criminal. Not sure I should be giving him anything really.
“Do you still need to be here, Lucia?” Damyr said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, don’t be like that. It’s starting to get fun,” she replied with a pout.
God, her voice was annoying. There was a false sweetness to it that had me wincing.
Damyr beckoned Vlad closer and whispered something in his ear. It was too low for me to hear what was said, and Vlad’s blank expression gave nothing away.
“Lucia, why don’t you come with me?” Vlad said, his voice as smooth as silk. There was something familiar about the tone he was using and something uncomfortable churned in my gut. Lucia giggled softly and followed Vlad, over to the main entrance and out through the door. Huh. I didn’t think she was going to leave that easily. Weird .
“Tell me what you see,” Damyr said, pointing towards the body.
“You could say ‘please’,” I muttered under my breath and knelt closer to the man in the box.
“Please,” he grumbled, catching me by surprise.
I looked up at him and his tongue darted out to wet his lips. My heart lurched in my chest and desire zipped along my skin. He stared at me for a long, hard moment and held me captive in his sultry gaze. The world could burn down around me, and it wouldn’t distract me. I’d never felt anything this intense, this terrifying.
This goddamn soul shaking.
“I like the way you look on your knees, Banjamin.” He reached his finger out and traced my bottom lip. This wasn’t the place for this, with a corpse right next to me, but I couldn’t resist, even if I wanted to. This wasn’t like me, I could be impulsive, but not normally like this . Fuck, I had a sudden urge to rip my clothes off and let Damyr fuck me next to a corpse. A fucking corpse ! This was madness. It had to be. It was the only explanation I could come up with for parting my lips and letting Damyr sink two fingers to the back of my throat and hold me there. My mouth open wide, saliva pooling and running over my chin.
Damyr’s nostrils flared as my throat constricted around his fingers. He dragged them back and forth along my tongue and shit, my dick was instantly hard in my pants.
“Yes, Benjamin. Just like that,” he hummed as he fucked my throat with his fingers. I could do nothing but gag and take it, imagining all the while that it was his cock I was sucking on. “That’s it, pet.”
I whimpered at the term of endearment. It took me by surprise, but I didn’t hate it. Damyr’s other hand settled on the top of my head, his fingers weaving through the soft curls and gripping them tightly.
“Such a good boy for me,” Damyr said, his voice a hoarse whisper, his restraint thin.
Holy fuck. Why did that sound so hot?
My hips started to roll as I tried to find some relief, anything, something to take away the ache, the burning need, the complete and utter—
“Well, this wasn’t what I was expecting to walk into,” a voice drawled from somewhere behind me.
The fog of desire in my brain dissipated faster than a snow cone in Hell.
“Acheron!” Damyr barked. “What have I told you about portalling in my house!”
I must still be out of it, because I couldn’t have heard Damyr right. Portalling?
Acheron snorted and stepped into my line of sight. “I wasn’t even sneaking around, sugar. You were just distracted. Can’t say I blame you, though. That was hot.”
His silver eyes were blown wide with desire and heat flushed over my skin. What the fuck was I doing? I scrambled backwards and tried to put some distance between Damyr and me, but the further I moved away, the more I felt like I was losing something. Maybe I should have gone for that CT scan like Maya had suggested.
“What do you want?” Damyr growled.
Acheron chuckled. “You sent for me. Remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Damyr snapped, and I had to bite back a laugh. Guess I wasn’t the only one whose brain was affected by that sudden surge of lust.
I looked down at the unfortunate man who’d been delivered to the Morozov Mansion, hoping that I could distract myself from the man currently looming over me with an intense, unrelenting lust-filled gaze pinned on the side of my face. I could feel Damyr’s stare like it was a physical thing and I didn’t know what to make of it. I couldn’t believe how close I’d gotten to making an acquaintance with Damyr’s dick. Again. Fuck, even now I still wanted to wrap my lips around it and choke on it.
Man, I needed help. Like real serious help.
This wasn’t sane. I wasn’t sane.
I needed to think about something else or I was going to crawl back over to Damyr and suck his dick. Acheron be damned.
Right. The body.
He was in his early fifties, and I could see by the ID taped to his head, that he was a Montgomery. Now that I was looking at his face closely, I could see the resemblance to the Royal Family. Hmm… hadn’t the King’s brother disappeared a decade ago? What was he doing in Damyr’s entrance hall? Dead and looking like he’d been mauled by a bear. Accept the only claw mark that had been inflicted when he was alive was the one on his face. The ones across his abdomen and chest didn’t show signs of blood flow so he couldn’t have been alive afterwards. Why go to the trouble of gutting the guy after strangling him? The only thing I could think of was in agreement with what Vlad had said. That someone was making this murder look specifically like something else. But why?
I tentatively prodded the man’s neck and felt the telltale sign of a broken hyoid bone. There were a number of fingertip shaped bruises around his neck. The guy was definitely strangled, but judging by the state of his hands, he fought back. A couple of his fingernails were broken and his palms showed signs of trauma.
“What do you see?”
I jumped and yelped as Damyr suddenly appeared in the space next to me. The guy almost cracked a smile.
“Jesus, Damyr. Warm a guy before you sneak up on them.”
“But you scream so prettily for me.” His voice was low and husky and made my knees weak. Fuck, this man was too much.
I looked away, too caught up in the man that was Damyr Morozov for my brain to function. There were sparks and signals firing in all sorts of directions and I had the unfortunate feeling that my mouth was bobbing open and closed like a fucking fish.
“Are you okay there?” he asked, a knowing smirk on his handsome face.
“Um… y-yeah.” Fucking hell, Benji. Get it together. I coughed and pointed to the dead guy. “I was right. The guy was strangled. All these other wounds were inflicted after death.”
Damyr’s expression hardened, and I had a sudden urge to ask what he was thinking but I stopped myself. Did I really want to know? Did I really want to delve deeper into this underworld that I had already been dragged into?
I couldn’t deny there was something drawing me to Damyr, but it felt dark and dangerous. I wanted him in a way I’d never wanted anyone before, and it scared me. Not because I was terrified of him, but because I was terrified that I wasn’t terrified. My mind rebelled at the very idea of running away and I couldn’t rationalise that. That’s what scared me. That I wanted the danger and that I wanted to surrender to the dark. That those million red flags were just going to be completely ignored, and I was probably going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere.
And that was if I was lucky.
I stood back up and took a step back from the body and away from Damyr. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to do something stupid.
Like fall for the guy.
Damyr pulled his phone out and dialled a number. I wondered if I’d ever get my phone back. Acheron was probably having too much fun demolishing my nice and orderly life via the wonder of social media. I just hoped that when I got access to my phone again, he hadn’t turned me into a wandering, philanthropic hippie that only visits random places in the back of beyond.
“Hey, doll face, what’s up?”
The female voice was ridiculously bright and chirpy considering it was like stupid o’clock in the morning.
“You’re on speaker phone. I have a… guest.”
“Okay,” she replied, drawing out the syllables. “That’s unlike you. Does your guest have a name?”
“Yes,” Damyr said with a frown.
Jeez, this guy but, heaven help me, I was starting to find that frown utterly adorable. “It’s Benji.”
There was the sound of a keyboard clicking. “As in Benjamin Barrett?”
“Yep,” I said, popping the ‘p’.
“Weren’t you tied up in the basement?” she asked.
“Yep.” I could see Damyr’s expression tightening.
“But now you’re a ‘guest’?”
“Apparently so.”
Damyr growled impatiently. “Can we move on?”
“Sure thing, Boss,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Roxie by the way. Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
Damyr huffed. “Roxie, I’m sending you a couple of pics.”
“Ooh, lucky me. Are they at least interesting? The last time someone said they were sending me pictures, Acheron sent me images of his dick.”
“Sorry about that,” Damyr grumbled.
Roxie snorted. “Did I sound like I was complaining? He has a great dick. Those images totally went in my wank bank.”
“Roxie. Speaker phone.” Damyr looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel.
“Sorry, Benji. But if you’d seen his dick—”
“He will never see that imbecile’s cock,” Damyr cut in and I couldn’t help it. A laugh tumbled out of my mouth before I could snatch it back. His eyes narrowed to sharp slits as I tried unsuccessfully to reclaim my giggle.
“Can we get back to the dead body?” Damyr snapped.
Roxie groaned. “That’s not nearly as exciting as talking about dicks.”
I definitely agreed with her on that one.
“I’ve sent Acheron to a dead drop location for you. There’s some evidence in there I’d like you to process. Can you do that for me?”
She snorted. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Damyr frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
The sound of fingernails clicking away furiously on the line halted. “You know, I sometimes hate this job. You vam—”
“Roxie,” Damyr hissed. “Speaker phone.”
“Sorry. This is just a really late call, and I’ve finally got the baby to sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept for like twenty hours at this point.”
My jaw dropped. “Damyr! Are you telling me that you have this woman working for you when she should be sleeping?! Are you insane? Do you know one of the leading causes of depression in new mothers is due to lack of sleep and you have her working on this for you?! ”
The clicking fingernails paused again. “Oh, Damyr. Can we keep him?”
“Not up to you,” Damyr grumbled. “And I don’t answer to you, Benjamin. I need Roxie because she’s the best.”
“Aww,” she sniffed dramatically. “I knew you loved me, Damyr. And don’t worry about me, Benji love, I’m used to working long days with little sleep. Caffeine is my best friend. Oh, and energy drinks and self-help books. They get me through the day.”
Well, that wasn’t healthy but who was I to judge? A few minutes ago, I’d been about to fuck a mafia don next to a corpse.
Damyr clicked his phone a few times. “I’ve just sent you the pictures. Can you identify what order the injuries were made?”
“Holy shit,” she muttered. Guess she got the pictures. “Is that Theo Montgomery?”
“Yes. Can you identify what order—”
“Yeah, yeah, give me a few minutes, doll face.” And with that she disconnected.
Well, she was a bit of a whirlwind. And interesting.
“I like her,” I said.
Damyr sighed. “Everybody likes her.”
Was that a touch of jealousy I detected? And why did I care?
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. What the fuck was I doing?
Oh, God.
I was the na?ve girl in the rom-com movie who ignored all the signs and fell in love with the bad guy only to get their heart broken and trodden on a million different ways.
I’d always had good instincts, but a few hours with this intense, brooding man, and I didn’t know which way was north. What the hell was I going to do?