Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Conrad
I stood starting blankly at the oven. Inside was the leftovers of a breakfast casserole my chef had made.
It had been too sweet for my taste, a French toast thing, but something told me Tav would love it.
A bowl of cut up fruit sat on the counter, and two steaming mugs of coffee were on a tray, ready for me to deliver to Tav.
But I needed a minute. I needed a whole lot of minutes.
The weight of the last day was finally catching up to me. The fighting. Tav’s attachment to Devlin. The way Tav hid behind Husk to survive.
If all I wanted was a fuck, I’d go out and get one with a hell of a lot less complications.
This was true. Tav might be a dream, but his life outside this apartment was a million red flags, and I was a bull charging through all of them. Complications be damned.
Today wouldn’t be easy. Tav and I would have to talk. He was going to have to tell me things, and I was going to have to reciprocate. It was going to be hard, and it was going to hurt. But at least he was here. He was in my apartment, safe, and with me. Everything else we could handle in due time.
The way he’d reacted when I’d called him Husk… that would haunt me forever. I’d lashed out, sick over this entire situation, and had only succeeded him hurting him more. I regretted it, but I didn’t regret what came after. Because when Tav’s anger burned out, he’d been so beautifully open with me.
I had never been the type of lover who wanted to take care of someone.
I liked domination in the bedroom, but outside of it, I was independent, and I preferred my partners to be the same.
But Tav was different. I wanted to hand feed him grapes.
I wanted to tend to his wounds. I wanted to wash his big body with a soapy loofah and suds up his hair with shampoo.
When the casserole was sufficiently heated, I dumped a massive helping on a plate, placed it on the tray with the rest of the breakfast, and carried it into the bedroom.
Tav glanced up from where he was propped up on the bed with about three pillows stuffed behind his head and back. The TV was playing where it hung on the opposite wall. Some old movie he’d found.
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“I don’t—didn’t have streaming services at my apartment,” he said sheepishly.
His face looked awful—a mass of bruises and cuts. I had a hard time looking at him without wincing, without feeling that inner rage that almost had me marching to find that Shock fucker and ripping his throat out.
But my murderous thoughts fled when Tav’s face lit up as I dropped the tray on his lap.
He ate like a starving animal, scarfing up the whole casserole and all the fruit while sucking down lava-hot coffee like it was ice water.
Pleased sounds rumbled from his throat in between talking along with the movie.
I sat down next to him, stealing a few strawberries and sipping my own coffee.
When I asked him what movie was on, he stared at me, his mouth open and full of food. “It’s Bloodsport.”
I stared back.
He chewed and swallowed. “Bloodsport,” he said again.
“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
He waved his hand in front of my face. “B-but you had no reaction.”
“And what reaction am I supposed to have?”
He blinked, then squinted his eyes and pinched his lips. When he spoke, it was in a mock low voice. “Ah, Bloodsport. Yes, my Tav, of course. How could I be so silly not to recognize Jean-Claude Van Damme in what’s considered his finest cinematic masterpiece?”
I stole a stray casserole crumb off his plate. Yeah, still too sweet. “Do I really sound like that?”
He threw up his hands and turned back to the TV. “I’m sorry, this isn’t going to work out.”
I ignored that remark. “Jean-Claude Van Damme—wasn’t he in that Under Siege movie?”
His jaw dropped in horror. “Holy shit, stop talking.”
“Why?”
“That was Steven Seagal!” Tav’s voice had gone up an octave. His outrage was genuine, but I found it hilarious. My lips were twitching. I didn’t do lip twitching. I wasn’t sure I really did smiling. Or banter with a lover. Or whatever the fuck we were doing.
I poked at his dimple. “You’re still gorgeous when you’re mad.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” he huffed. On the TV some man punched another man with—were those nails on his knuckles?—while Tav smiled at my compliment.
“What movies do you like then?” he asked when the bloody fight was over and his empty tray was on the floor beside the bed. He’d practically licked the plate clean. “Please don’t tell me documentaries or something.”
“Are you calling me boring?”
Tav grinned, and that dimple was back. “You’re far from boring, Con.”
I flicked him on the arm in a spot that wasn’t bruised. I settled lower. “I like dumb action movies. The dumber and more ridiculous the better.”
His eyes lit up, and his smile grew impossibly wide. Fuck, he looked so young and carefree like this, if I looked past the bruises and cuts. “No way.”
“Yes way. Like The Fast and Furious.”
“Those movies are totally genius. How dare you call them dumb.”
I gave him a look. “Tav, they pulled a bank safe through the streets with cars.”
“Have you ever tried it? How can you say it wouldn’t work?”
I laughed then, appreciating the way he quipped back at me. “Soon as you’re better, let’s rent a car, rob a bank, and test out the theory.”
“Great, I’m driving.”
“Oh, so I’m the passenger princess?”
It was his turn to give me a look. “Con, you have a driver.”
We traded favorite movies back and forth for a little while until Tav shut up so he could watch the closing scenes of Bloodsport. Which I had to admit was entertaining.
I finished my coffee and was about to get another one, when Tav spoke again. “Used to watch this all the time when I was a kid. Had the DVD. Plastic cover was all marked up, corners peeling. But I carted that damn thing to every fucking foster home we went to.”
He was giving me something right now. A little bit of Tav, and not just his body. I didn’t move, worried he’d flinch and bound away like a startled deer. “Do you still have it?”
He took a noisy sip of his coffee. “Nah. It got stolen before we aged out of the system.”
So many questions. “Who’s we?” I asked quietly.
Tav kept his eyes on the TV. “My sister.”
I didn’t want to ask the next question. I feared it, but I had a feeling this sister had something to do with why Tav fought for Devlin. Call it instinct. “And where is she now?”
He fidgeted with the blanket. “She’s alive but hates my guts. I don’t hate her, though.” Finally, he looked at me. “Tattooed her on my back.”
The angel with the long, dark hair. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” His voice shook. “Yeah, she is.”
Although I wanted to ask more questions, I knew he was done for right now. So I took his empty dishes out to the kitchen while he watched the rest of his movie silently. No more humor in those eyes now. It’d been nice, that one glimpse I had. I’d get more. I’d get them forever.
When I finished cleaning up from breakfast, I checked on Tav. He was asleep, the credits rolling on the TV. I left it on, the soundtrack playing softly in the background, and closed the door to the bedroom.
I walked directly to my office and shut the door. I dialed his number, and Nik answered after the first ring and spoke first. “Found it.”
I exhaled with relief, glad I had a back-up plan. “Don’t tell me. I’ll get it out of him.”
Nik grunted but stayed silent. It was wrong to know Tav’s full name before he chose to tell me.
What I was about to do next was enough of a betrayal.
“He has a sister. Alive. That’s all I know.
I want everything you can find out—name, occupation, history, address, what she fucking had for breakfast. Everything. ”
A sound in the receiver. Nik was smoking. “Yep.”
“And you know the drill. She can’t know.”
“Yep.”
“There’s a connection to Devlin, you find that out, and I’ll buy you a fucking yacht.”
Nik chuckled in that husky way he had. “Don’t need a fucking yacht.”
“What do you want then?”
A pause. “What I want isn’t yours to give.” And then he hung up the phone.
“Cryptic fuck,” I muttered.
In the bedroom, Tav was still sleeping. I slipped under the covers, sitting with my back against the headboard.
I picked up my paperback. Work could wait.
Without waking, Tav curled into me, snuffling in his sleep, his head against my hip.
He slung an arm around my legs, his hand on the opposite thigh.
I touched the scars on his knuckles, now that I was aware what they were capable of.
That woman at the fight had said he was undefeated, hadn’t lost a fight.
Dead in the eyes. I’d seen it for myself, who Tav turned into when he had to be Husk.
And I hated it. How he’d managed to survive and still to be able to save a bit of himself, enough to sit in this bed with me and joke about a movie, was a miracle.
Everything he did proved to me he was the strongest man I knew. Much stronger than me, and I considered myself a hard man.
I had been reading for about an hour or so when the hand on my thigh flexed.
There was movement at my hip, a hot breath through the thin material of my pants.
Tav’s body rolled, falling between my legs in the same position I’d held him in months ago when I’d brought him home from Collar.
He looked up at me with those two-toned eyes still a little blurry from sleep and mouthed the outline of my quickly hardening shaft.
He was asking without any words for what he wanted, those lips dampening the fabric, those eyes pleading.
I held his chin with one hand and lowered my pants with the other, tucking the waistband under my balls. Tav opened his mouth and inched forward but I gripped his chin, digging my fingers into the flesh of his jaw, and held him there. His eyes darted up, questioning me.