Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Kieran
My phone rang several more times throughout the day and then again when I was on my way into the gym, so I turned it off.
The last job I did required travel. I’d been away from Buffalo for nearly three weeks. And that didn’t count the preliminary travel I’d done a couple weeks before the actual job.
People thought killing was simple business. I guess, for some, it was. Point and shoot. Stab and go. Shove a body off a bridge and walk home. But that was for amateurs and people practically begging to be caught.
That wasn’t really the kind of killing I did. It was never spur of the moment and very rarely in my hometown. It was logistical, tactical, and always confidential.
I’d only been home a few days and already my phone was ringing, and from the incessant way it was going off, I’d say whoever wanted to hire me was desperate.
Desperate jobs paid very well because they were often messy.
And usually, when someone was desperate, it meant they wanted the job done now, which also added an extra fee.
I wasn’t hard up for money, though, and right now, my attention was focused elsewhere. On keeping someone instead of killing them.
The fact that I was so obsessed over someone I’d just met was not sitting well.
I was too analytical, too sensible. I know better.
So I went through reps of upper body exercises, muscles straining under the max weight I punished myself with, and tried to convince myself it was because I was sexually frustrated.
I’d gone over a month without sex because of my last job.
Haz’s eager mouth and the enthusiastic way he deep-throated my dick was a wet dream come to life.
And the way he scraped his teeth along my shaft…
The weights clanked when I dropped the bar into the stand and sat up.
Grabbing my towel, I wiped the sweat dripping from my nose and brow, then mopped at my hairline.
I liked it a little rough, a little bite of pain with my pleasure. And to have that come with someone who was so goddamned innocent-looking was screwing with my head.
He was screwing with your head before he got ahold of your dick.
Moving to the pull-up bar, I cranked out thirty, begrudgingly coming to terms with the fact that, yeah, I’d been far too interested in him from the moment he nearly plowed me down in the hospital.
I really thought his innocence was an act. I’d been infuriated with him for trying to manipulate me.
But it wasn’t an act. I was sure of it. One night with that blue-and-green-eyed doll and I knew without a doubt the naivety inside Haz was genuine. So rare. I’d never seen it before. Not in an adult. Most certainly not in another man.
I couldn’t understand how he retained it, especially after seeing where he lived and hearing how he grew up.
It made him an anomaly. As if there were somehow a glitch in the programming of his brain. I was so fascinated with his open looks and reactions. His pleasure was unrestrained too, so passionate that he came in his pants with just a kiss.
It was sort of like meeting a myth.
Whatever green view of the world I once believed in was tarnished long ago. The world was cruel. People weren’t much better, and my disdain for humanity grew until it was all I knew. When you live long enough in the dark, you forget about the light.
Any “light” I’d seen over the years made me suspicious, and that mistrust was always proved right. So I assumed there was none left at all.
And then Haz slid into my DMs.
Had I been wrong all this time? Was I just so blinded by my own darkness that I simply saw no light? And if so, then why him? What was it about Hazard’s light that illuminated the blackout consuming me?
These thoughts, these feelings, pushed me into the gray when for so long I viewed everything as black and white.
Haz had been right before. Not that I would ever admit that out loud. I was anal. And right now, my analytical, neat brain was going haywire. My usual reaction to this would be to kill whatever was causing such chaos.
And not necessarily literally.
In truth, I saved assassination for paid contracts.
I didn’t just go around offing everyone and everything that pissed me off.
There were ways to retaliate against those that made life difficult that didn’t require murder.
It was what separated a professional hitman from a barbaric murderer on the street.
Besides that, death was too good for a lot of people. Some deserved to suffer.
I didn’t want Haz to suffer. In fact, the very idea had me heading toward the closest treadmill for a run. Being in the gray was uncomfortable. Doubting myself was even worse.
Still, I didn’t want to get away from him.
If anything, I wanted closer. Greedy for the innocence he somehow retained in a mean world, bound and determined to preserve what I considered a near-extinct quality and unscrupulously protect everything he was.
Because yes, his innocence was what first drew me, but the man who embodied it was the reason I refused to walk away.
It took me all day to acknowledge this, even though I fell asleep with the thoughts rattling around my brain.
But knowing something and accepting it were two completely different things.
Now that I had, the way we left things this morning gnawed at me like a dog with a fresh bone.
Something was off, and I wanted to know what.
I wanted to know now.
I hoped my little hazard used our time apart today to also come to terms with my presence in his life because it wasn’t going to change. If anything, I was about to become even more invasive.
After finishing a two-mile run in under eighteen minutes, I dropped the speed to a leisurely pace and mopped the sweat off my brow.
Draining the bottle of water I’d brought with, I headed into the locker room to shower and change.
I wasn’t sure what time Haz got off work, and I couldn’t call him to ask.
Completely unacceptable. So I’d just have to go back to the Neon Reef, and if he wasn’t finished, I’d wait.
The locker room was quiet. I only saw two others on my way to the shower. The space in here was cooler than out in the gym as well, the air hitting my sweat-dampened skin and making it prickle with goose bumps.
At the very end of a row, I swung my locker open, immediately stripping off my sweat-soaked shirt. One of the men called a goodbye to the other, and the door leading out into the main room opened and shut.
Naked, I slung a towel around my hips and grabbed a small pouch with my shower stuff.
I preferred working out at the gym in my building, but sometimes it was important to change it up.
It was never good to be too predictable.
Because of this, I had several memberships around the city so I could stop by any of them on a whim.
When the year was up on this place, I was going to move my membership to a boxing club.
Keeping my fighting skills honed was important.
My shower shoes slapped lightly on the tile as I moved.
A sense of urgency pushed me faster, as I was determined to get back to Haz.
I couldn’t figure out what could have happened for his mood to change the way it had.
He’d practically been a walking zombie. Almost got run over by a car for shits sake.
After turning on the water and pulling the white curtain closed, I grabbed my soap and allowed myself a brief moment to enjoy the water sluicing over my exerted muscles before shoving my head under the spray to saturate my hair.
Maybe it was the concussion. I considered this as suds bubbled between my fingers as I scrubbed my hair. What if the doctor at the hospital had somehow missed something? What if the physical exertion from me fucking his throat like a madman increased his symptoms?
I scrubbed my body roughly, cursing myself and my lack of control. I knew better. I had no plans to do anything sexual with him last night. Fuck, he made me weak. He tested my control unlike anyone else.
And now he’d been at work for hours. Probably on his feet. That asshole of a boss probably berated him all day. I should never have let him out of the apartment. It was just more evidence that I was wrapped around his hazardous little finger.
I had to be stronger than this. For both our sakes.
Something caught my attention, and my head lifted, tilting to the side.
There hadn’t been a sound, per se, but all the thoughts in my head silenced.
The switch inside me flipped instantly, the line between man and assassin very fine.
Shutting off my humanity was a skill I wasn’t particularly proud of but one I used to my advantage.
With emotion out of the way, there was more room to assess the environment and act accordingly.
Action was much easier when I didn’t have to think about its consequences.
Again, there was no sound except for the shower raining down behind me, but the energy in the room had shifted. My heart thumped as adrenaline diluted the blood in my veins. There was no reason to think that whatever changed had to do with me, and that was exactly why I was alert.
Slow and deliberate, I palmed the body wash, overturning it to pour almost the entire contents onto the tile. The shower curtain fluttered, and anticipation turned me almost twitchy.
In an explosion of movement, the curtain burst in, the cheap plastic material slapping against the tile.
A body lunged for me, but the soap I’d dumped all over the floor between myself and the stall door made him slip.
Kicking out, I swiped his unsteady legs out from beneath him, and he went down hard with a grunt.
I leaped on him, locking my hand around his throat, mercilessly cutting off his air. Eyes bulging with shock, he fought to get off his back. The more he tried, the more he failed, the scent of panic and soap thick in the air.