CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The party wears on until around three when Jules, Roman and Savannah are finally excused to their rooms and the adults move the party to the pool.
Lachlan is thrilled to leave them, hopes there are sharks in the water and they’re all painfully eaten alive, but sharks cannot survive in chlorinated water.
Inside the air-conditioned room, Lachlan performs his checks.
If he had anyone else here that he could trust, he’d leave them here while he went to do the same for Roman and Savannah. God, he wishes they could all sleep in here. Keep them safe, keep the kids together, keep them—
‘Lachlan?’
He blinks, comes back to himself with a snap.
They are all children to us because we never were.
Jules is standing in front of him.
‘Sorry?’
‘You kinda… went away,’ Jules says, worried. He strokes Lachlan’s cheek, searching for answers unspoken. ‘I know tonight was hard.’
‘You all right?’ Lachlan asks, his default concern always.
‘I’m fine.’ Jules smiles warmly. ‘You kept me very safe.’
Safe.
If they were attacked on the beach, Lachlan would have been useless.
If they were shot at from a boat, Lachlan would have been useless.
There’s nothing he could have done to ensure Jules was safe.
It’s only the lack of an attempt that kept him so.
Lachlan shakes his head, doesn’t know what to say. Jules guides Lachlan towards the bed in the corner. ‘I’m sorry she touched you. It wasn’t right.’
‘I don’t care about that.’
‘You did a nice thing for Savannah.’
Lachlan looks away, lets Jules make him sit. ‘I can’t protect her.’
‘But you did.’
‘Not always. Not really.’
‘You can’t protect everyone.’
‘Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow?’
‘The party?’
Lachlan thinks back to what Roman said.
My father started when I was nineteen.
‘Does she give blood too?’
‘You need to sleep,’ Jules says seriously.
Lachlan ignores him. ‘Something isn’t right.’
‘No shit, Bodyguard,’ Jules snorts. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘I mean it. This place is wrong. It’s all wrong somehow.’ Lachlan swallows. ‘If they wanted a party, why not have a big one in the ballroom of the Estate?’
‘I’ve never been to a twenty-first before, but Ariadne said it’s always tradition to come here.’
‘Why?’
‘What makes anything a tradition?’ Jules climbs into his lap. ‘You really need to sleep. You seem a little manic.’
‘I’m justifiably worried.’
‘About what?’
‘Too many things to even list.’
‘You can list them to me if it helps.’
‘It won’t.’ Lachlan sighs, tries to make his bones unlock. ‘This place feels…’
‘What?’
Evil.
‘I need to make the rounds.’
‘You’re not gonna stay?’
‘I can’t stay.’
‘No one cares if you sleep in here.’
‘Your father will definitely care. He wants you and Savannah posed together in every photograph.’
‘Good thing no one’s taking pictures in the bedroom.’
Lachlan strokes his hair back, kissing him just once. ‘Get some sleep.’
Jules seems to recognise a lost cause when he sees one. ‘Fine.’
‘Don’t be mad.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I can tell when you’re mad.’
‘Just…’
‘What?’
‘If you don’t want me anymore—’
Lachlan groans. ‘Come on.’
‘—then just say it. I know you like Roman. He’s better than me, anyway. Stronger. He’s tactical-minded. You like that.’
‘Julian.’
‘You don’t care about beauty or looks. He’s on your level.’
‘He’s a rich kid raised in Russia.’
Jules sulks hard. ‘You call him Ro.’
‘And I call you baby, sweetheart and Jules.’
‘Do you love me?’ he asks, unbearably fragile. ‘Like, really love me?’
‘Baby, I love you so much it’s disgusting.’
‘You treat him differently.’
‘Do you want to make a secret language so I can tell you I love you even when there are other people around?’
‘I… maybe.’
‘All right.’ Lachlan thinks for a beat. ‘It has to be subtle.’
‘What about sign language?’ Jules makes the sign for I love you, a single gesture with little and index fingers raised, middle two flat, thumb out at a ninety-degree angle.
‘That’s too obvious, but I like that you knew it.’
‘Your boy’s good with languages,’ Jules tells him like he forgot to be sulky and then scowls when he remembers. ‘I suppose Roman’s better though.’
‘Enough of that,’ Lachlan chides. ‘What about…hmm.’ He clasps Jules’ hands together, amassing frequent scenarios where they’re sharing space with others in between.
‘Interlace your fingers.’ Jules does so, his slender digits slotting together perfectly.
‘Now lift your ring finger. Only that finger. Tap the knuckle. Good.’
‘Once or twice?’
Lachlan sees an opportunity. ‘How about we make a code?’
‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘One tap and the finger remains raised is asking for help.’
‘Lachlan, I just want to know that you love me.’
‘Two taps, finger down, is all’s fine.’
‘Bodyguard.’
‘Three taps, finger down, is I love you.’
‘Three taps, finger up, is I love you but you fucking suck.’
‘If you like.’
Jules is still caught in his sulk. ‘Show me again?’
Lachlan runs through the gestures, Jules naming them as they occur. ‘It’s hard to lift my ring finger.’
‘Good little workout then.’
‘Say you love me.’
Lachlan makes the gesture and kisses Jules. ‘I love you.’
‘Do you wanna fuck me?’
‘You know I do.’
‘How bad?’
‘Baby.’
‘Bad enough to risk getting caught?’
Lachlan groans again, but in a different way. ‘You’re killing me.’
‘No one can kill you, bodyguard. You’re mine.
I’d take you back from God and make him so sorry for trying,’ Jules whispers, eyes overbright, like they hold what makes lightning deep in their core.
Lachlan buries a rippling shudder; wishes it wasn’t so intrinsically connected to his dick.
‘You’re mine now. I never had anything before that was mine. ’
Sweetheart, you have everything, he does not say because a kneejerk counter isn’t worth being so catastrophically unfair. Jules has all that money can buy but freedom has no price-tag.
‘Well I am,’ Lachlan says plainly. ‘I’m yours.’
‘Am I yours?’
‘Do you want to be?’
That too is unfair given the hideous conversation that went down between Jules and his father before they left, but he can’t help asking it. Jules tangles fingers in his hair, says, ‘I’ve been yours ever since you sewed me up.’
Lachlan kisses him, bittersweet things twisting violently within; a towel-wring of crushing love and the wet crash of water flooding and filling him in a way nothing else ever has.
He holds Jules’ face in both hands, tasting him, branding possession with kisses as deep as he can give them, the way children make potions of mud and berries and wishes of whispers to the moon, so too Lachlan would possess and be possessed by love, kisses and skin.
It shouldn’t get him like it does, it shouldn’t wrench engines to life after years dormant and rusted, but they deal in extremes, both of them, albeit in different ways and so extremes speak like poetry writ large in blood and risk and the ever-present threat looming overhead like a storm refusing to break, makes tension thick and heavy, soaks his tongue in metal and madness as he crawls on top of Jules, now flat on the bed.
‘Say it again,’ he gasps harshly, hand slipping down Jules’ waistband to palm his cock, skin to skin, he’s so hard already.
‘I was yours since that night, and I know you felt it too,’ Jules moans into his mouth. ‘We were both bleeding.’
Lachlan fucks him on the bed, pins hands above his head because his boy wanted it, and it’s so fucking intimate and risky that when he comes he doesn’t even realise he forgot the condom, he fills Jules with himself, can only hear we were both bleeding over and over as Jules’ tight clutch milks his orgasm in waves and he feels the tell-tale slip and slide between their partially clothed bodies, meaning Jules came untouched.
Breathing ragged, head light, he kisses Jules with delicate tenderness, shaking. He’s shaking. It was conditioned out of him years ago, nervous system put through shock-training, but he’s trembling now, still inside Jules, lost to this love and desire and need so wild control cannot temper it.
It’s dangerous for Lachlan to lose control.
It is so fucking dangerous.
‘I didn’t wear…’ Lachlan mutters, head still swimming in the spacey absence of gravity. Jules softly bites the flesh of his shoulder, planting sloppy kisses wherever he likes, tasting him. ‘I forgot.’
‘I know.’ Jules whispers, nuzzling deep into the crook of Lachlan’s neck before sucking a bruise into being. ‘I wanted you to.’
?
Lachlan does a full circuit by night.
The adults are in the pool, so he purposefully avoids that area. The beach has been cleaned up. You’d never know a party took place. The waves wash in and out, soothingly constant and the moon catches the surface of the water.
It makes Lachlan think of her. Shimmer. God, he misses her so much.
When he finds the good spot, he uses the satellite phone to call Danya, who answers on the third ring.
‘Lachlan.’
‘Hey,’ Lachlan says, relieved despite himself. ‘Sorry I couldn’t call until now. How’s things?’
‘Eight bells,’ Danya tells him, sounds normal. ‘All good here. How is it there?’
‘Fucking awful.’ Lachlan rubs over the love-bite Jules gave him earlier. ‘It’s insanely exposed. I just want to bring him home.’
‘Tell me about the exposure.’
Lachlan reels off all the red flags and finally gets a little validation when Danya whistles low, and says ‘Fuck me,’ with the same shock that Lachlan feels.
‘Exactly.’ Lachlan kicks sand. ‘How’s Mimi?’
‘Your little one misses you but she’s taking her mission very seriously. Already asked me for a gun.’
‘That’s my girl,’ he chuckles. ‘Did you give her one?’
‘I might give her a Kel-Tec P-32.’
‘If you give my little girl a P-32, I’ll kick your ass, Danya.’ Lachlan wipes his eyes. ‘She can handle a 3-AT.’
Danya laughs softly. It’s reassuring. Feels like home.
And when the fuck did that overgrown prison become home?
‘You’d better come back soon because she’s eyeing up the weapons cabinet.’
‘Why are you letting her near the weapons cabinet?’
‘When I train her to kill.’
‘Danya.’
‘Like I said, place is falling apart without you. Hurry your ass.’