Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Rett
He ran practically naked through the streets.
No one had ever done anything like that for me before. Yeah, yeah, it’s not as impressive as, say, taking a bullet, but listen, we all have our fantasies.
And Hiro just seemed to know exactly how to fulfill mine.
Rescuing me more than once. Three times. But who’s counting? Took care of me when I was sick, got me off the streets, and chased me down half naked to kiss the shit out of me.
“I guess you’re the only one allowed to run away,” I murmured, my face still pressed against his neck.
“I didn’t run away. I had work,” he replied, voice deep and rumbly beside my ear.
Tingles raced across my scalp and rushed down my spine. “You never came back.”
And that was what hurt the most. He never planned to see me again; he just happened to.
He pulled back, the dark umber of his eyes almost black in the dim light. “I’m here now.”
Will you stay? The question sat heavy on my tongue, almost choking me with the urge to ask. But asking would be like admitting I wanted him to. He’d already taken enough of me. I wasn’t going to just keep spooning out more, and that signaled it was a good time to put my dick back in my pants.
The sticky mess between us was an embarrassing reminder of how weak I was when he touched me. No one had ever affected me this way. If I hadn’t met him, I would deny that anyone even could.
Since my shirt was already ruined, I used it to clean off his abs, which were just as cut as two years ago, and then quickly tucked my softened dick back into my jeans. It made me realize that only one of us got off.
I wiggled around, bumping almost instantly into his rock-hard cock. Despite the satisfaction clinging to my bones, I tensed. “Let me…” I began, unwrapping my legs from his waist to reach for the tent in his sweats.
By the way, everything they say about men in gray sweats is true.
It’s no wonder I combusted right here in this dingy little alley.
Hotter than a microwaved burrito at two a.m. And listen, there was literally nothing better than a microwaved burrito in the middle of a cold night in the dark city.
When I was homeless, I didn’t have them much, but when I did, it felt like a little slice of heaven.
Hiro tsked and gripped me harder, keeping me lifted so that my feet dangled uselessly over the ground. “Now what are you doing?”
“Repaying the favor,” I said, reaching again for his dick.
He twisted away so I couldn’t reach but somehow still kept me suspended over the concrete. “Hands to yourself, Pip.”
Rejection stung, and I tried to shrink away. “You don’t want me to touch you?”
He cursed beneath his breath and set me on my feet. Before I could rush off, he used his body to pin me against the wall. “Sometimes all I can think about are your hands,” he admitted, eyes burning a hole through mine.
Taking a chance, I reached between us again, my hand wrapping around the bulge easily. When my fingers tightened, he pulsed beneath them.
Something I couldn’t identify passed through his eyes, the hazy expression cut off by his heavy lids. I started to stroke, using the soft fabric and my grip as friction.
He let out a rough sound and then caught my wrist, holding tight enough to stop me but not tight enough to hurt. “If you want to repay me, tell me why you were limping down the street just now.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous. He’d rather question me than have an orgasm? Lame.
“Did you get hurt yesterday?” He scowled. “That’s what you get for trying to get involved in a fight with a pair of tweezers. Tweezers, Pip! Just because it’s pointy doesn’t mean it’s a weapon.”
“They were giant tweezers!” I defended. “And they stabbed right into that guy.” I saw him bleed and everything.
“I’ve seen mosquitoes do more damage,” he bit back. “You could have gotten hurt.” His eyes flared. “You did get hurt.”
Was he serious right now? “What was I supposed to do? Watch you fight with a bullet wound?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not just going to cower when everyone is in troub—”
He snatched my chin, tilting up my face and squeezing until my cheeks hollowed around my teeth. “You don’t gamble with your safety. Ever.”
The ferocity with which he gave the command made my stomach flip, but even still, my eyes narrowed in challenge. “Says the man who jumps in front of bullets.”
“If it threatens you, it answers to me.”
The bold statement knocked the breath from my lungs and any retort from my lips and staggered the rhythmic beating of my heart. How dare he say such darkly possessive things like he had every right to claim me?
He might have my heart… but the rest of me was mine and mine alone.
“Hiro.” My hand flattened over his stomach, fingers curling around his side. His skin was warm despite being bare, and even though the touch was meant to remind him he did not own me, suddenly, my mouth was dry.
“Tell me why you’re limping.” The edge in his voice was not gone. “If the person who did this to you is still living, he is living on borrowed time.”
I wondered what he’d say if I told him the person hurting me the most was me.
“Rett.” He was impatient, crowding me even farther against the wall.
“It’s not because of yesterday,” I confessed. “I must have twisted my ankle when I was running.”
His eyes skewered mine, searching for a lie but coming up short. “You twisted your ankle,” he echoed, still probing.
“And maybe my knee,” I admitted.
His stare relented, melting into concern. It shouldn’t have been charming the way his dark brows dipped in the middle when he frowned. But consider me captivated.
The hand he used to wring me dry of pleasure just minutes before delved into his pocket to pull out a small bottle of pills. The ones Haz had tried to give me before. “And these?”
“Headache,” I replied, pointing to the bruise he’d already seen.
The lid uncapped with a pop, and he shook a few out into his palm. “Can you swallow them without water?”
“I already took some,” I told him, covering his hand with mine.
“You don’t need more?” he questioned. It almost felt like a test.
I shook my head. “You’re supposed to wait at least six hours between doses.”
He stared another second, the secrets in his eyes not giving an inch. Then he tucked the bottle away and bent down in front of me. “Let’s go.”
I plastered myself against the brick, eyes roaming over his broad shoulders and the tattoo of the dark angel covering his back.
“I’m not going with you,” I told him. I was trying to get away!
“Then I’ll go with you.”
“No, I—” The look he fired over his shoulder cut off my protest.
And when he spoke, the threat in his low tone was obvious. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Perversely, I wondered what the hard way was. But I decided against calling his bluff and draped myself over his back. He stood easily, as though he didn’t have the weight of an entire human to carry, and hooked his arms beneath my knees.
“You’re going to pull your stitches.” I worried, trying to shift my weight to the side that wasn’t injured.
“My shoulder’s fine.” He dismissed my concern and stepped out onto the sidewalk and back into the city.
“I can walk.”
“No,” he declared while raising his arm to hail a cab.
I scoffed because getting a cab in this city was not as easy as that. The scoff turned into a gasp when a yellow and black car swerved from the middle lane and drifted to the curb. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“There a problem back there, Pip?” he asked over his shoulder.
It made me want to poke him in the eye. I said nothing. If I opened my mouth, I might bite him.
He swung me into the back of the cab like it was easy and then slid in beside me, not even out of breath.
The driver barely glanced in the back. “Where to?”
Hiro rattled off my address like he had it memorized, and I gaped.
The cab swerved out into traffic, and Hiro slid me a smug look. “Weren’t going home?”
“You know my address?”
“It’s the same as Haz’s.”
Right. Of course. The cabbie braked hard, and I went flying forward, only to be stopped by an iron band that pushed me back into my seat. Startled, I looked up only for a wall of muscle to be blocking my view.
Hiro glanced around as if making sure I was unharmed, then leaned toward the front. “My guy, there are two kinds of drivers in this city. Alive and dead. You want to keep being the first, I suggest you drive like you know how.”
The driver’s eyes flew up to the rearview, and whatever biting reply he was about to deliver died the second he caught sight of Hiro. “S-sure,” he stuttered before turning back to the road.
Hiro leaned back into the seat, crowding me so close his shoulder pinned mine. I started to complain, but he cut me a look—likely the same look he’d just given the driver—and I decided this seating arrangement was just fine.
Seconds later, Hiro was patting his pockets. “You got any snacks, Pip?”
“Snacks?” I wondered.
“I’m feeling snacky.”
Shoving my hand into my coat pocket, I pulled out a couple spare cups of hazelnut creamer and held them out in offering.
The interior of the cab dropped about ten degrees. “What the hell did I tell you about creamer?” he growled, the muscles in his jaw protruding.
Clearly, he wasn’t actually hungry because beggars were not choosers. And listen, there was just enough fat and sugar in these tiny cups to take the edge off any kind of hunger.
His loss. Curling my fingers around them, I started to put them back when he caught my arm, pried my fingers open, scooped them from my palm, and chucked them out of the moving car.
“Hey!” I bellowed, looking out the back window as if I could see where the tiny cups of my sip insurance landed.
“Fucking coping mechanism in liquid form,” he spat. Turning smoldering eyes on me, he demanded, “Why do you still have those?”
“For emergencies.”
“Flashlights are for emergencies, not creamer cups.”