Chapter 5

SPARROW

There's a new swagger in my step when I strut into Babylon a week after leaving Velcro's body in the alley to stain the pavement and serve as a harbinger of what's to come for his friends. There hasn't been a word about his murder on the news or in the papers. But in a city like Wildcliff, I didn't think the death of a man with a criminal record longer than my dick would even ping the radar.

I wonder whether Xaviaro knows about it. He did say that it's his job to know what's going on in the city. He's a smart man. I doubt he would have any trouble putting two and two together and figuring out what happened to that waste of oxygen. Assuming I'm still on his mind at all. His nose must be healed and the bruises faded by now, all reminders of me completely erased. For some reason, that thought sours my mood momentarily.

I shake it off and sweep my gaze over the bar, zeroing in on the Sleepless Reapers' regular table. Personally, if a buddy of mine was murdered in the alley of a bar, I don't think I'd return to that same establishment the following week. But I had a feeling that these idiots wouldn't feel quite the same, and what do you know? I was right. Drunkie and Dry Paint are exactly where I left them last Thursday, and tonight they're joined by two other men with club patches who I don't recognize. One of them has a colorful mohawk and tattoos filling in the bald spaces on his skull. The other is rocking a handlebar mustache like he had to park his horse outside before getting a drink at Ye Olde Saloon.

Do they suspect I'm the one who doled out the karma Velcro had coming? They have no reason to since, as far as they knew, I was falling down drunk and stumbled home before anything went down. My heart beats faster with the excitement of sliding onto a barstool mere feet away from the friends of the man I bled out. Maybe I'm more fucked in the head than I realized. And maybe I don't mind all that much. The world is a vicious place full of dangerous, bloodthirsty people. Shedding my conscience and growing some claws is the best thing I've ever done.

I order a soda and subtly angle myself so I can listen in on the Reapers' conversation. Anticipation vibrates through my bones, waiting to hear the worry in their voices, the fear that any one of them might be next.

Drunkie snorts at whatever Mohawk said while I was ordering my drink.

"He's at the bottom of some bottle. Mark my words," he declares with only a slight slur tonight.

Mustache shakes his head. "I don't know. 'Cro usually manages to crawl home after a multi-day bender. It's been a week."

Drunkie shrugs, seemingly unconcerned.

"Then he fell into somebody's bed and hasn't gotten bored yet or stuck a needle back in his arm. You know how he is. He always stumbles back to the clubhouse eventually," Dry Paint says, seeming to share Drunkie's confidence that Velcro is alive and well… or at least well-ish.

All four of them laugh in agreement and the subject is dropped in favor of a conversation about their bikes. I huff quietly and set my teeth with an audible click.

How can they not know he's dead? I knew they were shitty friends, but none of them went to check on him when he didn't come back? So, who the fuck found him? Is he lying in the county morgue with ‘John Doe'scrawled on his toe tag?

Fuckity fuck fuck.

The stool on my other side scrapes noisily against the floor and I turn my head, ready to take my foul mood out on whatever idiot got the bright idea to come sit next to me when half the seats at the bar are unoccupied.

"Do you—" The words die on my lips when my gaze lands on all six feet of the olive-skinned stud in his signature jet-black suit. Xaviaro.

My eyes roam over him silently for several seconds while my thoughts scramble to sort themselves out. The skin around his eyes is unblemished now, the purple bruises long since faded. The bandage is gone from his nose too. The only evidence of the break is a slightly off-center bump on the bridge of his nose.

It can't be a coincidence that he just happened to choose Babylon as his bar of choice tonight, sitting down barely five minutes after I arrived…

But… what?Has he been following me? The back of my neck prickles with a reminder of the feeling of being watched that's been a near constant since I arrived in Wildcliff. No… it's been a constant since I met Xaviaro. And if he's been following me…

The pieces all click into place and my body runs hot and cold at the same time as rage washes over me.

"Can we talk?" I grit the words through my clenched teeth.

A flicker of a smile dances on his lips. "I'm all ears, Little Sparrow."

"Outside," I snap, hopping off my stool and make a beeline for the backdoor without glancing over my shoulder to make sure he's following me.

I'm not sure if it's because I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck like a phantom touch, or his surprising responsiveness to my commands, but I don't need to look to know he's right behind me. It's not quite dark yet, but the sunlight is fading quickly, leaving the sky overhead a dark blue with streaks of pink.

I fling the heavy door open with a noisy clatter, my eyes landing immediately on the dark spot on the pavement. I look one way, then the other, remembering that night with perfect clarity. But where was Xaviaro hiding? No matter how hard I try, I just can't picture him crouching behind a dumpster with a banana peel stuck to his thousand-dollar Hermès loafers.

Stepping out into the alley, goose bumps rise along my arms and skitter down my spine. It's hard to tell whether they're a Pavlovian reaction to the rush of adrenaline I had the last time I was here, or if they have more to do with the man who has apparently been stalking me. A fresh wave of anger rushes through me, but there's something else underneath it. Something hot and dangerous. Something I should probably leave alone if I know what's good for me…

As soon as the door clangs shut behind Xaviaro, leaving the two of us alone in the alley, I whirl on him like a tornado, indignation and fury spinning wildly inside of me with nowhere to go. Of course, I understand logically that this man is a trained killer. I know that he keeps his favorite gun tucked just under his suit jacket and could no doubt have it unholstered, cocked, and fired before I can so much as blink. He could leave me lying on the ground with a smoking hole between my eyes, my blood seeping out to add to the stain already left by Velcro, and I wouldn't even know what hit me.

I should be terrified of him. I should be cowering and pissing myself. I'm sure that's what he's used to. It would be the smart way to go.

Even knowing all of that, I close the space between us in three short steps, backing him up against the rusted metal door and wrapping a hand around his throat.

XAVIARO

Sparrow's eyes dance with rage and mayhem as he presses his small body up against mine with a surprising amount of force and squeezes my throat until I can feel finger shaped bruises starting to form.

My cock swells to life so forcefully it makes me dizzy. I could throw him off me if I wanted to. I could break his hand with one swift motion. I could leave him dead with only two. But why the hell would I want to do that when my little bird looks so damn stunning when he's murderous like this?

I swallow and his hand tightens, his palm pressing against my Adam's apple, just shy of hard enough to cut off my airway. The motion is controlled, calculated. This isn't his first time. My cock throbs. What other dirty secrets is he hiding? Without a real name, the only things I know about him are what I've been able to discover while following him for the past month.

"What. The. Fuck?" He spits each word as its own sentence, pressing his body harder into mine. Because he's trying to pin me in place or because he likes the way it feels as much as I do?

"Is that rhetorical or are you looking for an answer?" I ask, staring him down with a bored expression to hide the heat building in my gut and between my legs.

Sparrow bares his teeth like a feral animal. "You dumped my fucking body? That's… fucked up. It's out of line. Touching someone else's kill has to be the number one no-no in the serial killer handbook. Just… what the fuck?" he asks again, his rage slipping into frustration as he loosens his grip a fraction but leans more of his weight into me, bringing the hard, thick length of his erection into contact with my thigh.

So, he does like this as much as I do. I don't try to fight the slow smile that creeps over my lips as I stare him down in the hazy orange light. The lamp hanging above my head casts menacing shadows over his sharp features, making him look like the Angel of Death he's dying to be.

"First of all, neither of us are serial killers. By definition, I'm more of an assassin, since the people I kill are for a paycheck. And if I had to guess, you don't quite have the numbers to claim the ‘serial' part of that title just yet," I point out, and he huffs in frustration at my logic, his hand twitching around my throat again.

He brings his face closer to mine, pushing up onto his tiptoes to do it. His cock drags along my thigh with the motion, making mine tingle and ache again. My nipples tighten and a hot, desperate feeling crawls along my skin as his breath ghosts against my cheek.

"Is there a second of all?" he asks.

"Second of all…" I catch his gaze with my own, holding it and getting lost for a fraction of a second in the way his pupils expand, the black obscuring most of the light blue shade of his irises. "Do you know what happens to people in this city who run around making trouble? I don't mean slinging a few bags of coke or ripping off convenience stores. I'm talking about the kind of trouble that's bound to have the cops sniffing around sooner or later."

He pulls his eyebrows together and a little crease forms between them while his tongue darts out to wet his lips. I track the motion involuntarily, wondering what it would feel like to let him tie me up and spend a whole night licking every inch of me without relief. Would he be into it? Something tells me the answer is a resounding yes.

Finally, Sparrow gives a quick shake of his head in answer to my question.

"My boss puts their name on my list. I don't want your name on my list."

He narrows his eyes. "What do you care?" he challenges. "You don't know me. If Lorenzo Moretti tells you to kill me, you'll do it without flinching and you'll sleep just fine."

"There it is, Little Sparrow," I murmur, bringing the tip of my nose into contact with his and watching the way his eyes widen a fraction. "Your words are cold, but there's a barely concealed quiver that gives you away. There's a momentary fear in your eyes when you to talk so casually about your own death. There's still a sliver of humanity buried under the monster you want so desperately to be. You're not numb. You still feel things." I nudge my nose against his again, and his breath catches, his tongue darting out to leave his lips glistening and damp. "Rage and passion pump through your veins like liquid fire. Fear still makes your heart race and your breath quicken. I'm a well-oiled machine, but you're a goddamn hurricane, beautiful and violent, leaving a path of destruction in your wake."

He makes a choked sound and slides his hand from around my throat to grab my jaw with the same rough force. He slams his mouth into mine savagely, both of us groaning as soon as our lips meet. There's nothing soft or sweet about this kiss. There's no tender exploration or tentative pecks. Sparrow is all teeth and tongue, forcing my lips apart and ravaging my mouth like he fucking owns it. He wraps his tongue around mine and makes my toes curl as he tightens his grip on my jaw. An electric current jolts through my body, rattling me out of the emotionless sleepwalking I've been doing for years and lighting up nerve endings I forgot I had.

He pulls back just as quickly, leaving me gasping and stumbling forward to catch myself when his weight is suddenly gone. I drag in a ragged breath and look at him again, immediately lost in the wildness of his eyes.

"Don't get in my way again, Xav. Seriously, don't," he says, breathing just as heavily as I am and dragging both hands through his hair.

"I can't agree to that. The drawback to all the emotions you have crashing through you every second is that they make you sloppy. You made a mistake leaving Velcro's body, and it's not going to be the last time you fuck up."

He sets his jaw stubbornly and takes another step back, inching towards the mouth of the alley. "Stay out of it."

He spins and walks away quickly, his footsteps echoing off the buildings until he disappears. I push off the wall and drag my fingertips over my lips, still throbbing from the kiss. It only takes me a few seconds to decide I'm done playing by his rules… at least when it comes to this. If he has other rules, I'm happy to discuss them. Preferably naked.

But before I can go after him, my phone vibrates in my pocket. There's only a handful of people with this number, and I know it's Enzo calling without even glancing at the screen.

"Yeah, boss?" I answer, hoping my voice sounds more even to him than it does to me.

"We need to talk. I'm at the club." The line goes dead.

Fucking great.