13. Cane

"Fuuuck." Cane groaned and stretched. "You couldn't have given it up earlier, sweetheart?"

Hart was panting beside him, eyes closed and body limp.

Cane ran a possessive hand over his cum-stained stomach, rubbing it into his skin and not caring that Hart hated it. He kissed Hart's bruised collarbone, scraping his teeth there and already feeling ready for another round.

"You never played so hard to get in the past," he murmured.

Hart fluttered his lashes open, glaring at him from beneath his half-closed lids.

Cane smirked. "Are we still pretending we don't know each other?"

"We don't."

Cane slid a hand between Hart's legs and crooked two fingers inside him, spreading the mess from his stomach around his hole. "What would you call this then?"

Hart jerked when he hit his prostate dead on, mouth falling slack and legs splaying open. He grasped Cane's wrist to keep him there, undulating his hips even though he must have been oversensitive. Cane kissed his spent cock, running the ring on his lip over the head of it, brushing it against the slit.

Hart made a wounded, needy sound, and Cane could already feel him getting hard under his lips again. It drove Cane crazy the way he could wring Hart out like this. The way he responded to him.

It had done right from the very first time they'd met.

It was what had gotten him hooked in the first place.

Made it impossible to think of anyone else.

Hart's orgasm came on fast, and Cane didn't deny him this time, milking it out of him to make a point.

I know you. I could make you shatter in seconds if I really wanted.

Hart's back arched beautifully as he cried out Cane's name, cum spilling against Cane's lips that he lapped up. It was music to his ears. An undeniable sign that Hart couldn't suppress, couldn't refute. He was Cane's in these moments. Wholly. Completely.

Hart shivered in the aftermath, hissing when Cane continued to kiss his cock and massage his prostate. "Cane…"

It was too addictive, making Hart mewl and twist, but eventually Cane relented, rolling off of him and letting him take a break. He sat up, took care of the condom, and reached for his discarded jeans, pulling out his cigarettes and a lighter. The first drag was relaxation at its finest and he offered it over to Hart.

Hart opened his mouth before closing it again. He looked at the cigarette for a few moments before taking it between his elegant fingers and bringing it to his mouth.

Cane smiled slowly, pulling out another cigarette for himself and lighting it.

He lay back down, one arm behind his head and a cigarette perched between his lips, smoke curling up to cloud above them.

"You should just tell them. Your brothers."

"For the hundredth time, we're not talking about this," Hart said.

Cane rolled his eyes, remembering each and every time he'd brought it up in the past. "Why do you give a shit what they think of you? It's just smoking. It's just fucking. Why do you care? You think they're squeaky clean and perfect?"

"Cane," Hart warned. "I mean it."

Cane puffed another mouthful of smoke up to the ceiling. It was stupid to expect anything to have changed in the time they'd been apart. Hart was still as closed off as he'd ever been. "Man, that facility really must have fucked you up. The trauma must run deep, huh."

Hart kicked out at him, and Cane looked over with a lazily arched brow to see him fuming, face like a thundercloud.

"Firstly, you have no idea what you're talking about. Secondly, you're one to talk about childhood trauma."

Cane snorted. "Got me all figured out, sweetheart?"

"No," Hart said after a beat, surprisingly honest. "But if you get to make assumptions about me, then I can too."

"You know what they say about assumptions," Cane drawled, sucking in another lungful of smoke, then letting it out. "They get your head beat in."

"That is not how that saying goes," Hart said.

"No?" Cane asked, looking over to him. "Coulda sworn it was something like that."

Hart pinched his lips shut, turning his head quickly, but Cane caught the beginnings of a smile. He was always soft in the aftermath. Malleable. Sated.

And then he would be out the door.

This was the first time he'd stuck around.

Cane watched him smoke for a moment, thinking he'd never seen anything so beautiful. The graceful movements, the way his lips wrapped around the cigarette that Cane had just had in his own mouth, the satisfaction Hart got from breathing in.

It wasn't just the cigarettes, it was the relaxation only Cane could provide him.

They smoked silently until they hit the ends, and Cane lit them up two more without asking. Hart took one without protest. Cane pulled a bottle of vodka out, grabbing a glass for Hart, knowing he wouldn't drink from the bottle. He splashed some into the glass then took a pull for himself. It wasn't his personal liquor of choice, but Hart enjoyed it, so he always had a bottle on hand.

Sometimes Cane drank it just to remember how Hart tasted on the nights he would come to him.

Hart rolled over onto his stomach and reached for the glass, cigarette still burning between his fingers in the other, Cane's marks all over him.

He was a fucking masterpiece.

"You know…I didn't have that bad of a childhood," Cane found himself saying.

Hart looked at him over the rim of his tumbler, eyes a little surprised.

They never did this.

Ever.

But Cane was feeling some type of way.

"My dad was a drunk, and my mom couldn't stick it anymore and left his deadbeat ass and me. But it was pretty standard," Cane said.

Hart frowned. "You know that's not standard, right? Or it shouldn't be. I don't exactly have personal experience, but even I know that."

"It was where I came from," Cane said with a shrug that was only slightly tense, memories sliding along the edges of his mind. "Some people had it much worse. Like the twins. And it taught me the lessons I needed early."

"What lessons?"

"That all I needed was myself. That if I wanted something I could go out and take it. That once something was mine, I wouldn't let anyone else have it," he said, almost biting the words out with how strongly he felt them. How deep they went into his core.

He didn't really spend the money he'd accumulated, or wield the power he'd earned other than to keep people away from what was his. He just wanted. Endlessly. It was a black hole that wouldn't fill up no matter what he did.

Hart shook his head after a moment. "That explains a lot about you."

"Does it?" Cane asked nonchalantly, taking another swallow of vodka to drown the emotion in his chest. "I don't know about that."

"Our pasts don't have to define us, but they definitely play a big part in shaping us. Even if we don't want it to, or fight against it," Hart said, before continuing quietly. "And I didn't know that…about you."

"You never asked, sweetheart." Cane shrugged. "You're the one with all the rules about what we can and can't mention. You never asked about me."

Hart froze when he said that, but Cane wasn't sure exactly why.

Because of him bringing up the things he didn't want to talk about? Because he'd drawn attention to how their arrangement worked? Hart was the one who'd said they didn't know each other, so why was he acting surprised when Cane said the same?

He pushed it away.

Asking questions like that always closed Hart up like a clam. And it didn't really matter anyway. Cane firmly believed that he didn't need to know the details of Hart's history to know him, or the other way around. He knew him on a level that superseded all of that. Something primal and undefined by whos and whys. Cane and Hart were connected by blood and tissue and sinew. Interwoven. Fundamental.

No matter how many times Hart denied it.

"Why'd you think I was lying to you?" Cane asked. "When you burst in here."

Hart glanced at him from the corner of his eye before moving his gaze down to his glass, swirling the clear liquid. "Fix said…maybe you weren't being completely honest."

Cane laughed out loud. "Oh, Fix said."

Hart scowled, but it faded into something a little shamefaced. "I was frustrated and I let it cloud my judgment."

"I saw that. Hopefully you're a little more relaxed now."

Hart went back to scowling at the implication, but Cane didn't have the wherewithal to tease him. Now he had niggled the loose tooth, he needed to yank it out.

"Even if I was in the habit of lying to you, what would hiding anything get me here?" Cane asked seriously. "My business is tanking. There's no upside. No angle that helps me. I have people canceling fights, suppliers pulling out. I'm getting calls from the other crime bosses in the city questioning my place. Why the fuck would I lie to the only person who could help me figure it out?"

"I know," Hart whispered.

"Do you?"

"Yes! I…" Hart swallowed and took a deep puff of his cigarette before sitting upright. "I haven't been thinking straight and I apologize."

There was something else in there. Something Hart refused to say. What else had been playing on Hart's mind? What could have wound him up so much? Cane knew he wouldn't be able to pry it out of him. He never could.

Hart took a deep breath, his eyes losing some of their guardedness as he continued. "Whoever made this curse must have a huge grudge against you. It moves like nothing I've ever seen before. I've buried myself in cases, and there's no precedent."

"Well, isn't that fucking peachy." Cane closed his eyes and sighed out a plume of smoke.

He couldn't find the anger in him right now. He was too tired, and too spent to be angry.

But he knew it was there. Underneath the more pressing things, just like before. When he'd been sitting in jail and survival was the most important thing, the anger had still been there, simmering under the surface and waiting for him to be ready to use it to his advantage.

A hand slipped over his unexpectedly, and Cane glanced across in shock, his heart thumping once. Loudly. Violently.

He knew how to handle being alone, and destroyed, and scrabbling for another chance at something. He knew how to fight for things.

He didn't know how to handle this.

How to hold on to it.

How to get it to stay.

"There must be a name. Someone you know of or who knows of you," Hart said, eyes focused on Cane like lasers.

"We've gone over this," Cane said, holding Hart's gaze and reveling in the feeling of his hand wrapped around his. "When I got out of jail I built this shit up alone. I didn't cross anyone sideways any more than what's expected, but I could be on anyone's laundry list of hits. That's just how it works. I can't give you a specific name."

"How about someone from inside? Or before?" Hart asked desperately, squeezing his hand tighter.

"Still in jail, or dead and buried," he said. "I'm not one to leave loose ends around, sweetheart, I told you."

Hart sighed, and Cane wished weirdly he could make it better somehow. He was the one with the fucking curse, but Hart had always ranked above that in importance. His hand was still hot on Cane's, skin soft against the rough tattoos, stealing most of Cane's attention.

"You don't have to have it all figured out to take a step forward," Hart murmured, then repeated it louder and squared his shoulders. "You don't have to have it all figured out to take a step forward."

Cane shook his head with a smile at Hart's self-motivation. "Oh yeah?"

"Yes," Hart said primly. "The idea about catching them in the act was good."

"The execution fucking sucked."

"Maybe," Hart said. "Whoever is doing this thinks the fight ring is done now."

"And they're right," Cane said through clenched teeth.

"Not necessarily," Hart said. "Your…business…can still stay operational."

"No fights, no point, sweetheart. They're all running scared."

"Not all of them," Hart said with a sly glint in his eye. "You have one fighter who isn't afraid of curses."

Cane arched a brow as he caught on. "Ash?"

"If you can line him up a fight. I hear from him he's quite popular."

It was a suggestion Cane hadn't even considered, too caught up in putting out the fires around him. Hart was a cooling breeze sweeping through the chaos.

"I thought you didn't like him fighting. And there's even more risk now."

"Ash is his own person. He'll do it whether I like it or not," Hart said. "And he can handle himself while we try to figure out the curse. I'll invite my other brothers if they're free too, to blend in with the crowd and see if they spot anything. If we show that you're still doing fine, whoever cursed you might slip up and show themselves in some way."

"You want to poke the beast."

"I have experience doing that."

The words settled between them, and Cane ran his tongue over the bite on his lip. Hart definitely knew the most cutthroat ways to rile him up with the smallest things. Hart's eyes followed the motion of his tongue like he knew, and Cane could feel himself heating up again. He shifted over only for his hand to slip from its place under Hart's, drawing both of their attention.

Hart looked down at their joined hands and quickly removed his, blushing like he hadn't realized he was still holding Cane's.

Cane decided he very much didn't like that, so he grabbed Hart's escaping hand back.

Hart met his eyes, their hands straining and frozen between them, like a standoff in a game of tug of war.

"Since when have you wanted to hold hands?" Hart said, still trying to pull away.

Cane refused to let him go, all too aware that this was something larger between them. It was basically a metaphor for their whole relationship. Cane trying to hold on too tight, Hart pulling away once he was done. "You started it."

"So let me finish it," Hart said.

Cane clenched his jaw and tightened his grip. "No."

Hart frowned at him. "Cane…"

"I'll let go if you don't bolt for the exit as soon as I do," Cane bargained.

Hart's eyes shifted tellingly, and Cane tried to ignore the way it burned.

"Okay," Hart said finally. "I won't go."

Cane knew he only meant for now. It was temporary. Ephemeral.

Cane wished it meant more. He wished it meant everything.

But he would take this for now.