Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Jesse

I t was still snowing outside. We’d only seen this amount of snow in this part of Texas maybe one or two times in the last hundred years. After getting up— fucking ouch —and causing a minimal amount of trouble, I’d checked Rafferty’s phone. The cell service was still down, and frankly, I was surprised that we still had water and electricity. Either way, I was warm, comfortable, and being hosted by a surprisingly sexy man.

If I was being honest, I hadn’t felt this safe in a really long time.

I got back into bed, watching his face as he started to rise to the surface. He blinked a few times until his eyes focused on mine.

“Mornin’,” he said, yawning through half of it.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Shit. It is Christmas, isn’t it?” He blinked. “You been up long?”

“For a bit.”

“I should be happy you kept your promise about not killing me in my sleep, then.”

I sent him a sharp grin, then shifted my eyes downward. He followed the movement, finally clocking the knife in my hand, right at his throat .

“I did say that you’d be awake and looking right at me.”

“Mm. That you did.”

As he spoke, he made a quick gesture that I didn’t quite follow. Suddenly, the knife was in his hand.

“I see you found where I hid one of the knives.”

“The planter on the back porch was an inspired choice,” I said, shivering. “Though it’s so fucking cold outside.”

He shifted, looking out the window. “Damn. That snow is still coming down pretty hard.”

“I do love a white Christmas, but cell and Wi-Fi are still down.”

Rafferty scrunched his nose. “You went into my phone?”

“You really should change your settings.”

Glaring at me, he reached behind him without looking and took the phone off the nightstand, right where I’d left it.

He used facial recognition and thumbed open the photographs.

I kind of hoped he wouldn’t find those until after I was gone, but he seemed to enjoy the dirty selfies I took.

“I’m not erasing these,” he said, locking his phone and putting it back on the nightstand.

“Call it a Christmas present from me.”

He used the knife to tap the end of my nose. “You are trouble.”

“I know. It’s a gift.” I thumbed my nipple, grinning at him. “We should get you some water. You’re bound to be a little dehydrated after all that vodka.”

He examined the sharp kitchen knife, then flipped it and held the dull side of the blade against my throat.

“There’s more than one way to hydrate.” His predatory look sent desire chasing down my groin and inner thighs. “Pull down your pants.”

I sucked in a breath at the gentle order, then shoved the bottoms down past my ass and cock to mid-thigh. It’s a good thing I decided against killing him.

With a deep, satisfied rumble, he sucked my nipple into his warm mouth before trailing kisses down my chest and belly, keeping the knife at my throat. He nuzzled into the patch of pubic hair, inhaling deeply before taking my sleepy cock into his warm, inviting mouth.

Fucking hell.

It had been a rough night of muscle aches and underwater nightmares, so it took a while for my body to respond. He kept at it, though, patiently palming my nuts, stroking my thighs as his mouth drove me insane.

Finally, when I was impossibly hard and thrusting my hips, he set aside the knife and thumbed my nipples while continuing to deep-throat me. I hadn’t ever known sex to be both cozy and hot, but this fucking guy managed to make it work.

The heat and tension in my body finally ratcheted up to the point that I was arching off the bed, moaning his name.

“Coming . . .” I warned.

His deep rumble was the final straw, and my vision went white as the orgasm ran roughshod through my body. He drank me down, insistent until I cried out from the intensity. He rolled away with a satisfied grin on his face, and I righted my pajamas before pushing him back against the pillows and yanking down his sweats.

“Jesus, how did my poor ass ever manage this beast?” I murmured, then swallowed him down as best I could, my lips stretching obscenely around his girth.

He gripped the back of my head, careful as he rolled his hips. Making me come must’ve had him on edge because his shout was the only warning I got before I was choking on his orgasm.

He tried to pull away, but I kept after him, needing every fucking drop. I captured his gaze as I took down the last of what he had to offer, then slowly pulled off him and tugged his sweats back up to his waist. We lay back, completely fucked out for several breaths before he tucked me in against his heated body, once again my snuggly big spoon.

Merry Christmas, indeed .

After a few moments, he rose from the bed like a god and made his way to the bathroom, where he left the door open. From my vantage point, I watched as he pissed, then washed his hands and brushed his teeth.

Chuckling to myself, I grabbed the knife and walked up behind him as he was rinsing his mouth out. I had planned to jokingly hold it up behind him in the mirror, but his hand shot out and twisted my wrist before I could get that far. The knife painlessly dropped out of my hand. More impressively, he grabbed the knife before it hit the ground. With knife in hand, he gave his mouth one more rinse, then arched his brow at me in the mirror.

His expression was a combination of amusement and murder, and fuck if that didn’t get my blood pumping.

I suspected he’d left the knife out in the open as a test. I couldn’t tell if I’d passed or failed, but I had a feeling that it was going to lead to more orgasms either way.

“How do you like your eggs?” he asked. “I’ll be frying up some bacon.”

“Then I like my eggs fried. Hard.”

He tsked and went to the kitchen, where he began gathering supplies. Soon, the sounds and smells of breakfast—coffee and frying bacon—filled the air. I poured two cups of coffee, setting one beside him as he flipped our eggs. The knife was sitting on the counter, and the sneaky part of me had to reach for it.

Before my fingers could even touch the handle, however, he shifted and smacked my knuckles with the greasy spatula.

“No touchy,” he growled through a bemused smile.

“Fine.” I pouted, then stole a piece of bacon instead.

We sat at the tiny kitchen table, which had a great view through the picture windows out onto the cove. The snow had stopped but still lay in drifts on the ground.

“Feels like we’ve been dropped onto an alien planet,” he said, cutting up his eggs and bacon together .

“It really does. Do you think we should try to go out to the main road and see what’s happening up there?”

“I don’t have the clothing for that,” he admitted. “I didn’t believe the weatherman when he said there was a chance of snow. But since the electricity is still on, we can turn on the radio and see what they’re saying.”

I looked around. “Where’s the radio?”

He pointed to a tiny, ancient-looking box on top of the refrigerator. He grabbed it by the handle, then plugged it in and set it on the table between us. I watched as he extended and manipulated the antenna, finally landing on a fuzzy station out of San Angelo.

“Looks like the worst of it will be over by midnight or so, folks. All major highways in the Texas Hill Country will remain closed at least until noon, and local law enforcement are asking people to stay off the road except in emergencies. But get this, Dana,” the weatherman said to the DJ. “The high on Tuesday will be sixty-five.”

“You know what they say about Texas weather, George.”

Rafferty snapped off the radio. “Hopefully by tomorrow morning we’ll be able to get you in touch with the Rangers. In the meantime, I don’t mind having a little fun with you. Provided you stop trying to stab me.”

“I make no promises. Though I might need some Advil or something before we go after it again,” I said, stretching my back.

“Shit, you should’ve said something sooner.” He leaned in with a concerned expression, cupping my face. “I think I have some 800-milligram ibuprofen from the time I strained my back. Gimme a sec.”

I sucked in a breath at the sweet intimacy of the gesture and nodded. He got up and went to the bathroom, returning seconds later with the pill and a glass of water.

“Sorry I didn’t offer this to you last night,” he said, handing them to me.

“That’s okay. We were occupied.”

After swallowing the pill and downing the water, I asked, “Is there anything else to do here? ”

Rafferty grimaced. “I’d planned on drinking, but I don’t think my system can handle any more vodka.”

I laughed as he scratched his chin. A few moments later, his eyes twinkled in amusement.

“How does a round of Rummikub sound?”

My brows met in the middle. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Then you are in for a treat.”

He was laughing when he said it, so I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not. He pulled the game box—frayed at the corners and held together by yellowing Scotch tap—from an upper cabinet and displayed it to me like a slightly deranged game show host. As he set out the trays and numbered tiles, he explained that he’d spent many summer afternoons divided between swimming in the lake and playing Rummikub with his grandparents.

The game itself was simple to learn and surprisingly addictive. It also made us chatty. Rafferty told me that his mom had him young and that he’d been raised by his grandparents. Even though they were much older than your average parents, they’d always been active in his life, supporting him in everything from his sexuality to his career. Both had hated his husband, which made me laugh.

I wondered if he’d regret telling me so much about his personal life, but he seemed at peace with what he was saying. I was surprised to hear that ever since his grandparents died, he’d wondered if he was truly happy with his life. He explained that was why he’d intended to spend the holiday drunk. He wanted to figure things out.

I knew that feeling intimately. Having been a criminal for as long as I could remember, I had no idea what to do with the new life I’d been given.

Rafferty even spoke about the way he and his ex-husband were so hot in the beginning, but that they had been better off as an idea than an actual couple. Given that Rafferty was straight up disrespectful in bed, I could see how a fancy lawyer could forget about the reality of his life .

Thankfully, I was under no delusions as to what this little bubble of time meant. As soon as the snow melted, the bubble would pop, and we’d be right back in our old roles of cop and convict. In a way, though, I was glad I’d gotten to know the man. The hatred I’d carried for him had been heavy and impossible to maintain from the second I was in his care.

Rafferty wasn’t the only one oversharing, though. I told him my favorite memory—a fishing trip with Kyler off the coast of Isla Mujeres. I admitted how much it’d hurt when everyone, save for my cousin, had turned their backs on me after my arrest. I also confessed that I wasn’t quite the stone-cold killer that the courts had made me out to be. I was surprised when he seemed to already know that.

My father had put a gun in my hand at the age of sixteen and said I had to start earning my keep. I’d thrown up the first time I’d killed a man, and after that I made sure that the only people I took out were very, very bad. On the rare occasion my father had wanted me to take out somebody who was genuinely good, I had done what I could to either fuck it up, covertly warn the person, or in one case, directly tell them to disappear.

After nearly a year’s worth of time to think in my prison cell, I didn’t hesitate when I was given the opportunity to turn state’s evidence.

The one thing I didn’t share with Rafferty was that I didn’t know what I was going to do after this, but it might involve stealing his truck. I’d been promised a new life, a new identity, but never once had I felt safe. I hadn’t ever been able to shake the sense that my protection had been compromised in some way. When we were attacked on the road, I knew that I couldn’t trust the Rangers to protect me from my family.

“Can you tell me more about what happened yesterday?” he asked as we shuffled the tiles in the middle of the table.

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you think they knew where the safe house was? ”

“We were only a few minutes away from our location when they ran us off the road, so...yeah.”

“You’d said that everyone was dead. How did that happen?”

“Arnold, the Ranger who was driving, tried to correct for the impact, but there was already ice over the bridge, and he ended up overcorrecting and taking out the other car as well. Both cars went over.”

“Did you see the other car underwater?”

I started choosing tiles.

“Jesse?”

“I didn’t see the other car, but I did see the other driver. He was...uh...my uncle.” I arranged the tiles. “He didn’t make it out of the lake.”

What I didn’t say was that I was the one who’d made sure he stayed underwater.

Despite the long-standing issues I’d had with my uncle—he was a ruthless asshole and a homophobe—I knew that Kyler loved his dad and would be devastated by his death.

That wasn’t the reason I stayed quiet in this moment, though. As much as I hated to admit it, there was something so good about Rafferty that I wanted him to think I was good, too.

But I wasn’t.

“Hey,” he said, closing his hand over mine. “He was trying to kill you. That’s endgame. It was either him or you. And I am perfectly fine with the way things ended up.”

I chanced a look in his direction and saw only honesty.

“I don’t really like killing people.” I said quietly as I made a few other adjustments with my tiles. “But some people need killing.”

I was surprised when he laughed.

“What? Did you think you would shock someone in law enforcement by saying that? We know it’s true.”

“You say that, but you put me in jail for taking out a real scumbag.”

“That’s true. I did. ”

I tapped a tile on the table. “And what do you think of the people who take out the trash? Are they good guys or bad guys?”

I held my breath, waiting for his answer.

He took a moment, adjusting his own tiles. Then looked me in the eye.

“Yes.”