Chapter 7

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Killian

This was wrong, but so right. Noah's mouth was taking me down some forgotten path, one I'd long ago denied existed. Pleasure . Selfish, bone-melting, ball-aching indulgence. I should have known his smart mouth would be my undoing, and now he had me captured, at his mercy.

If his father knew my dick was between his son's lips, he'd kill me in an instant, and that thought—among a tiny riot of others—had me racing toward the edge of ecstasy, losing control, nudging the fringes of madness.

Noah sensed I was close, pulled off, and grinned. I already had my hand in his hair and gave it a twist. He gasped, that pretty mouth opening, his pink, wet lips inviting. I nudged my cock between them, and he took it in, his ice-blue eyes making it clear he wasn't letting up this time. And true to his silent promise, he took control.

The sight of his lips wrapped around my dick tugged at pieces of my broken thoughts, rearranging things I thought I knew, making them unknown again. Like, what the fuck was I doing fucking Noah's King's mouth? It was too late for regrets. Not least because he smiled while getting me off. His lips tightened, and I rushed toward coming so fast there was no stopping it.

I clutched the back of his head and came undone down his throat. Somewhere far away I heard him splutter, but I was lost, spilling between his lovely lips, watching his not-so-innocent eyes shine. And there, right on the precipice, some tiny, sharp piece of my cold, icy heart broke.

Noah sucked, then pulled off and flopped back on the couch. He coughed, licked his lips, and peered up through his lashes, his post-fuck gaze telling me things had changed. Or maybe he'd always had the power, and we were both now realizing it.

A dark, damp patch stained his towel. Had he come? Should I finish him off? It would mean going to my knees, and I didn't kneel for anyone.

"Don't worry," he croaked. "You don't have to reciprocate. Although you could untie me so I can fix it myself, you know? Because, Killer, you're fucking hot, and I'm dying here. Or maybe you like hurting me, huh? Maybe that's your thing? When did you get hard? Back in the kitchen there, tying me up, bending me over the counter? Yeah, there it is. Is this new for you, or have you always wanted to fuck me? Can't say I expected it. Not you. Must be messing with your head, huh? You always liked dick, or is it just my mouth you want to fuck?"

"Noah," I growled, "you talk too much." After tucking my dick away, I ran a hand through my hair. Shit, my hands were filthy with blood and mud. And Noah still looked at me as though we'd just begun whatever the fuck this was.

"Say my name again." He smirked, like the cat who'd gotten the cream. "Say it like you hate it."

He was going to make this worse, smirking like he was, like he had me by the balls. I was screwed. I'd made it worse. If there was any chance of him living, he'd never be able to keep his mouth shut, and it would get back to his father that I'd fucked his son. "Fuck. Stay there. Don't fucking move."

I locked myself in the bathroom and slumped against the wall. I'd mouth-fucked Noah King. No, this was… This couldn't happen. Five years I'd kept myself under control. Five years, groveling to a man I despised—his father. Five fucking years, waiting for revenge.

"Where am I going to go in just a towel?" he called. "This will be good for you," he went on. "All that bottled up aggression. You just needed a good fuck. You feel good? Because I feel fucking fantastic."

I stripped off, stepped into the shower with its cracked tiles and stained grout, then flicked on the water and stood under its ice-cold jets, waiting for it to warm up. Noah was probably still talking. Apparently, he didn't care about what had happened, like fucking a man was just another Tuesday for him. He took everything in stride, made every day seem effortless, despite living in a world that wanted to kill him around every corner.

How did he do it? How did he smile so easily?

I washed my shirt and pants, slung them over every surface in the bathroom, alongside Noah's fashionable clothes, flung a towel around my middle, and stared at the door. Nothing had changed. I'd had my dick in Noah's mouth. He'd been willing. Wanted it. Didn't mean anything. Didn't change how I needed to figure out a way of living through this.

But shit, I'd fucked the boss's son.

How had that even happened? How did he get inside my head and unravel all the carefully constructed restraints I'd kept myself in for years? What was it about Noah fucking King that unraveled me ?

"Bad fucking move," I told my reflection. This whole shitshow had been one bad decision after another. No more mistakes. Just business.

I opened the door. He was still on the couch, where I'd told him to stay. His gaze drank in my bare chest. The way those eyes roamed, I felt their heat, like I wanted to feel his hands on me, his mouth, his tongue. Fuck .

He laughed. "Now you're just being cruel."

It was going to be a long night.

"We're just going to sit here and pretend we don't want to fuck each other's brains out?"

"Take the beer."

He took the beer. I'd untied him earlier, as it seemed fair since he'd been so… accommodating. "What happened… earlier…" I began, standing over him, still wearing just a towel.

"You mean the best blowjob of your monosyllabic life?" He brought the bottle to his lips, reminding me where my dick had been less than an hour ago.

Naturally, he was going to make this difficult. He didn't know any other way than to be irritating. "It didn't mean anything."

"Sure." He shrugged. "It's not like we're in love, right? You and me. Just a one-off, we bonded over killing a man. I've got Stockholm syndrome. Or a rope kink. Both? Whatever."

There was a whole lot of shit he'd said that I wasn't going to touch. "Right." I sat on the edge of the old wingback chair, beer bottle between my hands, and tried to find the thoughts I needed to focus on—not the ones filled with Noah, and how even now, I knew that frantic mouth-fuck might have lit the fuse between us. "I can fix this," I said.

Noah raised his eyebrows. "In a way that doesn't mean you have to dig the next grave without me?"

Was he joking or being serious? I couldn't tell with him. But then one of those eyebrows twitched, and his smile ticked with it. "If I find who claimed you were—" I cleared my throat. "—sleeping with the enemy, I'll tell your father it was a setup, show him proof."

"You believe me now?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe."

"Yeah, but you see why it's a lie, right? Whoever this Southie girl is, I didn't touch her. You see why?" He spread his hands, beer in one.

"I see." I'd had a first-hand demonstration of why it was all lies. Or was that why he'd done it? No. He wasn't faking how much he'd enjoyed earlier . Noah was many things, but he'd never lied to me, not once. "If I find whoever set you up, go to Val with proof, tell him I kept you alive since he wouldn't want you killed by mistake, then we're good?"

"Until he finds the next excuse to kill me." Noah picked at the beer label.

"Your father is…"

"What?" He looked up. "My father is what? Because if you were going to say under all that sociopathic repressed male bullshit he actually loves me? We both know that's not true."

"I was going to say he's old, maybe you'll get lucky and his heart gives out."

He mustered a short laugh. "My father will live until he's a hundred and five just to piss me off." He tried to smile, but the weight of too much history held it down. "Can't choose your family, right?"

"Right."

"What about you? Where's your family? Assuming you were born and not carved from stone. You appeared five years ago and slotted right in, like you'd always been in the business."

I should have known that was coming. "You hungry?" I stood, set the beer down, and headed into the kitchen.

"For something other than cock?" he asked, following.

"The more you talk, the more appealing that second grave becomes."

"I can't tell if you're joking or serious."

"Always serious."

He propped his hip against the counter, folded his arms, and tried to read beneath my stoic expression. "Are you though?"

I was, but since he'd started looking at me like he was now, as though trying to figure me out, and how I liked his eyes on me… Maybe I could fuck with him some more.

I showed him a can of soup in one hand and beans in the other.

"Soup," he said, then searched the cupboard for some pans. A few minutes later, I had the soup on the heat and sliced the bread.

"So you are domesticated," Noah said after watching me for a while. "I wasn't sure, since my father keeps you chained."

"Is that what you see?" I asked.

"It's what you show everyone." He shifted closer. "You make them think you're a yes man, a murder machine, but you're not like that, are you? You're smarter than that. I'm starting to think you're smarter than you look, Killer. How did you get my father to trust you like he does?"

I stirred the soup. "By putting his enemies in the ground."

"But not me?"

I planted a bowl of hot soup into his hands. "No, not you." Our gazes met through the steam. "You've never been his enemy, just a pain in my ass." His eyes widened. I knew what was coming and nipped it in the bud. "Say anything about asses and I'll tie you up again."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

I picked up my soup, the plate of bread, and sat at the small fold-out table. Noah sat opposite, smirking. Our knees bumped, so I shifted sideways. He grinned as he ate, dipping his bread and tucking in.

He was a relentless flirt. I knew that. I'd just never had the full force of his sassy charm directed at me and was struggling with how to shut him down, or whether to encourage it, since it brought parts of me alive I hadn't indulged in for years. Parts I thought I'd never feel again.

"You didn't tell me where you came from," he said, eyes flicking up from his soup.

"No, I didn't. Eat."

"Mysterious man. Huh."

"We need to figure out who lied about you. Any ideas?"

Noah gave a dry, empty laugh. "All of them?"

"You pissed off anyone lately—more than usual?"

"Just my father, by breathing."

There was more to it. His father didn't need an excuse to kill Noah. Someone had forced his hand, someone had given him evidence he had no choice but to act on and send me. Few had that much sway over Val.

"Ask him," Noah said, shrugging. "He'll tell you."

"I never ask him. It doesn't work like that."

Noah swept a piece of bread around his empty bowl, soaking up the last of the soup, popped it into his mouth, finished up, and leaned back in the chair. "Is this all you want, to be my father's pet? His killer until he kills you? Because he will, you know. One day, he'll decide you're a threat, and you'll be gone by sunset. That's how he's lived this long. Anyone smart, strong, he uses, and then he turns on them before they turn on him. Kill or be killed."

I knew exactly how his father ran the Back Bay Mafia, and I knew that day would come, but not yet. Not over his son, Val King's pawn. I wasn't dying for a lie, and neither was Noah. I was fixing this.

"He kills the clever ones first," Noah added.

"That's why I don't ask questions."

He lifted his gaze, sensing or hearing something in my tone I shouldn't have let slip, and he knew there was more happening here because he was another one in his father's orbit who wasn't as stupid as they seemed. Perhaps I'd been wrong, perhaps he did listen. He was listening now and hearing more than I'd said with words alone.

"What did he do to you?" Noah asked, his smiles gone. He looked older without that smile, colder too.

I stood, gathered up the dishes, and dumped them in the kitchen sink, then stared at the snow swirling in the dark outside the window. "There was someone," I said, grounding out the words. "Someone in my life. He died. Wrong place, wrong time. Just… walking down the street. He wasn't supposed to be there."

I heard Noah move but didn't dare glance back. If I stared at the snow, the words came easier, as though it had happened to someone else, another man, in a different life. Which was true. Things had been different back then. I'd been different.

Noah's soft hand settled on my back and stroked higher. I almost shrugged him off, but the part that had broken off in my heart revealed the truth of how I needed his warmth, needed to feel again beneath the ice I'd frozen myself in.

"I'm sorry," Noah said, leaning in close.

I smiled without any humor. He didn't need to say sorry, but one day his father would, at the end of my gun.

He moved closer, hooking his bare leg around the back of mine and pressing all of himself up against my side. I stared at the snow falling as Noah's heat thawed the past from my bones and warmed me through.

"I can make you forget."

Nothing would make me forget. But as I turned my head and found his soft eyes looking up at me, his face so beautiful, it seemed as though it wouldn't kill me to feel again. Noah's fingers stroked along my jaw, training my gaze on him. He was too fucking pretty to be real, but he wasn't fragile, not like most believed him to be. The more I knew him, the more I understood what it took to be the coyote in a den of wolves.

I stroked his cheek, touching the forbidden, and when he leaned into me, seeking more—like I needed to feel him—I figured we might be falling together. And would that be so bad?

He tilted his head back, brushed his lips close to mine, and purred, "Stop thinking, Killer. We're just two fucked-up guys, wearing only towels, in a cabin in the woods, and there's nobody here to tell us no." The last words passed his lips in a breathless whisper.

I slipped my fingers into his hair, almost kissed his tempting lips, but skimmed my mouth against the corner of his. As he turned his head, I mouthed his jaw, tasting Noah for the first time.

One taste would never be enough.

Somehow, sometime, he'd gotten under my skin like he'd said, and it wasn't because of the cabin. It had happened years ago, when his brilliant blue eyes had fixed me in his sights and his smile had punctured my heart like a bullet to the chest. That was why, every time the call had come in about some new trouble he'd gotten caught up in, I'd volunteered to save him. Every damn time. I'd chosen to save him for five years, and he believed his father had ordered me to.

It was better he think that, or he'd know how deep that first smile had cut me.

His soft exhale fluttered over my ear, his cheek brushed mine, and his hands stroked my biceps, seeking to hold on.

"So soft, Killer," he said against my cheek. "Careful, or I might start thinking you care."

I grabbed his arms, slammed him against the counter, and ravaged his neck, his collarbone, swirled my tongue around a tight, pert nipple, going lower, falling deeper. His fingers tugged at my hair. Breathless, needful moans fell from his lips. I licked up his abs, wild with desperate need, then dropped to my knees, tore his towel free, and swallowed his dick, balls to chin.

"Ah, fuck!" He bucked, hands twisting in my hair, hips thrusting, thrusting his dick deeper down my throat. It wasn't romance, it was fucking desperation. I'd fucked his mouth and needed to fuck the rest of him, but before that happened, it had been too long since I'd had another man come undone under my tongue, and I needed it to happen now—like he'd said, in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, nobody else mattered. Just Noah and me.

"Yes, take it, take it, God, Killian, your mouth was made for me."

I lifted my gaze, slid off some, and jerked him off with my hand.

Our gazes locked. He knew I was going to make him come in the next few minutes, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop me.

"Fuck, look at you, on your knees for me?—"

He was right. I was on my knees, where I'd vowed never to be. Noah was ruining me in all ways. I hated him for that, hated how he'd emptied out my heart and sauntered into the space left behind. I pulled off, stood, and crushed him under me, gripping his hair and holding his head back, exposing his throat and wide eyes as I pumped ruthlessly.

"I'm going to fuck you," I growled over his lips. "I'm going to fuck you so goddamned hard it'll ruin you for any other man. You understand me? Because after this, there is nobody else."

"Fuck," he sneered, breathing hard, breathing fast, his cock trapped in my fist.

"You want to fuck with me, Noah, then know who you're fucking with. If you're mine, then you're mine to the end. I will brand myself on your soul, you hear me?"

His eyes widened, pupils going dark. "I'm gonna come?—"

I stopped jerking him off and gripped his chin. "Say it, say you want me, and know if I make you mine, no one else will fucking touch you, nobody will hurt you."

He whimpered, but the lust in his eyes made the noise one of need, not fear. "My father?—"

I brushed my lips over his open, gasping mouth. "Is on borrowed time."

He gazed at me, through me, seeing me, perhaps for the first time. I didn't fuck people and throw them away when I was done. When I fell, I fell hard. If he didn't want that, didn't want me, if he wanted someone to cum-dump in, then I wasn't his man. But if he wanted me in his life, if he wanted me, my heart, my soul, then I was his. All-in. Under all the sass, the swagger, all the times I'd saved him, he damn well knew it would come to this. He had to. We'd been circling each other's orbits, threatening to collide, growing ever closer, until here we were. Collision imminent.

"Yes," he whispered.

That one fucking word. Yes. Just a word. But its meaning sealed our fates. Forever.

I dropped my hand to finish him off, but Noah grabbed my wrist and locked on, his fingers tight, like a vise. "Now fuck me like you meant all that," he snarled.

I spun him, and his tight round ass demanded I dig my fingers in. I held him and rubbed against his cheeks, just my towel between my hard cock and his tight ass.

I tore open the nearby cupboard, found some oil—didn't care what kind—dropped my towel, slickened my fingers, and parted his cheeks, sliding down the valley to skim over his hole. He stuttered a gasp and shifted his hips, arching his back and lifting his rear.

"Condom?" he asked.

"I haven't fucked anyone in five years."

"You… What?—"

He tried to turn his head, but I gripped his neck, spread his ass with my free hand, and pushed my dick in, stretching his tight hole. Noah King finally stopped talking. But it didn't last, and I didn't want it to, not when the sweet, short gasps were all I needed to hear to push deeper inside.

"Goddamn, I never thought I'd get your dick."

Bending over him, I kissed the back of his neck. "You wanted it since that day at the gym."

"You knew?"

I straightened, grabbed his ass, and plunged deeper—so deep, Noah choked. I'd wondered about his long, lingering glances since that that day, wondered how he'd feel clenching my dick, until I made myself stop dreaming.

"I see your smile in the window, Killer," he growled.

I looked up, and there we were, reflected in the window, him and me, bent over the kitchen sink, stripped of our lives, down to the bone, naked and fucking glorious. I rammed my dick home. Noah gasped, arched, and thrust back, hungry for more. Our eyes met in the glass and stayed fixed on each other as I fell into an easy, sweet rhythm. Noah's gaze grew heavy, his mouth open, body alive under me. His soft, pining moans sharpened into lusty gasps.

Shifting him back against me, I reached around his hip and grasped his dick, picking up right where I'd left off, jerking him fast. He panted and rocked, his ass riding my cock as he fucked my fist, quickening until he lost himself in the race to finish.

His moans peaked, body stuttering. "Oh God!" He threw his head back and came over my fingers. I might have lost my mind in the next few thrusts, but I needed to get deeper, needed to be inside him, like I'd said, to brand myself on his soul. I grasped his hips, tilted his ass up, and fucked him down , making him gasp and pant all over again. I was coming undone, falling into the electric dark, falling for him, and as the blinding pleasure snapped, I spilled with a guttural shout, forgetting who and what I was, just knowing the man under me was everything .

I came back to myself, with Noah watching me in our reflection, his eyebrow raised. "We're both fucked," he said, adding his cocky smile.

We were both something, but what, I hadn't yet figured out.