by Layla Reyne
Dante chuckled. “Fair enough.” A flicker of some emotion streaked across Dante’s face, killing the humor and dampening the heat.
“Hey, you okay?” Hawes moved to close the distance between them, but Dante sidestepped his approach, heading toward the living area instead.
“You’re asking me that?”
“You were held hostage tonight, after being drugged twice.”
Dante deflected again, looking around the living room, whistling low. “It’s like it never happened.”
“Madigan Cold Storage—both enterprises—cleans up after itself.” Hawes skated his fingers over Dante’s abs as he passed in front of him. At the snick of the cat-food lid, Iris bounded down from the loft. Hawes set her bowl on the floor and scratched behind her ears. She gave him a tail shake, then ignored his existence in favor of food. Straightening, he continued with his security checks. Balcony doors, check. Doors, check. Panic room, check.
“So the ladder to nowhere does go somewhere,” Dante said.
“It does,” Hawes said as he climbed down the ladder. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”
Dante stepped forward and caged him in, a knee between Hawes’s legs, hands on the ladder rails on either side of his head. “I let myself be held hostage until you got here.”
“You were drugged, for which I am sorry.”
“I know you are,” he said, voice softening. “And I know why you did it. Can’t fault you for putting your family first. Just don’t do it again.”
Hawes nodded. “Thank you.”
“As for being held hostage, I could’ve made a break for it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Dante’s gaze slid sideways, toward the kitchen, where chaos had erupted earlier. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak but shut it before words escaped. He refocused on Hawes and restarted. “It was your decision how to handle Amelia. You’re the king now.”
Hawes didn’t think that was what Dante was going to say at first. He probably would have liked those words better. “Don’t call me that.”
“It’s true.”
“Tonight, I’m just the man who lost a dearly loved family member. The brother and uncle who is going to have to pick up the pieces.” He grasped Dante’s chin and drew him closer. “The lover who almost lost someone he cares about. A future he didn’t think possible.” Dante’s eyes flared, and Hawes kissed him, quick and hard. “I’m just a man who could have lost everything.”
Dante lifted a hand off the rail and cradled Hawes’s face, thumb tracing the sharp hinge of his jaw. “You are not just a man.”
“And neither are you.” Hawes covered Dante’s hand with his and coiled a leg around Dante’s, trapping him close. “Don’t ever sacrifice your safety for me like that again.”
“I won’t make that promise.”
Hawes started to object, and Dante returned the earlier swift kiss. “Trust me in those situations to make the right call. I’ve earned that much.”
Hawes’s mind whirled as Dante captured his lips. He still had questions—Holt’s and Helena’s lingering concerns about Dante couldn’t be disregarded—but no doubt, Hawes trusted Dante to handle himself when the shit hit the fan. He could use an ally, a partner, like that. And Hawes trusted Dante to handle him, especially tonight when other needs were so much closer to the surface.
Relaxing against the ladder, he opened wider for Dante’s kiss, inviting his tongue to tangle with his as it swept inside Hawes’s mouth. Dante tasted sweet, like the caramel candy he’d taken off Kane’s desk, on top of the Dante flavor Hawes had come to enjoy so much this week—dark, mysterious, dependable. A favorite cocktail that filled Hawes’s insides with steady warmth. That both ensnared and freed him. Dante’s thigh between his legs, the rhythmic rocking of hips, his hard chest beneath Hawes’s palms. The long, silky hair Hawes could wrap around his fist and hold on to. Or use to pull Dante back when it became clear, once shirts were shed and pants undone, that they were gonna fuck right there against the ladder if Hawes didn’t move them elsewhere. Granted, the blowjob Dante had given him there ranked among Hawes’s hottest sexual encounters, but it wasn’t what he wanted tonight. “I’m not sure this is better than the foyer pole.”
Dante fought his hold. “Picky, picky.”
Tugging Dante’s head back farther, Hawes licked a stripe from his throat to his ear. “Fuck me in my bed,” he whispered hotly, then released Dante’s hair and trailed his hands over his shoulders to his biceps. “And let me fall asleep in your arms after.”
Dante righted his head, wretched confusion swirling in his eyes, same as it had in the foyer. Hawes recognized the emotion now. He opened his mouth to ask about it, but Dante blinked it away the next instant. Desire returned, his dark eyes molten with hunger, and the instant after that, Dante shucked his pants and boxers. He pushed down Hawes’s too, and as he stood he curled his hands under Hawes’s thighs and boosted him into his arms. “Let’s go, then.”
Hawes flailed an embarrassing half second, unused to being so effortlessly manhandled, but then chagrin gave way to turned-the-fuck-on. He wrapped his legs around Dante’s waist, cock delightfully nestled against warm skin and hard muscle, and looped his arms around Dante’s neck. He drove his hands back into his long hair and attacked his mouth, trusting Dante to navigate to the bedroom despite Hawes’s greedy kisses. His trust wasn’t misplaced, his back hitting the bed in no time.
Dante came down on top of him. “Is this what you want?”
“Getting there.” He kicked out a leg, taking Dante’s knee with it, and braced a hand in the mattress, pushing up. Hawes rolled them so he was on top, but he was only there a second before Dante wrenched them the opposite direction. As they continued to wrestle, their slick cocks bumped and slid, limbs tangled, teeth nipped, and tongues licked, and the smell of sweat and precome filled the room. Hawes had never before grappled with a bedmate of equal strength and skill, and it was fucking exhilarating. By the time he finally got Dante onto his back, Hawes’s knees on either side of his hips, his hands pinning Dante’s to the mattress, Hawes was panting. His nipples scraped against Dante’s chest with each breath, only making him more desperate to be fucked.
He glared down at Dante, daring him to make another move. “If I reach over to the table to get a condom and lube, are you gonna stay?”
Dante grinned and rolled his hips. “Risk you’re gonna have to take.”
Worth it, as were the consequences Dante delivered. Hawes had barely wrapped his fingers around the foil packet and bottle when Dante grabbed an ankle and flipped him onto his stomach.
“Tell me you want this,” Dante said as he sat astride Hawes’s thighs.
Hawes grasped the headboard rails and lifted his ass. “Yes.”
Dante dribbled lube between his cheeks, and Hawes hissed at the cold. Dante chased it away with kisses dotted across his shoulders and fingers spreading the lubricant down his crack and around his rim. He pressed a thumb against Hawes’s hole. “And this?”
“Fuck yes.”
Dante’s thumb pressed in, and Hawes saw the sun behind his closed eyelids. A bright burst of pain, then as his muscles gave way and sucked Dante in, a whole sky of stars came out to play. Endless and beautiful, made more so by Dante’s fingertips teasing his taint.
A warm weight covered Hawes’s back, Dante stretched over him. Hawes opened his eyes, and a curtain of brown waves fell around his face. “Christ, you’re tight,” Dante murmured behind his ear. “How long’s it been, Madigan?”
“Too long.” Fingers tightening around the rails, Hawes struggled between riding Dante’s hand and humping the mattress for friction. “Need more, please.”
Giving it to him, Dante worked him open until he was begging for his cock, wanting Dante inside him before he exploded. The rip of foil and snap of latex had never sounded sweeter. Even sweeter was the sound and sight—because Hawes had to look back—of Dante lubing up his cock, fist shuttling up and down his
hard length. It was the most erotic thing Hawes had ever seen.
And the next second it was the scariest sight of Hawes’s life. Stars became black holes, and Hawes came untethered, free falling with nothing but the bed rails and sheets to grab hold of. It had been too long. Years since he’d opened himself up like this—to the possibility of more than just sex, to a potential partnership, to making love with another man in his bed. With all that riding on the here and now, he needed more control.
“Sun—”
He didn’t even finish the safe word before Dante shifted off and flipped him back over.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Dante cooed, voice gentling. “I got you.”
Hawes gasped out a giant breath, then sucked in a bigger one. “I’m okay, just need a sec, but stay with me, please.”
“Not going anywhere.” Dante straddled his hips, but not so tight or close as to be confining. Comforting instead. Same with his forearms on either side of Hawes’s head, his fingers gently brushing back Hawes’s hair while his own hair created a cocoon around them. Dante waited for his breathing to calm, then asked, “You still want this?”
“Yes. Want you inside me, together.”
Dante lifted Hawes’s hands and put them on his shoulders. “Hold on to me, then,” he said, eyes burning with desire and understanding. “Hold on to me and let go, but only as much as you want to.”
It was exactly what Hawes needed to hear, exactly the power he needed back, and with it came a swell of emotion that Hawes poured into the kiss they shared. Everything he’d never dared hope for, everything he never thought he could have. Until now. He dug his fingers into Dante’s shoulders and held on tight, riding that hope as Dante slid into him.
Riding it higher with each thrust and roll of their hips, with each kiss stolen between quickened breaths, with each stroke of Dante’s hand around his cock, until Dante snapped his hips hard one last time, their gazes locked, and Hawes exploded with him, as high on hope as he’d ever been.
Chapter Nineteen
Light bloomed behind Hawes’s eyelids, a sudden burst that pushed him from dozing to awake. For the sun to have broken through the fog, to be shining so bright that it poured through the windows and over the loft wall, it had to be midday. Fuck, when was the last time he’d slept so late? Probably the last time he’d been laid so well. Which was an understatement. Fucked into oblivion was more like it. Dante had been powerful, wild, and caring, totally in tune with him. Hawes had barely spoken his safe word, and Dante had adjusted. He’d given Hawes exactly what he’d needed.
And fuck, it had been good.
So good that Hawes woke relaxed and rested, eager for the day ahead for the first time in a week. There were loose ends to deal with still—pending investigations, missing explosives, imploding family—but today Hawes felt more like a king than he’d ever felt like a prince. Like he could walk out the front door and onto his city’s streets with the same easy confidence Dante carried himself.
Or better yet, he could get fucked again first.
Eyes closed, he scratched his bare chest and stretched from the toes up, pausing when his ass gave a twinge of protest. He carefully bowed his back off the mattress, counting each vertebra as it bent. No pain there. He could make this work. He just needed to convince Dante. Hawes didn’t think it would be too hard. Right arm above his head, he inched his left over the sheets, searching for the other warm body in his bed.
And came up empty.
Cool sheets. No Dante.
Maybe he was scrunched on the far edge of the king-size bed. Hawes did have a tendency to starfish when he slept. He moved to stretch farther and was yanked back—by cold metal around his right wrist.
He instinctively yanked at his arm, hard, nearly jerking his shoulder out of its socket. Eyes popping open, he arched his neck and spied one end of Dante’s handcuffs around his wrist, the other around a headboard rail. The one Hawes had had his fingers curled around last night as Dante had…
Ah, seemed his lover had in mind the same start to the day as Hawes. Still in tune with him and what he needed.
A sly smile spread across Hawes’s face, and his morning wood, already stiffening further at the memory of last night, plumped to full attention. He lowered his back and shoulders to the mattress and listened. Sounds drifted up from the bathroom. There was his lover.
“You know,” Hawes called, raising his voice. “It defeats the purpose to cuff me to the bed, naked, and then leave. You’re missing the good stuff.”
The toilet flushed and steps thudded up the stairs, as if Dante had his boots on. Had he gone out somewhere? Hawes inhaled deep. He didn’t smell coffee or food, just the leftover musk of their lovemaking.
Before Hawes could enjoy another flash of memory, Dante appeared at the top of the stairs and robbed Hawes of thought. And all his breath.
Fully clothed, gun in hand, this Dante was not the same man Hawes had spent last night with, much less the past week. The top half of his hair was tied back in a ponytail, a holster was clipped to his hip, and his posture was rigid, as if those blips Hawes had noticed yesterday had taken root and grown into towering redwoods overnight. Worst of all were his eyes. They were all wrong. Not the molten brown Hawes had stared into as they’d come together. The fire in them was gone, snuffed out and replaced by cold, hard detachment.
Dante’s voice was dead to match. “This exactly serves my purpose.”
Dread settled like a boulder on Hawes’s chest.
In his mind, Hawes replayed last night through a different lens. Was it possible he’d misread Dante’s hunger, their flirtatious grappling, the passionate fight for and exchange of power? By the look of the stranger at the foot of his bed, the answer to that question was highly likely.
Shit.
Hawes tensed, preparing to reach across his body to the bedside drawer.
Dante, who’d become well acquainted with his reflexes—because fuck if Hawes hadn’t goaded him into multiple displays of them—raised his pistol. “Nuh-uh-uh, I already removed the knife and panic button.”
Hawes seethed. “I trusted you.”
“You should have trusted your siblings.”
Shit!
Holt hadn’t been the only one suffering a blind spot. Hawes had been so eager for the steadiness Dante offered, for an ally and partner, for a life he’d written off as impossible, that he’d forgotten it was impossible for a reason.
Someone was always gunning for the king.
Silencing his naive hopes for more than thrones and empires, Hawes ignored his grieving heart and wrenched his mind into operative mode, evaluating exit strategies as he kept Dante talking. “Were you working with her?” he asked.
“With whom?”
“Amelia.”
Dante laughed. It didn’t sound amused at all. He stepped around to Hawes’s side of the bed and stared down at him. Hawes yanked again at the cuff, testing the rail, and no longer comfortable under Dante’s intense gaze, even if fire did momentarily flicker in those dark depths. “No, I wasn’t working with her,” Dante answered. “But she did tell me some interesting things before you and Helena showed up.”
“Such as?”
“She was working for someone. Your throne’s not safe. And my mission’s not complete.”
Hawes paused in his assessment of escape routes to unpack those three deceptively simple sentences. There were obviously more loose ends than he’d accounted for, but what struck Hawes most was Dante’s use of the word mission. Tactical, in the same way his ex-army brother and Chief Kane often used it. Committed, in a way that spoke to abject devotion, above all else. Above any feelings Dante might have developed for Hawes.
“Your mission?” Hawes asked, every hair on his body standing on end.
“To bring Isabelle’s killer to justice.”
Hawes forced himself not to laugh. Not to cry. Isabelle’s killer was right here, handcuffed to the fucking bed. Did Dante know that? Was that one of the interesting things Amelia h
ad told him? Or did Dante remain in the dark about that most essential fact? Like Hawes had been in the dark about the most essential question Dante had dodged all week.
“Who was she to you?” Hawes asked again, sensing he’d finally get the answer and that he wouldn’t like it one damn bit.
He was right.
Dante reached into his back pocket, withdrew a black leather billfold, and tossed it onto Hawes’s chest. It landed open—to a gold-and-blue badge with a distinctive eagle on top. Hawes picked it up with his shaking left hand and confirmed his hairs had stood on end for a reason. “You’re ATF?”
“Special Agent Christopher Perri.”
Hawes flipped to the other half of the billfold, to the stranger’s credentials, and read the truth for himself. Holt had been right. The digital copy of the yearbook had been altered. The picture was the same man, and he’d be in the same alphabetical position in the class roster, only a letter’s difference between his real last name and the one he’d used for his cover, but the first name… “Christopher?”
“My partner used to call me Dante. She thought it was funny, given my nose and the fact that I always had it in a book.”
Hawes’s gut clenched. “Your partner?”
“Isabelle Costa.”
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And turn the page for a first look at the cover and blurb for book two of the Fog City Trilogy!
Coming Soon! Book Two of the Fog City Trilogy!
Never fall for a mark. Mission fail.
ATF agent Christopher Perri infiltrated the Madigan organization with one goal: vengeance for his murdered partner. Falling for the assassin at the head of the table wasn’t part of the plan, but Hawes Madigan is not the cold, untouchable Prince of Killers Chris expected. Everything about the newly crowned king is hot, and every inch of him eminently touchable… and off-limits once Chris’s cover is blown.