Page 15 of The King's Pawn

“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 enjoyedearlier. 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. Youappearedfive 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 youaredomesticated,” Noah said after watching me for a while. “I wasn’t sure, since my father keeps you chained.”

---