Page 35 of Her Beast

“No, I think you should allow me to take care of the problem for you.”

Malcolm bristled. “You think I’m not capable of doing my own killing?”

“I know you are entirely capable of that, Malcolm. However, this is… well, it will get ugly, won’t it? Ugly and very personal. I would be honored to do this for you.”

“I won’t ask you to do my dirty work.”

Smith shrugged. “If you won’t let me handle it, so be it. Iwillsay that I think it’s a mistake to bring in an innocent.”

“I won’t hurt her.”

Smith didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue. “Do you need any help?”

Malcolm gave a startled snort. “You just finished telling me that you don’t agree with how I’m handling this.”

“I don’t.”

“But you’d help me, anyhow?”

“That is what friends are for.” Smith gave him a slight smile. “And you are perhaps my only friend.”

Malcolm was deeply touched by both his offer and his words. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need any help.”

Smith nodded.

“It’s too late to change things, in any case,” Malcolm said—perhaps more for himself than Smith. “It’s happening right now, as we sit here. The girl will be here in a few hours.”

Smith’s hand absently stroked his chest and he stared at nothing, his mind obviously elsewhere.

Malcolm’s mouth flooded as he watched Smith’s hand stroking down over the defined muscles of his chest to the sculpted ridges of his abdomen, hovering just above his half-slumbering cock.

As long as he’d known him, Smith had always shaved every part of his body except for his head. Sukey had loved the look and feel of such smoothness and so she and Malcolm had groomed each other, taking as much pleasure in the act as the result. Now Malcolm was as hairy as a bear. Or at least half a bear, since nothing grew from the burned side of his body.

Smith’s fingers stopped caressing and Malcolm looked up to find the other man’s eyes on him.

“I can feel your gaze on me even though I cannot see you over there in the gloom,” Smith said.

Malcolm never lit the lamps around his desk, not even with Smith.

Smith pulled open the loose flaps of the robe, exposing more of his exquisite body to Malcolm’s hungry gaze. “I don’t think our show tonight satisfied your needs, Malcolm.” His hand drifted to his smooth scrotum and he fondled his balls, the muscles in his forearm and biceps flexing, his shaft growing thick and long. He softly clucked his tongue. “How you like to hide yourself in the darkness, Malcolm. Even when I have already seen every inch of you, damaged or otherwise.”

Malcolm’s disfigured mouth tightened.

Smithhadseen him, right after the fire, while Malcolm had been in too much pain to care or object, when all he had wanted was death.

He’d had no pride and had begged his friend and lover to kill him.

But Smith had refused.

Instead, he’d sat by Malcolm’s bed for an hour or two every day, until his natural instinct for survival—no matter how miserable his existence—had reasserted itself.

Malcolm knew the cost of such time and effort and he loved Smith for his care even though he occasionally still hated him for denying Malcolm an easy escape all those years ago.

In the end, it had been Smith who’d kept him alive. And Smith who’d made sure he wasn’t a vegetable. Smith was the one person in the world Malcolm really gave a damn about.

Smith stood, shrugged off his robe, caught it before it fell, and then neatly laid it over the chair he’d just vacated.

Amusement at the fastidious gesture pushed through Malcolm’s raw desire; he had never met anyone as tidy as Smith.

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