6
Benito:thanks for last night. sorry if it got heavy.
Mickey:if it gt hvy it was my fault
Mickey:im sorry
Benito:don’t be. next week, yea?
Mickey went offline. Benito waited a moment to see if he’d come back, but he didn’t.
Eight hours later, he was still waiting. Sighing, he stuffed the phone in his pocket and scowled at his surroundings. Toddington Services were a shithole. He sank low in the car he’d bought for £200 from a scrapyard, tracking the lorries and caravans as they came and went, gaze sharp as he watched for the nondescript Vauxhall to make its scheduled fuel stop. It was already an hour late, but Benito wasn’t worried... yet. He knew how this shit went down, and it wasn’t fucking black ops. It was two idiots in a car with a kilo of coke under the seat—idiots who were stupid enough to make the drive at night, when the feds were watching the motorways the most.
Shoulda gone for rush hour, boys. Blend into the chaos.But Benito wasn’t calling the shots anymore, and for the first time, it had gifted him an advantage. Stupid people did stupid things. They left themselves open. Vulnerable. They were blood in the water, and Benito was the motherfucking shark.
At least, he would be if the marked car ever showed up.
He lit another smoke, staving off the hunger pains in his belly. Grocery shopping had fallen by the wayside after he’d emptied his bank account to buy Gianna her iPad, and he still hadn’t managed to give it to her. It was sitting on his kitchen counter where he usually kept the eggs, reminding him that living off baked beans for a week was worth being too fucking hungry to lift weights at the gym.
The hours ticked by. Benito clutched the burner phone to his chest, waiting for a signal from the deep, while his other phone lay dormant in his pocket, silent and still, like it had been all day. Not that Benito had been waiting on a text. No. Definitely not. And he hadn’t been obsessing over his latest encounter with a six-foot sandy-haired northerner either.
Much.
The kiss went on and on, as rough as the first they’d shared, but this felt different. As if every clash of lips and teeth sunk them deeper into something Benito didn’t understand. Mickey fucking him was a trip. An out-of-body experience. But it wasn’t meant to be like this. It was supposed to ground him, not leave him so dizzy he didn’t know which way was up.
Mickey kissed Benito harder, fighting Benito’s hold on him.
Benito kept him pressed against the door, just for a moment, before he relented and let Mickey spin them around. As tempting as it was to push their physicality to its limits, instinct told him this wasn’t the time. Not yet.
Butfuck, Benito wanted to. Almost as much as he wanted Mickey to fuck him again.
Right here.
Right now.
Against the front door—
The phone buzzed.
Benito’s eyes flew open. He bolted upright and grabbed it as it slid off his chest.Shit.Had he fallen asleep? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d drifted off to dirty memories of Mickey.
He rubbed his face and opened the text.
Unknown number:5 mins out. Fuel then KFC. Follow us.
Benito rolled his eyes. What kind of idiot stopped for dinner on a muling run? But again, it suited him. Their stupidity was his gain.Snap to.
It was late. And thanks to the extra half hour it had taken Benito to leave Mickey’s house the night before, he hadn’t slept. Not because he’d lost the time, more that he’d been too keyed up by the second drilling Mickey had gifted him in the hallway. Hard. Fast. Frantic. It hadn’t hurt, but it had been as close to the edge as Benito could bear.
If he closed his eyes, he could still feel Mickey’s thick—
Damn it. Snap the fuck to.
Benito jerked back to alertness, cold muscles protesting as he stretched his arms and legs. A blue Astra cruised into the service station, easing past the dark parking bay Benito had taken up residence in and onto the forecourt. So close to London, the fuel pumps were busy, even at this time of night. It took a while for the car’s occupants to fill up and pay.
The Astra joined the queue at the fried chicken drive-through. Benito watched as it crawled past each window and accepted a big bag of food, and flicked the ignition on the ancient SEAT Ibiza. The old engine spluttered to life.Don’t fucking die on me. Benito pumped the accelerator a few times, warming the engine, then slipped into the exit lane to follow the Astra out of the services.
Toddington was a strange place, both efficiently connected to the capital and surrounding towns and yet remote enough that deserted country roads weren’t hard to find. The Astra passed the M1 junction and headed away from civilisation. It wasn’t the quickest route to where they were going, but so far, the most sensible thing the muling crew had done.