No note, no anything. The kitchen is spotless and my pen and notepad are in their usual place next to the coffee pot. Spettro’s lucky he’s the Dom in this situation, because if our roles were reversed, he’d be getting one hell of a spanking.
My phone vibrates in my hand and my heart jumps. I flip it over to see the screen and find a text from Xaviaro.
“I’m positive I don’t have the energy for this shit,” I mutter, using one thumb to press the start button on the coffee maker, which I always pre-load so I don’t have to fuck around in the morning, and my other to unlock my phone so I can see why the Ice Man is texting me so early.
I open my messages, and Xav’s isn’t the only one waiting for me. The scowl I woke up with immediately melts, and I ignore the text that just came in, clicking on the one beneath it instead.
SPETTRO: Thank you.
SPETTRO: That was…
SPETTRO: nice.
I lean against the counter and chuckle quietly. The first message was sent at around four in the morning. I’m guessing he sent it as soon as he left. The second one was immediately after, but the third didn’t come in until four forty-five. It took him forty-five minutes to get his thoughts together enough to decide that falling asleep with his dick in my mouth wasnice.
The protective feeling that flooded me last night when he told me he doesn’t like to be touched rears up again. He’s tough, I could tell that much when he taunted me to go ahead and shoot him. He’s dominant and in control, and clearly, he’s seen some shit, all of which I find extremely fucking hot. He’s also terrified and a little bit broken. I could be the thing that scares away his demons, if he lets me.
I stare at the messages for a minute or two until my coffee pot beeps to alert me that it’s finished brewing. I let out a breath and type out my reply.
ALESSIO: Didn’t expect I’d sleep so well with your cock in my mouth. But 10/10, would definitely do again.
ALESSIO: And speaking of doing things again… when can I see you? Maybe we could go out somewhere this time? You know, like a proper date.
I wait another minute and both messages stay on “sent.” Maybe he went home and went back to sleep, or maybe he’s busy breaking into someone else’s apartment. That thought makes my gut squeeze. That shit is dangerous. He could end up shot or in jail. While I pour my coffee, I consider sending anothermessage telling him that if he needs money, I’ll take care of him. But before I can decide whether that would be romantic or just fucking insane enough to scare him off, my phone buzzes with another text from Xaviaro.
“Why are you so obsessed with me?” I mutter to myself, closing out of the text thread with Spettro and opening Xav’s messages.
XAVIARO: I have an idea to generate some leads on that project of ours…
I snort a laugh. I know he’s being vague in case the feds ever do nail us and subpoena our texts and shit, but it never fails to amuse me how corporate he can manage to make shit sound. The second text says, “9” and then has an emoji of a building and the silhouette talking head guy.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a sip of my coffee. It’s too fucking early for Xav’s riddles, so I try to come at it a different way. He has an idea of where to get a lead on The Ghost…All we’ve done so far is watch the Sleepless Reaper’s clubhouse and we haven’t spotted anyone unexpected coming or going. The next logical step would be to just fucking ask the Reapers if they have any clue who might be behind this. I’m sure they’ll be real cooperative and forthcoming, too.
I grin and take another sip of my coffee.
Okay, so where to meet Xav to have a friendly chat with a Reaper or two. I run through a mental list of bars we know they frequent and there’s one right at the top of the list—Babylon on 10th Street. It’s where a lot of the mid-level members like to hang out. It’s a decent bet that they’ll have overheard the president, Savage, and his inner circle talking about their littleproblem, and they’ll be easier to extract information from than any of the higher-ups would be.
I look at the emojis in Xav’s message again and roll my eyes. The tower of Babel… Babylon… I see where he could get there, but it’s a reach. He’s lucky I’m smarter than I look. I’m assuming he meant ninetonight, not this morning, so I text him back a thumbs-up emoji, although I’m fucking tempted to send him a random string of them and let him spend the day working out the meaning. I’m not expecting a reply, but one comes anyway.
XAVIARO: By the way, two more turned up in the morning trash. Lazy.
Lazy?Lazy?My shoulders and arms are still fucking sore from lifting those dead weight motherfuckers. Lazy my ass. Excuse the hell out of me for not carrying around a bone saw so I could have chopped them up into little pieces and fed them to the fishes. Lazy. I scoff and start to type out exactly that before gritting my teeth and deleting it without sending.
I can’t think of any response that wouldn’t be defensive or incriminating, so I close out of the text thread without sending one at all. I’ve got shit to do today that doesn’t involve staring at my phone waiting to see if Spettro will text me back or cracking and explaining to Xav that I didn’t have a damn car with me, sonoit wasn’t lazy, it was the best I could do. I finish my coffee and head for a shower, still muttering to myself about Xaviaro.
Places to go, people to threaten, and I can already tell I’m going to be doing it all with Spettro on my mind again today.
“You’re my new addiction.”
His words play in my head on repeat, and honestly?Same.
GHOST
It took me forty-five minutes to come up with the word “nice”this morning to describe what happened between Alessio and me last night, and the rest of the day to decide that “nice”was a cop-out. Every other word I tried to insert there scares the hell out of me though, so I guess that’s the best I can do for now.
I kind of expected that waking up with his mouth on me might trigger the fuck out of me. Maybe I even hoped it would. That probably would have been the easiest way to bury this obsession and get my focus back on my revenge arc. I knew where I was before I opened my eyes though. And I knew whose head was resting on my thigh, his hot breath ghosting against my cockhead with every slow, steady exhale. His lips were slack and parted, my soft cock likely having slipped out hours ago while we slept. I carded my fingers through his hair for a minute or two, tempted to close my eyes again and go back to sleep, to find out what it would be like to wake up with him at a proper time like a normal fucking person.
I’m not normal though, and I couldn’t make myself pretend. I don’t know what people talk about over coffee or what you’re supposed to say to a man who offered to warm your cock and let you get some sleep when you came over for a fucking booty call.