“Leave me the fuck alone,” I add for good measure.
“Your face is too pretty for such an ugly look, boss.You’ve been extra edgy lately, and everyone’s starting to worry.”She gestures to the room behind us, where the rest of the team are either playing or betting on a game of darts.My friend and business partner, Zed, has for some reason taken his shirt off and is circling it in the air like a lasso.
“After you beat a man of God to death in our warehouse, we figured you could use a night out to decompress,” she adds with a humorless smile.“Doesn’t seem to be working.”
I take a healthy swig of my beer.“Can’t call him a man of God when he was trafficking his own followers, if you ask me.”
She shrugs and tips back her IPA.“If you ask me, God doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t matter what you call him.”
Thirty seconds into this conversation and I already want to go back to being left alone.“You didn’t come over here to discuss whether or not God exists.”
“No, sir.I came over here because you’ve spent the day biting everyone’s head off.The little boys are all too nervous to talk to you about it, so somebody had to woman up.Since I’m currently the only woman on the team, here I am.”
A shout comes from the far wall, where Reece has managed a bull’s-eye.Zed pumps his fist and holds his hand out to Yannis, who forks over some cash.Fred and Callaghan keep glancing over my way, trying to act as if they’re minding their own business.
“They placing bets on why I’m in a bad mood?”
“Odds heavily favor your boy, Ravi.Reece said you were ranting about him at your last job together, and Callaghan said—I want to be clear that these are his words, not mine—last time he saw the two of you together, the boy looked at you ‘like he’d crawl naked over glass if you asked him to.’”
“I think Callaghan needs to keep shit to himself before I cut out his tongue.”
She continues as if I hadn’t spoken.“Sal and Marcus called in from Mexico, and they’re thinking this goes back to months ago when that recovery job went tits up.Yannis has fifty on the fact that none of us did anything for your birthday last month.”
Fuck that.I never celebrate my birthday.Why do I need to, when I’ve got a college freshman in my life to remind me exactly how old I am?Besides, birthdays are hard for Ravi.No need to put him through that shit.
“Yannis should stop betting on things.He’s already broke from two divorces.”
Bev raises her eyebrows but says nothing.
“That recovery job is done and buried.We don’t win them all.Can’t change the past.”
Honestly, Bev’s an amazing hacker but she could pull the truth from anybody with nothing but her eyebrows.No fillet knife needed.
I’ve had interrogation training.Twenty years in the Army, ten of them in special forces.Nobody can break me with the power of a stare.
Usually.
I’m tired as fuck.I’m strung out from that spontaneous spanking session in Ravi’s bedroom.Still sensing the smoothness of his ass under my palm, the way he orgasmed from the lightest brush of my finger on his hole.The moans and cries he made when I touched him won’t leave me alone.There’s this ugly thing pacing and thrashing inside me since it happened.I’m trying so hard to keep the beast on a leash.
It’s not working.Not when every time I close my eyes I see his tearstained face, flushed with a mix of confusion and sated pleasure.Hear his voice, rough from crying out, asking to discuss what happened between us.I hate myself for what I did as much as for the way I keep wanting to do it again.
“He’s not my boy,” I growl.
If I could just convince the beast inside me.The one who took over when I grabbed him and threw him over my lap as if he very much was mine.I still can’t believe the way I lost control.
“But…you…want him to be?”There’s no judgment in her face.Only interest.
“Of course I fucking don’t.”I rip the rest of the label off my bottle, crumpling the foil-stamped scrap in my fist.“I’m supposed to be protecting him.It’s what I do.Protecting people is what I’ve spent my entire life doing.I’ve also never been more certain that I’m failing.”
She regards me silently, spinning her empty beer bottle in little circles.The repetitive sound has me wanting to stab somebody.
“Sir, you know my ex was an alcoholic?”
Where is this going?“I think you’ve mentioned it before.”
“Spent years trying to fix him.Years.Dumping out his booze, trying to keep him in a good mood, placating him when he was on a rampage.He’d agree to go to a meeting once in a while but never made it more than a few weeks sober before it all went off the rails again.He was set on killing himself, and I kept trying to save him.”
Ah.I see now.“This is a teaching story.”