Mr. K would be on a plane by midnight. My da was still where I'd left him in Edinburgh. The coat smelled of vodka, cordite, and a man who'd shot three people to get me back. I'd take that and the bill that came with it.
The safehouse on Garfieldwas a two bedroom above a payday loan place, and I'd been pacing the length of it for twenty minutes while Fin ate. Fin sat on the couch in my coat and his underwear, working through a burger, color coming back into his face by degrees. Collins had come and gone an hour ago, run his numbers and dosed him, and pronounced him a lucky idiot.
I rubbed my hands together and stopped facing the wall, but it didn't help. All I wanted to do was put my hands back on him, put my lips back on him, taste him, feel him, crawl inside his skin and sign my name on his bones.
It wasn't logical. Hell, it wasn't even possible. Didn't stop me from wanting it.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my texts, half expecting to find a new one from Nikita. There wasn't one, which was worrying. It was taking him too damn long to figure out what I'd done. I'd shot one of our own men in the back in some Italian leather shop in Greek territory, someone who'd been with the organization longer than I'd been alive. If this didn't start awar with the Greeks, and somehow didn't escalate things with the Italians, then I still might find a bullet in my back before the night was out.
"Ye're going to wear a hole through the floor."
"Shut up and eat your burger."
"Aleksi." There it was. That fucking bedroom voice of his. "Come and sit down."
I looked back at him. There was nowhere to sit except right fucking beside him, right where I'd have to sit with my hands on my knees, smell him, pretend I didn't want to suck bruises onto his skin.
Fuck.
"I'm good."
"Yer either gonna have a heart attack or pass out if ye don't eat something, Aleksi."
God damn him for using my name like that. I turned away from the wall, stomped across the room, scooped up my untouched burger, and took a big bite. "There. Happy?" I said, throwing it down. "Fucking brat."
He stared at me while I chewed. "Aye. I'm a brat. But yer pretty damn good at taming me, seems."
I scoffed and looked away. "Don't talk to me like that. I could kill you. I should fucking kill you."
"Ye dinnae want to kill me." He put his burger down and stood up. "I think you want something harder." He licked his thumb and reached for me.
I flinched back. "Fin, what the—"
He drew his spit damp thumb over my bottom lip. It came away yellow with mustard. He stuck his thumb between his lips and sucked. My knees nearly buckled.
The fucker was still grinning when I yanked him in by the hair and bit his lip.
He hissed and sank his teeth into my lower lip hard enough that I tasted blood. Not his.
I pulled back. He was breathing hard, bottom lip swelling where I'd caught it, and he looked at me like I'd finally done something worth his time. I went back in, and he turned his head at the last second, catching my jaw instead, teeth dragging slowly along the bone.
"Ye want me," he said against my skin, "ye're going to have to mean it."
I hauled him through the bedroom door by his shirt. He hit the wall, and I was on him before he bounced off it.
I kissed him hard with teeth because that's the version of me he deserved, the version of me he wanted. And I kissed him with teeth because he'd never stop running his fucking mouth if I didn't, because I liked the violence of it. Judging by his answering moan, he did too.
Fin's hands hit my chest and yanked my shirt open.
"Christ," he said against my mouth, "even yer buttons are uptight."
I wanted to shut him up. I also wanted to let him keep talking, because his lips on mine while he was being a smartass about my suit was the best thing that'd happened to me in forty years and I was furious about it.
I shoved the coat off his shoulders, and then there was just him, all that pale, freckled skin in the dark. I didn't know what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't this. No curves. No softness. Just lean muscle and sharp bone and the ridge of his ribs under my palms when I put my hands on him. I ran my thumbs along his ribs. He shivered, and I wanted to put my lips on every freckle. I wanted to find out how far down they went. I wanted things I didn't have words for yet. That terrified me, and I did it anyway.
Fin let me look. He stood there with his hands loose at his sides and let me put my palms on him and figure out what I was doing, and he didn't say a word, which for Fin was its own kind of answer.
Then thirty seconds were up.