beautiful. Paolo watched him, entranced, but too soon, his own climax rushed him, and he shot deep and hard, his vision whiting out as he groaned loud enough to rattle the walls.
It seemed to go on forever. Paolo shuddered with aftershocks, and beneath him, Luis shivered, chest heaving.
Paolo let his dick ease from Luis’s body. Luis made a soft sound that wasn’t all pleasure. Paolo moved to roll away, but Luis caught him.
“Don’t. Not yet.”
He pulled Paolo down for a sticky, consuming kiss, and Paolo forgot about the condom he needed to bin, the mess of come and sweat between them, and the fact that Luis had double locked the front door the moment it had shut behind him. He forgot about everything except how it felt to lie naked with Luis, breathless and awed, as they kissed until Paolo was hard again.
The urge to fuck Luis again was so strong it almost blinded him to the fact that Luis was halfway to sleep, but as he gazed at Luis, the ache in his dick was easy to ignore. He pushed Luis’s damp hair away from his face and stroked his scruffy jaw. Luis sighed, and it was as peaceful as Paolo had ever seen him.
Paolo ditched the condom, hustled him under the covers, and turned the lamp off. Luis pulled him close, burying his face in Paolo’s neck, and immediately knocked out. It was cute as fuck, but sleep didn’t find Paolo for a long time. For hours, he switched between gazing at Luis and staring at the ceiling. Convinced he’d see the dawn, he turned his alarm off, but eventually, he fell asleep.
It was light when he woke, and he knew without looking that he was alone. He opened his eyes to an empty bed. Luis was gone, leaving only rumpled sheets, his borrowed phone, and two full beer cans to show he’d been there at all.
20
Luis waited outside the industrial unit, his back to the lashing rain, transfixed by the crumpled photograph of Paolo’s grandmother’s nursing home. It had come through Paolo’s door in the early hours of the morning. Luis had found it on a stumbling trip to the bathroom and had returned to bed to find it had been sent to his phone too from yet another unknown number.
A burner, no doubt, but the message was clear. Dante knew Luis had lied, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to punish Paolo if Luis didn’t come through for him on this job.
Yeah? And then what? You think you’ll do this for him and that’ll be it? That he’ll let you go?
Of course he wouldn’t. But Luis didn’t give a shit anymore. He’d spend the rest of his life muling rock if it kept Paolo safe. He stared at the grainy picture again, as if he needed reminding what was at stake, that his own pain was nothing compared to how Paolo would feel if something happened to Nonna.
Something that would be Luis’s fault for being so fucking weak. “Come home with me . . . please?”
Hazy memories of what had come next haunted Luis in the best and worst ways. His body was wonderfully sore, but his heart ached so fierce he could hardly breathe. You should’ve said no. Then you’d never have known what you’d lost.
But that wasn’t true. Even without the mind-blowing sex, Luis had left a piece of himself with Paolo that he’d never get back.
The door to the unit started to open, drawing Luis from his maudlin thoughts. On alert, he braced himself, waiting for Dante’s contact to emerge. Years ago, it had been Fat Mo from the meat market, but life had moved on since then, and Luis had zero clue who was coming.
He kept to the shadows, watching and waiting. But instead of a person, a nondescript estate car emerged with Dante at the wheel. The car pulled up to where Luis loitered, and Dante opened the window. “Get in, brother.”
Luis scowled. “You never said you’d be here.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Truth. Based on past experience, Luis had assumed Dante would steer clear of his scuzz work, leaving the risk to anyone and everyone except himself. In fact, the only positive to his dawn appointment with a package of coke had been the certainty that Dante wouldn’t be there. Fuck my life.
Luis got in the car. “Where did you find this heap of shit?”
Dante gunned the engine and peeled out of the industrial estate under the mist of the early morning.