Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,80
he’d ever even had it, all while Paolo kept fucking him.
His cock dragged over Luis’s prostate. It was the best kind of torture. Coming seemed to last forever, but of course it didn’t. Growling, Paolo drove in deep and stayed there, juddering as he came too, tying them together as Luis trembled with aftershocks.
And then it was over. Luis fell slack, and Paolo slid out of him with far more care than he’d entered. He disappeared, but not for long. He came back with a warm, wet towel—Luis’s only towel—and cleaned them both up.
Luis rolled onto his back, exhaustion settling into his bones. His eyes were heavy with the sleep he so desperately needed, but as Paolo returned to the bed again, he knew their strangest of nights was far from over. “Are you going to tell me how you got into my place without a key?”
Paolo shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed, naked from the waist down but still wearing his T-shirt. “I wasn’t always a good boy, and your door is rubbish.”
Luis couldn’t argue with that, and he yearned to know more about what had happened in Paolo’s life to teach him how to break and enter, but he’d run out of time for deflection. He owed Paolo an explanation. More than that, he owed him the truth.
He coaxed Paolo into his bed, and in the dark bedsit, lit only by the slivers of streetlight from outside, told him everything, right up until the moment he’d left Dante bleeding on the sticky snooker club floor.
Paolo listened in silence, his expression unreadable, but his wandering fingertips held Luis’s fear at bay. “So you left the drugs with Dante? Like that Martell dude wanted you to?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it hard to leave your brother?”
Luis nodded. “Annoyingly so, even though it was his fault I was there at all.”
“You’ll probably feel guilty about it for a while.”
“You think?”
“For sure. That’s where you’re totally different to him, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you should. And I guess you need to live with that guilt for as long as it’s there. Fighting it won’t change anything.”
“You’re so wise.”
Paolo hummed and slid further down the bed. “Not really. If I was, I probably wouldn’t have broken into a road boy’s flat.”
“Ex road boy.”
“No offence, mate, but I’ve heard that shit before.”
“And it was true when I said it. I only went with Dante because—” Luis stopped. He’d promised Paolo the truth, but was he really about to tell him Dante had been creeping on his elderly grandparents? Holy fuck, his life was a mess.
“Because what?” Paolo nudged him. “And don’t give me bullshit. I gave you what you needed, now it’s my turn.”
Luis’s sore body still tingled from Paolo turning him inside out. He shivered a little, but not from cold. “Dante threatened you. Said he’d fuck up you and your family if I didn’t do what he wanted. So . . . I did.”
Paolo’s dancing fingers stilled. “You went on a drugs run to Coventry to protect me?”
Luis shrugged, glad Paolo hadn’t swooped on the entire truth. “Of course. I promised you—and myself—that Dante’s drama wouldn’t ruin your life too. Maybe I should’ve looked closer at what he was doing, talked more with Asa and Martell before I took him seriously, but I’ve been out of the game a long time, man. I thought he was still a king.”
Paolo said nothing. Just resumed his attentions to Luis’s forearms, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
Luis rolled onto his side and smoothed the line away. “What are you thinking?”
“Lots of things.”
“Like?”
“Like how you should’ve had a better way to deal with your brother’s manipulation than committing a crime, but I’m starting to understand why you didn’t.”
“You are?”
“Kind of. You can’t choose your family, can you? I get that, trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
Paolo smiled a little. “I know. And maybe when the dust has settled from this, I’ll trust you too.”
His words hurt, but Luis understood them. Paolo had always been brutally honest with him. It was why Luis loved him. And, fuck, did he love him. So much. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here when I got back.”
“I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
“How long were you going to wait?”
Paolo flushed. “Well, I told myself I’d wait forever, but I guess I’d have had to give up eventually. That greasy spoon doesn’t run itself.”
A light bubble of laughter warmed Luis’s chest, but Paolo remained serious.
“We need to figure out