King Me (Forever Wilde 7)

I knew he expected me to put up a fight, so I didn’t. I went along willingly and even squeezed his hand partway back to the house.

“Thank you for coming after me,” I said. “Um… that’s… that’s something no one has ever done for me except my family.”

I clenched my teeth together. Why did I always sound like a nervous boy around him? I had my damned shit together, so why couldn’t I sound like it?

Falcon looked over at me. “How do you mean?”

Why had I told him something personal like that? Something vulnerable?

“Never mind. That was stupid. I just wanted to thank you. Otherwise I’d still be cold.” I swallowed. “The sweatshirt, I mean. That was nice of you. That’s all I meant.”

Falcon stopped midstride and pressed his lips together before opening his mouth to speak and then closing it again. I could tell he was arguing with himself over whatever it was he wanted to say. I assumed this was when he’d tell me we couldn’t sleep together after all because of his work and his rules.

I waited patiently for what I knew was coming. When it came, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

“King… the undercover agent with your family… isn’t with your family.”

My heart thumped. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head, clearly annoyed with himself for telling me. “The agent doesn’t have any kind of personal relationship with anyone in your family. They’re just embedded in Hobie to keep an eye out and ask around. It’s not…” Clearly he was struggling with his ethics.

And failing.

“Dammit. It’s not anyone trusted by your family. So you don’t… you don’t need to worry that…”

He raked his hand through his short hair before tugging on it and shaking his head with exasperation. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.”

Then he strode ahead and let himself into the house.

I stood there, staring after him.

The blustery motherfucker cared enough about me to give me that reassurance against his better judgment.

But, why?

13

Falcon

I couldn’t believe what I’d just allowed to happen. Who the hell was I? And how many times was I going to allow a pretty face—that specific pretty face—to get me to fold like a cheap house of cards?

Maybe I should request a reassignment.

The house was dark. I made my way to the bedroom and got under the covers of my bed before King could follow me in and gloat over my unprofessionalism. I’d known better than to give him even that little bit of information, but I hadn’t been able to stand seeing him so upset. The amount of self-recrimination going on in my brain was overwhelming, so I began reviewing our plan for the following day to distract me from what had happened with King. Concentrate on the future, not the past.

Even if it was the very recent past.

And even then, the only regret was the unauthorized intel blabbing. I certainly didn’t regret learning what King’s mouth tasted like or how his entire body melted against mine the minute I took charge of him physically.

Great, so now I had a giant throbbing boner. And I was going to have to ignore it since I was sharing a room with the boner maker.

I heard him make his way into the room quietly, closing the door with a soft click. But instead of padding over to his bed on the other side of the room, he pulled back the covers on mine and slid in next to me.

There was no way in hell I was going to kick this sexy man out of my bed no matter how stupid I was in all other areas of my life.

I pulled him in closer and held him tight, noticing he’d removed the hoodie and his shirt. His bare back felt like heaven, and it led all the way down to his curvy, tempting ass.

We lay quietly, simply running hands over each other with metric tons of unspoken bullshit between us, until he spoke.

“He was friends with my art history professor.”

King’s voice was whisper soft in the small room, and his breath brushed against my shoulder. It took me a minute to realize he was talking about Elek.

“One day after class, my professor invited me to participate in a special challenge. He had an art collector who was supposedly obsessed with identifying forgeries.” He shifted back a little so he could meet my eyes. We lay on our sides, facing each other, heads on separate pillows. The moonlight was barely there, but it was enough to show me the outline of his form in the darkness. “I assumed at the time it was because the collector was scared of acquiring a forgery one day by mistake.”

I reached out and pushed his floppy hair out of his face, running my thumb down his cheek afterward to keep a connection with him. “What happened?”