Leo (Vigilance 3)

I had done a lot of fucked-up shit. I’d killed, tortured, and lied to people to gain their trust. I still did those things, but now I only lied to those who deserved it or to protect people. That hadn’t bothered me until now. I didn’t want to lie to Ezra, but it wasn’t just my secrets I held.

I couldn’t tell him everything, and I hadn’t been lying when I’d said that the more he knew the more danger he would be in. Swain already had Ezra in his sights, and knowing the business he’d been involved in, I could only imagine what he had in mind for this beautiful young man.

“You can trust me. My number one priority is keeping you safe.”

“This man you’re after, did he send those men tonight?”

“Yes.”

He bit his lower lip. “And if you hadn’t…”

“They would’ve either killed you or taken you, but I won’t let that happen.”

“You said he’d done terrible things. What kind of terrible things?”

He needed to know enough to grasp how serious this was. “He takes young, vulnerable men and women and forces them to service him and his friends. He sells some of them after making sure they’re compliant.”

Ezra went as pale as he’d been in the alley. “You’re serious?”

“Very. People are nothing but commodities to him.”

“That’s…” He laid a hand against his stomach. “I feel sick.”

“I’m going to protect you, but I need to know that you’ll listen to me.”

“But if someone came into the shop…”

I let out a slow breath. “I fucked up. I thought I could track down whoever was watching us, but that wasn’t really their game. They’re playing with us.”

“You and Giorgio and the other men who meet here? You’re in this together, aren’t you?”

“We work together to stop people like this man.”

“People you can’t turn over to the police?”

I nodded. “The man we’re after is very powerful. He has contacts in the Boston PD. We’re not going to be able to make him pay through legal channels.”

“So you’re going to…”

“Whatever we do to him, it will be less than he deserves.”

Ezra’s expression hardened, and he nodded. “If he hurts people like that, then yeah, he needs to die.”

I smiled. “You have a fierce side.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tease me. I stand up for things that matter. There’s nothing—”

I kissed him then, pulling him against me and claiming his lips like I’d wanted to ever since the first time.

He moaned as my lips pressed against his, and the slightest pressure from my tongue had him opening his mouth to let me in. The taste of him was warm and enticing. I wanted more, so much more. I couldn’t fight this. I couldn’t bring him home with me, have him stay in my house, keep him with me all day and all night and not do this.

“Please,” he begged against my lips. There were so many things he might’ve been asking for, but I didn’t need to know what he meant in that moment. I intended to give him everything.

When I pulled away from his mouth, he whimpered. The sound made my cock even harder. It would take so little to have him begging and desperate. I could torment him and make him enjoy every second of it. He seemed too innocent to have ever had a man who would give him what I would, and I liked thinking I’d be his first. I wanted to possess him utterly. I wanted to drive into his body and make him mine.

I slid my lips along his throat, nipping gently at first, then harder, loving the way he tipped his head back, offering himself to me. He was trembling, and it made me smile to know how much I affected him. I longed to take him home and wrap his body in rope until he was absolutely helpless and all he could do was focus on the pleasure I could give him.

I sucked on his earlobe, then flicked my tongue along the outer edge. “We’ll be safer back at my place.”

He let out a shaky breath. “Are you just playing with me again?”

I took his face in my hands and brushed my thumbs over his sharp cheekbones. “No, sweetheart. I want you.”

“The other day, you said—”

“I was trying to keep you safe. I’ve thought about you constantly since then, fantasized about you, about what it would have been like to take you right there, to drive into you as you laid over the desk.”

“Fuck. Y-you have?”

“Yes. Come on, sweetheart. I need to get you somewhere safe.”

“Won’t the man who’s after you be able to find you at your house?”

“Possibly, but there will be guards watching it.”

“All you have to do is call someone to make dead bodies disappear and have people show up to guard your house?”

I grinned. “Just think of it as magic.”