Remington (The Theriot Family 1)

He watched me, seeming shocked and amazed as my bow slid over the cello strings, bringing forth music. Henri closed his eyes and swayed, totally under the music’s spell. His reaction made me want him again but this time gentle and sweet. That wasn’t how I was with men, but with him… with him I wanted that. I wanted everything. When I finished and set my bow down, he looked at me, and in that moment, I knew I couldn’t keep secrets from him, not if we were going to have what I wanted.

“I assume you’ve guessed I’m a mobster. My family has been involved in organized crime for generations. Like I told you before, I did kill those men. They deserved it, and I would do it again. They were connected to Gayle. I managed to reach them, but despite doing my best to hunt Gayle down, I couldn’t get to him. When I failed to stop him, I made a bargain with the devil.”

His eyes widened. “I wouldn’t think someone like you would ever sell their soul.”

I’d sell it to him. “I gave information to the cops. Basically the same thing. That’s how I got the murder charges dropped.” The shock on his face made me smile. “You didn’t expect that, did you? But that’s it. My biggest secret. Only two other people know. Well, maybe three.”

I had to assume Emilio knew since he’d likely discovered it for X. Why was I telling Henri all of this? I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to tell him a damn thing about me or my family, but I wanted to. For once, I wanted to share all my secrets. I held out my hand to him. “Come here.”

He walked toward me, and I pulled him onto my lap. He pressed his face against my neck and breathed in deeply. “I love how you smell.”

I wanted to devour him, but I simply held him. We would get to that, but I was enjoying this too. “Tell me more about you. What would you be doing if your mom hadn’t gotten sick?”

“I’ll tell you, but first I need to tell you about something I saw tonight.”

I tensed, not liking the fear in his voice. “What happened?”

“I went out in the courtyard to feel the night air, and there was a man looking in the back fence. He might have just been a curious tourist, but he looked familiar, like a man I used to see in my old neighborhood.”

I tilted my chin so I was looking at him. “Describe him.”

“He’s very tall, like, probably six five or so, and he’s got a bushy beard.”

Fuck. No way. “Stay right here.” I retrieved my phone from the bedroom and pulled up a picture of Charles Landry. “Is this him?”

He looked at the picture on the screen and nodded. “That’s him.”

“And he had a beard like this?”

“He did.”

Had Charles survived. That wasn’t what our intel said. I was going to have to dig deeper because no way in hell would I let him that close to Henri again if he was still among the living. “I’ll make sure my guards watch out for him.”

“Who is he?”

“No one you need to worry about. Now tell me about the plans you had.”

He looked like he wanted to protest, but he didn’t. “I was working on a design degree. I wanted to help people make their spaces beautiful but not like beautiful for a magazine, beautiful to suit their purposes, to make them happy at home, to make them want to be there. Your home feels like that.”

“Thank you.” I could tell that for him that was a very serious compliment. “How much school do you have left?”

“A year or maybe a year and a half, but I don’t know that I’ll go back. I’d have to find a job where I could earn enough to either save up for school or take classes while I was working. What are the chances of that?”

I wanted to tell him to choose a school close to New Orleans, and I would pay his tuition. I wanted to tell him he was mine, and I would support him from now on, but that was a rash middle-of-the-night, lust-fueled decision, and I didn’t make decisions like that. Lance used to, but he’d partly outgrown it, and Corbin… so far we hadn’t let Corbin make many important decisions at all. “I believe in you. You’ll find a way.”

He tried to smile. I could see the sadness in his eyes. Claiming him like that might be rash, but I’d known since… Fuck, I’d known since I’d told him to get in my car that first night that he was special. Still, I held back. He would argue with me if I offered to help him, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want anything between us, no arguments and no barriers. I just wanted his body on mine. We’d work out the rest once I knew he was safe and I wasn’t under so much pressure to put the Landrys in their place, which was looking more and more like six feet under.