Giorgio (Vigilance 1)

Sandra’s intuition was right. Hendon was bad news whether or not he was directly responsible for the deaths of the two young men previously connected to him. Lane needed the protection his mother and father were insisting on.

His father.

X.

My boss.

My boss, who’d told me to keep my hands off his son, except my hands had already been all over Lane. I’d had my dick down his throat and deep in his ass. I’d made him shatter. I’d made him beg. I’d fucked him so hard I thought he would protest, but he didn’t. He wanted the rough control I loved to give.

Now I was supposed to spend God knows how long trapped in a cabin with him, not touching him, with nothing else to do.

What the fuck had I done to deserve this?

I squeezed my eyes shut and gripped the edge of the desk as images of men I’d killed flashed in front of my eyes. I rapidly listed off all the things I’d done to earn me a place in hell.

My pulse accelerated, and my chest tightened like bands were closing around me. I tried to breathe slowly, carefully. The world seemed to be spinning out of control around me. I sank into a chair and fought against the panic. I refused to let it consume me. If I couldn’t keep a hold on it, I couldn’t do my job. My job was all I had.

The breathing exercises I diligently practiced helped me refocus. I opened and closed my hands several times, needing to move them after holding the table in a death grip. I stretched my neck, then reached my hands up toward the ceiling, enjoying the stretch. I wished I could go for a long hard run before I had to see Lane again. I needed to do something to tame the restless buzz inside me because once I was alone with him, I was going to want to hold him down and drive into his ass again. Nothing would calm me like that could. But having him again was impossible. He was X’s son. Even if being a client didn’t make him off-limits—and I might be willing to bend the rules there since we’d already fucked—there was no way in hell I would cross my boss.

Not only was there no one else who would hire my sorry ass, X was fucking scary. Very few people intimidated me, but he was the smartest man I’d ever met. He was also wealthy, powerful, and he might know even more ways to kill a man than I did, which was saying a lot.

So instead of getting the distracting mission I’d been longing for, I was getting weeks of fucking torture. I really needed to pass this job on to someone else, except… the only people other than X that I absolutely, one hundred percent trusted were Leo and Niall. Too bad I wasn’t qualified to work at Leo’s shop. He’d opened it after he’d left the CIA. When X had recruited him, they’d decided to use the extra office space in the back as a place for covert meetings with clients. I’d messaged Niall to see how his mission was going, but he hadn’t gotten back to me. The only other people I’d consider assigning to Lane were Devil Marchesi or his partner, Joe. I trusted them, but they didn’t have special forces training.

Why did that matter, though? It was a bodyguard job. The stalker owns an art gallery. He’s creepy as fuck and maybe a murderer, but that’s not anything a former cop and a mobster couldn’t handle. Why was I reluctant to pass this job off when I knew it was going to be hell?

Because I’m a fucking idiot who doesn’t know what’s good for me? Or was there something about Lane that set off all my protective instincts? When I’d read the notes X had sent me, I’d Googled Hendon and realized he was the asshole who’d attacked Lane at Ignite. It was then—about five minutes before Lane and Sandra arrived—that I’d realized X’s son and the man I’d picked up at the club didn’t just have the same name, they were the same person.

Instead of scrambling to get out of the job then, I’d fantasized about tracking Hendon down and ripping him apart. Even when I hadn’t known how much danger Lane was in, my instincts had told me to intervene when Hendon approached him. I’d been ready to kill Hendon if necessary, and I hadn’t even known Lane then, not that I really knew him now.

Yes, you do. You know things about him that probably few men do. He said no one read him like you.

He’d said that during sex. It doesn’t count.

Except it had been incredible, open, vulnerable sex, maybe the best fucking sex I’d ever had.