Xavier (Vigilance 4)

“Inhale.” X used a tone that absolutely demanded obedience, so I did as he said.

“Good. Now exhale.”

Fear fell away as I listened to his voice, soaked up his praise, and let him guide me. I felt myself beginning to drift off to sleep again.

I worked odd hours and slept in bursts, never really keeping to a steady schedule. Recently, the work I’d been doing for X and a few other clients had me sleeping very little.

Caffeine was my best friend. Even when work was slower and I slept more, I never slept all that deeply. I’d fallen into a deeper sleep lying against X’s shoulder and in the passenger seat of his car than I had in my own bed in years, and once again, I couldn’t resist the temptation to sink into slumber.

I stretched and raised my seat to a sitting position. “I never sleep this much.”

“You need it. You had a stressful day yesterday.”

“I guess so. What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. Was that really a diamond Rolex? I supposed I could have something flashy like that if I wasn’t supporting my foster siblings, but what would be the point? I didn’t go anywhere to show it off.

“What about you? Your day was pretty stressful as well.”

“Speaking of that, I got a call from Niall while you were sleeping. Leo is doing much better. He insisted on going to see Ezra. He’s home now, and Ezra is taking care of him.”

“That’s awesome. If something had happened to him or Giorgio because I got hacked…”

X laid a hand on my thigh. It was so warm. I wanted him to slide his hand up and—

“Stop blaming yourself. Leo and Giorgio knew the risks they were taking.”

I nodded. X started rubbing his thumb back and forth on my inner thigh. It felt so good I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

I tried to remind myself that he was straight, no matter how much he seemed to be flirting with me. He probably saw me as a kid, and he was just taking care of me. These stressful few days had me seeing things.

7

Xavier

It was all I could do not to pull Emilio to me and kiss his sad expression away. What was happening to me? Why did I feel so strongly about him? About a man? About this man?

I was lucky to have wealth and power, a liberal family, and a sister who fought in the Senate for LGBTQ rights. I could be open about my sexuality, so why had I never realized I liked men before?

Or had I not, and it was all about Emilio. Could you like one man and not others? The way I noticed him was the same way I’d noticed women, but what I felt, the depth of it, was very different. Was this just the first time I’d felt something more than desire or friendship? Maybe gender didn’t matter for those things. Had I really surpassed desire when it came to Emilio, though?

Either way, I wasn’t going to act on my feelings. I’d been in plenty of situations where I had to deny myself. I could certainly do that now. I was bringing Emilio to the island to protect him, not to seduce him. Just the thought of that had me imagining what it would feel like to kiss him, to touch him, to push inside him.

No. If I wanted to find out what it was like to be with a man, I had plenty of other options, men who wouldn’t be as likely to fuck with my focus.

Except, when I thought about the men I knew who wouldn’t be averse to hooking up if I decided I wasn’t as straight as I’d thought I was, being with them didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t want to find out what it felt like to fuck just any man—surely if that was all this was I would have gotten it out of my system long ago—I wanted to find out how it felt to be with Emilio. I wanted to spend time with him and learn more about him. I wanted to figure out how his mind worked and watch him as he broke into security systems and—

Jesus Christ. I had lost my mind.

The rest of the team had warned me. My sister had warned me. Even Lucien Marchesi had told me I was going to burn myself out and needed a vacation, but that was just because he’d taken a trip with Peter who was lovely and compliant and—

I looked at Emilio, who was as darkly beautiful as Peter was fair and angelic. Maybe they were right, and insanity was the consequence of long-term burnout.

But could the way I’d been working myself stateside possibly compare to the hell I’d been through in the sandbox? If I’d come back from those tours sane or at least functional, surely bringing down a sick bastard who should never have been allowed to be elected to office and running a philanthropic foundation shouldn’t do it.