Page 19 of Subduing the Shark

"What do you want?" Jack asked. He meant it as a challenge, a provocation, a way to force Harold into admitting that this whole educational exercise was foreplay dressed up in good intentions. But it came out quieter than he intended, and the question was real.

Harold looked at him for a long time. "I want you to feel something when someone touches you. Not endurance. Not blankness. Not the thing you do when your mind goes away and leaves an empty shell behind. I want you to be in the room when it happens." He paused. "I want that for you. Not from you. There's a difference, and until you understand it, nothing else I say is going to make sense."

Jack stood. The chair scraped against the concrete. He looked at the items on the table, the neat row of tools designed for pleasure that his body had translated into threat. He looked at Harold, who was watching him with an expression Jack couldn't decode, warm, sad, and stubborn all at once.

"Clean up the room," Jack said. "I have tables to do."

He left the door open behind him.

Chapter Eleven

Harold spent three days after the kink lesson trying to convince himself he wasn't attracted to Jack.

It didn't work. His body was ahead of his brain on that one, and it had been for a while. The moment his hands had closed the cuff around Jack's wrist, the warm skin under his fingers, the delicate bones of the joint, the stillness of Jack's body as he waited to be restrained, Harold's pulse had kicked and his mouth had gone dry and every Dom instinct he possessed had lit up like a switchboard. He'd wanted to close the other cuff. He'd wanted to position Jack's body with his own hands. He'd wanted to hear what sounds Jack would make if he felt safe enough to make them.

Then Jack had shut down and Harold had wanted to put his fist through the wall instead.

He was driving home from a shift, windows down, the desert air warm and dry against his face. Las Vegas at two in the morning was neon and emptiness, the Strip a distant glow to the north, the warehouse district behind him already fading in his mirrors. He drove the long way because the long way took him past the dolphin pool facility, the one with the painted warehouse wall, and he'd started doing that without admitting to himself why. Jack went there during the day. Harold went there at night when it was closed, slowing the truck as he passed, letting his window down to catch whatever scent lingered in the parking lot.

Nothing that night. The lot was empty. The warehouse was dark. Jack should be at the shiver house, asleep, or enduring what had become normalized for him. Was he safe? Was he inpain? Harold didn't know and the not knowing was eating him alive.

He pulled into his apartment complex and sat in the truck with the engine off. His apartment was on the second floor, a one-bedroom that he'd furnished with the essentials and hadn't decorated because decorating felt permanent and he'd never quite committed to Las Vegas as a permanent thing, even after years of being there.

He went upstairs, drank a glass of water, sat on the couch even though he was exhausted after working his two jobs. The apartment smelled like him. Loam, warmth, and the faded remnants of the coffee he'd made that morning. Clean. Familiar. Nothing like the deep ocean water that had taken up permanent residence in his head.

He wanted Jack. That was the problem laid bare without dressing it up. He wanted the shark who went still when he touched him and who didn't know what it felt like to be wanted instead of used. He wanted the man who sat on concrete steps at three in the morning and saidI don't know who I am outside the shiverwith a voice so empty it sounded like a well with no bottom. He wanted the gray eyes, the dry humor, and the lean body in those ridiculous shorts, and the way Jack's hands moved when he was cleaning, precise and focused, the service instinct that Lady Leo had named and Harold couldn't stop watching.

He hated himself for it. Not the wanting itself but the context of it. Jack had participated in kidnapping Amani. He'd tied the rope. He'd driven the van. He'd known what the crane would do, and he'd delivered Amani anyway. Yes, Jack was also a victim, yes, his life in the shiver had been a sustained assault that he'd only recently begun to name, but none of that erased what he'd done. Being hurt didn't give anyone permission to hurt other people. Harold had arrested enough abusers who'dbeen abused themselves to know that the cycle didn't excuse the actions.

And there Harold was, developing feelings for one of them. While Amani was still wearing the hoodie. While Nero was still positioning himself as a shield between his partner and the shark. While the person Jack had helped break was working behind the same bar Jack cleaned tables in, processing the same trauma Jack had confessed to being part of.

Harold dropped his head against the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling.

He picked up his phone and texted Nero.

You awake?

The reply came in under a minute.Always. What's wrong.

Nothing's wrong. I need to talk to you about something.

Come to the club. I'm reviewing footage.

He could have protested. He could have called him instead. But talking face to face felt like the right call. Harold put his shoes back on, drove back to KK, and let himself in through the staff entrance. The club was closed and dark. He took the stairs instead of the elevator because the elevator felt too enclosed at that moment and the stairwell smelled like concrete and cleaning chemicals, which helped. No one ever took the stairs unless they were part of the staff.

Nero was in the security office, the converted closet that smelled permanently of industrial cleaner. He was leaned back in the desk chair with his feet up, the monitor cycling through camera views of empty rooms. He'd changed out of his shift clothes into a black t-shirt and jeans. He looked relaxed in a way he rarely did during business hours. His dark gaze found Harold in the doorway and stayed there.

"You drove home and came back," Nero said. "I can smell the highway on you."

Harold sat on the edge of the desk, the only other surface in the room that could support a person's weight. The closet was barely big enough for the chair and the desk and the monitor. Two grown men made it feel like a submarine. "I need to tell you something and I need you to not react until I'm done."

Nero took his feet off the desk and sat up straight. Professional mode. The shift was immediate, the way it had always been with Nero, one second he was your friend and the next he was your partner and the distinction mattered. "Go."

Harold looked at the monitor instead of at Nero because what he was about to say was hard enough without watching his best friend's face while he said it. Camera four showed the empty bar. Camera six showed the hallway by the room where Jack had thrown a punch at Harold and Harold had pinned him to the floor. Camera eight showed the private room where, three days ago, Harold had cuffed Jack's wrist and watched the man disappear behind his own eyes.

"I'm developing feelings for Jack."

Nero was quiet. Harold kept his eyes on the monitor. Camera three, the main floor. Tables clean, chairs pushed in. Jack's work. Even the camera could see how thorough it was.