Page 49 of Villains Never Die

He muffled a string of incoherent curses into the pillow.

I stopped when my hips were flush against him, my cock buried deep in his arse, his inner muscles squeezing me until I could barely breathe.

“Move,” he rasped.

I landed a light smack on his ass. “I’m savoring it for a second,” I gritted out as I caught my breath. I withdrew and thrust once, testing how much he could take, and when I pounded harder into him, it turned out he could take a lot.

“Fuck, Austin, that feels so good.”

I rammed into him until he had to brace his knees to stay upright. He moaned and writhed, and soon I felt the rhythm of him taking himself in his hand, his pace matching the intensity of mine.

“I wonder if coming with you in my ass will feel as good as destroying you at chess,” he snarked, his hand moving rapidly along his shaft.

I growled and threw my head back, reaching for a sly comeback that would put him in his place, and findingnothing but the way he squeezed my cock until the pleasure overwhelmed me.

But this was safe—his irreverence. It wasn’t the strange touches and soft glances when things got too quiet between us. It wasn’t the way gravity reoriented itself around us when we stood still together.

It was safe enough to drive me over the edge, my fingers strangling one of his hipbones as I dumped my cum deep inside him. My chin fell to my chest as I basked in the moment of perfect, consummate release, and when I opened my eyes, he’d come all over the bed in front of him and leaned on one elbow with the exhaustion of being spent.

As we dressed, Rook asked, “Are you going to tell me how you know the killer wears a mask?”

I froze with my pants halfway up and listened hard, but if the spirits were eavesdropping, they had nothing to say.

“I can’t tell you, but be careful. He might be following you too.”

Rook nodded and pulled his shirt on. “You be careful too.”

It struck me how odd this moment was. We’d gone from trying to kill each other to worrying about one another’s safety. I tried to imagine Rook being brutally murdered, and the glee it would have brought me a few months ago was replaced by a twisting in my chest.

“I have three fights tomorrow night, but I’ll be around if you want to text me.” His face gave nothing away, but he shoved one hand through his blonde hair—a small tell? Was he nervous about my safety, or that I might not contact him again?

“If I have time,” I said. “I have a shipment coming in from abroad and I’m after someone who failed an assignment I gave them and fled town.”

“Who’s that?”

I shook my head. “Teddy Abner. No one of consequence, but unfortunately someone good at hiding. I’ll find him, eventually.”

Kiss him goodbye.

Three or four voices all chimed in at once. They just couldn’t fucking stay away, could they? I hated that I wanted to do as they said. I circled from where I stood on the opposite side of the bed from him and wrapped my hand around one of his elbows. He didn’t pull away, not even as I stepped closer and leaned toward him, testing whether that inch of space between our faces was a short distance or a long one. He didn’t hesitate, just captured my lips in his and slipped the arm I held around my waist.

“See you later, England.” He smirked up at me and squeezed my hip once before he let go and left the penthouse. When he did, I was struck with the realization that the distance between us was even shorter than I thought.

Chapter Eighteen

The Russian shipment was sixty crates of antiquities lost in the 1600-1700s. I watched a crane with a harness maneuver them into neat stacks in the warehouse with Gray at my side.

“When can you go through them?” I asked him.

“I can start tonight, get everything catalogued, and get you the list in a week or so. Pick out what you want for the private buyers and I’ll get the rest ready for auction.”

I nodded, my eyes tracking the boxes like I might see through them to whatever was tucked away inside.

My phone made a noise in my pocket and I fished it out to check it.

Rook: You’re doing something boring, aren’t you?

He must be doing something boring too, if he was bothering me in the middle of the day. The corner of my mouth twitched like it was thinking about smiling. Gray noticed and bit back a smile of his own.