Page 97 of Corrupt

I didn’t ask what that meant. I knew what currency his world dealt in.

“And the other option?”

He tipped his head back, drifting his gaze past the lake, the cottage, out towards the line of trees and the life he didn’t belong to. “The other option is to burn the whole thing down.”

“Is that possible?”

He shrugged. “Not without consequences.”

I let it rest there.

I didn’t want to hear any more. Not the methods. Or the bargains. Certainly not the bodies or the leverage or the blood-price his world always demanded. I was a criminal barrister; I knew the broad routes of how people got out. But the moment he put language to it, it wouldn’t just be his anymore. It would live in me. Sit in my mouth. Stain my hands.

And I couldn’t have that here. Not now.

This was too perfect. Too rare. This moment of sun-warm skin, quiet air, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear was what it could be if the world weren’t already waiting to close in around us.

Even if this, us, could never last, I wanted it.

So I wanted this memory, what I would be left with one day, untainted.

But by the time the light began to tilt, hunger crept in.

I set Razor the task of getting the fire pit going in the hope to barbecue whatever I found at the local shop. Then I took Razor’s keys and drove to the nearest village, windows down, the air thick with cut grass and heat. I came back with steaks, bread, a salad I hadn’t intended to buy but had felt morally compelled to, and a bottle of Rioja.

Razor was barefoot in the grass, an axe in his hands, an old radio crackling out nineties garage tracks that he was very definitely singing along to. His clothes lay slung over the back of a lounger, drying in the sun. He wore nothing but his boxers and a faint sheen of sweat where sunlight caught on ink and muscle as he lifted the axe overhead.

The motion was beautiful.

And I stood there watching him work with a sober sense of awe. It was the quiet competence of him. The ease. The way he seemed to inhabit his body differently here, as if he weren’t braced for anything at all.

He finally noticed me. “See something you like, rich boy?”

“Absolutely.”

He peered over beneath his lashes. “Name your price then.”

I smiled. “How about you get the fire going and we’ll talk terms.” I lifted the bags. “I have offerings.”

He set the axe aside and crossed the grass to me, taking them from my hands. Then he leant in and kissed my cheek. Quick, thoughtless, and ever so intimate.

I tilted my head. “Perhaps you should dance for me, too.”

He snorted, then dipped his head to my neck and half-sang the old garage tune blasting from the radio into my ear as he circled his arm around my waist. I dropped the bags. And somehow, impossibly, I danced with him there in the garden to some half rap, half garage number.

I hadn’t known he could be like this.

This unguarded. This easy. This perfect.

And I was suddenly, acutely aware that I was in danger of never being able to see him as anything else again.

“I’ll get the fire going.” He tapped my arse as he stepped away, a ghost of a smile on his mouth.

Then I watched him build it with instinctive care, stacking the split logs so air could move between them, using his lighter to coax flame into life. He crouched close, forearms resting on his knees, feeding it patiently until it caught, until it held.

I busied myself with the food. Seasoned the steaks. Tore bread with my hands. Poured the wine into two mismatched glasses scavenged from the back of a cupboard. By the time we carried everything outside, the air cooled. Smoke lifted in pale ribbons. Firelight replaced daylight and we cooked over the makeshift pit and ate outside, perched on crates and old chairs, knees brushing every time one of us shifted.

“When did you learn to do all this?” I nodded at the fire. “Chop wood. Build fires. I doubt you were a boy scout, right?”