Hunter snorted softly, that caress up and down his back becoming more insistent. “Oh, princess, this is way more than coworkers. But to answer some of your questions…. I’ll be thirty-one next month, which makes me almost too old for you, so shut up. I was in the military for six years, special ops for the last three. I… I did not like what I was ordered to do.” He blew out a breath. “I guess I figured that as a hired gun, I could at least pick who I was working for.”
“Why’d you stop?” Grace asked, and part of him wanted to let this caress go on and on, but part of him—the feral animal part—needed to keep poking, keep working, until he found the sore spot, the festering tooth, the old wound.
So he could know that Hunter would snarl and strike or grow cold and leave, and this moment of warmth, of pleasure, of interest in Grace as a person would go away, like it pretty much did with everyone else.
And sure enough, Hunter’s breath hitched. “I lost someone,” he said, and Grace felt like shit because the admission was obviously painful. “We were working the same op, had been together for about a month. I thought we were just guarding a businessman. But two of his bodyguards blew him up, so he must have been more than that.”
“Would you have quit?” Grace asked, because that didn’t sound like the man who’d been so stalwart for a kid he met at college. “If you’d known they were out to get him?”
“I would have been on my fucking guard,” Hunter snarled, his entire body tensing up, and Grace—who had sworn he didn’t have a comforting bone in his entire body—petted his chest.
“Sh…. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s okay. I get it.”
“Get what?” Hunter asked suspiciously.
“You wish he was here instead of me,” Grace said, and to his dismay Hunter jerked back and glared at him.
“God, you’re stupid,” he muttered. “I mean, you can pick a lock or climb a ventilation shaft or a thousand other things, but you’re really fucking stupid.”
And Grace usually would have railed against that. He wasn’t stupid! He was fucking brilliant! He had the test scores, he had the grades, he had every teacher in his life petting him and telling him he was pretty.
But not this man. This man had praised him for the things he’d done right and had never, until now, told him he’d fucked up.
“Why?” he asked in a small voice.
“Because it doesn’t work like that!” Hunter told him, and he sounded so distressed Grace found he was petting him again. “I miss Paulie, sure, but that’s not the lesson I got out of that!”
“Oh,” Grace said, confused. “What… what was the takeaway again?”
“I don’t want it to happen to you!”
Grace never got scared—ever. But with Hunter’s words hanging in the air, his skin flushed hot, cold sweat prickled along his back, and his breath came quickly, in pants, as it hadn’t done when he’d been running down the damned stairwell. He started shaking all over, freezing, and only Hunter’s arms around his shoulders made him feel any better.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, not sure what he was sorry for. “Sorry. So sorry. I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry….”
God, Hunter’s warmth, his strength, his safety. For this moment, suspended in time, it was all Grace wanted in the world.
Eventually the shaking stopped, and Grace was left limp and drained, fully dressed on top of the covers. Hunter started stretching, and Grace remembered that he was probably going to go back to his own room and catch a nap before getting up early to run around the streets with Josh and be all commando and shit. And Grace was going to—what? Get ready for a formal dinner that Artur was really looking forward to? Go to see the ballet?
Because that’s what Hunter did—the important stuff. Grace apparently stole the same gem as often as necessary to get their shit done.
Grace was expendable, right? Wasn’t that who he always was?
Instead of leaving, though, Hunter gave a soft groan and pulled him tight up against Hunter’s surprisingly broad chest, crushing him, but Grace didn’t mind.
“Don’t be sorry,” Hunter grumbled in his ear. “Be safe. You feel so good in my arms right now, Dylan. Don’t throw yourself down the wrong elevator shaft because you think nobody will care when you land.”
Grace nodded, still shaken. He wanted to ask how Paulie had died. He wanted to make sure it was something that could never happen to him.
He wanted, just once, to tell Hunter about the night he’d almost died, but in that sudden silence, he realized he couldn’t.
He may not have understood everything Hunter Rutledge was trying to tell him, but he was pretty sure that one thing he’d almost done would be pretty unforgivable.
He whimpered, clinging to Hunter’s shirt. God. This was wonderful, and they weren’t even naked. Would the wonderfulness go away if they took off their clothes? Would it be just as wonderful?
Oh wow. Would it get better?
Grace couldn’t risk it. He lay there and allowed himself to be held and soothed, allowed himself to be cared for, and plotted, not feeling guilty in the slightest that he was actively scheming for how to make it happen again.
Quiet fell, and Grace grew closer and closer to sleep. When Hunter moved, Grace shamed himself forever by whimpering and clinging to his shirt. “No, please?”
“Don’t worry.”
Hunter reached over Grace’s body then and grabbed his own earbud from the bed stand, popping it in as he leaned back and made himself comfortable on the bed again.
“Mine?” Grace asked, and the rumble in Hunter’s chest indicated that wasn’t going to happen.
“Sleep,” he murmured, setting an alarm on his watch. “I’ll wake you up before I go. Do you need to take off your—”
Grace was already kicking his yoga pants down to his feet. He paused with his fingers over the zipper of the hoodie, though, glaring narrowly at Hunter.
Hunter’s lean mouth quirked up at the corners. “If you take it off to sleep, I promise not to take it back.”
Grace couldn’t help it. He grinned, then sat up and unzipped it, folded it neatly, and put it on top of his luggage without ever leaving the bed. Hunter stood and pulled back the covers, taking his trousers and overshirt off before climbing into bed and patting the spot next to him.
Grace hummed and wriggled back. He’d never spooned before. Who spooned when you were trying to get out of the room before the rubber hit the road?
Hunter slid his hand possessively around Grace’s waist and splayed his fingers across Grace’s flat abdomen. Grace’s body gave a tremendous throb, bigger than the ache in his feet or the confusion in his brain and the exhaustion in his bones.
He whimpered a little and arched his hips, and Hunter’s breathy chuckle told him Hunter had noticed.
“Don’t worry,” Hunter whispered. “It’ll happen.”
But not now. Now Hunter was mic’d, and if they went at it like banshees, all of their friends and family would hear them—not to mention Artur, who was in the next room.
Grace let out a disconsolate sigh and thought wistfully that a quick bang would be exactly the thing to get him to fall asleep.