“Grace, I don’t want to go back to mercenary gigs. If this doesn’t work, I’ll start a security agency or, I don’t know, teach history in an inner-city school or… hell, even coach football or something. I….”
Grace heard him swallow and almost wanted to shout, “Stop! No! I don’t want to hear this,” but then he remembered how he’d let this man tie him up the night before, and how he’d trusted Hunter to not leave him there, eyes bulging, cock flopping, while Hunter pissed off and had a beer or something.
This was the same thing, right?
The least Grace could do was listen, right?
“What?” he prompted, taking hold of the two hands clasped at his abdomen.
“My last boyfriend went up in flames,” he rasped. “Along with a car, a garage, and half a mansion with a coke-refining operation in the basement.”
Grace’s eyes were going to pop right out of his head. “Oh, dear Gordon,” he said.
“Well, Paulie and I didn’t know about the op in the basement.” Bitterness laced Hunter’s voice. “Nobody knew about that until the car blew up, and then the house went with it. And so did the client.” His voice hitched. “And so did….”
“Your boyfriend,” Grace muttered, feeling awful for him.
“Yeah.” Hunter blew out a breath that tickled the nape of Grace’s neck. “The forensics report said he was killed almost instantly—the concussion of the blast pretty much wrecked his internal organs. They needed dental records and DNA to ID him.” He shuddered, pulling Grace tighter. “I couldn’t.”
“Augh!” Grace turned in his arms. “That’s so horrible. I’m so sorry.” His mouth worked, and he choked back on what he wanted to say, trying to be good, trying to be the sort of person Hunter could trust with this revelation, trying to be—
“Spit it out,” Hunter said, leaning his forehead against Grace’s. “What are you trying to say?”
Grace closed his eyes and took in everything—warm, wet man; sexy, sexy afterglow; the warm water pounding his back from the vast water pipes of a very expensive hotel, and stopped trying to be someone besides Grace.
“Why?”
“Why did someone plant the bomb? Because our employer was a bad man who….” Hunter’s voice trailed off for a moment. “Who apparently got some information that was way above his paygrade about two weeks before the bombing.” He frowned for a moment, and Grace could see him making connections. Then, before Grace could ask what he was thinking, Hunter pulled his attention back to Grace. “But that’s not what you were asking, was it?”
“No,” Grace said, feeling like this whole conversation was above his paygrade. “I was asking why would you trust me with… with….” He rubbed Hunter’s wet chest and tried not to cling to the man when they were both slick and wet in the hotel shower. “With this? Why would you tell… tell me something this important! It’s like trusting… like trusting me in your house with your valuables when you just watched me crack someone’s safe. You know what kind of person I am—I’m irresponsible, goddammit! How am I supposed to take care of this! This hurts you, and I don’t know how to fix it!”
His brow was scrunched, his throat ached, and he wanted to turn into water and flow down the drain, but Hunter’s arms around him kept him human, kept him there.
“Grace,” Hunter rasped. “Baby. What do you think you’re doing now?”
“Crying in the shower?” Grace sniffed. “It’s revolting. I wouldn’t want to date me.”
Hunter chuckled gruffly. “You’re empathizing, sweetheart. Don’t hurt yourself. It doesn’t always feel good, especially when you start.”
Grace buried his face in Hunter’s throat. “I’m sorry your last boyfriend got… uhm, blown up,” he said awkwardly. “Are you sure you want me now? Really sure? Because if I were you, I’d want someone totally different. Someone bug-eyed and serious with glasses and sensitive and shit. I just….” His voice threatened to break again, and he patted Hunter’s shoulder in an unconscious gesture of comfort. “I wish you didn’t have to have that in your heart.”
“Me too,” Hunter said, starting that rocking motion again. “But you’re here, and you… you’re here without feeling sorry for me. And you don’t do the scary stuff—usually, you don’t do the scary stuff. Unless you’re running barefoot from guys with guns or BASE jumping off tall buildings.”
“Who told?” Grace snuffled, feeling pathetic.
“Grace, it was a month ago. We all saw it on the news and said, ‘Goddammit, Grace!’ and you said ‘What? You can’t see my face’!”
Grace managed a rusty chuckle. “Josh was right behind me.”
“Which is also how we know. You’re lucky we didn’t tell Josh’s parents.”
Grace snorted. “We were… well, we were running an errand for Felix that Felix didn’t need to know about. Anyway, you were saying that I’m not the guy who beats up other people.”
“Yes,” Hunter breathed. “And I’m glad. Don’t worry, Grace. I don’t need someone with glasses and a college degree. I need someone who can keep up with me and has the same slippery grasp of the law that I do.”
“And who won’t hurt you!” Grace interjected. This seemed important, and he didn’t think Hunter was getting his gist.
“And who will try his best not to hurt me,” Hunter agreed soberly, turning the water off. Well, fine. It was running cold anyway.
“I didn’t soap my hair,” Grace said peevishly.
“Neither did I,” Hunter told him. “That’s fine. We can soap it tonight. Let’s go downstairs and have the buffet. I want cater-taters and ham like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Cater-taters?” Grace raised a questioning eyebrow and followed Hunter’s lead getting out of the shower.
“Those fried potatoes you only get in places that have chafing dishes,” Hunter clarified. “Mmm.”
Grace laughed, because Hunter was obviously making shit up, and toweled himself off roughly. “I’ll try, you know,” he said, surprised to find that he was the one returning to the scary topics.
“Try what?” Hunter asked, standing naked and toweling off his hair.
“Not to hurt you. I’ve never done this before. I may fuck up. I hate that. You can’t… you can’t fix some fuckups. I’ll worry.”
Hunter gave a very deliberate exhale. “I’ll worry that you won’t be careful with your body,” Hunter said softly. “Death is the only fuckup you really can’t fix.”
Grace whimpered and fled the room, forgetting he’d left his T-shirt and briefs on the counter.
But there wasn’t far to go, really. An hour later, they were sitting down to breakfast at the hotel buffet, talking about everything from the ballet the night before to the op Hunter and Josh had run during the ballet, to the fact that Molly had managed to cajole Stirling out of his room to go on an outing. As they were chattering, Hunter kept giving Josh and Julia speculative glances, and Grace wondered what connection he’d made, what he was thinking that kept him so preoccupied.