Luis’s sore body still tingled from Paolo turning him inside out. He shivered a little, but not from cold. “Dante threatened you. Said he’d fuck up you and your family if I didn’t do what he wanted. So . . . I did.”
Paolo’s dancing fingers stilled. “You went on a drugs run to Coventry to protect me?”
Luis shrugged, glad Paolo hadn’t swooped on the entire truth. “Of course. I promised you—and myself—that Dante’s drama wouldn’t ruin your life too. Maybe I should’ve looked closer at what he was doing, talked more with Asa and Martell before I took him seriously, but I’ve been out of the game a long time, man. I thought he was still a king.”
Paolo said nothing. Just resumed his attentions to Luis’s forearms, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
Luis rolled onto his side and smoothed the line away. “What are you thinking?”
“Lots of things.”
“Like?”
“Like how you should’ve had a better way to deal with your brother’s manipulation than committing a crime, but I’m starting to understand why you didn’t.”
“You are?”
“Kind of. You can’t choose your family, can you? I get that, trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
Paolo smiled a little. “I know. And maybe when the dust has settled from this, I’ll trust you too.”
His words hurt, but Luis understood them. Paolo had always been brutally honest with him. It was why Luis loved him. And, fuck, did he love him. So much. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here when I got back.”
“I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
“How long were you going to wait?”
Paolo flushed. “Well, I told myself I’d wait forever, but I guess I’d have had to give up eventually. That greasy spoon doesn’t run itself.”
A light bubble of laughter warmed Luis’s chest, but Paolo remained serious.
“We need to figure out what you’re going to do,” he said. “You don’t know if you got in and out of that club unseen. The police could’ve been watching it all along.”
“I thought of that. When I’d calmed down enough to think rationally, I went and sat outside the snooker club while they were clearing it out to see if they’d notice me. When they didn’t, I sat outside the police station for an hour too.”
“That’s what you call rational thought?” Paolo whistled. “Though I suppose it was as good a plan as any if you actually wanted them to pick you up.”
“I didn’t want them to. It was more that if they were going to, I wanted it over and done with. Not to look over my shoulder for the next six months.”
“Dante won’t talk?”
“Nah. He’d get murdered in prison if he snitched.”
“Fair enough. What about the cameras in the club?”
“I couldn’t see how many there were, but it was pretty dark, and they were accessed remotely. I’ve never been lucky, but that changed when I met you, so who knows?”
“You met me when you were eleven, you just didn’t notice.”
Luis opened his mouth to voice his regret, but a hardcore yawn overwhelmed him, cracking his jaw.
Paolo took pity on him and rolled onto his back, tugging Luis to lie against him with his head on his chest. He carded gentle fingers through Luis’s hair. “Don’t worry about it now, baby. We’ll figure it all out.”
He was tired too, and the intimate endearment seemed to fall from him with little conscious thought. But Luis heard it like he’d shouted it in his good ear, and he thought of nothing else until he fell asleep.
Luis woke to the promising light of the imminent spring. And to Paolo straddling him and sinking down on Luis’s rigid cock. “Fuck.”
Paolo gasped out a ragged laugh. “I was hoping you got the memo.”
Luis’s brain struggled to catch up with the race his body was already winning. He watched, spellbound, as Paolo ground down on him, pleasuring himself with his hand as he rode Luis’s cock, screwing Luis with the satanic tilt and roll of his pelvis.
It was perfection.
Luis bent his legs to support Paolo’s back.
Paolo moaned. “Yeah, that’s it. Right there.”
“Yeah? You like that? I thought you were a power top.”
“That’s funny. You thought I didn’t bottom? Wow . . . fuck yeah, I do it all.”
Paolo’s incoherency set Luis on fire, and he questioned whether he was actually awake or whether a day on the road had gifted him the best dreams of his life. Either way, he was so here for Paolo’s versatility. It suited Luis down to the ground. He’d never been able to choose what he liked best—getting dicked out or burying himself deep inside someone, searching for the trigger to make them blow.
And Paolo was going to blow, and suddenly nothing mattered except making that happen.
Luis thrust up, meeting Paolo in the middle. A flush darkened Paolo’s olive skin, and another moan tore from his chest. “Do it,” he whispered. “Make me come.”
He started to fall apart, fucking himself deep on Luis’s dick, and everything about him sent Luis crashing over the edge. A long, bone-deep orgasm ripped through him. He dug his fingers into Paolo’s hips and thrust hard, chasing the pleasure that already had him frantic with need. His cock pulsed, and he filled Paolo, exulting in the sensation of Paolo clenching around his bare dick. It was like nothing he’d ever known, and a rare clarity struck him as hard as his climax: he didn’t need pain to be a better man. He needed this, with Paolo, forever and always.
Still groaning, Paolo fell forwards. Luis caught him but couldn’t stop fucking him, milking every drop of heat that flowed between them until sweat and shivers were all they had left.
He wrapped his arms tight around Paolo, ignoring the sticky mess between them. “I was worried it was your turn to run out on me. Never once did I picture you waking me up like that.”
“Yeah, well, don’t expect it every morning.”
The implication that they had more mornings to spend together made Luis’s soul sing. He squeezed Paolo impossibly tighter, then let him go. “The police might come looking for me today, even if they don’t know I was there. They have to tell someone he got hurt, or get my probation officer on the case.”
“What about your mum?”
“He’d never give them her details. It’s not how we do. What time is it?”
“Early. My alarm hasn’t gone off yet. But I’ve been thinking about that.”
“What? Your alarm?”
“No. About work. I think you should come with me and carry on like none of this ever happened, any of it, not just yesterday.”
“You mean the weeks and weeks of my fuck-ups, not just this one?”
“Don’t be a prick. I mean all of it, which includes my fuck-ups too, like pushing you out of your job in the first place.”
“That’s not what—”
Paolo clamped his hand over Luis’s mouth. “Whatever. We can argue about that later. At work, where you’ll have been all day after spending the night with me.”