Alexielleans back on his hands, lips encircled by a full goatee purse into thought, or irritation, it’s hard to tell. A combination of both?
They both let the silence carry. A tactical play of power neither is willing to break. Something that would have lesser men squirming, and by the way the men around them do squirm, it’s working.
“If you change your mind . . .” The sentence drifts, as does Alexiel’s hand, into the blond head of hair by his leg. A glaring invitation to switch out. “tit for tat.” His accent carries a husky air. Then it’s gone, and his eyes turn cold. “Matvey.” The sharp word has Izz jumping and bumping into Sinn'ous’s back.
The artist steps out from the group, eyes going between his boss and Sinn'ous.
Alexiel flicks his chin at Sinn'ous instead of voicing anything. And Matvey nods to the silent conversation.
And the discussion is over. Sinn'ous turns, pushing Izz to walk ahead of him back towards the building. To wait in I-Wing for Matvey to collect everything needed for the work.
~~~
Sinn'ous isn’t the only one in here who owns guards. One such guard had unlocked the way into I-Wing, having already been informed by Alexiel. It meant they’d gone straight in to wait in the usual cell.
That had been a good hour ago. Time has been passing in a comfortable crawl. Izz’s lying on his stomach on a bare prison bunk, his pant leg bunched above the knee. Matvey is hunched over his work, scratching the clean lines into the exposed leg. And Sinn'ous is sitting in a chair by his boy’s head, watching the ink slowly grow into something artful.
“I don’t know why you pay for this stuff.” His boy’s voice takes his focus off the mixture of inky blood being cleaned from skin. A strain to his voice at the next touch of needle. “It’s not like I do anything in return for it.”
A smirk plays over his lips. Something he is increasingly aware has become a bad habit around his boy. “So you don’t bend over for me. I was imagining you sprawled out on my bunk—”
“Oh, my God. Stop,” Izz frantically looks back at the artist, embarrassment colouring his cheeks.
But thatword.It should be burned from any form of vocabulary. From memory.
“Satan,” Sinn'ous sits up in his chair, leaning closer to his boy. Letting the word cut deep. He wants it to leave a permanent scar.
“Huh?”
“Yourgodreference is repulsive,” he slides his fingers through Izz’s hair, tugging lightly, but hard enough to send the message of ownership, “ ‘oh, Satan.’ Is the term you should use . . . If you want me to do sin unto your body.”
The heat in his boy’s eyes is almost enough to have him shoving Matvey aside and mounting his boy. Like some sex deprived beast.
Satan, give me strength.
~~~
He’d managed to cling to his self-control. Allowing the tattoo to be completed in a timely manner.
Tracking Izz’s movements as he walks to the locked doors of I-Wings corridor, after being dismissed by Sinn'ous and told to wait there.
He turns to Matvey, still packing the tools of his trade. He’d sent his boy out of ear shot, there is no need for anything not controlled by him to be brought to Izz’s attention. And this conversation is not one that will be controlled by him. Matvey could say anything, things he doesn’t need his boy to be privy to.
Matvey speaks without stopping in his task.“He’ll send word to you on the price of this work.”
“Not the usual?”
“Nope. He wants somebusinessdealt with.”
A kill.
Sinn'ous hasn’t had a job in this sense since he stepped into Sandstone Correctional. On the outside he occasionally dabbled in contract kills. They pay good, especially if you take the high paying jobs offered by the many networks of organised crime families.
“You think a bit of ink covers that cost.” Will he turn down the given opportunity to kill someone? No, probably not. But thatdoesn’t mean he can’t kill anyone to take the edge off. Especially if he’s not being paid adequately for a job.
“No. Which is why Alexiel will be in touch.”
Matvey scurries out of the cell, hands occupied by ink bottles and everything else he’d used, crammed into two sizable boxes. Leaving Sinn'ous to stride to his boy and escort him back to their wing.
