“Thank you.”
They both said their goodbyes, and I clicked off the call.
With a sigh, I leaned back against the couch and closed my eyes. Miami’s heat was a lot worse than New York City anytime of the year, and Florida was having an unseasonable heatwave that was pushing eighty degrees. The humidity made everything feel ten times worse, especially since it was cold at home right now. I’d sweated through my shirts in the last two weeks, and I hated nothing more. Rosita, Sloan’s butler for the Miami house, had offered to turn the air conditioner colder more than once, but I’d brushed her off. Now, I was seriously rethinking my life choices.
Something hit my side and landed on the couch with a softwhump. I snapped my eyes open. Rosita stood in front of me. She was a tall, slim older lady with white hair pulled tightly into a bun and a sharp black suit—the same kind Mr. Hopper wore in Sloan’s other home. She had suspicious eyes and a noticeable dip in her thin lower lip. Even though she was in her seventies, she scared the shit out of me. I’d heard stories about how she’d taken an automatic rifle to the Russians—the ones now controlled by Sasha Markow—when they’d tried to attack this property years ago. She’d taken out over twenty men, and the Russians had never tried to make waves in Miami again.
I glanced at what she’d dropped beside me and frowned at the green bottle of aloe gel. “What’s this?”
“For your friend.” Rosita’s Spanish accent was light in her voice, but she’d lived in Miami for longer than I’d been alive. She crossed her arms. “He’s in the pool. Asleep on the float. And he’s as red as an apple. He’ll be in pain when he wakes. Much longer and he might need the hospital.”
I straightened and picked up the bottle, staring down at it before I nodded.
She huffed. “Also, your boys are cute. Especially the blond one with the long hair.”
“Fallon,” I offered.
She waved her hand. “I was talking to Mr. Hopper today. We regularly update each other on what’s happening. He says your boy, Fallon, gave the boss’s pet self-defense lessons without the boss knowing.”
I stiffened, jaw clicking shut. I gritted my teeth together in concern. Sloan wanted to know everything that happened in his house, but that went triple when it involved Conall. Touching Conall without Sloan’s permission could lead to a lot of problems. Buried six feet under, problems.
“Luckily for your boy, the boss forgave him.” She raised her chin and pursed her thin lips, a shadow crossing her face as the sun dipped behind a cloud outside the window on her left. “I would talk to him. You know the boss suffers no fools.”
“I’m aware,” I said simply and stood. She only reached my shoulders, but she stared up at me as if she was ready to take me on in a fight. This was her house, and Cillian and I had come to respect it. “I’m sure Rowen has it handled.”
She made a small disbelieving sound before she spun on her shiny black shoes and stalked deeper into the house. I watched her go, not quite sure I trusted her at my back, before I headed toward the glass doors and out into the pool area. Like she’d said, Cillian was lying on his stomach on a blue float, buck naked and red as a tomato from his neck, down his muscled back and ass, all the way to his heels.
I winced. He was going to be in serious pain when he woke. Walking to the edge of the pool, I gazed over the mounds of his strong asscheeks and smirked. Yep, a lot of pain. I crouched. “Cillian!”
He startled awake, tipping to the side and landing in the water. I snickered when he spluttered, cursing up a storm as he glared at me. As if his pain receptors kicked in all at once, his furious brown eyes widened. The swearing turned more fierce and more Irish as he raced toward the edge near me, then pulled himself up and out of the pool. Water glistened on his dark eyelashes and dripped from the longer strands of hair on the very top of his head, rolling down his thick biceps and defined pecs.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. That hurts like a moderfecking bitch.” He tried to glance over his shoulder, but that only made him hiss and curse more as he hopped over hot cement and toward the sliding glass doors. I followed him, amused by his antics and the way his dick bounced as he walked. Cillian wasn’t one to care what people thought about his nudity. He worked hard for his body and it was more than nice to look at.
“That’s what you get for lying in the sun for hours. This isn’t New York, you idiot.” I shook my head and lifted the bottle of aloe gel when he turned to glare at me.
“Houl yer whisht.It fecking burns. The last thing I need is for ye to give me a lecture, ye twat.” He went to snatch the bottle out of my hand, but I yanked it away before he could.
“You can’t reach around to your back and this burn is going to peel. You can’t fight if you’re bitching about how much pain you’re in.” I sighed. Fallon would be so pissed off that he’d missed this. “Lie on the couch. I’ll rub you down.”
Cillian hissed when he twisted slightly and his glare deepened along with the indent in his chin. “If ye tell a fecking soul....”
My lips twitched. “I’m not Vail or Fallon or Rowen. You can’t threaten me. Get on the fucking couch or I’ll force you down.”
Something sparked in his gaze, a glimmering interest I’d seen him direct at me in the past. We’d never acted on our attraction to each other, though. Cillian and I were both tops, and we’d decided early on in our friendship that we would never be sexually compatible. So, we chose to share instead. It worked for us.
“Lie down.” I added more dominance to my tone, and his mouth twisted into a smirk.
He limped his way over to the couch, the pain of walking making him grumble as he slowly settled face-first along the white leather. His dick and balls sat nestled between his thighs as he opened his legs, trying to ease some of the pressure on his burned skin.
His entire back, ass, and legs grew redder as the seconds ticked by, and I could already imagine the blistering and peeling that would happen over the next week. He would curse his way through every day, especially when we would be forced to sit on our asses and keep an eye on Joaquin Reyes.
Cillian grabbed a cushion from the end of the couch and gathered it beneath his head, burying his face in it. “Motherfecker hurts.”
I shook my head. “Why the fuck did you think that was a good idea?”
He grumbled something I didn’t hear, then sent a glare over his shoulder. “I liked it better when ye talked less.”
I yanked my phone from my pocket and took a picture of him. The click of the photo had him shoving to his hands, face redder than the burn from embarrassment.
