“Your thoughts were all over the place.” Duron handed him his towel. “Should I be worried?”
“No,” Beaumont said firmly. “Definitely not.” Wiping the towel down his front, he wrapped it around his hips, ignoring his cock that had decided it wanted to play. Stepping closer to his mate, Beaumont brushed his lips over Duron’s before whispering, “There are things in my past I want to share with you… when all this other business is over. Some things I want to explain about why this business with the scientists, the assassin training program, and now the Devil, all feels so personal to me. About how Marvin’s story in front of the council just months ago changed my life.”
“Marvin?” Duron stilled at the name and then let out a long breath. “There was a long time back before I met you, where I thought about Marvin and me together. Maybe… it was nothing like what I felt when I met you. He used to visit me when I was contained.” Beaumont saw a small shrug, a hint of pink on Duron’s cheeks. “For the longest time, he was the only kindness I knew… until you.”
“Remember what I said about how mates become our focus, the most important thing? Anything that happened before, goes in the past—good memories and bad—not to be forgotten, but simply put in a new place.” Beaumont searched Duron’s eyes. “Does that make sense?”
“I think so. I know I never wanted to do this with Marvin,” Duron said, and before the words registered, Duron’s arms were around him, pulling him flush so their chests and bellies slammed together, their lips tangling and tasting—hard and demanding.
Settle down stomach, breakfast is going to have to wait.
~/~/~/~
“I’m not happy about this at all.”
Kylo had returned from the station while Beaumont and Duron were finishing up their breakfast. He was in a foul mood. “I didn’t let on I knew Wyatt. I just let him out of the cell along with three others, also in for disorderly conduct. And what happens? Do I get a thank you, an acknowledgement or anything else? Nothing. Not a damned thing. Your friend sails out of the station with his new friends. And I have no doubt they’ll all be drunk and causing trouble by lunchtime. For fuck’s sake, what were you all thinking?”
“This sausage is incredible,” Beaumont said to Felix, who was hovering by the stove, juggling two frying pans and a saucepan. “You’re an amazing cook, thank you. What do you think, Duron?”
“Sausages are good, yep.” Duron stuffed a whole one in his mouth, and Beaumont really shouldn’t have thought… nope. Not going there.
“Someone bombed our house!” Kylo thumped down on the table between where Beaumont and Duron were sitting, causing the plates to clatter.
Faster than the eye could move, Duron had that same fist pulled up behind Kylo’s back, his face mushed where the hand had thumped. “You are stressed. Understandable. We’re eating.” He let Kylo go and sat down, picking up his knife and fork as though nothing had happened.
“I should just kick you out,” Kylo growled, rubbing his shoulders. “Damned council and damned assassins bring their shit into our family home…”
“Hang on a goddamned minute,” Beaumont interrupted. “Have you forgotten it was your brother who started all this? Your brother who found men neglected and abused to the point of death in your territory—something that had been going on for years and you didn’t know about it. Hell’s teeth, one of the dead men found with Ben’s mates, was one of your men.
“Don’t talk about us bringing the shit here. It’s always been here. The stench of that shit is infused in every jungle leaf and tree trunk around. You’ve been chasing this Devil person for years—you’ve got nothing. Wyatt is doing what should’ve been done when you first knew the Devil was an issue—plant someone in his organization and bring him down that way.”
“Wyatt’s not local. He doesn’t know our customs, he doesn’t know the people…”
“The people are scared, and Wyatt is trained,” Duron said, chomping his way through another sausage. Felix came over, dumping another four of them on his plate, for which Duron nodded his thanks.
“I didn’t know it was going to happen, either,” Beaumont said as he cast a look at Duron’s plate. Without a break in his chewing, Duron speared one of his sausages with his fork, putting it on Beaumont’s plate. There was only the barest hesitation before a second one was added.
Thank you, but you can eat it. There is plenty here.
Duron kept on eating, his lips quirking up at the edges.
Beaumont looked at Kylo. “What have you got? As you said, Wyatt’s not local, but that’s a good thing. If he can act as though he believes everything he’s told, and he can show in some way how useful he can be to the Devil’s organization…”
“But that’s just it. How many bodies am I going to be scraping off the pavement so your Wyatt can prove his worth to a master criminal?” Kylo took the coffee his brother handed him and glared over the rim of the mug.
“No more than normal, I imagine.” Beaumont kept his voice calm, although inside he seethed at Kylo’s dismissal of Wyatt’s skills, and thereby dismissing Duron as well. “If you stopped thinking about any of the assassins as rabid dogs, and appreciate that despite the methods they use, these men are highly skilled and highly trained. Not to mention loyal, then you might help ward off the ulcer you’re going to get stressing about shit you can’t control.”
“So what? We just wait, and hope Wyatt manages to do what my men and women haven’t been able to do in years and pull the Devil out of his ass?” Kylo sculled back the rest of his coffee. “We don’t even know where your assassin friend is.”
“Not right now, no, we don’t.” Duron put down his utensils across his plate and pushed it to one side. “But I know where he’ll be at two this afternoon, and me and my mate will be there as backup.”
You do? We are?Beaumont felt a flood of warmth on his normally chilly insides.My mate isn’t shutting me out.
Spearing at one of the spare sausages with his fork, the one that Duron had given him, he held it out to his mate, picking up the other one in his fingers. Mutual sausage chomping—better than a fist bump in Beaumont’s opinion.
Chapter Nine
Duron
