“He seems terrible at the job,” Luis said.
“Not even degreed or anything, self-taught. Not that you can’t be good at it with self-teaching,” Karim said, “but he’s just not.”
“I’ve looked at your site,” Luis admitted, “there’s a lot of bugs that he should’ve fixed like… a while ago.” Not that Luis had been keeping tabs on it.
Karim looked at him thoughtfully. “You do website stuff, don’t you?” Karim’s phone buzzing interrupted him. He grabbed it and read through a text, then quickly typed something back. “Julien will be a while, he said we could go on without him. What do you think?”
Luis shrugged. “I guess? Does he need help though?”
But Karim was shaking his head. “No, if I go in there, I’m just going to fire Gerald and it won’t be nicely either. Jules always gets annoyed when I do stuff like that without discussion first.”
“Ah.” Luis could definitely see that.
“Best to leave him to it until I get the green light.” Karim grabbed the remote. “Movie?”
“Yeah, alright,” Luis conceded, and the movie started again.
Karim had kept silent while Julien was in the room, but now he started a running commentary on the characters and plot holes as they watched.
“There is no way a normal human would get up after that,” Karim said when at the climax the assassin took an eight-story leap to the ground and then kept going.
“He’s clearly not a normal human,” Luis replied. The amount of damage he’d taken and kept going with was bordering on comical.
“It would make more sense if they’d just made him a vampire,” Karim added.
Luis had to agree.
“There’s only one rule you shouldn’t break,”Karim mocked, whispering in his ear ten minutes later. Luis got goosebumps. He and Karim were touching from shoulder to thigh, and man’s weight and heat was pressing into him. “So, what does he do?”
“It’s no fun if he doesn’t break the big rule. It’s movie law,” Luis said.
“So predictable though.”
“Oh, so you foresaw the evil twin brother twist?” Luis asked with a laugh.
“No, but I knew something was fishy, the way he cornered her, his hand like–” Karim demonstrated by sliding his own hand up Luis’s thigh. All of Luis’s thoughts stuttered to a stop. “Talk about a tone-shift.”
“Right,” Luis said even though he no longer had any idea what Karim was talking about.
The vampire lifted his hand off with a laugh. “Enough to distract me, make me question things.”
Luis swallowed hard, keeping his eyes on the screen. “Yeah,” he said.
On the screen something exploded, which helped cover his uneven breathing.
Get a hold of yourself, he’s just messing with you.
“That was fun,” Karim said when the credits began to roll. “Good choice,” he said, patting Luis’s thigh. “Makes no sense that they expect you to believe a human can survive all that, but I was entertained.”
“Thanks,” Luis said. He wanted to push into the touch, wanted to shove Karim’s hand away.
“Too bad Julien missed the rest, he would’ve liked the ending,” Karim said, “he’s a sucker for a love-triangle ending in a throuple.”
Luis could tell he was being teased by the way Karim said it, but his cheeks still got hot. “I didn’t expect her to want them both,” Luis said.
Karim’s thumb began to rub idle shapes against his jeans. Arousal spurred to life so fast that Luis had to concentrate on not jerking away guilty. “Well, they both brought something different to the table. Steadiness versus danger. Reliability versus excitement. Sometimes you want a little of both…” Karim crooned.
Luis cleared his throat. “Right. Yeah.”
