“Okay, maybe not the feral one who follows you around. You should keep him.”
“Was planning on it. Any other advice for me?”
Alexei was silent a moment. Somehow I knew he was smiling that strange smile of his, the one that warmed me and yet sent chills down my spine. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, barely a fucking whisper. “I have some advice for you. The first thing is, keep yourbodyguardwith you as much as you can. He is... observant, and I would have found it more difficult to breach your compound if he’d been there. The second is to change the cameras that monitor your rear boundary. They have no motion detectors. I opened the cable and disconnected it before I unravelled your fence and entered your compound. If you watch your footage more closely, you will see the blip where the connection is lost and restarts. The rest was easy. There are no locks in your compound that cannot be picked, and you,Cam, need to stay alert when you are alone.”
I absorbed it all with a resigned huff. “I like being alone.” It wasn’t much of a counter argument, but it was all I had. It wasn’t like I didn’t know Saint was my sharpest weapon. And talking to Alexei scrambled my brain. “What else you got for me?”
“It’s more what you have for me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I still require payment for my financial services. And I will collect.”
“What’s your price?”
Another beat of silence passed, then Alexei treated me to another dark chuckle. “That, dearfriend, I will leave up to you. Until then, be safe.”
He hung up, of course. And yeah, I had a goddamn boner.
I also had an idea. Whether it cleared my debt or not, I wouldn’t know until it was over, but I fired off a text to Alexei anyway.
Cam:Angel Cottage, Beach Road. Thursday, 8pm.
* * *
Alexei
Cam surprised me. And I liked surprises when it came to this man, so I didn’t research the property he summoned me to. I approached it from the back and in the dark from the coastal path, keeping to the shadows, and found myself caught in the glow seeping from the kitchen window.
Beyond the old glass, Cam was at the stove, a beer in one hand, a wooden spoon in the other. He was dressed in dark unbuttoned jeans, damp hair slicked back.
He was the Cam I saw in my dreams.
Spellbound, I crept forward before I caught myself.This man... he will be the death of me.
I didn’t mind. I watched him some more, enjoying his domestication, before circling his property, taking note of the green-eyed brother lounging on his bike in a shadowed corner. He didn’t see me, but I had no doubt he’d see anyone else who approached. I liked him—he was good. For reasons I didn’t entirely know yet, I trusted him to keep Cam safe in his home.
Cam was still in the kitchen. I knocked at the back door. He didn’t look round or even blink. “It’s open.”
I slipped inside, leaving the crashing waves of the ocean behind, letting the scent of whatever he was cooking seep into me. “You were expecting me at the back door?”
Cam clamped a lid on a pan and turned to face me, the soft light from a nearby lamp casting perfect shadows on his chiselled face. “Actually, I half expected you to jump down from the attic, but it is what it is.”
“What does that mean?”
“What?”
“It is what it is. Everything is that.”
“Fucking A, mate. I don’t know. You’re here. That’s what matters.”
“Is it?”
Cam approached me, fearless and bold. God, how I loved that about him. He put his work-hardened hands on my shoulders and brought his face close enough to mine that I could’ve licked his unshaven jaw. “Right now? Yes. Are you hungry?”
“That depends.”
“On?” More humour warmed his molten gaze.
