"What will you do?"
He turns off the water, dries his hands, faces me.
"Whatever I have to."
That should scare me. They don't. They settle into my chest like something solid, something I can hold onto.
"Okay," I say.
He nods again, then opens his phone.
"You need to eat," he says.
"I had a banana."
"That's not enough."
He dials a number and orders take-out. Real take-out. Food I’ve never had before. It sounds exotic and expensive.
When it arrives, I see the label and ask him what it says.
“Phucket Thai. It’s Vietnamese.”
It smells so good, my stomach constricts.
“You’ve never had take-out before have you?”
I shake my head and he sighs, grabbing plates and dishing up food. “Eat.”
“Why… are you being nice to me? Risking it all for me?”
He shrugs. “Not sure, to be quite frank. I think my conditioning is wearing off, and maybe I became attached to you because you are weak and I am not. I’ve spent a lifetime destroying the weak, but you’re not a weak threat. You’re just weak and vulnerable. It does something to me that I don’t quite understand. Hence why they want me to come in. Turn you over. Maybe they can recondition me, maybe they can’t. Either way I’d end up in a body bag. I am the Reaper after-all.”
That’s the most he’s ever said to me and probably the most I’ll ever get. I don’t understand it, and neither does he, but we are both in full awareness that something big is coming if he doesn’t hand me over and report himself to the Ministry.
Something in me tells me that he’s telling the truth.
That he won’t just give me up because his own life is at stake.
Maybe I’m a penance he’s paying. Maybe he truly is interested in saving me.
Either way, when his hand comes up under my chin and forces me to meet his eyes, a jolt flows down my spine and straight to the tip of my cock. There is something very, very wrong with this, and yet…
There’s nothing more I want him from than for him to replace the bad memories with new ones that I have a choice in.
Chapter Seven: Jace
Hispulsejumpsundermy thumb.
My thumbs squish into his chin, tilting his face up to meet my eyes, and I can feel the rapid flutter of blood through his carotid. Elevated heart rate. Dilated pupils. Shallow breathing. The physiological markers of fear.
Except his body is leaning toward me, not away.
He’s horny.
The realization should mean nothing. It's just information. But something shifts in my chest, a pressure that wasn't there before, and suddenly, I’m staring at the shape of his mouth, the way his lips part slightly, the wet gleam of his tongue against his teeth.
I release his chin. Step back. Put distance between us.
