Jay was confused as hell. “Why would you do that? You obviously worked hard on this.”
“It’s not ruined.” Crisp’s smile didn’t dim, as he explained. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. The wrapping paper is meant to be ripped away in excitement and anticipation. This is meant to be fun.”
“Oh.” He stared down at the half-torn paper, and Crisp was right. Jay wanted to know what was inside. What was Crisp so thrilled to give him that he would rip through the wrapping in his excitement? He had to know. Jay quickly shredded what was left and whipped the lid off. There were a few different items inside, along with an envelope. He picked up each thing and inspected it. The first was a driver’s license. Jayson M. Agafonov. Thirty-five. Six-foot-two with brown eyes. The address was where they currently sat. There was a matching passport, birth certificate, and social security card. There was a strange feeling in his chest and stomach. He had a new identity. His last name matched Crisp’s surname. Crisp had connected himself with Jay. He picked up the key in the box just to hide the way his mind was trapped in unfamiliar emotions.
“That’s a key to the room. I don’t want you to accidentally get locked out one day when you sneak out.”
Jay glanced up and held Crisp’s stare. “Why is my last name yours?”
The happiness in Crisp’s eyes never dimmed. “Because I’m your family now. Open the envelope.”
Jay had too many questions to know where to start. His feelings were too big. So he opened the envelope. It was a card. He flipped it open, brought it close to his face, and read.
You’re cordially invited to join me on a fourteen-day road trip through the wilds of the U.S.A., seeing sights such as the GrandCanyon, the Vegas strip, Wild West towns frozen in time, The world’s largest ball of twine, NYC, and many more.
Crisp bounced a little. “I know you’re feeling cooped up, so Fabrice and I came up with a plan to get you off and back on property without risk. What do you say? Do you want to go on an adventure with me?”
Jay couldn’t stop staring at the box and all its contents. He had known he would need a new identity soon. Jay hadn’t known how to go about that without the Russian government's backing, but he had imagined it would be outrageously expensive. The entire contents of the gift had Jay speechless and feeling things he didn’t know how to process. Everything that had been growing inside him from living side by side with Crisp came to a head with the contents of a single box. Crisp wanted to be his family. Jay wanted to touch him. Well, he ached with that desire every minute of every day, but this time, he was ready to explode. He had no idea where to go with all these crazy thoughts he had. Sometimes Crisp looked at him like he felt all the same things as Jay. But he never did anything about it either, and Jay was just confused and frustrated by these things he couldn’t control. Now Crisp had done all of this for him while Jay sat there with nothing to offer, and he was just useless in the face of so much. He had to act, or he might lose what little sanity he possessed.
Jay set the box aside and reached behind his neck. He took off his necklace and scooted as close to Crisp as he could get, but he kept his gaze locked on the necklace he held. “I bought this necklace about a month after I was sent on my first mission. As a child, I was given the call name Wraptor to match the hunter Iwould be. My training was simple. I was sent to get close and kill. My first assignment was this old man who lived in the mountains. He was no challenge at all.” Jay swallowed. Even though he knew Crisp had been raised the same as he had been, it still felt so wrong to let Crisp see the monster he had been made to be. “Back home, I’d been forced to kill countless people under controlled circumstances. I never knew their names or how they came to be in such a position. To survive, I told myself they were bad people. Enemies of our cause. This was different. I sat in his home.” He lifted his chin and forced himself to meet Crisp’s gaze. “He was no one as far as I could tell. Maybe he had been no more than a test for me. Maybe I passed, but it didn’t feel like glory or service to our country. It felt wrong. I looked around, desperately searching for a way to justify what I had done. Then I found it. There was a conservatory of some kind inside his home. A single living bird sat in a tiny cage surrounded by animals that had been stuffed and various butterflies pinned to velvet. I moved closer to the bird, unsure if it was truly alive. It was so still. Then he cocked his head and stared back at me, as if equally curious about my presence. It was a blue jay. He was beautiful and trapped. He had been born to live in the wild. It looked and felt so wrong to see him caged. What kind of monster caged a wild bird meant for freedom? I took his cage outside and opened the door, but he refused to leave. Even after I pried the cage away from its base, he sat perched as if the bars had simply turned invisible. He had the ability to go back to the life he deserved, and he chose to stay. It broke my heart and enraged me for reasons I couldn’t explain. Seeing a beautiful creature broken and trapped by the training drilled into him gave me all the justification I needed to leave my guilt behind. But I couldn’t outrun the feelings I’d experienced. That was when I chose the name Jay.” He put the necklace around Crisp’s neck. “I want you to have this.” After closing theclasp, Jay ran his fingertip down the jay bird charm. He watched the way his scarred hand stroked Crisp’s collarbone as he followed the chain upward with his fingertip. “I feel the same way when I look at you as I did when I stared at that bird.”
“How did you feel?”
Jay’s gaze lifted and met Crisp’s beautiful light green stare. “Like life was supposed to be different for me. Like that bird, nothing held me back if I was brave enough. But I didn’t know how to find what I didn’t understand. No one taught me how to break free. Just like now, when I look at you, I know there’s something more for me here, but I don’t know how to reach for it. No one taught me how to love.”
Crisp drew a shaky-sounding breath, but he never broke eye contact. He leaned Jay’s way. Jay didn’t know what came next, but he didn’t budge. Then Crisp’s lips touched him and lingered. Jay’s hand automatically slid from Crisp’s collarbone to holding his hair. He didn’t want Crisp to get away. Crisp’s lips parted. He lightly sucked Jay’s bottom lip. Jay welcomed him and Crisp’s tongue slipped inside to stroke his. Jay’s heart raced. Each breath he took sounded hard fought. There had been plenty of times Jay had feared himself and what he was capable of doing. But he had never been more scared of himself than he was now, and that told him everything.
Crisp felt the way Jay shook, but he didn’t back down. Jay matched him stroke for stroke, mimicking every move Crisp made. Crisp shifted closer, moving to his knees before straddling Jay. This hadn’t come from nowhere. Crisp lived for the longing looks. He woke up every day ready to spend it with Jay. Crisp went to bed every night hating the inches separating them and then pretending to sleep each time Jay scooted closer until he spooned Crisp. He had lain awake, aroused as hell, with Jay’s erection between them. Neither of them ever acted on their desires before now. The longing in his chest was suffocating. Jay had used the L-word. Until spoken aloud, Crisp hadn’t wanted to admit that was exactly what had been growing between them. It was a silent, gentle love that had slowly built a little more with each passing day and aching night. Jay wasn’t the only one who hadn’t known how to reach for this. He had no clue how to break through a lifetime of brainwashing. All Crisp had known to do was be there while Jay found his way, the way Crisp had done over a decade ago. There was no magic trick—only time and distance. Jay was still dangerous. Crisp wasn’t scared to die. He was terrified of what Jay could do to his heart. In the meantime, Crisp could show Jay what he could do for Jay’s body.
Crisp moved from Jay’s mouth to his neck. Jay didn’t try to hide the way he gasped for each breath. He felt powerful as hell, knowing he was the reason Jay was breathless. Crisp kissed and licked a path to Jay’s collarbone. He slipped lower and sucked Jay’s hardened nipple through his T-shirt. Crisp didn’t stop making his way down Jay’s body until Crisp was on his knees on the floor. He had Jay’s shirt lifted, savoring every spot he could reach while he undid the button on Jay’s jeans. Crisp wasted no time springing Jay’s dick free from his underwear. He licked Jay from root to tip.
Jay’s muscles seized beneath him. “Please don’t do that.”
Crisp stared up the line of Jay’s body, still holding the guy’s cock. A small, desperate-sounding noise caressed Crisp’s ears, but Jay’s muscles stayed stiff. “Damn. You should see how beautiful you look. I don’t want you to do this.”
Crisp was frozen with confusion while a hint of humiliation crept in. He cleared his throat and righted Jay’s clothes. Crisp kept his eyes on his task. He knew how to take no for an answer, but wow. This was humbling. It was rare as hell for Crisp to touch anyone. He was kind of anxiety-ridden when it came to sex. His experience was extremely lacking beyond giving head. His confidence had definitely been smashed against the rocks. “Sorry. Um.” He stood. His eyes darted in every direction. Everything inside him screamed for him to run. His pride refused to take that route. “Let me get those pajamas on and grab all the bedding I can find for our movie session.” He blindly headed for the bedroom in a haze. Crisp fought hard against the urge to cry. He didn’t know what he had done wrong, but he knew Jay thought men shouldn’t cry.
“Crisp.”
Crisp couldn’t hear a thing Jay had to say right now. He would break down if he let go of the hold he had on his emotions for a second. He kept moving. Crisp found his pajamas. He pulled his shirt up and over his head. His chest hurt so badly, he wondered if he should call nine-one-one. He would put these pajamas on, and he would make that pallet on the floor. Crisp would eat the junk food and keep his plans. He would smile and pretend nothing happened—the way he always did in every facet of his life. That kiss had been a mistake. Crisp had let a dream grow inside his head. One where he wasn’t alone in the world. He had allowed himself to feel like he was more than he was to Jay—that he wasn’t invisible. Right now, he was… fuck; he didn’t even know. Why the fuck had he done this dumbass thing? Why had he believed for a second that he was anything more to Jay than whatever the fuck happened between nurses and patients sometimes? Whatever Jay felt for him didn’t match what Crisp felt. That was fine. Crisp knew better than anyone that he wasn’t important.
“Fuck!” The scream was out of his control. Something broke inside him that had been barely held together for a while now. He tried to put his shirt back on, but the material fought him. Even he didn’t know what he would do next, but he knew it involved leaving this place and everything in it behind for good.
Jay’s arms encircled him. He dragged Crisp back against his chest. The first tear fell, and Crisp was furious about it. Still the tears wouldn’t stop coming, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t put himself back together this time. He had sat, dying inside as he watched the elation grow among his so-called brothers asthose DNA results were read. For five whole months afterward, he had let himself hope Jay was a new chapter. Why was he like this? He shouldn’t need anyone or anything. What was wrong with him?
Jay kissed Crisp’s neck and held him in a death grip, refusing to let him fall completely apart. “I’m sorry I’m broken. Please don’t. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Sometimes my words come out not like I mean. I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know is I want to do everything with you.” Jay kissed his neck again. He felt the moisture of tears against his skin and Crisp froze. Jay had said men don’t cry, but he cried for Crisp. “This is suffocating me. Please don’t cry.”
Crisp’s already swollen throat nearly closed completely at Jay’s plea.
Jay didn’t stop. “Please? Tell me what I’m supposed to do because I don’t know. I can’t see you on your knees the way those other people always were before I was forced to pull the trigger. You’re everything to me. Don’t make me do that.”
An ugly truth hit Crisp, and the horror hit harder. The leather daddy thing. He was just like Zeus. Jay had only been half honest about being nothing more than a hunter and assassin. They had him seducing people, using him like a whore to get victims completely alone. He knew how those agents were trained. Crisp had trained alongside them, cleaning the mess left behind. Watching the horrors of that conditioning had made Crisp thankful to be good at making crime scenes disappear. In fact, witnessing what happened to people like Jay had made himwork twice as hard at the field chosen for him. He knew there were far worse fates.
Crisp’s tears were no longer for himself. He hurt for the man who held him. He had noticed the way Jay had begun staring at his reflection—as if he were transfixed. Those moments always broke Crisp’s heart, thinking about Jay mourning the loss of his old self. Crisp hadn’t had a clue. Jay had been bred to be irresistible. That was his purpose in life. Crisp thought Jay was still sexy as sin, but he wasn’t the same. He realized now what he should have seen all along. Many of Jay’s scars were purposely done, specifically to carve away his appearance. They had stolen the very identity they had given him. Literally everything about his life had drastically changed. Jay had to feel so goddamn lost.
Crisp turned in Jay’s arms and buried his face in the crook of Jay’s neck. He couldn’t begin to explain how safe and right Crisp felt when Jay held him. Each time, a peace settled in his spirit that took away an invisible weight Crisp carried every second of the day. He eased Crisp’s soul.
Jay rocked him slightly from side to side, as if comforting himself.
