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“I’ve been training in the gym a lot with Tian, and I haven’t been sleeping well too.” I frown. Why am I telling him this? “I mean I’ve been practicing too and doing some translating for Tian, that’s been taking up most of my time.”

The lines around his eyes crinkle. Is this respect I see? I shake my head. No, that can’t be right?

“You need to sleep.”

I grab the railing for support. I don’t know what this feeling is I have in my chest. I place my hand on my heart. Is he concerned about me? I can feel his body warmth radiating from him. I look up at him to catch his eyes. It’s like I’m starring in my own Yaoi3 Manhwa4 remake, with this height difference. Fuck, maybe I do like one man.

“And you need to eat more,” he growls, making it sound like an order as his eyes trail over my body. His strength is undeniable, his coldness, his skills both in the boardroom and when he’s fighting. He can kill a man with one stroke of his hand.

He feels like an equal. What? My eyes widen. We haven’t spoken in months, and I don’t really know anything about him. The wind blows strands of hair in my eyes, but he reaches out to push them behind my ear. My breath catches. What the hell? He looks away like nothing happened, leaving me with a profound sense of longing and regret I don’t feel his fingers touching the shell of my ear again before he pulled away.

I grab my pack of cigarettes, tap one out and light it with shaking fingers while he keeps studying me. He intrigues me, I have to give him that. But his cold and reserved demeanor when he’s around me only means one thing, he dislikes me. The look of disdain is enough to take my knife and stab me in the chest to put myself out of this misery.

He takes the cigarette from my trembling fingers and smokes it. My dick twitches in response. A memory I thought I forgot hits me like a tidal wave.

“Are you okay?” A deep voice makes me look up while I go through the trash in the alleyway behind the whorehouse where my mother threw away my stuff, all because I bought some gay book. I was fifteen or sixteen back then. I stare at the man standing before me, holy shit that guy was Moon, why didn’t I notice it before? He walked toward me through the dark alley. He was wearing the same black suit he still wears. His hair was shorter then, his face rounder and more youthful but those sulky eyes were undoubtedly his.

Looking at him felt wrong, a single man like the title of the book my mother ripped the cover from I was clutching in my hands.

He stops right in front of me but doesn’t smile. “You like this book?” he asks, taking it from me. His fingertips glide over the words I underlined. I swallow hard as I stare at his stoic face while his eyes flash to my throat. Maybe I need to stop lying to myself. I’ve always liked men, or just this man. Maybe that’s why it took me three years to finally ask for the dark side of the moon at sixteen.

Fuming, I snatch the book from his hands, only then noticing his knuckles are bloodied and covered with cuts. His smirk is gone before I can blink, and I watch him take off his jacket. “Damn, it’s warm. Fuck, I shouldn’t swear in front of a kid. How old are you?”

I’m too stunned to speak while my eyes slide over his veiny forearms as he pushes his shirtsleeves up revealing his defined arms. I follow the veins all the way up to the shirt cuffs he’s wearing around his biceps. What else could you use them for? I think licking my lips.

“Hey kid,” he says his voice firm. “Whatever you do, never smoke, okay?” He chuckles, tapping a cigarette from the carton, to push it between his teeth.

My eyes travel up his hands lighting the cigarette all the way to his lips and dark stoic eyes without any emotion that meet mine. It’s like being punched in the chest. Is this what a real man looks like? I know I have no business at fifteen years old looking at a guy probably fifteen years older than me. My eyes widen, are those tattoos hiding under his collar?

“Kid, eyes up here,” he orders, taking the book from me again.

I stumble back against the wall as he towers over me, draping his jacket over his veiny forearm.

“Do you even know what this book is about?” he asks, flipping through it before throwing it my way.

I catch it midair, and the corner of his mouth hikes up while I nod. “I do.”

He keeps looking at me; I feel naked. I let my hair fall in front of my gaze and he flicks the lighter open and closes it again, the sound reverberating through my bones. He takes a step in my direction and my back hits the wall. Many tell me I look as pretty as a girl. That’s why I keep my hair short and my head down until the moment I can get the fuck out of this place. But the past few months I didn’t care anymore and started to grow it out. Around the same time the trouble started up again with the regular customers asking if I was on the menu. My mom wanted to, but someone had paid her off, so she couldn’t.

“What’s your name? I paid to have her tell it to me,” he says, his voice so deep, rough, goosebumps break out all over my body.

Is he the guy who paid? I shake my head. No way, a man like him would never. “Eliot, or El,” I whisper.

“Eliot,” he repeats, my name dripping from his tongue like honey. “Whose son are you?”

I glance up at the house and the room my father disappeared into. I let out a mocking laugh while I shrug, not answering him.

He grabs my jaw hard and my stomach turns. His eyes run over my face as smoke from his cigarette drifts in my eyes. “Don’t,” he warns, that one word makes me want to fall to my knees in front of him and beg for forgiveness for disrespecting him.

“Don’t, El,” he repeats again.

I tell him my father’s name and his pupils dilate; they’re back to their normal size within a second, making me think I imagined it.

He playfully slaps my cheek, pushing my chin to the side, and something stirs below my belt. This only happened when I wake up in the morning, I think as my cheeks flush. He smiles and lets me go, slowly swiping his fingers down my neck while I swallow.

“If you ever want to get out of this dump,” he says, pointing with his cigarette in the direction of the house, “come to the compound and tell them you’re looking for the dark side of the moon.”

My tongue seems to be glued to the inside of my mouth. What the hell is that supposed to mean?