2-Bound By Law (17 page)

He’d come in from a four-month long mission and found Styx in his bed, waiting for him. They didn’t talk for hours and when Law woke that next morning, Styx was long gone.

Now, he waited for Styx’s reaction. Styx didn’t like to bottom at all—it just wasn’t his thing. But if Law remembered correctly, the man had been begging for more those two times—he just didn’t like to admit it.

“Come on, Law,” he started to protest, but Law stopped him.

“I’m sore as hell from you.”

“So I’ll suck your cock instead, baby.”

“No dice. Let me in. All the way.” He’d spoke those words recently to Paulo as well, and the man had trusted him enough to do so. “I’ll make it good—you know that.”

Styx conceded, but not with words. Instead, he put Law back on the counter and dropped his pants, then turned and held onto the counter.

And if he wanted it this Spartan, Law would give him exactly what he wanted. He took the lube and used it on his fingers, began to stroke Styx’s ass.

“Don’t treat me like a fucking virgin,” Styx growled, and Law inserted a finger inside and then a second. Styx groaned and dropped his head.

He was tight as anything—his breathing was a little harsh, too—and for a second, Law almost stopped.

“Let me make it good for you,” he whispered as his fingers probed Styx, scissoring, opening him up. Readying him.

He would’ve loved to tongue the man’s ass, but Styx wouldn’t wait for him to do that, would want it rough and tumble, and he would oblige the man.

He started slowly, until the head of his cock breached Styx, and then he pushed all the way in, nearly taking Styx off the floor and only then did he hear a low, keening moan. He took Styx’s hips and pistoned in and out, because if memory served, Styx liked this part rough, hated being babied in any way, shape or form. And Styx yelled Law’s name as he clutched the counter with one hand and his cock with the other, and then Law bent his head and bit Styx on the side of the neck as he came.

Styx came seconds later, barely able to hold on, and if it wasn’t for Law they would’ve tumbled to the floor.

“Fuck me,” Styx breathed, and Law laughed.

“Didn’t think you’d be up for it again that fast.”

“Don’t even try it.” Styx turned—his face was flushed, and he gathered Law against him. “It’s your turn, because if I don’t fuck you to sleep, you’ll never get any shut-eye.”

It was true—and Law knew he’d be too full of worry for Paulo no matter what, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t let Styx try his best.

Paulo was wired for sound, knew Tomcat was backing him up. The plan was in place. Tomcat told the usual suspects at the CIA where Paulo’s new safe house was.

Just like the first time, they were counting on a leak. This time Tomcat could concentrate on finding out who it was based on how he disseminated the intel, and Paulo hoped Styx’s father would send in men he could trail, if not come himself.

Tomcat hadn’t told a soul about Law and Styx’s location at the old cabin and Paulo was content in the knowledge that those men were safely hidden away.

Now, he would take steps to ensure they stayed that way.

He remained pressed to the ground under the house and waited for the men to show. There would be two this time—Tomcat was sure they would know to bring backup after what had happened to the last assassin.

The men knew they were up against cops, agents and Delta Force. They wouldn’t take chances.

Paulo could slide easily out of his hiding spot. Once the men entered the house looking for him, he’d put the tracking device on their car. Follow them back to the city.

This time, there was less stealth on their part. They rolled up to the house where Paulo had left the TV on and some lights, a coffeepot that was still warm. The men would find tire tracks going down the old road and assume he’d heard them and ran.

It would barely give Paulo enough time to do what he needed to, but he was ready.

Once they went in, he snaked across the front lawn in the dark, placed the tracker under the front tire of their car and snuck into the woods instead of risking the walk back to the house.

He lay in wait, closer to the men than he’d been before, pistol pulled in case he’d been made. When the men walked back to their car, it was apparent they were angry.

“Fossman got the intel right, but the guy made us,” the shorter of the two was telling someone on the other end of his cell phone. “We’re going after him now to see if we can pick up his trail.”

Paulo used the light from the car’s interior to catch a glimpse of his features—he looked nothing like Styx but still he committed the face to memory so he could describe it to a sketch artist if necessary or look through some CIA wanted pics. He couldn’t see the other guy worth a damn.

At least they knew Fossman was the leak.

He forced his breathing to calm until they drove away, didn’t stay put because he had a feeling they’d circle back around to check the house again. He threaded his way back through the woods to meet Tomcat at the end of the hidden road.

The hunter’s instincts Paulo’s father had always prided himself on his son having were even stronger now, despite missing buck season for at least eight years. It was something he’d used to try to bond with his father, whose cop instincts had always known there was something different about Paulo.

“You’re a queer, aren’t you?” he’d sneered one day up at the old cabin.

“No one uses queer anymore,” Paulo told him calmly, waited to eat the back of his father’s hand, but the shot never came.

His father was scared to touch him as though being gay was a communicable disease.

To Paulo’s father, it was. And that had been the last hunting trip.

Three weeks later, his father had been arrested for prisoner abuse and Paulo’s world turned inside out.

It was that way again, and he’d begun to doubt whether he’d ever feel completely safe anyplace again.

He spotted Tomcat’s truck and headed toward it, allowed himself to think briefly on Law and Styx…and then cursed himself for doing so.

Fuck, he missed them, and it had only been three goddamned days.

Maybe they missed him too, or maybe they’d begun to realize that the three of them together wasn’t necessary, that Paulo had simply been a way to facilitate their reconnecting.

Thinking about that made his heart pound unnaturally. He stopped, put his hand against a tree trunk, needing to pull himself together before he got into the truck with Tomcat.

What had he expected? He’d known Law for less than six months, had been on a couple of dates that were little more than fucking sessions.

Just because he’d fallen in love didn’t mean Law had. And the fact that he’d been the only one to use the word love in the past weeks hadn’t been lost on him—it just hit him with more force now since he’d left.

He’d known Styx for only a few days and felt more of an attachment to him than he had with men he’d been lovers with for a year.

There was definitely something fucked up about him. At twenty-eight, he wasn’t supposed to be having this love-at-first-sight bullshit happening to him. That should’ve happened when he was a teen, but at that point, he’d been too busy dealing with the fallout from his family after coming out to them—bringing a lover into that environment wouldn’t have worked at all.

And now he was alone again.

You saved him. You gave him and Styx their second chance.
And hell, those two deserved it. He’d only had to be around them for a few minutes to feel the electricity between them.

He pushed off the tree, shoving the pity party down, and walked to the truck.

“You okay?” Tomcat asked when he got in, and Paulo didn’t bother to lie.

“Just took a trip down memory lane I shouldn’t have.”

“Stop letting your past fuck with you,” Tomcat admonished, like it was that simple. And maybe it was—maybe that was the key.

“Are they transmitting?” Paulo asked.

Tomcat pointed to the red star on the GPS mounted to his dash as he drove away down another back road. “Don’t want to spook the spooks, so we’ll let them get an hour ahead.” In the meantime, the men lay low at a local diner, with Tomcat’s truck hidden among the semis in the back lot.

“They’re worried,” Tomcat told Paulo finally, and Paulo had known it was only a matter of time before he brought up Law and Styx.

“You said you wouldn’t go there.”

“I lied. I do it professionally.” Tomcat stared at him innocently, like that was a complete justification.

“Don’t you have a love life of your own to worry about?”

“Yeah, I do.” Tomcat’s face clouded briefly, and because he could see that Tomcat was suffering too, it made it easier to talk.

“They’re together. That’s the way it should’ve been from the start.”

“They want you back.”

“How’s that supposed to work?”

“Don’t know. I can barely handle a non-relationship with one man.” Tomcat checked the time and called to the waitress for more coffee to go. “I’ll take care of the leak personally.”

“Can we use him to track Styx’s father?”

Tomcat slid him a glance. “Didn’t realize you were CIA.”

“I’m a cop—that’s better.”

“You sure you’re up for what comes next?”

Paulo had been training for this—ready for it—his entire life. He just hadn’t known he’d be doing it for two men he loved. “More than. For Styx and Law.”

“For Styx and Law,” Tomcat repeated. “Let’s go over the plan again—I want you to eat, sleep and breathe it.”

Chapter Thirteen

Paulo surrendered himself to the two hit men he’d seen at the safe house two days earlier. He forced himself to remain calm as they put a bag over his head and dragged him inside a warehouse, hoped Tomcat had been able to get through the steel doors before they locked again.

There was no way out now, not without Tomcat’s help.

He’d wanted to be dragged in front of Styx’s father, but that wasn’t going to happen. He figured these men would never talk during an interrogation, but maybe they’d flip on one another.

All Paulo knew was that he had to stay alive long enough for Tomcat to gather the intel they needed to take things to the next level.

He thought about what Law had told him about his Delta training after they’d watched a war movie together, about how torture was so effective not because of the actual pain—although that was a bitch—but because the threat of the unknown, of what your captors could do to you, was ever present.

“It’ll fuck with your mind if you let it,” Law told him. “Best to stay in the present.”

It had made so much sense when Law said it, more so now as Paulo remained tied to a chair, attempting to interrogate the men threatening to end his life.

“I want to see your boss,” Paulo said through gritted teeth once they pulled the hood off him. He blinked a few times, because the room was bright and the sudden light hurt his eyes. He’d been tied to a chair and it was the only furniture in this room. Beyond it was an open door that led to a smaller room with a desk and an opened laptop, and he hoped that would contain the intel they needed.

“He doesn’t want to see you,” one of the men spat at him. “But your family’s worried.”

Yeah, that was bullshit. But Paulo clenched his jaw as if their words angered him.

“You tell us where Styx is, and maybe your family won’t be hurt. That’s the deal.”

“I want to hear it from your boss,” Paulo said, earning a hard slap across the face with the back of a hand.

“You give me something and then I give you something.”

“Last I heard, they were in the house upstate.” He rattled off the address of the house the men had already searched.

“Try again—he’s not there,” the man growled in his face.

“Then he’s probably coming for you.”

Another backhanded slap and then a punch to the side of the head and he lost consciousness. When he came to, everything throbbed and he wasn’t sure what was happening.

The men were standing behind him and he didn’t see any sign of Tomcat, and he wondered if this whole thing had gone south.

“He’s not the important one,” one of the men told him, and yeah, that could stomp on his heart if he let it.

“He’ll talk more, then.” The second man with the green shirt pushed at Paulo, who couldn’t open one swollen eye more than a slit. “Where are they?”

Paulo spit at him and laughed, which earned him a right hook. He kicked and made contact with one of them, which brought both men down on him, because he’d caught sight of Tomcat by the computer in the corner of the next room.

The chair went down, with the men concentrating on him—and if Tomcat was right, that computer would have all the possible addresses where Styx’s father lived.

They needed to catch him at home, where he was most vulnerable. Everyone was most vulnerable when they were home, no matter how good their alarm system was.

He managed to get a hand free of the ropes, dug into one of the men’s pockets for his cell. In the ruckus, he slipped it into his own pocket and shoved his hand behind him again, hoped the cell wouldn’t ring. And then there were more men, shining lights in his face, threatening his family.

Then they started talking about Styx. “He won’t show for this one. He likes the other fag.”

They were talking about Law, and Paulo wanted to kick all their asses. He might’ve, because he didn’t remember much—there was a lot of yelling and punches and grunting, and he freed himself using the sharp edge of a broken chair on the ropes holding his wrists.

And then, just like that, the fighting stopped and he was lying on the floor, dazed. Looked up to see Tomcat hovering over him.

“My pocket,” he remembered telling Tomcat before he passed out.

He remembered passing out—after that, the sensation of being carried and then floating outside his body.

Must’ve been in the hospital then, the drugs helping the I-don’t-give-a-shit feeling. He clung to that when he opened his eyes to find himself on a bed and alone in what looked like a hospital room.

Alone.

He closed his eyes again and let sleep overtake him.