Page 113 of Convict's Game

I sighed. “No, it wasn’t. He was trying to bribe you to have this conversation with me.”

“Surely not. Why on earth would he? He was just being nice.”

My mother’s world was so far apart from the Marchant life. There were no deals, no business manoeuvres. She lived in a nice three-bed semi, just down the road from the hairdresser’s where she worked, with Jeff right next door in an estate agent’s office. The boys went to a well-rated school nearby. The four of them played family tennis together on weekends.

Explaining the situation I was in suddenly felt exhausting.

I closed my eyes. “No, you’re right. Sorry. Did Wallace say anything else?”

“Only that he’s worried about his mum and he wants all the business drama to be over and done with soon.”

“Of course he does. We all do.”

With a few more platitudes, I got off the call.

Convict circled the couch to sit next to me. “Are Wallace’s actions a threat?”

“I don’t think so. He isn’t vicious in any way. If you met him, you’d see what I mean. I just don’t understand why he won’t pick up my calls yet he’ll set my mum on me.”

“Cowardly.”

An idea sprang into my mind.

Two, in fact. I needed more information to work with. There was no point in me complaining about being in the dark when I hadn’t tried all the ways to turn on a light.

Throwing my leg over Convict, I settled on his lap and rested my elbows lightly on his shoulders, drifting my fingers through his too-long hair.

“Will you come with me to do something illegal?”

“Always. When are we leaving?”

I loved that. I loved his instant readiness to be whatever I needed him to be. If I needed space, he gave it to me. When we hadn’t been talking, he’d made sure I was fed. Even before we were together, when I was out on a limb and doing dangerous things for questionable reasons, he’d been watching over me.

Since his confession of all the bad things he’d done, I’d only started seeing the good, and it was building up to a conclusion I wasn’t ready to accept. I could, however, give in to the urge to start taking care of him in the way he did me.

“After nightfall. Maybe in a few hours.”

His dark gaze held mine. “Whatever will we do with ourselves until then?”

I leaned in and kissed him softly. “You need a haircut.”

“Can you do it while riding my dick?”

I was pretty sure that was inevitable for us.

We set up in the bathroom with a kitchen stool and an old towel. The scissors made a soft snick as I clipped a lock of Convict’s dark hair. With his shoulders relaxed and chin tippeddown, he kept one hand on me when I moved around him. Always touching me somehow. The bathroom mirror reflected us in golden light. Him, shirtless and calm, and me, trying not to fall apart while my priorities battled and changed.

“Let me fuck you while you work.”

I tutted. “Not yet.”

“We’ll make it a game. You give me a haircut, I give you an orgasm. First one to mess up loses.”

I rolled my eyes and moved on.

His hair had grown out silky and thick, curling slightly at the ends. I combed it with my fingers and worked carefully to crop it back, shorter at the sides and blending it to longer on top. It was strange how familiar he’d become. The faint freckle behind his left ear, his ink, the raised scar on his shoulder he couldn’t explain, and the exact spot on his neck where I could drop a kiss that would make him shiver.

I landed my lips there.