Page 7 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

"That's gay," Lawrence threw out, and I resisted the urge to see if his legs were really broken by putting some extra weight on them and focused on giving Kayden's hands another swat when I saw them reach for my chest again. Sometimes it really was hard to believe the man was a fully capable cop who kept cool under fire. He had once been a marine who’d seen plenty of danger and fighting in his first and only term in the service.

And that was from me, someone who had seen him operate cool and collected, as in control as he was dangerous when he finally pulled his weapon to use it.

"Moron," I snapped at him, pushing him away. "Could you act like you took pepper spray to the face?"

"Oh hell, it wasn't anything. Throwing hot sauce in my face would have been worse."

"You were doubled over."

"Well, yeah, you get even regular pepper in your eyes and you're going to be out of it for a bit. I would have been right on your ass, but someone decided they were a rogue cop who didn't need backup and didn't tell his partner where he was going."

That...shut me up in an instant. It had been said with his typical playful tone and a smirk on his face, but I didn't need to look to know there was a steely glint in his eyes.

Kayden might have been former military, but wasn't the type to think that rules were the end-all, be-all of doing his job and was pretty tolerant of that sort of thing.

..he'd had to be to be partners with me for so long.

What he wasn't showing because there was a witness present, was that he was pissed that I’d left him behind and hadn't let him back me up because I'd been so focused on hunting our whining degenerate down.

God, I was going to get an earful from the captain and my partner later.

"Ah," I said, clearing my throat in what I hoped he took as a sign of understanding and acceptance.

"Mmm," he hummed, shaking his head and looking back toward the mouth of the alley. Which was his way of saying 'good, but you're still in for it later'. Honestly, having a partner was like having a particularly needy and cranky wife sometimes.

And people wondered why I’d stayed unmarried and mostly single for my adult life.

"Ah," Kayden said, perking up. "And here comes the cavalry."

Sure enough, the distant sirens were growing closer, and I prepared myself for the upcoming gauntlet.

There were going to be plenty of questions from the responding units, and I was going to bet there would be more melodramatics from the whimpering idiot still sitting handcuffed at my feet.

By the time that was done, we would be just in time for our shift change to return to the precinct, grab some food on the way, and start doing any reports we needed to finish up.

Except now I knew damn well we were going to be ordered back to the precinct on empty stomachs while the captain fired himself up to lay into me.

Again.

"Ready for the show?" Kayden asked with an amused smirk.

"Not as ready as you are."

"Well, that's normal."

"You still owe me lunch."

"Yeah, yeah."

I kicked the front doors to the precinct open and stormed out onto the sidewalk. “I can't believe he suspended me!"

"Actually, what he said was don't come in for the next couple of shifts until we see how much of a shitstorm is kicked up," Kayden reminded me, because he was helpful like that, as he jogged to keep up with me.

He wasn't exactly a short man, but I stood at almost six and a half feet tall, and my long legs could outpace most people unless they picked up the pace.

"Which is not the same thing as suspended. "

"I might as well be," I grumbled. "First, he takes me out of Narcotics, and then he suspends me."

"Since it's not going in your record or being broadcast, it's not really a suspension."

"Seriously?"

"Well...it is."

"Yeah, except now I'm not even getting paid for this shit. At least if he pulled this crap while I was still in Narcotics, then I would be getting paid no matter how many hours I missed."

Of course, going back to being a beat cop instead of a narcotics officer had been the compromise to my getting fired instead.

It had been done with the understanding that if I kept my 'nose clean' and my 'head on straight' for a year or two, then talk of reinstating me would be considered.

Of course, that clearly wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and now I was going to go without pay, which wasn't a disaster since I lived well below my means and had money to spare for a rainy day, but still. ..in all but name, suspended.

"Well, if you end up homeless and destitute, I promise you can crash on my couch."

"I refuse to sleep in your living room with the long train of women you drag through there."

"You could always have a train of your own, choo choo."

"You know, just because you need to have a string of meaningless, empty hook-ups to fill the void of your ex being a giant, cheating whore, doesn't mean everyone needs to keep track."

"Woah, woah, woah, that's cruel, man."

I stopped and winced. “Sorry."

"That's alright," he said, slapping my arm a little harder than normal. "I know your daddy used to beat the shit out of you. There was bound to be some brain damage somewhere."

I eyed him, now knowing he hadn't taken the slightest offense at what I said. "I know the Marine isn't talking about brain damage. You've got to have some just to sign up, let alone make it through Basic."

"True true, which is exactly why I would be the expert on it," he said with a shrug.

"And I'm not going to be too offended by what you said.

You could pull women with those looks and your dangerous aura, but you completely tanked your charisma, and most women probably think you're a serial killer in the making. "

"The last girl said I came off like an asshole who beats his wife and makes his buddies lie for him so she never feels safe leaving."

"God, that's right. What a bitch."

"Yeah, and wrong. Especially the part about my buddies lying for me. You'd never lie for me about something like that."

"Damn right. Women need to be treated right."

"I go back to the constantly moving train of women through your apartment."

"Hey, I get plenty of returners. I make sure those women are well taken care of. I make sure their legs are still shaking the next morning when I give them breakfast and offer to pay for their ride home."

"A slutty gentleman."

"What can I say? I'm a giver."

I snorted. “Tell yourself whatever it takes to get you through the night."

The thing was, I didn't need him to argue his point or insist on it, I believed him.

At his most basic, Kayden was a kind and generous soul, and it didn't take much imagination to picture him being willing to make sure his partners were well cared for before they left his apartment.

It was in his nature to make sure someone was happy if he felt he was responsible for that happiness.

Not that I had any proof, I’d never been around when he had sex as far as I knew.

There was just something...uncomfortable about being around people having sex.

Even if they were polite and kept the noise down and didn’t announce what they were doing, the knowledge sat like a rock in my stomach.

It wasn't something I’d ever shared, but I suspected Kayden had figured that out on his own.

Another thing he was good at was figuring people out and dealing with them, which I generally let him do because I was too big and too 'scary looking' for most people to want to open up to or relax around.

It wasn't like I could blame people. I had known as a teen that I’d suffer from the unfortunate fate of looking like my father as I grew older, and it had come true with every passing year.

Like him, I was a large man in every sense of the word, a face that was commonly regarded as 'hard' and 'mean', and while my dark hair didn't come into the equation, I had eyes so dark that in direct sunlight, they looked black.

Add in my deep voice and the fact that I wasn't that great at softer emotions, and people generally gave me a wide berth.

Not all people, of course, but Kayden had been right that there were women out there drawn to people who gave off the feeling I did.

Which, of course, made me wary of being with them because all I could see in them was my mother, who had taken my father's abuse over the years without a peep.

I may not have been the nicest guy, but I sure as shit didn't want to repeat history, or draw women who might unconsciously seek that very thing.

I'd seen that happen all too often in my time on the force, and there was a reason I loathed being called out to a domestic.

"The deal was lunch," I told Kayden, shaking off my thoughts before they grew darker.

All too often, my brain betrayed me like that, and if I wasn't careful, I’d end up caught up in thoughts that grew increasingly bleaker.

In a lot of ways, as much as Kayden's sunny and goofy disposition got on my nerves, it was usually him or at least his presence that made sure I didn't sink too far.

"It is not lunchtime, that was three hours of chewing out ago," he said with a chuckle, checking his phone and tapping furiously.

He lived on his phone when he wasn't forced to focus on the job, but at the same time, he was on that thing when we were stuck in the patrol car together.

Whereas I treated my phone as a nuisance that I couldn't wait to get away from most days.

"Speaking of, and you're still buying me food by the way, what the hell did the chief have to say to you? He had you in there for a minute."

"Oh. Giving me hell too."

"For what?"

"You."

"Me? What the hell?"

"See, he seems to be still suffering from the delusion that I'm going to keep you on a short leash when you decide to take off like an eighties hero cop."

" Why ?"