Page 32 of Immoral (Park Avenue Kings #3)

I flinched at the realization he’d known I was watching him. He was more aware than he’d originally let on, something I needed to remember.

Nodding, I shoved my hands in my pockets and entered the room. “Yes.”

“He’s handsome. He still around?”

“Not for you he’s not.”

Benoit chuckled but didn’t put down the frame. “For you, then?”

I hesitated, then shook my head.

“I see.” He looked back at the picture before carefully setting it on the piano. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven.”

“Just a child,” he murmured to himself. “He was in this world?”

I knew what he was getting at: did my father get killed doing the same thing I was doing now? But the reality was far from his insinuation.

“My father was too smart to get involved with this business. He steered clear of men like me.” I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “He’d fucking hate the person I am now.”

As silence fell between us, I tried to picture Dad’s face in my mind, but with each passing year it had faded and now I couldn’t tell if what I remembered was real or something my imagination made up.

“Where was this taken?” Benoit asked.

“Here on the island, during the Ifestia Festival.” When the name didn’t seem to ring a bell, I continued, “Some people call it the Volcano Festival, since it celebrates the origins of how Santorini came to be. How even in destruction, something beautiful can be formed.” I nodded at the photo, at the fireworks in the background as my father covered my ears from the noise, our faces lit up with huge smiles.

I was six, and it was the first time I’d been allowed to go.

It had also been the last.

“It’s a beautiful shot.” Benoit’s lips quirked. “You’re smiling in it.”

“I was six.”

“I know,” he said, and moved a little closer to me. “But it’s nice to know that somewhere inside you is a little boy who used to smile freely.”

“Deep, deep inside.”

“Are you always so cynical?”

“What do you think?”

Benoit put a hand on my arm, and for the first time since I’d discovered who he really was, I let him.

“I think that little boy is still in there. He’s just afraid to come out now.”

I shook my head. “Afraid? Hardly.”

“You’re so used to having to put up a front, show strength, not weakness, that you’ve buried him. But he started to come out with me.”

I swallowed back my denial as Benoit ran his hand up my arm and placed it on my chest. I knew I should shove it aside and walk away, but as he stared up at me with eyes full of understanding, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to move, let alone push him away.

“You can let your walls down,” he said so softly that I almost missed it. “It’s just you and me now.”

“Is it?” My heart thundered under his palm as visions of him on the balcony that first night in Prague, sitting in my lap, flashed inside my head.

Benoit was right—with him I’d shown a side of myself I’d rarely let anyone see, a vulnerable side.

It had started out as a lustful craving for him that I couldn’t quit.

But the more time I’d spent with him—been inside of him—the more I’d given of myself, until I’d been planning dates in the hopes of impressing him.

That hopeful boy, the one who might’ve grown into a young man my father would’ve been proud of had he lived, had started to re-emerge, and all because this beautiful man had smiled at me.

“When it was you and me, like this,” Benoit said, moving in until our toes touched, “it was only ever us.”

I wanted to believe him. But I wasn’t there yet. So I did the one thing I knew would stop him talking, stop him from pushing me to admit the one thing I wasn’t ready to yet—I kissed him.

I swept my lips over his in a gentle brush, a test. If he wanted to shove me away, he could. But the second my mouth met his, the fingers on my chest clenched around the material of my shirt and he opened to me.

I immediately accepted.

I slipped my tongue inside and tangled it with his, and the moan that left him had me reaching for his arms and drawing him even closer. I wanted to touch him and feel him touching me. I reached for the back of his neck, and Benoit angled his head and let me in even deeper.

“Dimitri,” he whispered as I kissed my way up his jaw to his ear. “I missed you…missed this.”

God, so had I. It felt like forever since I’d tasted him, and even longer since I’d held him, when in reality it’d only been days.

I turned him until his back was to the piano and caged him in, pushing a leg between his as I brought my mouth back to his, not trusting myself to talk. The last thing I needed to do was open my mouth and admit that I cared.

And fuck, that was the real problem here, wasn’t it?

I’d finally found someone I could see myself opening up to, sharing myself with, only to find out he wasn’t who he’d said he was.

As that cold, stark reality slammed into me, I ripped my mouth off Benoit’s.

I stared down into his gorgeous face, memorizing his flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and dilated eyes, and wanted nothing more than to lift him onto the piano and take him.

But just like I wanted to believe him—I wasn’t there yet.

I didn’t trust him. I didn’t know that I trusted this .

And until I did, Benoit was the most dangerous person in the world to me.