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“I was going to ask why didn’t you just tell me who you were, but it’s a stupid question. I wouldn’t have believed you. I had to see you in action. To see the way you protected me last night.”

“Some things can’t be told. They have to be seen. Trust me, Kens, I wanted to say something so many times, but I liked the way you looked at me. I was just a man, a clean slate with no murderous, violent past. Not someone who’d disappointed you.”

Kensley shook his head. “You never disappointed me.”

“I agreed with King’s plan to send you away. To force you into the Order. I saw your face the day you left.”

“You were just following King’s orders.” Like always. He kept that bitter thought to himself, desperate not to wallow in old hurts. This was a new day, a fresh start, a chance to do something else. To be someone else. “My other questions?”

Bishop nodded. “I’ve been back in the city for a little over a year, establishing my new identity. We’ve always watched the church from a distance. I started observing you more once I’d recovered, but you never leave the grounds. The only way to make contact was to actually attend a service.”

“I remember. I didn’t know you, but you still called to me. Your spirit.” Kensley no longer trusted his first impressions of “Drew Burton,” unsure what had been his priest instinct and what had been recognition. “Does anyone besides King or Ziggy know who you are?”

Bishop shook his head. “Them and you. Hopefully, it stays that way, but nothing is foolproof, and there is every possibility that a few months down the road law enforcement will find DNA evidence to link me to Drew. Fingerprints are easier to wipe away than DNA, and if they don’t find my DNA in Drew’s apartment, they’re likely to find it somewhere in the banquet hall. ”

“So, you aren’t safe anymore, either?”

“Well, safe for the immediate future. And I have the resources at my fingertips to keep you safe, and that’s what matters most to me.

We have time. If King doesn’t call today, he’ll call tomorrow with our next steps.

And if that means leaving the state? Leaving the country?

It’s worth it, Kens, because I don’t have anything left to lose except you. ”

Oxygen fled Kensley’s lungs, and he was glad to be sitting, or he might have fallen over from the shock of the blunt admission. He fought for proper breath to ask, “Because I was your protection assignment?”

“Because I care about you. I always have.”

“I’m your best friend’s little brother.”

“You started as that, yes. I watched you grow up into a strong, defiant young man. Even when you went to the Order, we both watched from a distance to make sure you were healthy and safe. I admit, Kens, that I lost personal track of you for a time, because I was heavily involved in the business. I didn’t have the time or energy to watch, but King never left you unguarded. I swear to you.”

Bishop looked at his lap for several seconds before meeting Kensley’s eyes. “It wasn’t until after the fire that I saw a picture of you again. Of the man you’d become. If King hadn’t asked me to use my new anonymity to watch over you, I would have volunteered.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you know why?”

He did, but Kensley also needed to hear Bishop say it. To make it as real as possible, before Kensley made his choice. He’d seen the heartbreak on Bishop’s face when King told Kensley he was being sent to the Order. For his “safety.”

“Do you think someone can fall in love at fourteen?” Kensley asked.

Bishop’s eyes glistened. “I think it’s possible. But it’s dangerous. Especially if you fall in love with the wrong person.”

Kensley had to swallow several times to wet his parched mouth. “Who’s the wrong person?”

“Someone a decade older. Someone harder, angrier, who’s only ever known a life of crime and violence. A man who has killed in both self-defense and on the orders of another. A hitman with no past and no future.”

“What if that fourteen-year-old grows up into a lonely twenty-eight-year-old with no future he cares to imagine, back in that lonely tower, set apart from the world like a fragile, wilting rose under glass. Trapped there until he’s rescued by a fabled knight and given a chance to actually live.

To feel something real, like he did when he was young. ”

“Kens, I can’t.” But the growl in his voice said otherwise, hinting at barely maintained control. “King will kill me if I touch you.”

“My brother hasn’t survived this long by being an idiot, Bishop. None of his other goons would protect me like you have, because none of them care about me like you do.”

“You’re an omega, Kens, he doesn’t trust anyone else not to take advantage of you. To seduce you and get you wet, so they know what it’s like to fuck a guy who drips for it.” Bishop’s face and neck flushed, and he gripped the edge of the table so hard a knuckle popped. “Fuck.”

“There isn’t another man alive I’d let touch me like that. Only you.”

“Stop.”

“No.” Kensley stood, his chair scraping backward, and he crossed to stand beside Bishop.

Bishop kept staring straight ahead, but his chest was heaving.

His knuckles white. Perspiration gathered at his temples.

“I never wanted to join the Order, you know that. I don’t believe in any of it.

I don’t believe my very existence will tempt virtuous men to sin.

I definitely don’t believe I’m some sort of sacred object to be hidden away and only brought out for public worship.

I’m a human being, Bishop, with all the same wants and desires as anyone else. ”

“If you don’t stop…” Bishop let out a long, low growl that stirred arousal deep in Kensley’s gut and sent blood rushing to his dick. His thin cotton undershorts did nothing to hide his growing erection, and even though Bishop wasn’t looking at him, Bishop still swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.

Kensley could still walk away, straight into the bedroom and shut the door.

End this torturous dance, let Bishop off the hook, make this whole protection detail just a job with no emotional attachment.

But he didn’t want to. For the first time in half his life, he was free.

Free to do whatever the hell he wanted, vows be damned, and right now?

Right now, all he wanted in the world was for Bishop to strip him naked and have his way with Kensley’s body. He’d submit and love every second of it, because he’d chosen it. “I don’t want to stop,” Kensley whispered. He ran a single finger down the line of Bishop’s jaw. “Please.”

Kensley didn’t see Bishop move, barely heard the scrape of his chair and the snarl of a beast unleashed, and then his arms were immobile by his sides, both hands behind his back and secured in one of Bishop’s.

Bishop’s other hand grabbed his jaw and held him still, dark eyes glimmering with desire so deep, so heady that Kensley moaned.

Bishop mashed their groins together, and Kensley moaned a second time, enthralled by the thick erection pressing into his own.

His hole clenched, and he felt the first trickle of wetness.

“Are you sure this is what you want, Kens?” Bishop’s voice rumbled into Kensley’s sternum, deep and almost scary.

“For me to bend you over this table and shove my cock up your wet, dripping ass? To take your virginity in a dirty old cabin in the middle of nowhere? For the hitman to fuck his priest?”

“Fuck, yeeeees.” Kensley struggled against Bishop’s hold, but Bishop’s grip was ironclad, giving him no room to do more than pant and thrust harder against Bishop’s dick. “I need it, please. I’ve wanted it for so long. Wanted you , Bishop.”

Bishop’s hand slid from his jaw to his shoulder, then down to his hip.

Further around to press hard against his crease.

Kensley gasped and humped back, wanting that hand touching bare skin.

Needing pressure. Bishop rubbed over the thin cotton, pressing deeper.

“You’re wet for me, omega. Reading about it in a textbook is one thing, but damn. ”

“Please.” Tired of begging, tired of Bishop second-guessing him, Kensley’s oft-hidden defiant side came out, and he did the only thing that made sense: he bit the side of Bishop’s neck.

Not a hard bite, but more than a nip, and it startled Bishop into releasing his hands.

Kensley immediately dragged his fingers through Bishop’s thick hair, then curled them near the nape of his neck, holding Bishop’s head still.

Their mouths mere inches apart, hot breaths mingling the scents of coffee and desire.

Bishop grabbed his hips and held tight, head angled so Kensley couldn’t see his eyes. All he saw were Bishop’s parted lips, then the slip of tongue that wetted them. “I’m going to hell for this,” Bishop whispered.

“I’d rather follow you to hell than keep living in this purgatory.”

“Fuck.”

Kensley had never been kissed before. Not a real, passionate kiss on the mouth; the kind that came from a lover whose only desire was to take him apart, one piece at a time.

He’d read about it, squirreling away romance novels secretly traded among the priests, reading about things they’d only imagined.

Experiencing fictional desires while barred from exploring real ones.

Kensley hadn’t known what to expect from an actual kiss, beyond flowery descriptions in worn, stained pages.