Page 18 of The Primary Pest (Iphicles Security #1)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dmytro

Ajax Fairchild, I fuck sick boys like you with a butcher knife. I’m coming for you…

When Bartosz pulled over to get gas, Dmytro decided to stretch his legs.

He joined the man by the pump in the chilly night air.

Ajax had wept himself to sleep as noisily as any child trying to hide his tears.

Dmytro hadn’t acknowledged it because… well.

Not to save his pride. Odd. Ajax Freedom had pride, but Ajax Fairchild did not.

“Bartosz, look. These messages are different from the others.” He’d read them over several times before he’d forwarded the messages to Bartosz’s and Zhenya’s phones. “See what I mean?”

“Yes. Besides being horrific, he used Ajax’s legal surname. Someone new, you think?”

“I don’t know.” Dmytro had become uneasy as each one grew more specific and grisly.

“Probably just a different nutter. Zhenya and the others will chase it down.”

Dmytro couldn’t let it go. His instinct told him these threats were more serious—more dangerous—than the others. But also, crying was Dmytro’s other Achilles’ heel. He couldn’t stand it when people cried.

What a little devil Ajax was, offering himself like that. Dmytro could now see the very real difference between Ajax Fairchild and Ajax Freedom. Ajax Fairchild thought before he spoke. He had empathy. He was highly intelligent and a little lonely and possibly, maybe, a decent person.

Freedom would rather be slapped for doing something dreadful than ignored for behaving like a rational human being. Freedom was shock and awe personified. So offering himself… Dmytro tried again to let it go. The proposition had probably been another ploy by Ajax Freedom to get attention.

Dmytro gazed sourly at the sky.

He would not look at Ajax again. He’d spent enough time studying the straight line of his spine already. That disgraceful mop of curly hair. His long neck and broad shoulders. His slim hips, rounded buttocks, and coltish legs.

Oh, yes, he’d clocked Ajax when he’d risen from the hot tub with his cock hard and goose flesh all over his skin. With his overblown pupils and water dripping down his body in tiny rivers like sweat after sex.

I saw you and I wanted you. Worse, I might even like you.

He’d schooled his face and kept his body disinterested.

In his old life, to betray even a breath of interest in Ajax would have led to certain death.

He’d kept his thoughts—his yearnings—to himself for so long they didn’t even feel like a part of him anymore.

It was as if they belonged to someone else.

Lived somewhere else now, except for some baggage in a closet that he hadn’t quite cleared out.

But he knew now. His body knew, and it wouldn’t be so easy to hide his attraction to Ajax. Especially with Ajax taunting him. I could blow you. Rim you. Ride you.

He’d wanted all of that and more, and somehow he’d managed to keep a blank expression on his face and any irritation out of his voice when he’d replied.

Reflexively, he checked inside the car.

Ajax was still asleep.

Relieved, Dmytro made a brief trip to the restroom, had a piss, and went around to the back to stare into the silent darkness. His muscles had grown stiff from holding still for so long, so he stamped his legs and stretched.

Serious or not, it had been a while since Dmytro had been propositioned by a man. Most found out he had children and simply didn’t bother. If they did, they were older, and often they were married and looking to cheat. It wasn’t difficult to say no to something like that, but Ajax…

He had to have been making fun. Turning his boredom into a silly, shocking game.

All Dmytro had to do was get home to his girls. He didn’t want to be a part of Ajax’s sad little drama. This was too dangerous. Too close to his real life for him to even contemplate. He returned just as the gas pump shut off. Bartosz looked a little bored.

“You okay?”

“Sure.” Bartosz retrieved a flask from his jacket pocket and offered Dmytro a drink.

Dmytro shook his head.

“Such a choirboy,” he mocked. “Despite all your time with our less than lawful friends abroad, you live like a priest.”

“All the priests I ever met were drunks.”

“Point.” Bartosz pointed the flask at him. “But what about the boy?”

Dmytro winced. “What about him?”

“He has a very sweet mouth.” Bartosz was as fond of eavesdropping as Ajax was of shocking people. Either way, the entire episode in the back seat had been a win for both of them.

Bartosz drank before wiping his lips in an unsubtle, suggestive way. “I don’t mind telling you, I could enjoy guarding that body up close.”

“Don’t be a pig.” He doubted Bartosz meant the words. They both knew not to shit where they ate. “He’s a baby.”

“He’s a perfectly fuckable age, even in these puritanical United States. Plus, I read his file. He’s whored himself out plenty already. You think he’d mind?”

Dmytro narrowed his eyes. “If I didn’t think you were teasing—”

“Of course I’m teasing, brother.” Bartosz’s good nature was back. “It wasn’t me he propositioned.”

“He was only trying to shock me.”

“The way he looks at you makes me wonder if he’d put up much of a fight if you gave him a try.”

“You really think I’m that sort of man? To just ‘give a try’?” He poked Bartosz’s chest. “That should disgust even you.”

“You misunderstand. I’m saying woo him . He looks at you like you’re the last kolaczki on the plate.”

“He looks at me because of my brother Anton,” Dmytro revealed finally. “Because of some hero worship from the past. Believe me. We keep him safe. We find the threat. And we send him back. Everyone will be happier.”

Bartosz pulled out his phone. “To that end, I got a message from Zhenya.”

Dmytro took it. Read it. Looking into new messages.

Sender using onion routing. We’re working on it.

They’re escalating. We’ve arranged for a decoy with another set of operatives.

They’re in the second safe house now. Did you ask about that list I sent?

Stay where you are. Lie low. We’ll be in touch.

“What does this mean?” Dmytro asked. “A decoy?”

“They’ve got another team with a lookalike in the safe house. So hopefully everyone believes the boy is there for now.”

“And we’re to keep His Majesty moving up and down the coast until the sender is found?” Dmytro knew what he would do with anyone who threatened Ajax. The idea made his gut burn with familiar fire.

“Zhenya gave me directions to the local marina. We’re to move to the water.” Bartosz took his phone back. “If we can, first thing, we get breakfast. I’m starving.”

“It’s three hours until daylight at least.”

“Tell my belly that.” Bartosz got his receipt.

“Can we get his things from the motel?”

“Zhenya says someone will meet us at the landing. They’ll have our things waiting.” Bartosz put his hand on the door handle. Dmytro stopped him from opening it.

“Don’t wake him. He has trouble sleeping.”

“He is trouble sleeping. But pretty.” Bartosz pushed inside, and the door closed quietly between them.

For a few painful seconds, Dmytro wondered if Ajax would make those astounding propositions to Bartosz too.

Wondered if Bartosz might take him up on them.

It was really none of his business, but it might be better for everyone concerned. It also might actually enrage him.

He didn’t let himself think about it further. He got into the back seat of the car, stared straight ahead, and brooded.

Bartosz’s elastic morality reminded him too much of his past when taking what he wanted from anyone who had it was his business plan. It would never have occurred to him back then that stealing from a girl with a broken head and a beater car was a bad thing to do as long as it was expedient.

He didn’t like to think about some of the things he’d done.

He’d fallen far from his father’s aspirations for him.

Discarded all his privilege by walking away from that life.

He’d believed that concepts like good and bad, right and wrong, were for people who didn’t have to scrape and claw and bully their way along the rough streets of Kiev to survive.

Then he’d met Yulia, and for her, he wanted to be more than that guy. For his children and for his immortal soul.

It sickened him to let them down, even for a moment.

“What should we do?” he asked when Bartosz started the engine.

“Seems to me we’re doing it.”

“Where’s the boat?”

“South of here.” Bartosz grinned into the rearview mirror. “The parents are sparing no expense. Did you bring your yachting togs?”

Dmytro gave yachting togs all the thought they deserved. “Let Zhenya know he should make amends with Carl and check on the girl. Make reparations for the car. Ajax will want to know she’s all right.”

“Why am I unsurprised?”

“What?” Dmytro glanced at Ajax.

“You’ve already gone soft for him. That’s why they picked you, brother.”

“What do you mean?” Dmytro asked.

“You never could resist a troubled child.”

“Don’t be stupid.” He kept his face impassive, but what would he do if he couldn’t hide his feelings for Ajax?

If Bartosz got even a whiff of his growing attraction to Ajax, he’d never hear the end of it.

Far more troubling, falling for Ajax would make it impossible to do his job.

He’d lose his best asset—a rational mind.

But if anyone had ever needed a true friend—someone who cared deeply about only him and not his looks or his money or what he could do for them—it was Ajax Fairchild. He’d had absentee parents, and the people in his life regarded him as a job.

Just as you’re trying to do, he reminded himself. Trying and failing.

In order for Dmytro to do his job to the best of his ability—with each threat growing more repugnant—he couldn’t afford to care about Ajax Fairchild, at least not any more than he cared about the rest of his clients.

He had to rein in his emotions and his dick and conceal his attraction for Ajax’s safety.

Since it was for Ajax’s future happiness, his safety, and his very well-being, Dmytro made more than a decision. He made a vow.