Page 6

6 The Secret Truth

The taxi driver was listening to the radio when I got in. Which is how I learnt that another hostage was executed. The details of who it was were not yet available, save that it was not the mayor.

I parted ways with the taxi close to my apartment and began to walk in the opposite direction, ignoring the relentless, cold rain beating against me, filtering through my clothing towards my skin. I needed the walk, needed to wash away the mental grime from the day.

Pa had lied about Ma. The truth of it was as stark and potent as my shock to learn it. If I had not seen their grief, I’d be dragging them for questioning. Pa had of course been questioned in the years that Secureforce had been working on the case. That question had been asked many times over as matter of routine, and their answer recorded. The same answer Pa had given me: No.

A short, brutal lie. Why did they lie? Why would a herm so broken by the murder of their lifemate lie about the reason for their death? Pa had hindered the investigation, led them to look in the wrong place, to dismiss it as a random attack by GLF seeking to maim and kill Herms.

I strode into the Flask , my favourite bar where I knew I would not be disturbed by some acquaintance or ex-lover. It was midweek, so the place was largely deserted, which is how I preferred it. I ordered a double measure of whisky from Dane, a bullish looking herm, and downed it quickly, before ordering more.

A large form slipped into the seat next to me. I stared at my empty glass and focused on the sudden change inside me his mere presence caused. The calm, the numbness I had lived with had abruptly vanished, and my whole body was now primed to his nearness, surrounded now by the energy that seemed to precede him. It was as if he lit the fuse on the rusted cogs and gears that made me and brought to life a flame inside my shrivelled soul. My body began to buzz with restless energy, with some primal recognition of a mate. The shock of it had stunned me this morning when I had come into Fanigan’s office, and made me act like a veritable arse. I sensed him just the same way then as I did now.

He pushed a five dollar note to the barkeeper. ‘I’ll get the next one for them, and a double for me. Although make it the Highlander’s. Peat.’ He pointed to the more expensive collection on the top shelf, which I had been eyeing for years, yet never felt like I could stretch to it.

The bartender flung their drying towel over their shoulder and looked at me. ‘This Gendrian bothering you, Rock?’

The question almost made me laugh. This Gendrian was turning me inside out, lighting some explosive fuse inside me. I downed my second measure of whisky Dane had placed in front of me. ‘He is most certainly bothering me. But let the fool buy me a drink anyway, if he wants to.’

I still had not looked at Rain. I knew the moment I did, my racing thoughts would come to a grinding halt, and I would be a tangle of unwanted sensations. We had met before, of that I grew more and more certain, and a detective in me sieved systematically through my long collection of memories.

The feelings his presence inspired would have left their mark on my psyche …

A party … Blue eyes behind a mask …

Dane snatched up the note and poured two doubles of the Highlander’s Peat, before heading to the other side of the bar to serve another drunk. I lifted the glass ready to down it, when the peaty warm smell hit my nose. Downing it seemed like a terrible waste. I took a sip and put the glass down, my mind spinning in a wash of memories …

The party …

Five years ago, I was made detective. At twenty, I was the youngest in their history, having risen through the ranks of Secureforce with neck-braking speed. The CEO, Jamie Carlson, took note and invited me along with a few others from our office to one of the playherm’s famed hedonistic parties at their house. By then I was no stranger to vice, and nothing I saw shocked me … except …

Images of that party now flashed in my mind. Masks everywhere, semi clad bodies, so much flesh, a tangle of limbs, kissing, dancing, fucking. Gendrian and Herm entertainers mingled with the guests, drawing them aside for carnal delights. I was on my fifth cocktail, dancing with any Herm who took my fancy. I avoided the few Gendrian guests and the entertainers.

Until I felt an unsettling pang, a sensation of being watched far too intently. I turned my head and my gaze collided with a masked giant Gendrian, watching me dance whilst leaning against one of the marble columns that decorated the CEO’s mansion. I hated Gendrians. It was the only feeling they had ever inspired in me … until now. Now I noticed things I had never noticed about them before, his size, the hairs on his chest peeking through a partially opened shirt. Those hairs seemed suddenly incredibly erotic and I wanted to run my hand through them, wanted to feel the size of a Gendrian cock. Aside from magazines, I had only ever seen them on stage in those strip nightclubs Shay and I occasionally frequented.

As if pulled by a taught string, I approached the giant, feeling much as I did now, angry, unsettled, and aroused. His cold pale blue eyes watched me from behind the mask, never wavering, never flicking aside. I felt as if that gaze stripped me bare and probed deeper than the skin and flesh and bone that made me.

My gaze now rose slowly up, to meet Rain’s in the mirror on the other side of the bar.

Fuck .

I stared intently at him. As ever he returned my stare, unashamedly, unwaveringly, the same gaze stripping me now as then of clothing and flesh, to bare my soul for his personal enjoyment.

‘The party,’ I uttered barely loud enough to hear.

Amusement and something else flashed in his eyes as he took a sip of his whisky, whilst watching me in the mirror. His silence and the slight, wicked tilt of his lips challenged me to relive every moment it again.

‘You are watching me,’ I had said to the masked man with an involuntary sensuous husk to my voice.

‘It is hard not to watch the most striking person in the room,’ he replied with a sensuous twist to his lips. ‘A flame in the darkness of this place.’

Those sinful lips dragged my gaze to them, pulled me a step closer until his scent and heat hit me with such staggering force I grew dizzy. ‘Are you one of those who likes to watch us Herms, Gendrian?’ My hand rose up as if in a dream and my fingers brushed the hair on his chest, silky soft, and yet wild in the way they curled and tangled. I had previously imagined that chest hair would be coarse.

He did not move, watched me touch him as the music beat around us, as the lights and night mingled together in a strange dance. With my hand on his chest, I could feel his heart beating harder, faster, his breath coming harsher.

‘I’m one of those who likes to watch you ,’ he said softly, almost tenderly. ‘My gaze is for no other.’

Something about his smoky voice went straight to my core and I leant into him until his hard chest crushed my softer one. ‘Are you the entertainment tonight then?’ I whispered close to his ear as I breathed the earthy, woody musk of him.

‘If I am, then I am only your entertainment tonight,’ he replied as his arm slowly came around my waist and he pulled me against his erection.

My hand rose up his chest, and hooked behind his neck, pulling his lips to mine. There was no resistance, only an eager tongue. The taste of him was heady, and my hips began to undulate against his, an ache of need rising fiercely in me. And that was when a flash of Ma’s blood struck my mind. I tensed, ripped my lips from his. As if he sensed my sudden self-disgust, he pulled away, his gaze searching mine, before finally sharpening with some understanding.

‘You hate me,’ he whispered against my cheek.

‘Yes,’ I replied breathlessly.

His lips quirked in bitter amusement.

‘Then why don’t you punish me?’ He whispered as his mouth moved to kiss my neck, and the feel of the rough stubble of his jaw against my skin made my cock twitch painfully. ‘Do you wish me on my knees before you?’ His lips moved along my throat and I threw my head back opening for him. ‘Tell me what you want?’ He lifted his face to look into mine.

Suddenly I felt too much all at one. Things I did not understand or even want to. ‘Yes, I want you on your knees,’ I said breathlessly, and it came out almost as some twisted endearment, whilst the need to hurt warred with the need to fuck. Beneath it all lurked another need that left me altogether breathless and close to tears. With a gentle encouragement of my hands on his shoulders, he sank to his knees before me, a wry smile touching his lips.

As he gazed up at me behind is mask, I gently stroked his chin and cheek like some cruel abuser, feeling the rough stubble of his face, as longing and tenderness battled my rage. I revelled in seeing a Gendrian before me on his knees, revelled in his almost helpless need to do as I demanded. And I fought a dreadful need to sink down with him and kiss him with all I had. I suspected he was entertainment, for surely no man would do this for a stranger. With my other hand, I unbuttoned my pants, reached inside and pulled out my cock. My fingers ran into his hair, and I gently gripped a handful of it whilst putting the tip of my erection to his lips.

Without breaking my gaze, he opened his mouth and took me inside, groaning in pleasure as he gripped my arse and pulled me closer into his face. I braced myself against the wall with one hand, the other tightened in his hair. The party, the other guests, the music all faded away. My thoughts and rage and hatred dissipated into a fog as I fucked his mouth, gripping his hair harshly, thrusting and thrusting as he sucked and licked, and then he slid a finger inside my quim. My hips jolted forward and my seed filled his mouth. I held him firmly in place for the last few thrust, not giving him the option to pull away and spit, forcing him to swallow, wanting him to take me even deeper inside him.

Another moment passed before the shuddering weakness of my limbs released the hold I had on his hair.

Slowly, he pulled away, his gaze still on my face, and I knew he had never stopped looking at me with those strikingly pale eyes. They watched me grow mindless, watched me shudder in ecstasy, watched every muscle in my face go taught with my climax. Still looking up at me from his knees he licked his lips, then pulled out his finger from my cunny and licked that too, slowly, sensuously. And it was that gesture which somehow had branded me as his.

Everything in me suddenly felt raw, unhinged, and I wanted to hurt him and myself, wanted to punch the wall. I closed my eyes, put away my cock, and quickly left him as he rose smoothly from his knees to his feet. The motion betrayed his strength, and somehow, I did not feel like I fucked him or used him, but he fucked me, as if he had me exactly where he wanted me.

I felt his gaze on me as I pushed and shoved my way through the party, needing to get away, as shame surged inside me. Not because I fucked a Gendrian, used him, fouled him, but because I fucking enjoyed it, more than I had enjoyed sex with any Herm. And I wanted more. I wanted to fall on my knees before him and take his cock into my mouth.

I stared at Rain now as I sipped my whisky, then took out my cigar, lit it and inhaled, dropping my gaze to stare at my glass. Here he was, the man who had haunted me these last ten years, and I didn’t know what to say, what to feel. The man who made me feel things again all those years ago, before I fled him.

‘I’ve never been so aroused in my life,’ he said gruffly beside me, staring now into his glass. ‘You’ve left me in quite a state. After you left, I found another Herm, took them into a dark room, and fucked them, all the while I was thinking of you, smelling you on my fingers.’

A pang of misplaced jealousy hit me. Followed by an even more ludicrous sense of betrayal.

I played with the glass before taking another sip. ‘I looked through Grant’s account,’ I said, clumsily steering away from the uncharted territory between us. Steering away from the past and what it meant. ‘He is getting paid, more than the going rate for a killer on the street. The account manager is also on their books. There is no record of who the payer is.’

Rain took my abrupt change of topic in his stride. ‘A dead end, then?’

‘Not exactly. I forged the account to show a large withdrawal, emptying the account of all the funds. If I am not mistaken, Grant will be making an appearance at the bank tomorrow for his regular cash withdrawal.’

Rain grunted in amusement. ‘Good thinking, Rockhall. Rattle the messenger and he will rattle his benefactor.’

‘Or he’ll be shaken for loose change by the receiver of those funds.’

I fell silent. He did, too.

When I said nothing more, he took another sip. ‘What are you not telling, Rockhall? Though news, this is hardly enough to get you in a mood. You seemed upset when you left the bank.’

I drew on my cigar and released the smoke. ‘Don’t you have anything better to do with your life than follow me, Drizzle.’

‘Here for the full report, Rockfall,’ He said casually, though there was nothing official in his voice.

I tuned the glass in my hand, staring at the liquid glowing warmly in the dim light, the peaty aroma mingling with the heady, musky scent of the man beside me. ‘Nothing to do with this case, Rain.’

‘I will decide that for myself, detective. So, spit it out.’

I downed the rest of my whisky. ‘He was paid to kill Ma.’

There was silence, and when I glanced at Rain in the mirror, he was steadily gazing into his drink as if considering this … no, he was staring into his drink as if this was no news to him.

His silence pissed me off. First Pa, now him. ‘You knew this.’

He did not answer, merely stared ahead in silence.

My glass was empty, my head swimming now and restrain was becoming harder with each drop I drank, with each moment of this blasted silence.

I called Dane over to get me another whisky. Rain slid forward another five-dollar note which Dane pocketed before pouring another two measures of Highlander’s Peat and sliding me the glass.

‘So, now that you have my report, maybe you can just bugger off.’ Despite my mood, there was no venom in my voice. ‘I like to drink alone in here.’ My gaze settled on his fingers wrapped around his glass. The same long, large fingers that had briefly wrapped around my cock a few hours earlier.

‘I’m not sorry about earlier,’ he said suddenly, gruffly, as he watched me stare at his hands, no doubt seeing inside my mind.

‘Why were you following me for seven years, Wild?’

A beat of silence, then, ‘It started off in an official capacity. Then became something else entirely.’ He grew silent for a moment, the type of silence I recognised from many interrogations and victim interviews, the silence of someone looking for right words in a swirling wind of emotions. Then he raised his gaze to meet mine in the mirror. ‘I was given your file by someone who recommended you as a recruit into our team. You were eighteen then, fresh out of school. The profiler who recommended you, was adamant you were a perfect fit. I read your file and was intrigued enough to listen and consider it. Your profile seemed to fit the type of people we look for. Trouble was, I was not certain I agreed with the Herm who wanted you to be on my team. You were too young, too wounded, too wild and undisciplined.’

‘Too broken,’ I said what he was trying not to say.

‘It was your self-destructive edge that gave me pause. Still, I saw potential and decided to see for myself. So I followed you, watched you. At first it was nothing more than basic observations, which I added to the file. Soon I began to realise how inadequate and woefully incomplete your profiling was.

‘From your school reports, I expected a hot-headed temperamental teen. Instead, I found a cool, calculating Herm, who became temperamental when there seemed to be no trigger for it. From knowing your past, I sought scars of grief, only to find a wall of hate blocking everything inside. I began peeling away layer after layer, never reaching the core, the heart of you. You made no sense. You see we need to understand a pattern of behaviour. We need to know what our agents will do in any one situation. With you there was no pattern, at least not one we could predict. You killed when we were certain you would spare. You laughed when we thought you would rage. You sought company when solitude was the instinctive choice. There was no pattern to your mood, to when or whom you showed mercy, to whom you even chose to bed.

‘We had three other profilers look at your file, behaviour, reaction and responses to stimuli, personality traits. Each profiler gave me a different sum of the whole. You were like a chameleon.

‘The more you mocked our profilers, the more I wanted to break through to your core. I went out again, to watch you, trying to see which of your colours were truly you.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Until it became more than that. You were a contradiction, and thus unstable, exactly what I did not want in my team. Wild, yet sombre, cold and calculating yet sensuous. I watched you take lover after lover. Watched you fuck in anger and despair, and even out of boredom. Rarely pleasure. Countless times I told myself that I had seen enough and tried to walk away …’ He shook his head in self-deprecating manner. ‘But what started as a simple assignment became an obsession. The only thing I knew for certain was that you were not ready for the agency. Once I finally came to this certainty, I stopped following you … for a time. But the draw was too much to resist. It was a compulsion, a new way of being for me. So I continued to follow you, wanting to get into your head, trying to see whether you would be the best damned asset we’ve ever had or a liability we could not afford. Then one day … in a rage I threw my fist into a mirror. It cracked, into a dozen jagged edges, sharp, chipped and yet the mirror remained whole, a bizarre collection of broken parts. And as I gazed at it, I suddenly saw you, knew you, understood you so profoundly, my legs almost buckled beneath me. You were that mirror, except you did break, you fell to the floor in pieces and someone tried to put you together again and all the pieces were now in the wrong place. You viewed the word through shards of distorted light.’

I will take you apart piece by piece, and then I will rebuild you again until you are whole as you once were.

‘You cannot fix me, Rain,’ I said roughly through a tightening throat.

He did not reply, merely continued with his story. ‘I followed your progress in Secureforce. Watched you become the best agent this city had. Watched you mature and reshape yourself, move those broken pieces around, as if seeking to make some sense of your world, of yourself. I watched you become more constant, wiser even, yet just as unpredictable to our profilers.’ He paused to take a drink. ‘But not to me. I saw the pieces of you, saw the distortion and knew where they would lead you.’

‘Why you? Who were you reporting to?’ My voice was hoarse, with something potent and violent, something that needed to break out.

He took a moment to reply. ‘I’m not just an agent with the secret service. I am the head of the Special Operatives Division. I would be the one to hire you to join our team.’

I ran my hand through my hair. Special Ops … chief … my cock inside him …

I could no longer look at him. This was absurd, twisted, even by my standards. ‘Which division?’

‘That’s classified, Rockhall. Your briefing will be when and if you join our team.’

I tapped the ash into the tray, taking a long, deep breath of calming smoke, until my head was swimming. ‘Who put my name forward?’

There was a beat of silence. ‘Doesn’t matter,’

‘I think it does. I was eighteen and straight out of school when I joined Secureforce. I was a nobody. That was seven years ago. Who profiled me and put me forward as a candidate?’

His lips firmed. ‘I think this is a conversation for another time, Rockfall.’

‘Who?’ I spun to face him, grabbed his shirt and leant into him. ‘Damn you, Wild, you better tell me unless you want to see one of those broken shards gut you like a fucking pig.’

He looked at me intently, calmly, as if he already knew what the answer would do to me and what I would do with it. ‘Your father,’ he uttered, his body tense, ready to react.

I jerked back. ‘What?’

His teeth clenched and his jaw ticked. ‘Both your parents were agents on my team. I was their handler. I was only just recently promoted when Casey Rockfall was murdered. Robin Rockfall never returned to duty after that. Robin was our profiler. Three years later, they put your name forward. Telling me to profile you myself if I didn’t believe them. It was the worst damned profiling of their career. Robin wanted to save you, and to them, that meant giving you to us to shape. But … you were not mouldable.’

I heard his unspoken words. One could not shape broken glass.

‘My parents were spies,’ I said numbly as every one of my feelings retreated and cold emptiness engulfed me.

‘Don’t,’ Rain gritted out, his jaw tense. ‘Don’t hide in the blasted darkness. Rage if you want, but stay with me, Rockhall.’

I turned away, leaning indifferently on the counter, whilst taping ash of the last stub of my cigar. ‘Ma wasn’t killed at random. It was never a random attack. They were targeted … because they were a spy and someone found out.’

I quickly erected layers of wall to stop the pain of betrayal breaking through and digging its claws into me. ‘Pa knew and never told me,’ I said calmly, somehow managing to sound bored by the whole thing. ‘Everything I knew about them was a lie.’ I downed the drink and staggered from my seat.

Rain gripped my arm. ‘Don’t. Don’t do anything rash now, Ari.’

Rash . I wanted to break something, kill someone, yell at my Pa, at the betrayal. But I could do none of those things, for if I gave into that impulse, it would rip me apart. All these years I thought it was a random attack by a Gendrian against a Herm. But it was not, it was an attack against secret service agents likely by the bastards they were investigating. And Pa never told me the true reason for why Ma was murdered, why I died in every way but in body beside them that day.

Rain was on his feet, holding me, his gaze knowing, heated. The one person who saw the shards of me and did not recoil, the one who somehow imbedded his own twisted shards of himself into my very soul.

I ran my fingers into his hair, gripped and put my face close to his. ‘You want to fuck me, then fuck me, otherwise let go of me.’

A heartbeat. Two. Then he released my arm and I marched out of the bar, heading blindly in a random direction. I could not go home, could not go anywhere where I would end up destroying everything in my path. The rain was now a thick shower, plastering my hair and clothes to my skin. A moment later I knew I was being followed.

I wanted to roar and turn around and go to him.

I turned into a dead-end alley, narrow, grimy and stinking of piss. I faced the wall, braced myself against with both hands and waited. I felt soiled, dirty, so this was a fitting place to get fucked. A shadow in a rain coat came around the corner. I turned my head to look at the giant man blocking the entrance to the alley.

He advanced on me.

I turned away, staring at the ground, feeling the rain drops run down my neck and down my spine.

Warmth came up behind me, engulfing me and blocking much of the rain. His hand swept aside the hair from my neck, and warm breath touched my skin followed by hot lips. Wordlessly, his hand slipped around my front, just as I had done earlier to him, and unbuttoned my trousers. His other hand braced above my own against the wall, his fingers twining with mine.

My breath quickened, as he pulled my trousers down just enough to allow his hand to slide down my arse, and a finger to enter my quim. My breath hitched as his thumb brushed my anus. He moved his finger gently in and out, his own breathing turning harsh, as his thumb continued to work and tease. Where do you want me to fuck you, Ari?’ He inserted his finger deep into my quim and then his thumb gently, slowly pushed inside my anus. I gasped and arched involuntarily. His other hand tightened around mine, his fingers bracing mine, his lips pressing gently on the side of my neck. ‘Where?’ he repeated as his thumb and finger moved gently in and out of me.

‘Fuck me anywhere you want, Wild,’ I growled low.

‘Is it pain or pleasure that you seek, Ari?’ he whispered against my neck.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, feeling his gentle invasion. ‘I don’t care.’

‘You lie. You want me to hurt you, to fuck you raw.’ His voice was dark and sensuous. ‘You want me to punish you, to do to you what you did to me earlier. You want to feel used, dirty. It is why you chose this filthy, stained alley. You want me to try and break you, because it’s the only way you want to know a Gendrian. But it will never be like that between us, Ari.’ He removed his hand from my pants. Then spun me around and pressed me against the wall, his eyes boring into me. ‘There will be no pain between us, no cruelty, and no hiding. You will look at me and see me and know that it is me you choose to give yourself to.’

I closed my eyes. ‘Fuck you, Wild,’ I whispered. ‘You are the reason Ma is dead. They kept it from me. Pa kept it from me.’

‘Robin had no authority to tell you,’ Rain said, his lips against my cheek. ‘What do you want, Ari? What do you need?’ he whispered against my ear. I knew what he was asking, what he was offering. ‘Whisky has a way of making it all seem worse than it is. I’m offering you to be a part of something more, Rockfall. Don’t screw it up.’

In his words, I heard a meaning that went deeper than just a place with an agency he was offering me.

My voice came out choked. ‘I want to hurt or be hurt. I want to kill and destroy. I want you to fucking stop trying to destroy me.’

His large hand suddenly cradled my cheek. ‘I am offering myself to you, Ari? Take me, fuck me, hit me, do what you will with me.’

My chest constricted painfully. No one had ever offered to be the altar of my rage, an outlet of my restrained grief. ‘Rain …’ I whispered as rain flowed down my cheeks, making mockery of those tears I have been unable to shed since I found Ma dead.

His mouth covered mine, gentle lips tasting me, his tongue mingling with mine, oh so tenderly I nearly sobbed into his mouth.

My fingers ran into his wet hair, gripping him to me. His lips grew more eager, crushing mine his tongue now taking charge of my mouth roaming over it possessively.

His hand cupped my breast, rubbing the hardened nipple through the damp shirt, before moving lower. His hand slipped inside my trousers and grabbed hold of my cock, his fingers wrapped around my erection. I gasped into his mouth, my hips jerking involuntarily into his rough hand. Mine was not a small cock. Many a herm had been envious of it, but in his large hand it felt insignificant.

‘Wild …’ I breathed against his mouth, feeling like I was about to spill over him just from his brutish grip.

‘I know what you want from me now.’ His hand moved up and down along my erection, his fingers tightening and loosening. ‘Look at me, Ari,’ he commanded as his hand moved again and again, his movements growing more frenzied as my hip surged to meet his tight jerks.

I opened my eyes and met his crystalline blue gaze, and my whole world tilted and focused onto his face streaked with rain and passion, the hand tight around my cock. Suddenly his touch on me felt as natural as breathing, and he was no longer a Gendrian but Rain Wild a man I had dreamt of for five years, sought him in places I had no right to seek him. And that ever pervasive restlessness inside me found something to latch on to. Something intangible yet dangerous and devastating.

Another jerk and light flashed behind my eyes, briefly blocking out his face as my hips surged forward. I bit his shoulder to stifle a scream as my seed spilled over his hand.

For a moment we just stood there. Only the wall and his strong body kept me upright. Slowly, sense began to return. My rage was spent, my mind blank of everything but his scent.

The world refocused on Rain’s fierce smouldering gaze staring into my eyes. He removed his hand from my pants, lifted his fist dripping with my seed and licked me off with his tongue. Slowly, sensuously, wickedly as if the taste of it was honey.

‘Fuck,’ I uttered, barely able to breathe.

Only that morning I strode into work whole and surefooted, and now this agent had wholly undone me, turned me inside out, made my life feel like none of was enough anymore, threatened to bring my carefully constructed world crashing around me, like shards of broken glass.

I pushed back on his chest. He stepped back. Cold hit me, replacing his warmth. I wobbled unsteadily, though not from the whisky. ‘I’m going home.’ My voice was hollow, drained.

‘I’ll walk with you,’ he said matter of fact as he took hold of my elbow, all trace of passion gone as if it had never been there.

That stopped me short. I looked at him, and for the first time saw the same brittle control he hid behind as I did. I knew he was aroused still, could sense his unsatisfied sexual tension. Rage, fear, tension, all of it he hid behind an impassive mask, the same mask that I had learned to wear. In that instant, I suddenly saw him for who he was. Like me, he had been broken before.

We walked in silence towards my apartment, my head too muddled to send him on his way, perhaps I was simply too wearied to fight. I would not admit that his touch felt far too familiar, far to comforting, that it felt like home.

At the door, I gathered some of my wits and shrugged him off. ‘I can make my own way upstairs, Drizzle. Been more drunk that this and made it home alone and alive. But then I guess you know that already.’

He released me. ‘Goodnight then, Rockfall,’ he said softly.

I opened the door and began to walk through when an arm blocked my way. ‘Oh, and Rockhall.’ His voice turned to mild steel. His eyes were burning now with something raw and dangerous. ‘Be sure that Shay and Ezra sleep in their own bed from now on. No one shares your bed as long as you are fucking me.’

A surge of outrage rose to the fore. It was not the first time someone tried to claim me. Yet for some reason, I could not find the words to knock him back. I had to walk away from him, not the other way around. He was trying to claim me, but it was I who had sought him out five years ago at that party, I who had pulled down his pants in the toilet today and fucked him. I who had lured him into an alley, so he could do the same to me. Again, and again I had laid claim to his body.

Still, I could not let it pass. ‘We’ve only just met, and now you want fidelity?’

‘We’ve met a long time ago. We have circled around each other for five years, ever since you claimed me. I will not be another plaything to you, Ari. You are mine, and I do not share.’

My survival instinct kicked in and did the only thing my body was familiar with when threatened. I pulled out my gun and pressed it to his throat. ‘Shards, Rain. Watch out for those shards.’

Ignoring the gun tip digging into his throat, his gaze hardened, as he leaned deliberately into my revolver. ‘You will have to kill me, darling, before I become the type of man who starts to share what is his.’ He moved his arm from blocking me.

I spun away and climbed the stairs to my apartment, feeling his gaze on my back.

When I opened the door, Shay and Ezra were waiting for me.

‘We were expecting you back sooner,’ said Shay. They had a glass of red wine in their hand. ‘I cooked dinner. It’s probably cold by now. Do you want me to reheat it?’

Seeing them so suddenly, yet not unexpectedly, was jarring to my senses with Rain’s words still ringing in my ears.

Only that morning I accepted their presence in my life as comfortable and steady. Only this morning my life was simple, easy, my emotions not this matted mess of barbed wire I could not untangle. All day I hadn’t thought once of my bedmates. Worse still, I looked at them and felt not a stirring of passion or interest. And it was not just because I could still taste Rain on my tongue, could still feel his fingers wrapped around my cock, his finger in my quim, in my anus. He had ravaged me today as thoroughly as I had ravaged him, body and soul.

Last night both Shay and Ezra had their hands around my cock, as each took turn to fuck me. Yet, the memory left me flaccid as a wet blanket.

There was something potently erotic about Rain’s hands on me, about the way he looked at me, about the scent of him, which still filled my nostrils and clung to my skin and clothes.

Surrounded by him even now, I suddenly found that for the first time in my life I did not want to bed Shay.

I will take you apart piece by piece.

How complete Rain’s destruction of me had been, how thoroughly he had dismantled me that suddenly, Shay and Ezra were not enough. That the two of them somehow seemed wilted and pale compared to Agent Wild.

The bastard didn’t even have a pussy I could bury myself in. He was half the sex, my cock would miss the wetness of a quim, of being inside another human. He wanted to make me whole, yet it was he who was half - human , half of the whole that made us Herms.

Shamed by such cruel, petty, angry thoughts, I rubbed my hand over my face. ‘Not tonight. Rough day,’ I managed to mumble. ‘Best if the two of you go home.’

They exchanged glances at my abruptness, and I felt like an arse. A plate of chicken and mash was laid out for me on the table, with a glass of wine beside it.

‘Very well, hon,’ said Shay, pausing to give me a quick kiss on the way past to the door. They hesitated for a breath, lips hovering close to my cheek. A heat of self-consciousness suddenly struck me as I, along with Shay, got a whiff of that masculine Gendrian musk. It shrouded me like a thick velvet cloak, reminding me that I belonged to another. Telling others that I had been claimed.

Shay quickly pecked me on the cheek before withdrawing sharply as if burnt, looking at me speculatively.

I quickly moved past them deeper into the room, taking off my wet jacket and kicking off my stilettos.

We’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Ezra with a cheeky wink.

I glanced behind to see a flash of hurt on Shay’s face, before they closed the door behind them. A moment later I heard the door to their shared apartment open and close down the corridor.

I went to my bedroom, and flinging off my red shoes, fell face first onto my bed fully clothed. And passed out.