King's Barber

by M. D. Gregory

  He stared at me carefully before smiling and stealing my breath in the process. “Yeah. I’m fine.” His smile turned into a smirk. “We’re quite the pair, huh? We match now.”

  I chuckled gently.

  “I am definitely worried about that head injury.” The doctor cleared his throat, eyes narrowed thoughtfully, but I didn’t miss the hint of a smug smile. “Are you someone who can talk sense into Mr. Beaumont?”

  “Luke? Sense? Hah.” Quain chuckled and the noise was both gorgeous and surprising, sending shivers down my body. I missed hearing that laughter.

  I smirked at the doctor. “Don’t think he’d listen to me, Doc.”

  The doctor rolled his eyes, and my gaze narrowed in on the name stitched into his white coat.

  Dr. Ian Moore.

  Ah, I’d heard about him more than once from Grant. The stories interchanged between Moore being frustrating to hilarious, and anything in between. He got Grant to do a lot of his work when they were on the same shift together.

  “He needs an MRI. I don’t want him dropping dead. I happen to like the current premium on my insurance, and I’d rather not have some idiot trying to sue my ass.” He tugged at his coat with a huff.

  Grant grinned and shook his head.

  Quain sighed and glanced at me, and I shrugged. “If I do it, will you leave me the hell alone?”

  “No,” Moore said bluntly. “I’m your doctor. I don’t have the luxury of leaving you alone, though it’d be nice if I didn’t have to deal with patients at all.”

  “Then you got into the wrong career, buddy,” I said with a smirk.

  “The money is the only reason I’m here, trust me,” Moore grumbled. “I’ll get you booked in for that MRI. Come with me, Grant.”

  They left the room, and we watched them go. It wasn’t a horrible sight, I had to admit, but a slap to my arm told me I’d stared too long. I turned back to Quain and dropped onto the bed near his thigh. Taking in the bruised face, guilt whacked me in the gut worse than a bullet could have.

  KC stood on Quain’s other side. He smiled and patted his belly. “I’m hungry. Fear does that stuff to a man. I’ll be back.” With a wink he fled the room, leaving us by ourselves.

  “Anything else you need to tell me?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Because if you’re really a sexy alien from a planet in another universe where you’re secretly able to get pregnant, I need to know now. I’m too young to be a father.”

  He snorted. “You’re not that young.”

  “Hah! But you don’t deny being an alien.” I leaned closer to him, placing my hands on either side of his thighs. “And who are you calling old, Assassin’s Creed?”

  “Are you going to sit there and talk smack, or are you going to kiss me?” He touched my neck, bandaged fingers dancing over my collarbone and tugging on my leather Kings jacket. “Because I said I was sorry for lying. It doesn’t make up for it—”

  “Shut up, Quain,” I interrupted, earning a glare. I smirked. “You want me to kiss you, I want you to do something for me first.”

  He blinked at me, head tilted. “Why do I have a feeling I won’t like this request?”

  “Because you probably won’t.” My gaze slid to his mouth, wet and full and begging for mine on top of his, even with the scrape under the right side of his bottom lip. I wanted to taste him again, kiss him until he melted beneath me.

  “What do you want me to do?” he whispered, inching closer, stopping when I shook my head.

  “I want you… to tell me I’m the best barber you’ve ever met, and I fuck like a god.”

  He groaned. “Oh please, no. Anything but that.” Rolling his eyes, he laughed. The sound made my insides twist in excitement. “You, Lucas Jeremy Booth, are the best barber I’ve ever met, and you fuck me like a god. Maybe like Thor or Odin. I’ve never had a dick like yours before. Oh wait, I change my mind, not like Thor or Odin, that just reminds me of the Norse Lords MC.”

  “The what now? What the fuck is the Norse Lords MC?” I frowned.

  His eyebrows danced upward and he grinned, wide and in a way that made my chest ache for him. “You’ve never heard of them? They’re a club out in Pleasant Beach. Run by a man who calls himself Odin. Thor’s his vice president. Now that I’m being honest, they’re both gorgeous and I’d fall into bed with them. Maybe at the same time.” The twinkle in his eye had me pursing my lips. “But luckily, you’re sexier.”

  “That’s more like it.” I grasped the back of his neck, careful of his injuries, and yanked him closer, slamming my mouth against his. The taste of him exploded against my tongue. I’d missed this, as hard as it was to admit. No one had my insides turning to knots like Quain did, and that wasn’t something I could say out loud. My club brothers wouldn’t let me live it down. But I’d seen them fall head over heels with their partners, too—King included.

  He sighed into my kiss, his eyes sliding closed and his arms curled around my neck. “Does that mean you forgive me, Mr. Booth?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, I guess it does. Don’t think this is over yet, though. There’s things you’ll need to do to make up for it.”

  He grinned. “I already told you you’re the best barber I’ve met and you’re a god in bed. What more do you want?”

  “That was just for a kiss,” I teased with a wicked smile. “King still wants to put a bullet in you.”

  Quain rolled his eyes. “That’s nothing new. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last.”

  I was tempted to ask him how many people wanted him dead, but I didn’t think I wanted to know. I suspected assassins and hitmen in the Society had all sorts of enemies, and I couldn’t go around and kill all of Quain’s like I would probably want to. Quain could take care of himself anyway.

  “Yeah, well, you’re gonna do some hard time for that undercover stunt of yours.” I slid my fingers through his hair, caressing my thumb over another scrape on his temple near his hairline. I hated to see his beautiful face injured.

  “Like what?”

  “Eight jobs.”

  “What?” He frowned.

  I grinned at him, pressing my tongue against the back of my front teeth. “You’ll owe the Kings eight jobs. Whenever we need help, we can ask for help eight times. If we need someone taken out or some shit like that.”

  “Two,” he countered.

  “Seven.”

  “Four.”

  “Five and that’s my final offer, humbug.”

  He sighed. “I don’t get a choice, do I?”

  “You do,” I said with a smirk. “But if you don’t go for it, you won’t be allowed in the clubhouse, and I want you there.”

  He snorted. “Does King know that was us in his bedroom?”

  I winced. King was adamant on finding out who had the balls to fuck in his room, but he’d yet to discover any clues. “No, and I think we’ll keep it that way. I’m already on shithouse duty. I’ve skipped out on it for a few weeks ’cause of what’s happened, but King’ll put me back on it soon. I don’t want to be on cleaning duty for the rest of my life if he finds out we fucked on his bed.”

  He laughed. “Noted. Never mentioning what we did that night.”

  “Now you tell me something.” I ran my palm down his cheek, and he sighed, leaning into my touch. He grabbed my hand and held it against his face, his eyes slipping closed. “How are you an assassin, Quain Beaumont? You told King you were still a certified hairstylist.”

  “I am.” He looked at me with a gentle but sad smile. “Mom was a scientist who had a primary lab in the basement of our house. She was smart. So smart. I remember when I came out to her, I was thirteen, and told her I liked boys. She smiled and told me she knew, and she was proud of me. She told me I could be anything I wanted, so I chose to be a hairstylist.”

  I listened, not breaking my stare from the grief that passed across his face. “She sounds amazing.”

  He nodded. “She was. Her main job was working for the United States Army. She was creatin
g pharmaceuticals for them.”

  “What kind of drugs?” I asked curiously.

  “The kind that shouldn’t be made. Pills to make soldiers stronger and need less sleep.”

  “Like something out of Captain America?” He cocked his head at me in surprise, and I shrugged. “The guy who acts as him is hot.”

  He laughed. “Chris Evans is hot, but yes, kind of like that. After a while the negative reactions the soldiers presented from the drug affected Mom. She couldn’t do it anymore, no matter how nicely they paid her. She told them she was done, and they didn’t like that. When I was seventeen, they sent men to kill her. I couldn’t even help. She stuffed me in the closet and I had to watch as they killed her.”

  “Fuck….” I let out a breath of surprise.

  “Yeah.” He gave me a thin smile. “After that I got my certification as a hairstylist, and I thought I could move on, but I couldn’t. I decided I wanted revenge, so I went to the seediest parts of New Gothenburg to find someone to kill for me. I knew I needed someone talented. I met Ardan Murphy.”

  “Oh fuck, I know him.” I chuckled. “Killough’s man.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Ardan was the first assassin I ever met. He made me a deal. Instead of having someone else kill them, he wanted me to do it, so he took me to meet the Society. He vouched for me, and I was trained as an assassin with some of the best teachers they had.”

  “And now you’re one of them.” I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of the Society before and that King had kept them a secret, but in a strange way, I could understand why. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “The Society has rules, and I had to follow them unless I wanted to end up dead.” He shrugged but smiled apologetically. “One of them is a client’s right to privacy. Your father wanted me to protect you without you ever knowing, so that’s what I did, even if he had no idea that my handlers were an organization that basically are the boogeymen of the underground.”

  I nodded, as much as I hated the lies. Fuck. I was more embarrassed than anything. How had I not seen him for who he really was? I’d been blinded by that hot ass and snarky attitude. “Any other secrets I should know about?”

  He licked his lips, wincing. “Everything I told you since I met you was the truth, except the assassin part. The only other thing I didn’t fully divulge is….”

  I crossed my arms, waiting.

  “I told you that my ex-fiancé was murdered. That was the truth. What I didn’t say was that I was the one who killed him.” There wasn’t any regret in his voice.

  I leaned forward curiously. “Should I be worried about waking up one day with a knife to my neck?”

  “Well, you already had a knife to your neck when you tried to spy on me the first time you were at my house.”

  “Yeah, explain that. What’s with the sleep talking?”

  He laughed, and his face lit up like King when he saw a classic Harley. Cheeks flushed, he said, “I can’t explain that. I’ve been sleep talking since I was a kid, but these days it’s only when I’m not on an assignment, or when I feel safe enough to fall into a deep sleep.”

  “So you felt safe with me in your house, huh?” I grabbed his hand and lifted his wrist to my mouth, pressing a kiss to the inside while I smirked at him. “I knew you had a thing for me from the start.”

  He rolled his eyes but laughed. “You’re not bad-looking, I suppose.”

  “Lies. I’m fucking hot. It’s the tattoos, right?” I raised my chin, flashing him the black roses inked onto my neck. “You can’t resist a man like me.”

  “It’s definitely not the personality.” A teasing glint twinkled in his dark eyes.

  “I’ll have you know, I have a fucking fantastic personality.”

  “Aren’t you still on shithouse duty for starting a fight with Scar?”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. “Shut up, prissy boy.”

  His laughter rose as the nurse who Grant had been talking to outside came into his room. She checked his vitals and injuries, changing a few bandages as she went.

  “The doctor has an MRI set for this afternoon. We’ll be in then to take you up.” With a sweet smile, she left again when Quain huffed out a “fine.”

  When I knew we were alone again, I slid my fingers into his and asked, “Why did you kill him?”

  He stared at me carefully and reached up to his chest, and I noticed his chain and ring had vanished. “Dean, my ex-fiancé?”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  His eyes slid to the TV screen on the wall, bottom lip pulled into his mouth. He ran his fingers over his bandaged wrist, and I watched as thoughts raced through his mind—he was deciding if and what he wanted to tell me. Finally, his gaze returned to me. “I can’t tell you some things”—the words because of the Society were left unsaid—“but I’ll tell you as much of the truth as I can.”

  I nodded. “Good enough for me.”

  He sighed. “Dean was a hitman for the Society. It doesn’t matter if you’re an assassin or a hitman, you have to follow the rules.”

  “What’s the difference between them? Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “No.” Quain snorted. “If you ask some of them, it’s about class. Hitmen think assassins are stuck-up pricks. Assassins think hitmen are the hillbillies of the organization. The difference is simple, though. Hitmen are free contractors. They take whatever contracts they want. Assassins are usually contracted to one person only. Like Ardan with Killough.”

  “But you’re an assassin and you’re a free contractor, right?”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t always. I started as an assassin. After I killed my mother’s murderers, I was hired by a mobster in Detroit. He was a good man. Well, that’s a lie.” He laughed and the sound warmed my stomach. “He wasn’t a good person. He killed for drugs and money. But he was a good boss. A Serbian. But when he died—natural causes, by the way—his son took over. I never really liked him that much because he was a homophobic asshole and he didn’t like me, so we parted on good terms. He ended my contract, and I went back to the Society. I didn’t want to change my status with them, so I stayed as an assassin and became a freelancer.”

  I frowned. “I don’t get how that organization works. They hire you out?”

  He shook his head. “Yes and no, they’re like… a middleman. All the clients go through them in hiring us, and they choose the best person for the job. A percentage of our payments go to them.”

  It made sense. The Kings were middlemen in a lot of ways, especially when it came to Killough and distributing drugs in the New Gothenburg area. “And this Dean guy?”

  “He… broke two rules. He thought he was smarter than the Society, and that’s what really got him killed.” He tightened his grip on my hand. “He was an idiot, and I warned him to stop playing God. But he wouldn’t listen. The Society doesn’t suffer fools.”

  I cringed. “What were the rules?”

  “He stole money from them. Usually the Society sets up the bank accounts the money goes into and they take their share, but he changed the account numbers with the client and then transferred whatever money he wanted to the Society. Didn’t give them what they were owed.”

  “Fuck.” I shook my head. “It’s never wise to steal money from dangerous people.”

  He snorted. “I didn’t know, or I would have told him what a dolt he was.”

  “And the second?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know. If King kept it hidden from us, it was for good reason.

  The silence dragged out as he stared at our entwined fingers, and I didn’t think he’d answer at first, until he finally did. “It’s easy to say we’re not good people. We kill human beings for a living. Our job is dangerous, and so… we need to protect our children. All children. They’re innocent in this world, and we might be murderers, but we have standards. Killing anyone under eighteen is against the rules.”

  I blinked, surprised. “Really? I thought they would be free game.” I held up my hands when h
e gave me a look of disgust. “I mean, fuck, I wouldn’t kill kids. But you’re contract killers, right? Kids are just part of the job.”

  His expression changed to incredulous. “No. Definitely not. They’d have very few hitmen and assassins if their children, any children, were targets. Well, less than they have now. But Dean took things into his own hands. He butted heads with another hitman, so he decided to take care of it. He killed his daughter. She was fourteen.”

  “Jesus fuck.”

  Quain nodded. “I didn’t know until they gave me the orders to kill him. I had no choice. He broke the rules. He was an idiot. I would have killed him anyway if I’d known he’d murdered a child.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not in the Society, then, huh?” I cupped his cheek, dragging him out of his thoughts. Kissing him lightly on the mouth, I relished the taste of him. He had me wrapped around his little finger, and I’d kill for him in a second. “That ring was his?”

  “Yeah….” He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “It was a reminder to protect my heart, but I decided it was time to let it go. You broke through the walls I’d built.”

  “I’m not sorry.” I slanted my mouth over his and kissed him again. I couldn’t get enough. “You will need to deal with King and Undertaker, though. They’re not happy with you.”

  He opened his eyes and grinned. “I can handle them. I also don’t blame them. I hurt you.”

  “Eh, I wouldn’t say hurt. More like I missed your asshole. It’s the tightest I’d had in a while.”

  He poked me in the gut hard enough to make me squirm.

  I laughed. “Fine. I enjoy your company. Are you really that whiny, though?”

  “Yes.” He smiled teasingly. “I don’t like messes or smoking.”

  “Or drinking, either.”

  He shrugged. “I need to be on my A-game. Alcohol affects my ability to do my job and I’m a perfectionist.”

  “Noted.” I slid my thumb over a scrape on his cheek and sighed. “If you hadn’t killed this motherfucker, I would have.”

  Quain raised his eyebrows. “As if I’d let him go alive.”

  I laughed and pressed my forehead against his. “Life is gonna be fun with you.”