by Erin M. Leaf
Mick suddenly nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” His voice cracked, and then his face went tight as his orgasm took him.
Knox shuddered, feeling Mick’s thumb press into the head of his cock, and then he went over the edge, shattered into a million pieces.
When he finally came back to himself, Mick’s face was plastered to his neck. Knox wrapped his arms around his lover and squeezed, not caring that they were both a fucking mess.
“I may have to breathe again someday,” Mick muttered into his skin.
Knox held on tighter. “Not today. We got time to kill.”
“True enough.” Mick wound his arms around Knox’s waist. “Time’s our bitch. The world is our oyster. Every cloud has a silver lining.”
“Fucking hell. Now he won’t shut up.” Knox rolled his eyes. “Go to sleep, Obi-Wan.”
Mick smiled against Knox’s skin.
Knox stroked a hand down Mick’s arm and listened to his breathing even out. When the hell did domestic bliss become my life? he wondered vaguely, just before he dropped into sleep.
Epilogue
Two years later…
“When I thought about what I wanted to do when I retired, this wasn’t one of the things on my list,” Knox said, squinting into the sunlight.
Mick laughed. “Yeah, well, my sister would never forgive you if you missed her high school graduation.”
“You mean her weird boarding school graduation. This isn’t like any high school graduation I’ve ever seen,” Knox said. He resisted slipping his hand into his jacket to check for his weapon. That was a rookie tell, and he was still a professional, despite his retirement status. There were too many people crowding around them. His shoulder fucking hurt from tension.
“Since when have you been to a high school graduation? You didn’t even go to your own, Knox,” Mick said, fiddling with his camera. A hint of leather peeked out from his sleeve, a clue that Mick wasn’t any more likely to go unarmed than Knox was, no matter how peaceful their lives were now.
Knox scowled at Mick’s wrist, feeling vindicated.
“Knox, relax. No one is out to get you. No one even knows who you are. We’re normal guys now, remember? Well, normal queer guys.” Mick slipped an arm around his waist. “Fucking pretend, if you have to.” He smiled at an older couple strolling past them.
Knox made an effort to loosen up. “Fine.” He didn’t like it, but Mick was right. Aileen would be angry if he hadn’t come. He glanced around the rear courtyard of the school. Flowers decorated the extensive gardens, and a table with fancy finger foods sat near the old brick of the main school building. About three hundred parents and other family members milled around congratulating themselves on how perfect their children were for graduating from snotty whatever the fuck this place was called. “Why did you send her here again?” He rolled his shoulders.
“Stop threat assessing everyone. They’re just parents and family. Nothing ominous here.” Mick towed him through an opening in the crowd. “And I didn’t send her. She wanted to come here, remember?”
Knox grumbled, but he let Mick pull him where he wanted. “You know, there’s a judge who hired me to eliminate his cousin, right over there.” He jerked his head, staring hard at a white-haired older man with an arm around a girl who was probably his granddaughter.
Mick jerked him closer to the fountain. “I don’t care if every one of your marks came back from the dead and are here eating the hors d’oeuvres like a club for the tragically murdered. We’re here for Aileen. She said she’d meet us here after the ceremony.”
Students in black caps and gowns clustered around the large marble fountain like a murder of crows. Knox shook his head. “Creepy outfits.”
“It’s traditional,” Mick said, sounding distracted. “Oh, there she is!” He waved.
Knox looked at Mick’s smile and gave up. “Crazy,” he muttered, a reluctant grin tugging at his mouth when he caught sight of Mick’s sister.
“Hey! I did it!” Aileen crowed, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. She flung herself into Mick’s arms, then reached out a hand and dragged Knox into the embrace. “I did it!”
The hard leather of her diploma dug into his diaphragm, but Knox didn’t care. He hugged her tightly. “You sure did,” he said gruffly. “I’m really proud of you, Aileen.”
“And we love you,” Mick said, picking her up off her feet and twirling her around. “Happy graduation!”
“Thanks!” Aileen’s face was flushed with happiness. “And now I can prove to all my friends that you guys really do exist.” She wrapped a ridiculously strong hand around Knox’s forearm and dragged him and Mick over to a tree where a cluster of girls was taking selfies. “Hey girls, I told you I have a brother! This is Mick. And this is his guy, Knox. I totally didn’t exaggerate, right?”
“Exaggerate what?” Knox asked, slowing their pace too late. Shit. Now we’re in for it, he thought, dismayed when Aileen’s friends turned to them in unison, like a bunch of cats eyeing their prey.
“You’re a total hottie,” Aileen said, as if it were obvious. “Duh.”
Knox and Mick exchanged pained looks as three girls clustered around them, giggling and flushed.
“Your brother’s a hottie, too,” one of them said.
“I see an exit,” Knox murmured in Mick’s ear. Mick nodded, suddenly looking less like he wanted to stick around and more like he wanted to make a break for it.
“I heard that, Knox, and no,” Aileen said, laughing as she wound her arm around his waist. “No dashing off.”
Knox grimaced. The girls with Aileen tittered. “You’re gonna owe me big time, Aileen,” he said, giving her a look.
She rolled her eyes. “All bark and no bite.” She and her friends started talking a mile a minute. One of them held up her phone and the next thing he knew, they were all taking more pictures of themselves and Aileen.
Knox shook his head. He didn’t understand half of what they said. He just hoped he didn’t end up in any of the photos. He angled himself closer to his lover, obscuring the line of photo-taking so that at most the cameras would get the side of his and Mick’s heads.
“Just grit your teeth and deal,” Mick muttered. “It’s only one day.”
“College graduation is next,” Knox reminded him. “Four years from now. There will be more people there.”
Mick groaned.
“You’re lucky I love you,” Knox said, standing as close to Mick as he dared. “I wouldn’t go through this for anyone else but you and Aileen.”
Mick stared at him.
“What?” Knox wondered if he had something in his teeth.
“You’ve never said that out loud before.” Mick’s bedroom smile spilled out unexpectedly. His eyes glowed. “Fort Knox has fallen.”
Knox huffed uncomfortably. If he got a hard-on in the middle of this nightmare, he was definitely going to have to kill someone, just to take the edge off his nerves. “Sure I did.”
“Nope.” Mick’s smile had somehow turned into a shit-eating grin.
“Well, you knew how I felt.” Knox felt his cheeks flush. “I mean, we live together, for Christ’s sake.”
“I love you, too.” Mick leaned in and kissed him, right in front of God and fucking half the state.
Knox shivered, hands twitching with all the wrong reactions. When Mick usually kissed him like that, they were naked and one of them was generally balls deep in the other. “Don’t get me all revved up, Mick.”
“Or what?”
Knox pursed his lips. “I know where you keep those shackles.”
Mick’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”
“And I know how to use them.” Knox leaned in suggestively.
“Is that a promise?”
Knox smiled, slow and evil. “It is.”
Mick nodded, eyes going dark. “Sounds like a good plan to me, Knox.”
Knox read his lover’s intentions in his eyes. Mick was never going to be that comfortable guy, the kind of partner you
could take for granted, oh no. Mick was sharp. Dangerous. And Knox liked him that way.
The End
www.erinmleaf.com
Other Books by Erin M. Leaf:
www.evernightpublishing.com/erin-m-leaf
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