Jacob Read online

  Lee narrowed his eyes as he stiffened. “I’ve learned a lot since I was attacked in an alley and left for dead. Which, by the way, would have never happened had you not chickened out that night.”

  Jacob tightened his hands into fists, immediately pissed. Although it looked exactly like that, that was not at all what had happened. He’d killed two men to protect him. He’d taken a bullet for him. He’d hid in the shadows, fighting against unconsciousness due to blood loss, just to be sure Lee didn’t die in that alley.

  None of that mattered right now. Lee was here to release the demon he’d been carrying for the past year. If that meant beating the shit out of Jacob, then so be it. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You blame me for what happened to you. Admit it.”

  He opened and closed his mouth several times as surprise washed over his expression, followed by comprehension. “I guess I do.”

  “That’s why you want to hit me.” He nodded, accepting the verdict. In a way, it really had been his fault for what happened to Lee. If he hadn’t called Sergio, hadn’t tried to back out of the contract, the man might not have sent Freddie and Luigi to finish the job. If he’d gone home with Lee, he could have kept him safe that night. Instead, he’d gotten them both shot.

  “Where’d you go?”

  His question pulled Jacob from his thoughts. “Let’s just do this.”

  “Fine.” Lee thrust out his chin, which Jacob found oddly arousing. Damn it. He brought up his fists and bent his knees. Jacob eyed his stance and shook his head. One hit and he’d have him out cold.

  “You really expect me to fight you?”

  Lee stayed light on his feet, which was good. But he danced too much, unnecessarily expelling energy. “Yep.”

  Despite his irritation, Jacob found himself intrigued by Lee’s actions. The man never backed down. He did love his persistence and found his determination extremely attractive, even though it proved his insanity.

  And then Lee did something Jacob hadn’t expected. He pulled his arm back and swung his fist. Even though Jacob saw it coming and could have blocked it, he didn’t.

  His fist slammed into Jacob’s lip, and he tasted blood as his teeth sank into his flesh. Now pissed, Jacob focused his control on not throwing a punch of his own. The rain picked up, drenching them. He stared at the sky, which is why he didn’t see the next hit until it was too late. Lee’s fist connected with Jacob’s cheek and sent him reeling back.

  “Still think you can beat me?” Lee brought his fists up and rested his glimmering gaze on Jacob.

  He licked the blood from his lips and stilled, his attention on Lee. Even when Lee swung and hit Jacob against the temple, sending everything into a blur, Jacob remained standing there, staring at him.

  He needed this. He needed to kick the shit out of Jacob, and Jacob wanted him to. Lee deserved that sense of triumph when he took down his enemy.

  Only problem—they weren’t enemies, and deep down, Jacob knew Lee felt that, too.

  Lee slammed his fist into Jacob’s hard jaw and jumped back, shaking his hand and cussing colorfully. That would leave serious bruises on his delicate hands.

  He didn’t have a fighter’s hands. Jacob didn’t want to see him break the skin, let alone any bones.

  “Are we done?”

  “Fight back, damn you!” Lee swung over and over, hitting Jacob in the shoulder, the stomach, the face. He then stood there facing him, panting, and let out a whimper that pulled at Jacob’s heart.

  Tears filled those warm eyes, and Jacob fought every ounce of want to go to him. Lee needed this, and so did Jacob.

  “Why won’t you fight back?”

  “Hit me again.”

  Lee snapped his expression into a pained frown as tears streamed down his face and mixed with the rain. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What?”

  “Do it. Think of all that hatred you’ve carried with you since the attack. Hit me.”

  “But that wasn’t your fault.”

  “Hit me!”

  He did, connecting his fist with Jacob’s jaw, but he barely felt it. He recognized that hatred burning in Lee’s eyes, knew all about carrying something that poisonous with him for too long. He refused to allow another person to let something like hate consume him as it had done to Jacob and turned him into the monster he was today.

  “Fight back, you son of a bitch!”

  “Put your hands up closer to your face,” Jacob instructed as he demonstrated with his own. “Always protect your head. Watch your opponent’s eyes. They’ll focus on their target right before they strike.”

  “What?”

  Slowly, Jacob curled his hands into fists. “Keep your hands up.”

  He swung and stopped when Lee simply stood there, dripping from the unrelenting rain and staring at him. “Come on. Block me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watch my eyes.” He walked backward, turning in a large circle. Lee followed him to stay facing his opponent, just as Jacob knew he would.

  He swung again, and this time Lee blocked him.

  “Good. Watch my body.”

  Lee gave him a slow and steady once-over, raking that wicked dark gaze over Jacob’s body and firing off every nerve ending. Despite the chill that had crept into his bones from the freezing rain, that look had Jacob’s blood sizzling.

  He snapped out of it. “Focus on my belly button.”

  “Why your belly button?”

  “Watch it,” Jacob barked and continued to turn in a backward circle. He shook his hair in an attempt to move it away from his face, but the rain had it soaked and it stuck to his cheeks. He shook his head again, and still, the damn hair stayed put.

  “Don’t do that.”

  Jacob froze and frowned. “Do what?”

  “That thing with your hair. You know how much I love your hair. It’s not fair.” He cleared his throat when his voice started to shake.

  Jacob couldn’t agree more. He didn’t want to fight this man. He wanted to touch him, kiss him, and explore this connection between them. After a year that bond between them should have disappeared, yet as they stood there looking at each other, the rain drenching them both to the bone, it felt stronger than ever.

  “Which way is my belly button pointing?”

  “Uh, to your right.”

  “And which fist am I holding higher?”

  “Your right.”

  “That tells you I’m right-handed, so that’s my dominant side. I’ll hit harder with my right than my left.”

  “I’m sure you hit pretty damn hard regardless which fist you’re using.”

  “Get closer to me.”

  Lee lowered his fists and tilted his head. “Excuse me?”

  “If you close in on your assailant it makes it harder for them to attack. Don’t give me enough room to swing.”

  Lee stepped toward him, and damn if Jacob could smell him. That rich scent wafted into his nostrils even in the rain. Lust surged through his balls, boiling in his blood.

  Jacob swallowed to wet his throat. “Put your hands up, your elbows out. That’s it. Keep your fists in front of your neck and swing your elbow toward me.”

  “Why my elbow? Why not my hand?”

  “Stronger bone. Does more damage to your opponent. Now, hit me with your elbow.”

  He did and barely clipped Jacob’s nose.

  “Again. Harder. This time follow the hit with a slam into my gut. You want to take advantage of your attacker’s distraction. When you hit him in the head, he’s going to focus on that hit and not the one coming.”

  Lee looked at him, uncertainty dancing in his dark gaze.

  “Do it!”

  An elbow slammed into his temple and immediately filled Jacob’s vision with little black dots. When Lee then delivered a direct hit to the solar plexus, Jacob doubled over and staggered back. Jesus, did this man have a hard ulna bone and solid aim. Jacob couldn’t breathe and fought to remain upright as the black
dots in his vision grew.

  “Oh no.” Lee ran to him and grabbed him before he fell to his knees. “Are you okay?”

  “Good hit,” Jacob grunted and kept his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.

  “They never taught us anything like that in self-defense class.”

  “Because it requires you to be closer to your attacker. In self-defense you learn what you need to get away from your attacker, not go on the attack yourself. Help me over to the bench.”

  He reached for Lee and accepted his help, sinking down with a groan. Closing his eyes, he lifted his face to the sky, allowing the rain to tickle his skin as he regrouped.

  When he felt fingers weave into his hair, he opened his eyes to see Lee leaning in front of him, his worried gaze on him, his hand in Jacob’s mane.

  “Your hair,” he explained in a strained voice. “It was in your face and I wanted to see your eyes.”

  The rain beat down around them, running into Lee’s eyes, all over his glasses, down his face, and glistening on his lips. Jacob focused on his mouth, wanting to lick those droplets from him.

  He brought his hand out and rested it on Lee’s face, using the pad of his thumb to caress under his eye. He traced the scar that ran along his jaw and closed his eyes, knowing how he’d gotten it and wishing he could take it all back. He took a deep breath and swallowed tightly as he let his hand fall.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered and fought against the pain pinching at his midsection. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Look at me,” Lee ordered in a thick voice and grabbed his hand, replacing it on his face, on his scar. “Please, Jacob. Just look at me.”

  He did and immediately regretted it. In an instant, the guilt and pain over what had happened between them nearly consumed him. Grief attacked his heart and made it hard for him to breathe. He wrote it off to the hit to his solar plexus.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Jacob studied him for several seconds before nodding.

  “Why didn’t you want to go home with me that night?”

  He couldn’t tell him the truth, no matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much he deserved it. With a deep sigh, Jacob dropped his attention to his soaked feet and lied—something he’d been trained to do with absolute conviction. “I was still recovering from a relationship that ended abruptly. You would have been my rebound. You deserved better.” All in all, not a total lie.

  “And now?”

  Jacob thought about that. He’d been with other men since losing Jonathan. He’d dominated them. Submitted to them. Had vanilla sex with them. None of them had ever made him want to be anything more than friends with benefits.

  With Lee, he wanted more. It made no sense, this connection between them. It drew them together, even after a year apart. It drove Jacob to want the impossible, like a second chance with the man he’d been paid to kill.

  10

  Lee paced the length of his living room, cursing himself for ever thinking he’d be able to beat Jacob in hand-to-hand combat. The man could have taken him out with a single punch. Lee, well, couldn’t say the same. The ice he now had on his swollen knuckles was a painful reminder that he was a lover not a fighter.

  He settled his racing thoughts on the fact Jacob could have ended him and instead allowed Lee to beat the snot out of him. Hell, he even gave lessons. He’d learned more during their fight in the rain than he ever had in the self-defense classes. Jacob had been right—those classes were designed to show how to flee an attacker, not become one.

  He could have used that training growing up. Being the smallest kid in his class didn’t do him any favors, but it was the fact he’d been a geek on top of everything else that got him shoved into so many lockers he lost count. His two meathead brothers had been no help. Hell, they’d been the ones to shove him into a locker half the time. If it wasn’t Charlie and his football buddies, it was Gregg and his rugby buddies.

  Even now, over a decade later, Lee still hadn’t forgiven either one for relentlessly teasing him growing up. Since he’d never be able to best them in brawn, he’d put all his focus into his studies, graduated class valedictorian, and landed a full-ride academic scholarship to the University of Washington.

  Gregg now lived in New Hampshire with his wife and kids. Charlie was a two-time divorcé and actively looking for the next future ex somewhere in the greater Chicago area, the last Lee had heard. He talked to them at forced family gatherings, but didn’t go out of his way outside of those uncomfortable reunions. They were both still meatheads, relentlessly teasing him for being the geek of the family.

  This geek had just earned another patent, thank you very much. Orchid was close to making the Fortune 500. With the release of Inferno, Lee had every intention of making that list soon.

  He studied the bruises on his hand, courtesy of his less-than-brilliant idea of punching Jacob over and over in the hopes it’d make him feel better. It didn’t. It only gave him bruised knuckles to accompany his bruised ego. Attacking Jacob solved nothing. It proved resorting to violence ran in the Lamont blood. Clearly he wasn’t as different from his meathead brothers as he’d like to think.

  Maybe he should call Jacob and check on him. Lee practically busted his hand on the man’s iron jaw. He might be in pain. Bruised from the beating. God only knew Lee was all those things.

  He was also sad. And lonely. And almost desperate to see Jacob again, which made no sense. There had to be some clinical label for Lee wanting to stage another break-in and then call Jacob, just to see him again.

  Jumping to the couch, he grabbed the laptop off the cushion and opened the lid as he propped his bare feet on the coffee table. He typed “Jacob Burns” into the search engine and scrolled through the results. A film center. A man from Virginia with pictures of his grandkids all over social media. A kid in high school posing with his girlfriend. An attorney. Obituaries. Birth records. None of them were the Jacob Burns he wanted—in every sense of the word.

  He closed the lid and set the laptop aside. This was maddening. He shouldn’t be so obsessed with the guy. He’d had lovers. Boyfriends. Even casual hookups. None of them had him so hyper-focused on seeing someone again.

  Lee blew out a long breath and stood, working the fingers on his bruised hand. He kept stealing glances at his phone, secretly willing it to ring. Jacob said he’d be in touch. That meant a call, didn’t it? A text, at least? Hell, Lee would settle for a tag on Twitter.

  So when his phone buzzed, he launched across the table and grabbed the phone mid-flight before landing on the couch. He read the screen and giggled. Yes, he giggled. And he didn’t care. Jacob texting him warranted a goddamn giggle.

  How’s the hand?

  Lee smiled. Hurts. You have a hard head.

  So do you.

  His grin widened. It’s a known fault of mine.

  There was a long wait with those damn three dots taunting him before Jacob’s text appeared. Mine too.

  Were they having a moment? It felt like they were having a moment. It might only be in his head, but he’d take it. Lee decided to take it a step further. Why not? What’d he have to lose? If Jacob stopped texting back, he’d know this thing between them was clearly all in Lee’s head. My favorite part of you is your hair.

  Another long pause, this time with no three dots. Damn it. He knew he shouldn’t have pushed it. But then a text popped up. You haven’t seen all of me.

  Holy shit. How he wanted to see all of him. He wanted to see all of him more than he wanted to see the next morning. How can we make that happen?

  Nothing. No response of any kind. Not even three dots teasing him of an incoming text. Nothing. Shit. Was it something he said?

  He stared at the screen and almost dropped it when it buzzed with an incoming call. Should he answer it? Duh. Of course he should answer it. Rolling his eyes, he cleared his throat and tried to regulate his breathing as he answered. “Lee Lamont speaking.”

  “You really want to see me a
gain?”

  It was him. God how he loved that gruff, gravelly voice. It stroked over his senses, charging them. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Good question. He wanted to say he had no idea. Deep down, he knew the truth. He did have an idea. He had a good idea. He wanted to see Jacob again to see if the connection they had was only one-sided. He wanted to see if the overwhelming relief at seeing him again after all this time was only temporary. Above everything else, he wanted to see if Jacob wanted to see him as badly as Lee wanted to see him.

  “A rematch.” Lee rolled his eyes. Seriously? That was the best he could come up with? He didn’t want to embarrass himself. Again.

  “A rematch,” Jacob chuckled, the low growl tickling in his ears. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t want to see me again?”

  “I never said that.”

  “A rematch requires us seeing each other again.”

  He chuckled again. “Yeah. I guess it does.”

  “Do you want to see me again?” he asked and held his breath, scared of the answer.

  “Are you asking me out?”

  This time Lee chuckled. “I am.”

  “Why?”

  He dropped his smile and sat up. “Why? Are you serious?” Did he not feel the overwhelming attraction between the two of them?

  Jacob sighed long and hard. It deflated Lee just from the sound. “We don’t exactly have a good past between us.”

  “But we do have a past,” he countered. “Like it or not, we’re connected by our past. We’re connected by what happened yesterday. And, yes, by what happened a year ago.”

  “By what that night did to you.”

  “You’re damn right by what that night did to me.” He sat up and switched ears. “We’re also connected by what that night did to you.”

  Another long pause. “I’m not following. That night didn’t do anything to me.”

  “Didn’t it? Do you still hunt people for a living?” Did you ever truly hunt people for a living?

  “I…” he trailed off. “No.”

  Shit. That meant he truly did hunt people for a living at one time. “Do you still kill people for money?”