Page 18 of Burn It Down

I shrugged, not looking to get into it and head down that path of all the training I had been subjected to as one of the Infidel’s most promising enforcers. Times had changed.

Hell, so much had.

Because of Asher and Aurora.

“So?” I pushed. “Progress?”

He lifted his coffee mug, took a sip, then told me, “I told you I’d come to you as soon as I cracked it.”

“Well, this is me making sure.”

“You mean, showing that you’ve learned that distrust well from Ash?”

“It’s good sense.”

He leaned back against the high-backed stool, nursing his mug. “Just say what you came in here to say. Aside from trying to micromanage me, of course.”

I looked him over, his mocha eyes strained with dark circles beneath from being up too long and trying to offset it with a high caffeine intake and chain-smoking outside during the two-minute-long breaks he afforded himself every couple of hours. His sandy-blond hair was wild in a sexy kind of rough-and-tumble way that I didn’t want to acknowledge. He’d pulled out his go-bag from his car earlier and changed into a pair of light gray sweatpants and a charcoal muscle tee stretching taut across his impressively defined abs. Those colorful snake tattoos were on display again and as I scrutinized him, I noticed some scars nestled amongst them, something the designs seemed like they’d specifically been positioned to conceal as much as possible. Hmm.

He was a little bulkier than Asher, less so than me. Then again, most people were. He was an inch or two shorter than him too, making that muscle and defined bulk all the more prominent on his frame.

He took another sip from his mug, annoyingly looking the picture of calm, as he asked, “Well? Are you going to say it, or is this an opportune time for me to take another smoke break?”

I pushed off the wall. “How did you manage it?”

A cocky smirk formed on his face. “You’re gonna have to be more specific. I’ve managed a lot over the years.”

Fucker. “How did you top him?”

“Huh.”

“Well? Was it topping from the bottom, is that it?”

“No. It was the former.”

“He doesn’t allow domination.” Even the other night when he’d let me take him, it hadn’t been me technically topping him. He’d still controlled it, held power. And more than that, it hadn’t been about any of that, it hadn’t been that kind of dynamic. It had been him opening himself to me, melding with me, loving me back. When he’d let Aurora fuck him, he’d still been the one in control. He’d damn well ordered her to unleash on him. It had been a situation of his making.

“I’m aware. Largely, because of the abuse that was inflicted upon him in that dungeon.”

I only just suppressed a growl. I didn’t like this fucker—this outsider—knowing that.

Before I could get past it, he went on, “It wasn’t about sexual pleasure. It was punishment, Jonah.”

“What?”

“He came to me in a desperate state. He was struggling to control his darkness. He wanted me to punish it out of him.”

My chest squeezed just thinking about Asher being in that frame of mind.

“He hated himself at that point because he was just beginning to realize the dark that lurked within, something that was becoming more powerful with every passing day at the time. He couldn’t accept the twisted and depraved parts of him. I helped him to cope, to sublimate, and to eventually accept.”

“He let that dark side that Carson created in him out for us, to protect us.”

“I know. And he didn’t come to you with it until I’d helped him to learn how to control it. He was dangerous back then, incredibly dangerous. But now he wields it like a weapon against your enemies, against anybody who crosses your paths.”

I pulled up a stool opposite him. “You used to be all holy and shit, yeah?”

“I still have faith. But I also have demons that keep me from embracing it fully and from a pure and innocent mindset that I used to. The life I’ve led, the things I’ve seen and had to do, made me believe in one clear truth: Sometimes it takes an act of evil to banish the greater evil.”

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