Page 67 of Breaking the Code

I know he does. I feel it in my bones. He wants me, and not just for the kinky shit. Although, fuck me, that is so, so, so good.

The memory of him moving inside me as he talks dirty to me, praising me, makes blood rush toward my dick. I heard about praise kink. Read about it, watched porn about it, but I never expected to experience it. I didn’t understand what the fuss was, either.

Then Draven called me a good boy and told me I was breathtaking. Those words sparked something in me. It felt as if the sun had moved out of the sky, taking up residence in my chest, setting me and the world around me on fire.

Turning the corner, I see him. The man who has quickly become my entire world.

“Draven!” I yell at him.

The anguish I see on his face when his eyes meet mine eviscerates me. He turns and walks away from me. His long legs chew up the ground under our feet three times as fast as mine do.

“Dammit, Daddy! Stop!”

“Go back to yer room, Tavish.”

“No! Talk to me.”

He laughs. I can’t say I blame him. I’ve withheld stuff and refused to answer him when he asked specific questions.

“Okay, I deserve that, but a lot of my position within the Society is secrets and only telling people things if they need to know them.”

He whirls around, his eyes blaze with an icy fire I’ve not seen since the night he shoved me against the stone exterior of this very building.

His gaze pins me in place as he questions me. “And you think, as your Dom, I didn’t need to know my boy was in danger?”

I sigh, yet hope surges. It’s the first time he’s said that, in that way. “I’ve been in danger since I was six years old, Draven. Since I watched my father murder my mother.”

Draven’s eyes widen. I can see I’ve shocked him. He leans back against the stone wall. His hands slide into his pockets as he crosses his feet at the ankle. I move to mirror his stance, bracing my back to the opposite wall.

“From the moment my father placed that pillow over my mother’s face, my life has been on a precipice. When he died, the edge of the cliff I’ve always stood on dropped from under me and I had to make a choice…either be sold into slavery to the highest bidder or make myself invaluable to the Order of Death and Owen Black.”

“What did ye do?”

“I approached the tech guy Owen had working for him. His name is Cato.”

“That was an enormous risk. He could’ve sold ye out to Owen.”

“Yes, it was, but not as much as you think.”

He scoffs, so I continue, “Cato and I were friends. Of a sort. We still kinda are. He befriended the geeky kid who pestered the shit out of him. I probably drove him nuts with all my questions, but I was bored and I had an inkling of the fate that awaited me even if my father hadn’t been killed. Graeme Buchanan was a follower and a fuckup.”

Something shifts in Draven’s face and his gaze, which hadn’t left mine since he’d stopped, moved off to the side before darting back to mine a moment later.

“Anyway, Cato’s induction into the Order was like mine. He’s bigger than me, but like me, he’s not soldier material. His saving grace was his ability to gather intel. His existence within the Order was mostly solitary. So instead of chasing the geeky pest away, he started teaching me. As soon as I got word my father had been killed, I went to him and we devised a plan. Since Cato’s tech skills saved him from the auction block, we planned Cato’s escape from the Order, and I took his place.”

He says nothing. He just stares at me. Then, just when I think he’s never going to say anything, he asks, “Is?”

Confusion must show on my face because he elaborates, “Ye said his name is Cato.”

“Oh! Yes, he’s still alive. He helped me create the fake info I sent you to lure you here.”

Draven huffs a dry, humorless laugh and scrubs his hands over his face and down his beard. Deciding, I curl my lips in, biting down on them, waiting for him to ask whatever else he wants to know.

“Why didn’t he take ye with him?”

“He wanted to, but there was no way. When my dad died, Owen glued me to his side the minute he found out. And if that wasn’t possible, he put guards on me. I went nowhere without him or my guards. There were two of them with me at all times,” I explained.

His head bobs. “Now, tell me about this latest threat.”

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