Page 12 of Drift

“Bribes?” Gray cocked a brow at Jan.

Shit. Jan controlled the burn of choking and almost ducked under the duvet. “Erm. Can I plead the 5th, maybe finish that blowjob?”

“You’re not American, and I’m not in the mood. What bribe? For me not cooking this morning? Seriously?”

“For the next few days, actually.” Jan reached over to the bedside unit and pulled a magazine from the drawer. He offered it to Gray a moment later. “Jack got some dirty midnight reading, all on the quiet… like. Gets me breakfast in bed for three days without a dicky stomach, starting—”

“Today, when it was my turn to cook, by any chance?”

“Just, erm, don’t need the hop, skip, humping to the bathroom during this level-up up at the MC tomorrow.” Jan winced, trying not to laugh. Gray was taken with the front cover of the magazine and the Range Rover that skidded down a ravine, going all off road and… muddy. Yeah, real X-rated stuff in Jack’s world.

“Christ.” Gray tossed the magazine back at Jan and eased down with a soft smile. “Fucking mechanics.”

Jan chuckled and got out of bed. “C’mon, get a shower. You know full well he’s treating you mean to keep you from going strip and whip on him. As much as he’ll mukka tip you for it, by the time he walks that expensive coffee up here that you like, it’ll be too damn cold.”

“Fuck sake…. Rabbit hole.” Gray wiped a hand over his face. “I’m still down the wrong one if I’m getting relationship memos off a soft lad.”

“That’sthesoft lad to you.” Jan grinned. “One you’re not getting any more emotional support sucking from either this morning.”

Gray’s grumble followed him as he turned away to the en suite.

“Yeah, love you too, tough guy.” Only he lost his smile a little too fast, and it wasn’t helped with how a call from the bedroom comm cut through the room.

Jan paused by the bathroom door and glanced back as Gray reached over and tapped at the comm.

“Make it good, Ray.” Gray wiped a hand over his face. “It’s too early in the goddamn morning, fuckingMondaymorning for that.”

Gray’s head of security chuckled. “You have a visitor on his way. Chief Superintendent Shaun Brennan, boss. Said he’ll be here in about an hour. It’s marked as urgent. That good enough for you?”

Gray eased up in bed, arms across his knees, and Jan cocked a brow. Yeah, that was good enough. Brennan was boss ofthe Metropolitan Police, but he was also Jan’s main boss at the Masters’ Circle. Well, more the boss of the boss, of the whole collection of bosses and the complex play of all their departments that spread through the British army, MI5 and 6, and the Met police combined when it came to the MC.

And for him to be coming here before work on a Monday morning… yeah. It was urgent. Gray’s look called it out too as he got out of bed, all naked, and headed over for the shower.

Chapter 4

GRAY

A quiet look at Jan in the mirror, Gray did up his shirt buttons and flicked him a look as the extractor fan quietly handled the fading mist in the en suite bathroom now they’d both showered and dressed for work.

With Shaun coming here, it seemed to have put Jan on guard. In part, Gray understood it. The offer of a promotion in the MC accounts department hadn’t gone down well with Jan.

Tomorrow he had an external skills assessment for it under the Financial Reporting Council, covering corporate, public, government, and forensic accounting. If Tax wasn’t the devil’s bed partner enough, the FRC was also lover to the Government, setting the UK’s Corporate Governance and Stewardship Codes. Over the past four months, Jan’s time on the books had been split between work and study, Jack there on feeding duty when Jan was too lost to remember the basics of eating, forget washing and combing his hair, which Jack always added a quick scrub into Jan’s windswept cut to play him up as Jan sat at his office desk. But like a few mornings now, Jan had lost his smile a little too easily and lain beside him in too much quiet before he’d relaxed and curled into Gray in bed.

“Problem?” Today his smile had fallen before Ray called about Shaun. Something else ate at him. Gray knew that.

Jan tapped at one of the three bathroom units and started to search through it after it gave quietly away. “A few hours. I left my new bloodyAventuscologne out of place for a few hours last night, and Jack—”

“Not what I’m asking about, Jan.” He was playing avoidance. Like with still keeping to a new cologne for Jack’s and his own sake over Vince’s rape, Jan was a soft lad, but only to a certain point. When Gray got no reply, only a hurried search for cologne, he reached behind Jan to a specialist built in unit with a cooler to keep the colognes away from direct exposure.

Chemicals were chemicals in his book, no matter how good they fuelled the senses with a promise of the good and wicked. He’d seen enough dirty terrorist tricks with acid swaps to make sure access was restricted to even bathroom items, mostly because the main composition in glass, silicon dioxide, played hard to seduce with most acids, making a cologne bottle nothing but a terrorist’s play toy when it came to acid-burnings and handing out warnings.

As Gray handed over hisAventus, Jan never asked why the cooler was needed, no doubt putting it down to simply keeping glass bottles out of direct sunlight. Gray preferred it that way. Some things Jan didn’t need to worry about on top of work, not chemicals and their poisons.

Gray stilled for a moment as he reached to close the unit, a bitter aftertaste of a carfentanyl and halothane mix from Light and Martin hitting his throat, or the ghost of it at the very least.

Through all the years, he’d obsessed over his career in MI5 or the cullers putting them on the detonation plate. Yet in the end, the worst threat of all had been family.

Jack’s.

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