Page 34 of The Club

This can’t go on. He’s distracting me. He’s fucking up my head. I have to end it.

I take the road to my family’s estate. Rocco is way past trying to hide, and when I pull around to the back side of the house, he follows, parking his Charger beside my Audi.

He gets out when I do. He stays by his car, waiting for what he knows is coming, bracing as I stalk his way. He doesn’t react when I grab the front of his jacket or even when I slam him against the side of his car.

“What the fuck did I tell you?” I snarl into his face.

“I know what you told me.”

“And you think you can fucking ignore my orders?”

“I think you need me to.”

“That’s not your fucking call to make!”

He doesn’t argue, doesn’t get smart with me. He’s just big and silent and steady. I shove him and step back.

“If you’re so fucking desperate to help, you can haul his ass to the cell,” I snap and head for the cellar door.

I go down ahead of Rocco, passing through the cellar to the hidden door and beyond that to the cell.

It’s clean. There are no traces of the last torture and death that took place here. I detach the metal chair from the floor andget it out of the way as Rocco lumbers in with Rafael draped over his shoulder. I repress an instinctive growl at the sight of Rocco’s arm hooked around Rafael’s legs and Rafael’s head hanging near Rocco’s ass.

“String him up,” I order.

Rocco glances at me, not liking it. He knows I’ve been stalking Rafael. I’m sure he assumes, correctly, that I’ve been fucking him.

“Take his jacket off first,” I add.

Rocco lowers Rafael to the sealed concrete floor, but when he unzips the leather jacket, I elbow him aside and do it myself. Rafael’s still out because I drugged him as soon as I got him in the car. He’s a dead weight as I haul him partway up to shove his jacket off his shoulders. Rocco pulls it free.

I decide to remove his shirt too. I want to look at his body one more time while he’s still breathing.

Rocco stands up and checks the cuffs that hang from the beam. I wrap my arms around Rafael’s torso and haul him up. Rocco gets his wrists in the cuffs.

“Dominic,” he says when Rafael is secured.

“Get the fuck out,” I tell him before he can finish whatever bullshit he was about to start.

When Rocco lingers like he has shit he really wants to say, I pull my gun from its underarm holster and point it at him. He takes the hint and heads to the door.

“He’s gorgeous,” Rocco says then quickly snaps the door shut.

I almost fire at the steel surface, but I grit my teeth and return my gun to its holster.

Yeah. Rafael is gorgeous. Even like this, unconscious, head hanging, body lax, he’s fucking gorgeous. He’s all refined muscle and perfect proportion. So beautiful and so male.

His jeans are riding low enough to show all of the tattoo on his lower belly. The intricate, twisting design would look purelyaggressive anywhere else on his body, but the placement makes it sexual.

The artwork hooking over his shoulders from his back echoes the pattern and introduces the other elements. The roses and thorns and what I’ve come to realize are skulls. They hide in the design, blending it, hard to recognize. I get it.

Death

Pain.

Beauty.

Order and chaos intermingled.

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