Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94527 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94527 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Yeah. Just a sec.” I trailed back to the entryway to grab the bag. “Want me to heat it up for you?”
“Yes, please. Thank you. I gotta sit down for a bit.”
Yeah, and I had to get out of here. Man, that baby did not stop screaming.
Seventeen minutes later, I returned to my own place a changed man. A deaf man.
I rubbed my ear and tossed my keys on the hallway table.
Shan was sitting on the couch, sipping a drink. Vodka, judging by the bottle on the coffee table.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked.
He glanced over at me, and the languidness of his movements told me everything I needed to know. He’d been at it for a while.
I removed the bottle and returned it to the cabinet.
“I need a favor,” he muttered. “I…I can’t ask sober.”
I frowned and sat down next to him. How bad could it be? Our guys in the syndicate turned to me for favors all the time. With my position, I was more connected than the boss himself, ’cause Finn had to stay clean. He couldn’t get his hands dirty for nothing.
“Whatever you need, sir. You know that.”
He nodded with a dip of his chin, then finished his drink and set the glass on the table. “You’ve set men up with mistresses and girlfriends before.”
Shite.
I’d been waiting for this, yet I hadn’t expected it so soon.
“Aye.” I eyed him carefully. His pain was as evident as usual.
But maybe it wasn’t so soon after all. It’d been over a year since Grace had died. It was the loss of Patrick this summer that’d completely wrecked Shan. It’d pushed him over the edge.
“Do you want me to arrange something for you?” I asked. “I can get it done in a couple of hours.”
As long as it was a woman.
He swallowed hard. “I miss human touch, but I don’t wanna see anyone.”
I felt my forehead crease. I could relate to the yearning, but I wasn’t sure if he was speaking literally about the last part. “You mean you don’t want a relationship or you want it anonymous?”
“Both,” he rasped. Then he cleared his throat. “I’m not looking for intimacy. Just physical. No faces, no names, no talking, no off-the-books apartment, nothing social.”
I nodded slowly, the alternatives appearing in my head—or disappearing, one by one. I wanted to say intimacy was exactly what he needed, but it was his choice. There were still options.
“That leaves you with massage parlors and fetish clubs,” I answered.
“It has to be dark,” he insisted. “Pitch black.”
Okay. He really didn’t wanna risk seeing a face. Fine, I could work with that. A certain underground club came to mind, and it was run by a friend of Colm’s. Aside from the main club being an essential location for our drug trade, it had an upstairs area with a VIP section, a hallway full of private booths, and a couple rooms with viewing windows for live porn.
“Any other preferences?” I asked. “I reckon you don’t care if she’s a blonde or a redhead in the dark, but body type? Age? You want her screened and on birth control so you can go without rubbers? You care about safewords? You want a subservient little thing or a bossy—”
“Jesus,” he muttered and rubbed his temples. “It suddenly feels too complicated. And at the risk of making it worse, I’d prefer a man.”
Fuck my life. Fuck my life hard.
I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and willed myself to stay calm.
Shannon O’Shea screwing a man. I didn’t wanna see that in my head—and for as bizarre as it still was to know he was even into men in the first place, it was terrifyingly easy to picture. It was why I wanted him to be straight. It kept him on the other half of the playing field. Away from me.
“I’ve no opinion on body type,” he said. “Just—what I’ve said so far. And no talking—I mean it, Kellan. Not a single word will be exchanged. Afterward, I don’t want to be able to pick him from a lineup. And vice versa. If I didn’t crave actual touch, I would’ve been satisfied with a damn gloryhole.”
Despite the unknown number of drinks he’d had, his discomfort became more evident the more he spoke. Something I could relate to. This was every shade of fucked up.
“Why do you have to be the one who makes things happen in our organization?” he asked, frustrated.
My mouth twitched. “Would you have trusted someone else?”
He had no response to that.
“Look, Shan, I get it. It’s weird. But you know I’m airtight, and we don’t gotta talk about it once I’ve found you someone. It’s none of my business.” I paused, summoning the energy to move forward with this screwed-up arrangement that was gonna give me nightmares. “Easiest route for you is Evan’s club across the river. I’ll find a guy for you, set up a line of communication so youse can decide when to meet up without my involvement, and I’ll have Colm get you a driver.” I’d talk to Evan myself to make sure Shan and whatever lucky son of a bitch I found for him would have a private room—and that they wouldn’t enter said room at the same time.