I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by an eighteen-wheeler and then backed over. Then set on fire just to make sure I was dead. 

Didn’t open my eyes right away, just lay there, face mashed into a pillow that smelled like stale detergent trying way too hard to bleach out the questionable stains underneath the pillow cover. The mattress under me creaked every time I breathed, springs digging into me. Every inch of my body hurt, dull in some places and sharp in others, all of it grinding together into one solid, miserable awareness that I was very much alive and regretting every second of it.

I forced one eye open, the shitty room coming into bleary focus. Old as hell, barely held together with peeling, striped yellow wallpaper. There was some kind of water stain blooming across the ceiling, kind of looked like a giraffe if you focused hard enough, or maybe Elvis. OR maybe the Elvis version of a giraffe. Fuck if I knew. The curtains were sad, thin and caked with the last fifty years of cigarette smoke and bad decisions. 

“What the fuck…?” I mumbled, my voice coming out wrecked. I pushed myself up and immediately regretted it when my ribs lit up and my jaw throbbed like it was on fire. My spine felt like it was in pieces. 

I slowly scanned the room, taking in the clothes lying everywhere. My jeans lay halfway across the room, my shirt draped over a busted chair. One of my boots was upside down by the door, and the other…honestly had no idea. 

Then I noticed the weight beside me, and I turned my head, seeing a lump under the stiff cover. 

I reached out and yanked the blanket down enough to see that there was a fucking dude in my bed. Blonde and curled on his side, one arm tucked under the pillow, the other stretched lazily across the mattress. 

I reached over and gave him a shove. “Hey. Blondie. Get the fuck out of my bed.”

He moved to swat my hand and gave a frustrated groan but didn’t make any effort to get up, which was wild. One night stands were supposed to be for…uh, one night. I hadn’t planned on playing mommy to this guy, making him breakfast and sending him on his way. The plan had been to clap cheeks with him for a couple of hours, then kick his ass out.

I shoved him again, a little harder this time. “Hey. Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. You’re in the wrong bed, in the wrong room, attached to the wrong goddamn problem.”

He groaned, louder this time, and swatted again weakly at my hand without even opening his eyes. “Five minutes—”

“I am not giving you five—”

“Good morning.”

Everything in me locked up at the sound of that voice. It hit me like a switch flipped somewhere behind my ribs, sharp, immediate, and wrong. I looked over and there he was. David. Sitting in the chair across the room like he’d been there the entire time. One leg crossed, posture loose, hands relaxed. But his eyes…like a viper waiting to strike in a pit. 

My stomach dropped so hard it felt like I missed a step on a staircase.

“What the fuck? I jerked upright so fast my vision blacked at the edges. Pain tore through my ribs, but I barely felt it over the spike of adrenaline. “How the fuck did you get in here!?”

David held up a key tag with a single key. “I have key,” he said calmly. “You ask for me very loudly last night. I come to see.” He shrugged.

“That doesn’t—” I choked out, the room tilting dangerously. “That doesn’t mean you get to just sit there while I’m sitting naked in bed with another dude! Holy shit, you’re some kind of sick pervert, aren’t you? You get off on this kind of shit?”

David’s eyes flicked briefly to the blonde, then back to me before drifting down to the bundle of sheets between my legs. “Is unexpected,” he said, leaning back more, hands folding in his lap. “But not unpleasant. How did you enjoy Marko’s company last night? Fun, yes?”

Oh, fuck.

I looked over at the blonde still sprawled across my bed, and it was like ice water got dumped over me all of a sudden. “Marko?” I said. “He’s one of yours? Did you send him to find me?”

David’s mouth curved. “No. You choose him,” he corrected. “I did not arrange this, Michael.”

I shivered, because the way he said my name, low and certain, like it already belonged in his mouth, sent something tight and unpleasant down my spine. While beside me, Marko shifted, pushing himself up onto one elbow, sheets sliding down his naked torso. 

“Marko,” David said, and then uttered something sharp and precise in Russian along with my name somewhere in there but more stretched out, like, “Mykael.”

Marko crawled over, positioned himself between me and David, and tugged down the edge of the sheet, exposing the hardening length of my cock to the cool air of the room. He didn’t say a word, just held my gaze with dark, doe eyes, unblinking, as if daring me to pull away. 

“Go on, Marko, make him hard.”

Holy fucking shit.

I couldn’t stop myself. Between David watching in his little corner like the pervert he was and Marko gently brushing his fingers over the blonde hairs on my thigh, my cock twitched upward as he tossed away the sheet. 

“What the fuck is this?” I rasped, “You running some kind of slutty ring around here?”

“Relax, Mikey,” Marko chuckled into my ear, tongue darting out to tease me.

“I heard last night you spoke to Noah Riley,” David said, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. Not with Marko reaching for my cock, encircling the base where it met my balls, squeezing just enough to pull a sharp inhale from my lungs. “Chased him down the street. Threatened him.”

I scoffed a little. “Yeah. And you wrecked my car and lit it up like a damn bonfire. So, guess we’re even now, huh, Terminator—”

I stopped when Marko's thumb traced lazy circles over the underside of my balls now. Heat surging downwards towards my groin, my cock jerked upward, the head brushing against his wrist. “Fuck you both,” I managed to spit out, but my voice cracked as Marko gave a slow, deliberate pump from base to tip, hand warm and callused, making my hips twitch forward involuntarily.

“Keep talking shit,” Marko whispered, breath hot and teasing against my ear. “I can make this last all day.”

“I did not touch your car,” David replied, all calm and annoyingly steady. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

He did. I knew he did, judging by that look in his eyes.

“Bullshit!” I spat, and I reached down to grab Marko’s wrist in a vice grip, stopping him in place. “You know exactly what I’m talking about! You wanted to kill me last night, didn’t you? Wanted to make it look like an accident. How’d you do it, David?” I demanded, “How’d you fucking do it? Lights and cameras? Optical illusion? I could have died, you sick, fucking freak.”

David quirked an eyebrow, then spoke a single, sharp line in Russian.

Marko stopped what he was doing, his expression losing the edge he’d been wearing since he woke up. He rolled his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and moved to climb off the bed. “Whatever,” he muttered, “Buzzkill.”

He bent to collect his clothes without ceremony and then shuffled into the bathroom, door slamming shut behind him.

I barely had time to process everything before something flew through the air and hit me in the chest. A black backpack, worn and full of something. 

“What the hell is this—” I started.

“Get dressed,” David cut me off. “You are not safe here.”

I looked down at the bag in my hands, then scowled at him. “You break into my room, watch whatever the hell this was, and now you’re giving me clothes like I’m…what? One of your dumb little hyenas you think you can move around whenever you want?”

“You’re not safe here,” he repeated, and shrugged like it was no big deal.

I let out a sharp laugh. “Yeah? From who? You?” 

David stood up, chair creaking as he rose to his full height, hands jammed into his pockets. “No,” he said. “From what you started when you chose to become visible. Get dressed, Michael. I will be waiting outside.” 

Marko opened the bathroom door, caught one look at the expression on David’s face, and shuffled past him, muttering in annoyance. A second later, David smacked the back of his head, and both of them headed outside, leaving me still sitting there in bed with a half-hard on and a rage like no other.