Page 20 of Connor's Claim

The last place I tried was the home Riordan shared with his da and sister, before Arran moved her into his, but coming here would end the secret I was keeping from them.

With no other choice, I knocked on the door.

An older man answered the communal street door, his eyes bleary and his jowls unshaven. “Who the hell are you?”

“Is your son here?”

“Who?”

“Riordan.”

The man spat, rolling on his feet. “That kid? Waste of fucking space.”

“Have ye seen him?”

He was steaming drunk and it was barely dark.

“After all I did for him, taking him in, and all the space he took up, I asked one thing in return. Trade in that bike he rides. He has a goddamned car, does he need both? Do you know what he said?”

I inched back from a hot waft of alcohol fumes. “What?”

“He said no. No! He has a full-time job, and I need the cash. Ungrateful, overgrown bastard.”

A strange pang of sympathy struck me. Riordan’s da wanted him to sell his bike to no doubt fuel his drunkenness. This guy bore a resemblance to the woman who’d had the misfortune to give birth to me. He didn’t care about him like my mother didn’t want me.

We had that in common.

The sentiment was short-lived.

I turned on my heel and stalked away, setting my tracks for the warehouse. The day was a fucking bust. For the next several hours, I worked security. Sunday nights were quieter but not dead. We had to shut up shop earlier because of licensing laws, but that was only the public-facing parts of the business.

The rest remained open until well into the early hours. The brothel, and the women and men who performed over live streams for paying customers. That was busy enough on a Sunday evening to keep me occupied.

I had another activity that was unique to me, the centre of my role in Deadwater, but nothing of that was possible tonight.

My knives stayed sheathed, and it was more the fucking pity because taking out my mood on deserving flesh would’ve helped me no end.

But no matter how much I took on, the draw to my apartment only got stronger as the evening continued. All I imagined was Everly. Stuck inside. Waiting for me. Or maybe not caring and just getting on with her precious work.

At midnight, I gave up my resistance and ran up the eight flights to the penthouse floor. Silently, I let myself into my apartment. All was quiet. A lamp had been left on, and I had the weird idea it was for my benefit, but I stopped that thought in its tracks and continued on.

In the bedroom, Everly slept in my bed. She was on her back, her long, brunette hair spread out over my pillow, and the sheets lightly draped over her form.

She took a breath, shifting in her sleep so the sheet moved and clung to the shape of her chest.

My dick thickened in my jeans. I’d spent the night around semi-naked women and watched people fuck, but it hadn’t triggered even the smallest degree of interest. Naked bodies were hot. Dicks disappearing into holes used to do something for me. But it was too commonplace to affect me anymore. I knew and respected the sex workers involved so didn’t fetishise them.

It took a lot to turn me on, yet the outline of this sleeping woman’s tits had caught me by the balls.

I pressed my spine to the wall, my chest rising and falling. Earlier, I’d told her she could do anything she wanted to me in my sleep, and she’d said the same.

Those words, gifted with a smile, haunted me.

Everything she did haunted me. The day my mother escaped her father wasn’t even two years from when we’d moved in. I’d been so relieved. So desperate for the nightmare of living in that house to be over.

With her gone, that left just me and Everly. My perfect, beautiful seventeen-year-old girlfriend. It was our turn to walk out the door, and I’d worked my arse off to prepare. I had a car. A job in another city, low-paying work in a bar but better than nothing and enough to rent us a room in a shared house.

The week leading up to the big day had been hellish. Mayor Makepeace was easy with his fists. He’d begun knocking mymother around only months after we’d moved in, though I didn’t know for a long time after. I heard the arguments, though. He liked control and saw offence in the smallest things. A glass left on the coffee table was reason for a screaming match.