Chained to My Bodyguard Until the Trial novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Click

In the first safe apartment Nico asks for the cuffs and for Ray's hand, and Ray gives him both. Ray will not let anyone touch him back. Vera calls at nine sharp and Ray lies to her for the first time.

The safe apartment was on the second floor of a brick building in Rogers Park, and it had one bedroom, one bed and one chair.

Ray checked every inch of it twice.

Then he checked the locks, the fire escape and the street.

Last he checked Nico, who had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch with his glasses in his lap.

The sun came up on a gray Tuesday.

They slept in shifts, or Nico did.

Ray sat in the chair with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door, and did not close them once.

At nine that night the phone rang.

It was Vera Cushing, who called every night at nine on the dot, and had for eight years.

"Tell me you're both breathing," she said.

"Both breathing," Ray said.

"Where are you? I'll update the file."

"Rogers Park. The Greenview address, second floor."

"Good boy," Vera said warmly. "I heard about the hotel. I'm so sorry, Ray. Is he sleeping?"

"He's about to."

"Then you sleep too. That's an order."

He hung up and stared at the wall for a moment.

He had told her everything that mattered, as always.

Nico came out of the bathroom with a towel around his neck and his hair wet and curling at his ears.

He had on a clean gray T-shirt and a pair of flannel pants, and no glasses, so he squinted.

"Is it bedtime?" he asked.

"It's bedtime."

"Then I'm taking the left side." Nico lifted the cuffs out of his bag. "Come here."

Ray lay down on the bed on top of the covers, in his shirt and trousers, with his shoes by the door.

Nico fastened the steel around his own right wrist first.

He took Ray's left wrist in both hands and turned it over to look at the faint pink mark from last night.

Then he closed the other cuff over it.

The chain lay across the sheet between their hips.

The lamp was off.

The streetlight came in through the blinds in thin stripes across Nico's face.

"You didn't sleep," Nico said.

"I'm not tired."

"You're lying."

"I'm working."

"You're lying and working." Nico shifted onto his side, and the chain slid with him. "Ray, can I tell you something stupid?"

"Go ahead."

"When you held my wrist in the car, I stopped shaking."

"It was the first time in three months I didn't want to jump out of my own skin."

Ray kept his eyes on the ceiling.

His voice came out rougher than he meant. "That's what the job is."

"It wasn't the job."

Nico was very close now.

His knee had come up against Ray's thigh, and his breath moved warm against Ray's jaw.

"It was your hand," he said. "I keep thinking about it."

"Nico."

"I'm twenty-nine years old. I'm not in shock, and I'm not grateful. I'm asking."

"I'm your guard."

"You're my guard," Nico agreed. "And I want you to put your hand on me."

The room was very quiet.

Ray could feel his own pulse in the cuff, in the thin place on the inside of his wrist where Nico's skin touched his.

He should have said no.

He had said no to a hundred clients in eight years, polite ones and rude ones.

It had never once cost him anything.

"You are going to be in a courtroom in forty-seven days," he said.

"Yes."

"I don't touch clients."

"I'm not a client tonight." Nico's voice dropped. "Tell me to stop, then. Go on."

Ray didn't say it.

He turned his head instead and looked at him.

Nico's eyes were dark without the glasses, and wide, and hungry, and not afraid at all.

Ray lifted his free hand and laid it on Nico's jaw.

It covered half his face.

Nico turned into it with a small breath, and kissed the heel of his palm.

That was all it took.

Ray kissed him.

It was slow, and then it wasn't.

Nico's mouth opened under his and he made a low noise.

His hand came up and fisted in Ray's shirt, which dragged the chain tight across both their hips.

He tasted like toothpaste and rain, and he kissed like someone who had been waiting to be allowed.

"Please," Nico said against his lips. "Touch me."

Ray slid his hand down.

Nico's flannel pants were soft, and under them he was already hard, hot through the cotton and pushing into Ray's palm.

Ray rubbed once, slowly, and Nico's hips jerked.

"Fuck," Nico said. "Yes. Like that."

Ray pushed the waistband down just far enough.

Nico's cock sprang free, flushed and thick and wet at the tip.

Ray wrapped his big fingers around it and stroked from the root to the head.

Nico's head went back on the pillow.

"Oh, God. Ray."

"I've got you."

Ray did it slowly at first, with a loose twist at the top that made Nico's thighs shake.

He watched his face the whole time.

The cuffed wrists lay together on the sheet, Nico's narrow one beside his own.

Every time Nico's body jerked, the chain rattled and tugged at both of them.

Nico's fingers found the chain and wrapped around it.

Then he wrapped them around Ray's cuffed wrist, tight.

"Faster," he whispered. "Please. Hold me down."

Ray put his forearm across Nico's hips and pinned them to the mattress.

Then he stroked him faster, with his thumb dragging over the wet head on each upstroke, and Nico came apart in his hand.

He made a broken sound into Ray's shoulder.

His cock pulsed, and hot cum spilled over Ray's knuckles and onto Nico's stomach in long bursts.

His hips tried to fuck up into Ray's fist and could not move.

Ray held him there and milked every drop.

"That's it," he said, low. "Let it go."

Nico shook through it, his breath sawing in and out.

When it ended, he lay boneless against the pillow with his eyes shut.

There was a wet streak at the corner of one of them.

Ray wiped his hand on the sheet and said nothing.

The ache between his own legs was hard and heavy and he ignored it.

"Your turn," Nico mumbled, and his fingers slid down Ray's chest, toward his belt.

Ray caught his hand at the wrist and stopped it.

"No."

Nico's eyes opened.

"Not tonight," Ray said. "This was for you."

"I want to."

"I know." He kissed Nico's forehead, lightly, just once. "Sleep."

Nico looked at him for a long moment.

Then he curled against Ray's side with the chain between them and his head on Ray's shoulder.

Within a few minutes his breathing slowed and deepened.

Ray lay awake with his heart pounding and Nico's tears drying on his shirt.

At midnight his phone lit up on the nightstand.

It was a text from Joan Whitaker, the prosecutor.

The clerk who coded the key card is gone, it read.

He quit an hour after he cut it, and someone gave him your room number.

Who else had it?

Ray looked at the sleeping man on his shoulder and typed with one thumb.

My boss, Cushing dispatch, your office, me.

The answer came in seconds.

Then it's one of four, Joan wrote. Tell nobody where you go next. Nobody.

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