A Life Chosen (Montreal #1)

Chapter Nine

M athias couldn’t stand it. His skin itched every time Rayan was close. He wondered how long this tension had existed between them, going unspoken, unexplored. They’d both stumbled into it so easily when given the opportunity. Mathias couldn’t decide what was more aggravating—having lost control or knowing someone had witnessed the dissolution. He barely recalled the sequence of events that had led to the sudden transformation between them, but he did know there had been no hesitation. Rayan—despite his usual acquiescence—had proven just as impatient as Mathias.

In the years he’d known him, Rayan had appeared to lead an unassuming life. Aside from his early inquiries into the man’s background, it was a life Mathias hadn’t spent much time considering. But there were signs, carefully hidden, that he was only now beginning to see, perhaps because he’d proven so adept at his own personal erasure.

Mathias paced the floor of his bedroom, sucking with restless vigor on his usual late-night cigarette. When he closed his eyes, he saw Rayan—the slick open mouth, the curve of his back, hips pressed against him.

He stopped, the cigarette clenched between his teeth, suppressing a groan. Mathias couldn’t remember a time when he’d wanted—really wanted—to fuck someone so badly it scrambled his thoughts. He had done everything he could to supplant these images with something tamer. He’d gone to a woman in Rosemont, someone he saw when he wanted to steer clear of the family’s well-worn establishments. It had only served to highlight exactly what he was missing.

Maybe if it hadn’t felt so good… if he hadn’t wanted his hands on every part of the man, craved the swell of his cock in his fist… if he hadn’t come so hard, his mind emptying for one delirious moment as though he’d been erased. Maybe then, Mathias could bury this reckless lapse of judg ment and move on.

Running a hand through his hair, he sat down on the edge of the bed. It was foolish to think adding Silvano to the team would do anything but amplify the deprivation. The distance made Mathias even more insatiable. He resented the way Junior’s presence curtailed what had once transpired seamlessly between him and Rayan. And still, his second said nothing. He showed up on time and did his job without question.

Mathias stood to stub out his waning cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. Enough. He was a grown man, for fuck’s sake. He would not be so easily undone.

As Mathias climbed into bed, it dawned on him that perhaps it was restraint itself that was messing with him. Maybe it was simply a matter of getting this out of his system. Enough of anything naturally became its own deterrent as it lost its power. He would shake Rayan’s hold over him not through avoidance but by meeting it head-on. When it was done—when it had run its course and he’d tired of the man—Mathias could move past this madness.

Rayan half expected Mathias to say something about Silvano on the drive home. Sitting beside him in the passenger seat, he could tell Mathias was seething after another day of jobs and more of the same. There’d been blood on Junior’s knuckles that he refused to wash off, bursting with a manic energy that he’d yet to come down from. The kid had brought his own piece with him that day and carried it around like he was the hero in an action film. It had been a relief to finally drop the kid off at the office, along with their daily takings, Tony smirking away behind his desk and a cloud of cigar smoke.

Mathias pulled the car to the curb outside his apartment building, but Rayan didn’t get out. He felt his capo’s eyes on him, growing impatient.

“What?” Mathias snapped.

Rayan glanced at him. He had too much to say and nowhere to start. He clicked off his seat belt, opened the door, then stopped. Turning, he spoke into the space between them. “You hungry?”

Rayan was starving. After yet another fitful night, he’d woken later than usual and had to skip breakfast. Then a series of setbacks meant the day hadn’t followed its typical pattern. Lunch had been abandoned, and the coffee he’d managed to grab at the office had barely sustained him.

Mathias stared at him, silent. Then he reached out to cut the engine. They stepped from the car, and Mathias followed him into the building. Rayan placed his wallet and keys down on the kitchen counter as Mathias shut the apartment door behind them. He hadn’t expected his boss to accept the invitation. He’d anticipated more of the same coldness. But hunger was a powerful motivator.

Rayan would never tell Mathias, but he enjoyed seeing him in his space—standing in the entranceway, walking through the kitchen. He tried not to think of the last time Mathias had been here. Rayan took off his jacket and draped it over a chair then unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves.

Mathias reached into his jacket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He paused. There was only one left.

“Rough day?” Rayan baited him, taking a wrapped chunk of roast beef out of the fridge.

Mathias had been chain smoking since they’d picked Silvano up that morning. He gave him a dirty look and returned the packet to his pocket, deciding against smoking his last one. “Chatty, aren’t we?”

He was in a bad mood. Rayan sliced thick chunks of bread and spread on a layer of mayonnaise. Mathias took off his jacket and pulled up a bar stool, watching as he carved slices of beef and stacked them onto the open bread.

“He’s going to do something stupid,” Rayan said, cutting open a dark-red tomato and reaching for a head of lettuce.

“Because he’s an idiot,” Mathias replied. “Like his father.”

Rayan pressed the top layer of bread onto each sandwich and moved them onto plates. He pushed one across the counter toward Mathias. They ate in silence, Rayan standing in the kitchen while Mathias sat hunched over the counter. The sandwich was good, kicking the edge off the gnawing hunger that had a way of jumbling his thoughts. Mathias seemed slightly less agitated after having eaten. He sat back on his stool as Rayan tossed the plates into the sink.

“Are you happy here?”

Rayan looked up at him in surprise. “Happy?” he repeated. Am I happy? It wasn’t a question he asked himself. Happiness had always felt like a concept that belonged to other people.

“With the job, the work.” Mathias frowned, a tweak of irritation tugging at his lips.

Rayan was housed, clothed, fed. Every week, Mathias handed him a brown envelope with more money than he could make use of. Compared to all those years with nothing, what more could he want? But there was something else that chased him—a need for purpose, connection. Something to fill the dark void that descended at night, threatening to overwhelm him .

“Yes,” he said finally, not wanting to tarnish his need for a simple answer with the complexity the question invoked.

Mathias did not look convinced. He drummed his fingers against the counter, unsatisfied. Sometimes, Rayan felt he would have an easier time dealing with the man if he wrote up a damn script.

“Though I’d be happier if you’d stop treating me like a fucking leper,” he muttered.

Mathias’s eyes snapped back to him, and Rayan held his gaze.

“What are you saying?” Mathias challenged him.

“Nothing.” He looked away. “I’ll grab you a pack downstairs.”

Rayan reached for his wallet. Mathias’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“I’m still hungry,” his capo said, eyes darkening.

Rayan seized the front of the man’s shirt, covering his mouth with his own. There was no hesitation. He felt Mathias’s hand on his neck, pushing back, as he parted Rayan’s lips with his tongue.

“Fuck it,” Mathias murmured when they came up for air. He stood and pulled Rayan toward the bed.

“Hnh… fuck—” It came out a muffled murmur as Rayan pressed his face into Mathias’s neck.

His skin prickled as Rayan shuddered. He felt the wetness slide through his fingers. It had surprised Mathias how much pleasure he could find in someone else’s. He’d never been one of those men turned on by eating out a woman or who jacked it while sucking someone off. He didn’t get the point. Sex had always been about his own release… until he found himself fixated on the ways his touch affected this man. The sudden arch of his back, a reluctant groan, the flush of heat along his chest. How Rayan tried to turn away, hide his face, making Mathias all the more determined to see it. It got him off. That and the way he clenched around him, spasming exquisitely with him inside.

Mathias’s grip slipped as he let himself give in to what he’d worked so hard to hold back. He came with a sharp grunt, feeling Rayan’s fist in his hair and slick thighs beneath his palms, everything else fading, contracting, as the sensation seared through him.

When their breathing slowed, Rayan extracted himself and rolled to one side. Mathias had discovered that Rayan was incredibly sensitive afterward, his body recoiling from the slightest touch. It took him a few minutes to lose his edge, and then he was seductively pliant. It made Mathias want to fuck him again.

They lay side by side, chests rising and falling as Rayan’s eyes began to close. Mathias reached out and yanked the pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his discarded jacket. That’s right—just the one left. It felt like hours had passed since their conversation in the kitchen. He lit up and took a long drag, savoring the taste before exhaling slowly.

Then, from his postcoital nicotine-fueled buzz, Mathias spoke the words he never would have uttered in the light of day. “I’m not the first man you’ve fucked.”

As soon as he said it, a shot of sobriety hit Mathias in the gut. He would be a liar if he said he hadn’t thought about it. This thing between them—and he still wasn’t sure what to call it—had happened with such intensity that he had yet to give it real-world context.

Rayan opened his eyes, shifting slightly so he was facing him. “Am I?”

Mathias bristled at the confrontation. He had a feeling Rayan already knew the answer to his question. He sat up, crushing his cigarette into the empty pack and reaching for his pants, but Rayan lunged forward, looped an arm around his chest, and pushed him back down onto the bed. He stared at Mathias with a veiled expression. This close, Mathias could see the swelling along Rayan’s bottom lip, where he had bitten down.

“The fuck do I care?” his second murmured, their mouths meeting once again.

This time, Mathias stayed. He stared at the ceiling as they lay, spent, on Rayan’s bed, the lights from the street ebbing and fading against the exposed concrete. Next to him, Rayan’s breathing was quiet and regular as if he were on the verge of sleep.

He’d wanted Rayan to tell him how much he hated the work, his life with the family. It would have made things easy. But as it turned out, lines were beginning to blur. Already, it was becoming difficult to separate the man he sent ahead of him from the man who lay beside him, their sweat mingling.

As if on cue, Rayan rolled over and rose from the bed, rubbing a hand across his face. He disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared several moments later in a T-shirt and gray sweats. “I have cognac, no scotch.”

Mathias pulled himself up, giving Rayan a skeptical look. “Here I was thinking this was a dry house.”

“Tony’s holiday bonus,” Rayan shot back, walking to the kitchen.

Mathias snorted. “Knowing him, it’s probably cheap.” He stood and slipped on his pants then shrugged into his shirt .

On the nightstand was a faded copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Terre des hommes . He’d read it in high school and found it trite, despite the author enjoying a popular resurgence. He picked up the book and flipped through. It fell open on a well-worn page, a place where the spine was heavily cracked, the corner dog-eared. Someone had underlined a passage, pressing hard enough to leave an indent in the paper:

Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

Mathias snapped the book shut and placed it back where he’d found it.

Rayan appeared in the doorway and held out a tumbler of amber liquid. In his own hand was a glass of water. His eyes fell on Saint-Exupéry’s memoir, and he picked it up and absently dropped it on top of a pile of books by the door. Mathias glanced around the room, surprised he hadn’t noticed before the stacks of books in various corners and along the windowsill. He recalled their conversation about Alighieri. So this is what he spends his money on? Certainly not booze and hookers, like the rest of the family’s soldiers.

“Favorite of yours?” Mathias asked, tilting his chin in the direction of the pile.

Rayan seemed to weigh his answer carefully. “A gift from my mother.”

It was oddly sentimental, a trait he hadn’t attributed to the man, who appeared content as his life was blown from one extreme to the next.

His second shrugged. “When I was young, I wanted to be a pilot.”

Mathias raised an eyebrow. “If I remember, it’s not so much about flying as it is about survival.”

“Right,” Rayan said, a strange look flickering across his face. “Maybe she knew me better than I thought.”

Mathias watched Rayan change shape before him, streaks of color filling in what had been an empty outline. He sat on the edge of the bed, taking a sip of the cheap cognac. “You would’ve made a shitty pilot.”

Rayan laughed. “I figured it was the fastest way out of Maskinongé.” He leaned against the wall, observing Mathias. “Tony said you went to university.”

“In another life.”

“What did you study?”

“Finance, economics.” Mathias paused. “Some literature.”

“Modern?”

“French.”

Rayan smiled knowingly. “Which is why you can’t stand Houellebecq.”

“That man is rotten.” Mathias swallowed another mouthful. It wasn’t half bad if you were a newly minted eighteen-year-old looking to get wasted. “What’s with the books?”

Rayan stared at the water in his hand, stalling. “I didn’t finish school,” he said finally. “Thought reading might make up for what I missed.”

“What you missed?”

“You know, an education.”

Rayan was smart—that wasn’t hard to glean from even a passing conversation. If you could pull the words out of him. It was strange to see him discredit himself over something so trivial.

“I’ve worked with men who couldn’t figure out the tax on a bagel,” Mathias scoffed. “You didn’t miss much.”

Rayan brought the glass to his lips, and Mathias watched the mask return. He could tell the man didn’t believe him.