...and then the Dead Man bent over Reece the empath, pinning him tighter to the hood of the Smart car. “I have to protect Seattle from dangerous empaths like you,” he said, in his deep, broody, and accented voice. “But I never thought defending the world from empaths would mean getting this close to one.”
Reece squirmed on the car hood, but the empath was never going to escape the Dead Man’s hold: the bigger man was just too strong. And that shouldn’t have been so sexy, but it was, because Reece wasn’t going to escape his feelings either.
(continued in the next comment)
—EXCERPT FROMHUNTING FOR LOVE, AN EMPATH/EMPATH HUNTER FANFICTION
One moment,Grayson was offering Reece a hand down from the truck.
The next, he was scrambling to catch him before he tumbled off the tailgate.
He got an arm around him just as Reece listed into him, boneless and unmoving as a rag doll. Grayson tilted him enough to glimpse his face, already knowing what he’d see.
Closed eyes. Slack expression. Because Grayson’s arms were suddenly full of unconscious empath.
He shifted Reece back to center, the full weight of his head resting against Grayson’s chest.
“Bad Decisions Bear,” he muttered.
He held Reece up for a moment, weighing his options. Reece himself didn’t weigh much, light and easy in his arms, soft in the hoodie and warm with that empath extra body heat. He was right up under Grayson’s sensitive nose, but for all of Grayson’s ribbing about his unwashed hair, he smelled good.
But Grayson would ignore all of that. Reece was unconscious; Grayson would behave with impeccable professionalism and keep the touching to an absolute minimum.
Starting with dropping the hand he hadn’t realized was still loosely intertwined in his own.
Grayson immediately let go, slipping his arms under Reece’s to steady him as he considered their options.
Reece had been game for driving up to Vancouver. But they’d also been planning to stop by Reece’s place first and that probably wasn’t an option anymore; Grayson wasn’t going to leave him alone and passed out in the truck, not when Waller knew where Reece lived, but folks would notice if Grayson carried Reece up and down from the studio with bags for two, and it’d be better if they didn’t leave a trail.
But waiting wasn’t ideal either, not when they only had a limited amount of time to search at Stone Solutions Canada before Vivian Marist returned to Vancouver. Reece would probably be unconscious still for some hours. Grayson couldn’t even be sure how many hours; he’d never knocked the same empath out twice before.
He could find somewhere safe for Reece to stay and leave him behind; maybe take him back to Detective St. James’ house. But Reece was dangerous in ways no empath ever had been before. And he knew it and wanted to stay with Grayson, even when it meant a trip to an airsoft course or Vancouver. Because he trusted Grayson to keep everyone safe, even when he didn’t trust himself.
Grayson bent forward, enough to get his left shoulder aligned with Reece’s stomach and lever him up and over as he straightened. Looked like they were heading to Canada, and it was Reece’s own fault that he couldn’t ask for the truck keys or complain about Grayson’s driving.
He worked his right hand into his pocket to pull out his phone. Pictures of the Dead Man were classified. They weren’t supposed to exist. But Reece had pulled this stunt and ought to see for himself where it got him.
He held the phone up and out to the side to get the back of the truck and both of their faces in frame, so there was no question who it was tipped over Grayson’s shoulder.
“Guess who gets to wake up to this in their texts?” he said, as he snapped a picture.
The missing glove was in the truck bed, lying innocently where Reece had been sitting. Why it wasn’t on Reece’shandwas a good question, but Grayson wasn’t gonna find out until Reece was conscious again.
Balancing Reece on his shoulder, Grayson grabbed the glove and stuck it in his pocket before closing up the tailgate. He carried Reece over to the passenger door and got it open.
He leaned forward again, awkwardly hunching and twisting to keep Reece’s head from bonking the door frame, then set the still out-cold Reece on the passenger seat.
“Very Bad Decisions Bear,” he told him, as he reclined the seat enough that Reece wouldn’t fall forward or slump off, then buckled him in—there’d be weeks of lectures if he forgot that part.
He straightened up and considered Reece, the lopsided look of one glove. After a moment, he reached for Reece’s left hand and pulled that glove off too. He stuck them both in the glove box, then slipped his coat off and put it over Reece. With Reece now secured and supine, Grayson shut the passenger door and went around to the driver’s side.
It was a short trip onto I-5, but even at midafternoon, the rush hour traffic was already starting. Without Reece’s chatter to fill the truck, Grayson put on music as he inched north, but even that wasn’t enough to tune out his thoughts.
Reece had taken off a glove in public. EI and Stone Solutions both would have some pretty big opinions about that.
They’d have even bigger opinions about Grayson taking an empath up to Stone Solutions Canada behind their backs.
But someone had sent Keith Waller those real empath gloves, manufactured by Stone Solutions and mailed from Vancouver. Considering what had happened in November, and what had been done to Reece in March, Grayson wouldn’t’ve trusted Vivian Marist and Stone Solutions with anything right then.
