Page 3 of Business vs. Pleasure

“You were…” August swallowed. “You’re bored?”

Ricardo exhaled hard and broke eye contact. “Yes. I love you, August. I love…” He gestured around them. “All of this. But I…” He let his shoulders fall as he met August’s gaze again. “You can’t tell me you don’t miss it.”

The way August gnawed his lower lip suggested Ricardo was at least somewhat right. Voice still taut, August growled, “I thought we agreed on this. On retiring.”

“We did. I know.” Ricardo rolled his shoulders. “And I…” He gestured with his phone. “I haven’t accepted any jobs. It was just… exciting to look.”

“Mmhmm. And if I said I was bored with our sex life, would you be okay with me”—August made air quotes—“just looking at other men who might get me off better than you do?”

Ricardo pursed his lips. “Point taken. I… I’m sorry, August. I’ve been…” He pushed out another breath. “I don’t know how to live this life.”

August blinked. “What life? Being rich and not having bullets flying at your head?”

“Being… sedate. It’s not…” Ricardo shook his head. “I just don’t know how to do it. So yes, I looked, and I texted with Heidi a little.” He paused. “And then when I realized someone was closing in on us on Rate Your Hit, I⁠—”

“Excuse me?” August stared at him, clearly affronted. “What do you mean someone is closing in on us?”

Gesturing again with his phone, Ricardo said, “I mean, there’s someone climbing the rankings. We’re still number one and number two, but he’s rising quickly.”

“So he’s been besting other people.” August shrugged, but he didn’t seem as indifferent as he probably wanted to be. “That’s easy. No one’s going to top our rankings.”

“Anything is possible.”

August gaped. “The hell it is! We’ve been inactive for almost three years and we’re still on top. No one is⁠—”

A loud shriek from August’s phone interrupted them.

“Fuck’s sake.” He snatched it off the nightstand and peered at the screen. A mix of emotions ran across his face. Then he swore again, tossed his phone aside, and strode toward the walk-in closet. “Put on some pants. Someone made it past one of the security mechanisms.”

CHAPTER 2

Sometimes, the safest thing to do was focus on rage.

Anger was easy. It narrowed situations down to their core, batted extraneous options out of the way like so much fluff, and rendered decision-making simple. A or B, black or white, gun to the head or knife to the heart. Simple.

Only August couldn’t exactly hold a gun to Ricardo’s head or a knife to his chest, because that would definitely be a sign that their marriage was deteriorating even faster than he thought. But where to put the anger? Where to put the need to rip and rend and hurt? Where to put the inexplicably brutal pain of hearing “I’m bored” from the man he loved more than life itself?

That kind of anger needed an outlet, and thank whatever gods used to exist on this island for providing him with one. August dressed briskly, ignoring the putterings and mutterings coming from behind him. Ricardo might be content to walk into a potential interrogation in nothing but basketball shorts and an FC Barcelona T-shirt, but August preferred to armor up—mostly figuratively, but if he also shrugged on a jacket made from a very particular type of cloth by his favorite Canadian bespoke suit tailor, that was his business.

John Wick, eat your heart out.

Lotus silk tie, Cartier watch that Ricardo had picked out for him last year, handmade leather shoes with custom inserts to cushion his feet as much as possible…and nothing but silence from his husband. August attached his cufflinks with quick, irritated motions, bothered beyond measure that Ricardo wasn’t complaining yet. On any normal day, Ricardo would be calling August out for getting all dolled up when they weren’t even leaving their property.

“What’s the point?” he would gripe, and then August would say, “To give you something nice to look at, of course,” and then Ricardo would say, “I like to look at you naked, get back in the bed,” and then…

But it wasn’t a normal day. Ricardo was spooked and trying not to start a fight, and August was furious and trying not to continue one, and frankly he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this uncomfortable with his partner. His husband.

His husband who was bored with him.

That’s not what he said, August had to remind himself as he pulled a comb through his hair, taming the worst of his wayward locks. Ricardo said he was bored with their lifestyle, but that didn’t mean he was unhappy with August.

Just that he was restless enough to reach out to Heidi, his former handler, about jobs, like either of them ever needed to work again, and—fuck it, this was exactly what he’d done to Eve, wasn’t it? He’d lied to his ex-wife about his work to the point that she thought he was cheating on her. She’d asked for a divorce and he’d granted it, even though he still loved her, because he wasn’t willing to be honest with her. They wanted different sorts of lives, and it simply hadn’t worked out in the end.

August set the comb down on the shelf with a sharp snap. He would be damned, absolutely one hundred percent damned to Hell itself, red-hot pokers and Catherine wheels and every sort of torture imaginable along for the ride, before he let Ricardo walk away from him. From them, from the life they’d built together.

He just wasn’t sure how to express that without getting bloody about it yet.

“August?” Ricardo finally spoke up behind him, sounding cautious. Cautious! As if he had a right to sound cautious, like August needed special handling when Ricardo was the one who⁠—