Page 63 of Corrupt

I pushed off the rail and stepped closer. “Do you always talk this much when you’re hungover?”

“Yes. I’m a barrister. It’s what we do. Talk our way out of bad situations.”

“You’re very good at it.”

“Thank you. I’ll tell my KC supervisor to add that to my review.”

I snorted. Then straightened. “I have to go out.”

“Right. Yes. Of course. If you let me get dressed, I’ll—”

“Stay.”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“Stay here.” I shrugged as if it didn’t matter. As if I hadn’t thought about it at all. “I’ve got food. Somewhere. Water. My hangover cure is full-fat Coke and a Ginsters. You can judge me later. Or tell me what you want, and I’ll grab it while I’m out.”

“You… want me to stay here?” He looked genuinely thrown. I didn’t blame him. “While you go do whatever it is you do on a Saturday?”

“I need to go clean up some shit I should’ve handled last night.” A pause. Truth, but not all of it. “It won’t take long. And honestly, full disclosure, I’m not convinced you walking out of here right now wouldn’t come back to bite me on the arse.” I raked a hand over my scalp. “So if you could just hang on until I get back, assuming I’ve made the coast clear, it’d ease my mind.” I met his gaze. “Work for you?”

The look on his face answered before he did because he smiled.

“Well… if it eases your mind,” he said through a grin, “I’ll reluctantly oblige.”

“Reluctantly?”

“I have a life, you know.”

I cocked my head, studying him. The deflection. The bravado. The way his eyes gave him away anyway. Then I closed the distance properly. And I dumped my hands on his waist. I didn’t kiss him, despite the pull of his mouth, the want curling sharp and insistent in my gut.

Instead, I lifted him.

Dragged him clean off the ground.

His breath left him in a startled rush, but his body answered instinctively. He wrapped his legs around me, sliding his arms up around my neck as if he’d been waiting for it. That’s when I kissed him. Not rushed. Not rough. Just sure. And I carried him back inside, across the open space, until the bathroom door was the only thing left between us and everything else. I nudged it open with my foot, set him down under the shower, then reached past him to turn the water on before either of us could overthink it.

Then I took his fucking clothes off and gave him what he needed to forget.

By the time I left him there, clean, breathless, wrung out under the steam, I didn’t know whether he’d sobered up. But I knew one thing for certain: whatever he’d come to me for last night, it wasn’t just that anymore.

Chapter thirteen

Tristan

The flat felt different once Razor had gone.

As if the air itself had shifted the moment the door clicked shut behind him, tension released in one place only to knot somewhere else. And I stood in his bedroom, barefoot on cold concrete, listening to the echo of his footsteps fade down the stairwell.

I told myself not to read into it.

Not to assign meaning where there might be none.

Easier said than done when I was wrapped in his towel.

So I whipped it off to run it through my hair and found the remnants of my clothes slipped over a soft chair in the corner. He’d folded them. My suit trousers and shirt, the tie draped along the back. Hugo Boss, tended to with the same quiet consideration as I’d been. But I stepped back into my underwear, then the trousers, then the shirt, fastening buttons with dedicated focus, doing my best not to think about why my chest felt tight. Or why I was still here.

It wasn’t about me.