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I try one last time to pull away, to twist out of his grip, but my muscles have dissolved. My body is no longer mine to command. The last thing I register is the rough texture of his coat against my cheek and the soft, rhythmic shushing sound he makes as he adjusts my dead weight against his chest.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, his breath stirring my hair. “Just let go. I’ve got you.”

7

Adrien

Kamden goes limp in my arms.

One second he’s fighting me with everything he has—kicking, twisting, clawing at my sleeve hard enough that I’ll probably find scratches in the fabric later—and the next, all of that frantic energy drains out of him at once.

His head falls against my chest, blond hair brushing beneath my chin, and for one second, every professional instinct I possess gets shoved aside by something much uglier and unexpected.

Fear.

Not that he got away.

Not that someone saw.

Fear that I miscalculated.

“Kamden?”

Nothing. Not a twitch.

I rip the chloroform-soaked rag away from his face and tilt him back in the cradle of my arm. His face is pale in the alley’s dim light. Eyes shut. Lips slightly parted. The shallow rise and fall of his chest is the only thing that keeps me from completely losing it.

Thank fuck.

My fingers find the pulse point beneath his jaw anyway. It’s racing, a frantic bird against my touch. Just fast enough to make the guilt set in because I know exactly why his heart is hammering even after consciousness has abandoned him.

Me.

I did that.

I know why I did it, and I know it was necessary, but neither fact makes the sight of the tear tracks drying on his face easier to stomach.

“Okay.” The word comes out hushed, rough. “That’s it, sweetheart.”

There it is again. The endearment slipped out before he lost consciousness too, and apparently my brain has decided we’re continuing with it.

At the club, words like that are deliberate. Calculated, even.

Sweetheart. Pretty boy. Baby. Good boy.

I know what they do in the right tone, how quickly tension can bleed from someone’s shoulders when they trust the person saying them.

But this isn’t the club and isn’t a scene. This is John’s son, who I’m kidnapping.

I shift his weight in my arms. He’s lighter than I expected. Not alarmingly so, but enough that I immediately remember watching him pick at an applesauce cup at work.

“You’re going to eat,” I tell his unconscious form.

Fantastic. Now I’m giving commands to someone who can’t hear me.

I straighten with him against my chest.

His face turns naturally into the front of my coat, cheek pressed against the fabric, and I make the mistake of looking at him properly.