His Favorite Color is Blood - Coffin Nails MC (gay biker dark romance) (Sex & Mayhem Book 8) (21 page)

There was an intensity in Grim’s
steel-grey eyes that made Misha swallow around a lump that appeared in his
throat. Oh, how much he could relate to that. Having had alcoholic parents, he
always made a point of watching his drinking habits and learning skills that
were actually useful, to not settle for just anything. It ultimately led to
Misha’s kidnapping, but he really felt that his life was on the right path once
again.

Grim leaned in for a kiss and
then traced Misha’s forehead with his lips. “My job needs to be done as quickly
as possible. I want to go tonight.”

Misha nodded. “And you’re sure
I’m safe here?”

Grim slid his hand down Misha’s
back. “Yes. My brothers wouldn’t let anyone take my property.”

“How did you get into doing your
first job for them?” Misha hoped he sounded casual.

Grim stretched and put his arm
around Misha. “They just noticed I was good at killing. And I wasn’t afraid the
way the others are. I’m excited when there’s danger. It’s like a good
adrenaline rush.”

Misha watched Grim’s eyes for any
signs of lying. “So you like it.” Like Zero, or the other sadists Misha had
witnessed in action. Was he catnip for evil?

“Danger? Yes, of course,” said
Grim and slowly pulled himself back into a sitting position before rolling off.

Misha sat up on the bed. “No.
Hurting people.”

Grim frowned with his hands
already at the bag he brought with him. “Yes. Why do you ask? You’ve seen it.”

“Does it turn you on?” Misha
sucked his lips in, working hard on putting his thoughts into words.

Grim scowled. “Fuck no. I mean ...
not this way,” he said, gesturing between himself and Misha as he pulled out
his skull mask, which didn’t look nearly as scary when it was neatly folded.

“Do you seek out targets just
because you enjoy hurting them?” Misha curled his shoulders, worried what could
happen if his questions touched a nerve.

Grim exhaled and pulled out his
work clothes, which were packaged into a large ziplock bag. “The club does it
for me. I don’t want to hurt people, who don’t deserve it.” He snorted. “So if
there’s no job for a long time, I might go for a little hunt to places where I
expect to find someone worthy of my fists and knives.”

That was at least mildly
reassuring. “How did this start for you?”

Grim shrugged, slightly tense in
the shoulders as he sat on the bed, and pulled off his pants. “I was an angry
kid,” he said, pulling up the black pants Misha knew he used on the job. “My
parents were deadbeat fucks, and a lot of the time, there wasn’t even enough
food for me to eat. I was this kid who’d steal the neighbor’s pie from the
windowsill, and it wasn’t just because I wanted dessert. I got into fights, I
got suspended, I was in juvie. I suppose this anger was always there, just
waiting for something to feed on. This dark piece of me that could keep me
satisfied if I let it take over.”

Misha nodded slowly, putting the
information into compartments. “So you don’t feel compassion for other people?”
Though what he really wanted to know was if Grim felt it at all. If he would
feel it for him.

Grim looked back after pulling
off his shirt. “Sometimes. I’m not very good at it. It’s easier if I know who I
don’t want to hurt. Clears my head of doubts.”

“Were you ever in love?” Misha
asked, feeling like an annoying reporter for the
Killer Times
.

Grim laughed and pulled on his
tight black longsleeve. “Yes. You?”

Misha looked through his
memories, but there hadn’t been a single man but Grim to ever be considered a
gentle partner. He had crushes, but they had been all fairly innocent. “No,” he
mumbled and looked down to his hands. “Who were you in love with?”

Grim stood up and stretched his
neck, grabbing the mask and gloves. His footsteps were loud as he walked up to
the bag that stored all his weapons. It took him a long moment to speak again.
“I need to focus on the job right now. You don’t want me to get killed, do
you?” he asked, pinning Misha to the bed with a sharp glare. He pulled on the
mask, ultimately hiding any clues Misha could read from him.

“Sorry.” Misha looked up into the
empty eyes of the skull mask, but they didn’t frighten him anymore. All he saw
when he looked up was the person who had saved him from Gary’s basement and the
person who pinky-promised not to kill him. It had to count for something.

Grim shrugged and looked out into
the bright lamps over the highway outside. “They’ll bring over some food later.
I might be late, depending on how quick I get the guy. He has
minions
.”

Misha snorted and shook his head.
“Am I your minion?”

Grim walked up to Misha, grabbing
him, not too gently, by the jaw. “No. You, my pretty birdie, are my property.”

Misha’s breath hitched, and all
of a sudden, he didn’t know if his cage was still open or not, yet he knew he
was too afraid to check the lock. He ran his thumb over Grim’s lips. “I’ll be
waiting.”

The mask’s insect-like eyes
betrayed nothing, but Grim opened his mouth and gently bit on the finger.
“Sweet dreams, baby,” he said and walked out of the room, leaving Misha
confused.

Despite all of Grim’s dark
insides revealed, Misha still worried more about Grim getting back safely than
about the fate of the poor fucker who would end up under Grim’s knife. After
all, this was bound to be someone who was involved in criminal activity one way
or another. And Grim was the best at what he did. The respect he was treated
with spoke volumes about his skill.

And yet, as Misha lay in bed and
continued watching the
Wife Wars
marathon, he kept missing details as
his thoughts trailed to Grim, who left without a single person for backup. Not
even a sniper to cover him. To Grim, who claimed to have loved before yet
wouldn’t say whom. If he really was a psychopath, maybe he just knew that
telling Misha about being capable of love would make him more likeable? Maybe
he was playing with Misha’s feelings, all to get the kind of sex he craved with
a willing amputee, who would stay with him for as long as he wanted.

Misha once had Gary order him a
book about psychopaths, simply because he thought it could potentially help him
deal with all the shit he needed to live with, and if the book was right,
Grim’s intelligence could make it easy for him to outwit Misha. Thirsty for
affection as he was, Misha would be easy prey for a psychopath, one that would
crawl into a web of lies and never break free again.

No amount of adoration could be
the same as being loved. No amount of great sex could be the same as real
feelings of care and affection. Misha would always feel the undercurrent of
fear that Grim could leave him at the drop of a hat if he got bored. No promise
was truly unbreakable.

A knock on the door pulled him
out of his dark thoughts, and he quickly switched off the sound of the TV,
watching the door as if it were holding back a pack of bloodthirsty wolves. He
reminded himself of what Grim said, and in the end, asked the stranger to come
in.

The man with the mohawk and the
scar underneath his eye peeked inside, chewing gum loudly enough for Misha to
hear from the bed. “Is Logan still in the clubhouse?”

Misha stared, his brain unable to
compute what he realized his heart already knew. “N-no. He’s gone.”

And just like that, he knew who
Grim had been in love with, and he knew from the tender way Grim had talked
about Coy, their love had been true. Grim wasn’t some complete psycho trying to
toy with Misha for his sick pleasure. There was something broken in Grim too,
but a broken heart was still a heart.

Chapter 18 - Grim

Grim walked into the club on soft
legs. He’d already talked to Spike about the hit, so he was free to nurse the
bruises on his ribs and roll into bed alongside Misha. The job took longer than
he had expected. It got messy, and he ended up engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Three average goons couldn’t take him down so easily, and there was blood on
Grim’s clothes to prove it, but the evening had been draining. With the
knowledge that Misha was waiting for him back at the clubhouse, all the stakes
were suddenly higher, an aftereffect of this budding relationship Grim hadn’t
been taking into account.

It hit him when he had someone on
top of him, a barrel swinging over his head and shooting into the ground as he
pushed it away with all the strength he had. He didn’t like to hurt, he never
wanted to die, but all of a sudden, there was someone who actually depended on
his presence. It wouldn’t have been fair to Misha to offer him protection and
then disappear, leaving him stranded. But that was the reality Grim needed to
face now. Misha had no documents, they were in no way related, and if anything
happened to Grim, Misha would suffer much more than emotional loss.

Grim was exhausted as he opened
the door to the guest bedroom and stepped into the darkness that was dispersed
only by the faint glow of a streetlight nearby. He shed his gloves, put down
the gun he hadn’t used during the hit, and gave himself a moment to savor its
cool touch as he watched the small figure curled up on the bed. His
responsibility. For once, the dark force inside Grim battled with something
else altogether.

Misha stirred on the bed and
pushed the blanket off his shoulders, raising his head to look at Grim.

“You’re back. Are you okay?” he
whispered as if he were afraid that one tone louder would break the night.

Grim swallowed hard, watching him
through the netting over his eyes, and it didn’t feel right. This narrow,
darkened view was how he saw his victims just before delivering the lethal
strike. For once, he wasn’t sure what to say. He would be fine eventually, but
confusion felt like a gash in what he was. He’d always lusted after men like
Misha. He still lusted after Misha, but now that he knew the smell of his skin
and the way Misha’s voice changed when he was happy, keeping him that way stopped
being the means to an end somewhere along the way.

“I’ll live,” he said in the end,
stepping closer to the bed.

“Come to me?” Misha said and
crawled to the edge of the bed, slipping from underneath the blanket. His big
brown eyes glistened in the faint light with intensity that carried a meaning
Grim couldn’t decipher. It made his skin crawl, but he wasn’t sure if it was
shivers of pleasure or anxiety trailing down his spine.

He pulled off his shoes and
grabbed the underside of his mask as he stepped closer, eager to be back at
Misha’s side.

“Don’t.” Misha reached for his
arm. “I want you the way you are.”

Grim’s fingers stilled, and he
looked at Misha for a few seconds, tasting the air that had the tang of
electricity. Was
this
him though? There were so many facets to who Grim
was, and he tended to keep them separated. The Grim he was on most days,
charming, always with a smile for Misha, was not all that was to him. Yet Grim the
killer wasn’t all of him either. The mask that represented the dark side of him
was bound to the shadows. He was fragmented and uncertain if Misha even
understood that much.

He stood by the bed. “You’re not
asleep. Were you worried?”

Misha entwined their fingers, and
the contrast between Grim’s hot skin and Misha’s cold hand was yet another
trigger for Grim’s senses, calling out for him to curl up around Misha and make
him warm.

“Of course, I was. I was worried
that if something happened to you, the last thing you’d remember of me would be
a sour face.”

Grim pulled Misha’s hands up and
kissed each knuckle, briefly watching the stump where it was curled up in the
sheet. “I’m back. I’ve always come back.”

Misha exhaled, and the messy
waves that hung around his face made him look even younger than he was. “Grim?
When you look at me, do you
see
me? When we have sex, is it about
me
,
or is it about my amputations?” Misha didn’t even blink, and Grim wasn’t sure
where the dense atmosphere came from, but it was there, refusing to let him
breathe.

He didn’t know what Misha wanted
to achieve by asking that question. Especially that now they had been
mentioned, Grim’s attention inevitably became more aware of Misha’s lovely,
unique legs. “I think that I see more of you every day,” he said in the end. When
he first met Misha, he didn’t care much about who he was as long as Misha’s
disposition remained pleasant, but that wasn’t the case anymore. “Especially
the annoying part of you,” he said with a smirk.

Misha gave him a playful punch in
the hip. “I lied to you today.” He pulled on Grim’s hand, inviting him to bed.

Grim followed him like a wolf
beckoned by a sheep’s bleating. “What? When?” All Misha had on was pajamas consisting
of a tanktop and shorts, so Grim’s thoughts were beginning to scatter as soon
as he sat on the warm mattress where Misha had been sleeping just moments ago.

“When I said I’ve never been in
love.” Misha’s hold on Grim’s hand tightened, triggering an explosion of
invading thoughts Grim wanted to push away.

“Gary?” he asked in the end.

Misha sat back, curling his
stumps under his thighs. “No. I’m in love with you.”

Grim’s chest compressed, and he
squeezed Misha’s hands, watching his handsome face in the dark. The declaration
seemed to come out of nowhere, even if Misha was so comfortable around him
lately. Grim didn’t believe anyone would ever say those words to him again, and
yet there was nothing but sincerity in Misha’s eyes. He was overcome by a sense
of painful
déjà vu
as he remembered that one moment in the tall grass
with warm hands trailing along his jaw and soft lips whispering into his ear.

Grim swallowed hard, a bit lost
in this new reality where an amputee offered him more than sexual
gratification. “I’m no angel,” he said in the end. “There’s blood on my clothes
right now, and there will be more of it in the future.”

Misha nodded, running his hands
up Grim’s chest. “I know, but with the monsters still after me, I need a beast,
not an angel.” He took a deep breath. “I love
you
, Logan. Not just the
man who pampers me and brings me gifts, but all the messy bits too.”

Grim couldn’t breathe. It’d been
a while since anyone called him by that name, and yet, it gave Misha’s words a
completely new meaning. If Misha knew who he was, and what he’d done, he wasn’t
only talking about the shadow that was Grim.

“How do you know ...?”

Misha pulled closer and hugged
Grim’s midsection, putting his cheek over Grim’s heart. “I’ve heard one of the
guys here say your name. I connected the dots. You wear a pendant with the bird
skull.”

Grim shuddered as pain shot
through the newly formed bruises on his body. “I killed the last I had of him.”

“You killed the bird?” Misha only
hugged him tighter, and his Russian accent was like a melody in itself. “Why?”

Grim slid his arms around Misha
and pulled him close, enjoying the firm hug that seemed to hold him in one
piece. “I couldn’t stand that it got to live when Coy didn’t. That’s the only
piece of him that I have. Everything else is gone.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Misha
kissed Grim’s pec, and Grim couldn’t imagine anything more soothing.

“It was. I was selfish and left
him alone with those junkie fuckups. I could have carried him to safety if I
was there. He had no one but me to rely on.”

“Everyone does … bad things
sometimes, things they regret.” Misha’s fingers trailed along Grim’s sides.
“You couldn’t have predicted any of it.”

“You say that, but you’ve never
done anything like this. You were a victim.”

Misha didn’t answer, but Grim
could hear his breath speed up. His voice came just when Grim was about to
speak again. “I did. I’ve done something really bad that I can’t take back.”

Grim stared at him, surprised.
“You did?”

Misha curled his shoulders. “I
complied with a lot of things I was asked to do, and that’s one thing, but a
few months ago, I did something horrible.” Misha pulled away and sat down. His
lips shivered until he pressed them tightly together. “Gary passed a message to
me from Zero. That he wanted me to talk to this guy online. I was to pretend I
wanted to meet up and make him go to a certain spot so Zero and his men could
take him. I talked to him face to face through webcam so many times. I smiled
and told him that he was such a cool guy, that I wanted to meet up and talk,
even though I knew he’d most likely suffer a horrific death. Fuck.” Misha
rubbed his eyes and wouldn’t look up. “I’m a coward and a horrible person.”

Grim exhaled as shock curled
around his muscles. “Why? Why did you do it?”

“Because otherwise Zero would
come for me. So I pushed that boy under the bus out of selfishness, even though
he was an innocent person and just wanted to meet me. I couldn’t bear seeing
Zero again. I just couldn’t. And that guy could be getting tortured right now.
Because of me.”

Grim’s mind exploded with a wave
of hate he couldn’t contain. He punched the mattress, trying to calm down by
slowing down his breathing. Zero. The fucker who tortured Misha. Who hacked his
legs off and turned him into a bundle of anxiety. People like Zero, most of the
time, got exactly what they wanted and advanced in the world. People with no
conscience and no regrets. The true top predators that needed to be put down if
they preyed on the weak.

He could only imagine Misha’s
suffering at the hands of that maniac, fastened to some contraption, woken up
every time he fainted—poked, prodded, and burned. Grim had seen too much
fucked-up shit in his life to count, but this he couldn’t stand.

“Sometimes we can’t help the bad
shit happening, even if we think we could have,” Misha whispered and looked up
at Grim. “We only have what’s in front of us. I don’t see a monster in your
mask. I only see my savior.”

Grim exhaled and pushed back
Misha’s hair, petting his face as he kissed his forehead, the bridge of his
nose, and his cheeks. As if any of this could ever erase the horror Misha had
been through. He should have known something was off about Andrey. He never did
live chats and only ever filmed inside his tiny room that didn’t get any
daylight. Grim had only seen what he wanted to see, because he enjoyed Andrey
too much to question the illusion.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. You made
me feel alive again. You made me
want
to be alive.” Misha entwined their
fingers once more, and this time his hands were so warm Grim couldn’t help but feel
a bit of relief. At least he hadn’t failed at
this
.

“That won’t change. I’m here.”

Misha pulled Grim down to the
mattress, slowly lying down without ever looking away from his eyes. “I want to
feel you inside me,” he said into Grim’s lips.

Grim’s heart did a backflip, and
a low groan left his mouth as he propped himself over Misha, fighting the urge
to rub his crotch against one of the stumps that now rested next to his knees.
It was such a direct request, one he didn’t often get. It was usually all about
his dick and about how his partner wanted to feel it inside them. They never
invited all of Grim.

He looked down, at the outline at
the front of his pants and felt it grow, ready to fulfill Misha’s request. But
when he glanced at Misha and thought of how small he was without his legs, how
he had struggled with sucking Grim off, he wasn’t sure if Misha could take him.
Like many others, Misha was excited, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t end
up begging Grim to stop. It almost felt as if Grim’s cock was a torture device,
not an instrument of pleasure, and thinking about Misha shutting him down this
way made Grim ache with worry.

“It’s really big,” he said in a
hollow voice.

“I know,” Misha whispered back,
and there was finally a small smile on his lips. “I’ve used big toys. Maybe not
that big, but big enough. Um … you’ve probably seen that. I think with the
right amount of time and lube, we’ll have fun.”

Grim sucked in his bottom lip as
erotic pictures swarmed his mind. There was a particular video of Andrey he
really liked. It involved a big black butt plug Andrey had mounted and even
ridden, slowly sinking on it and letting it slip out of his stretched anus. He
nodded and kissed Misha’s lips. “I ... want this too.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d say
that.” Misha licked his lips. “I got myself ready when you were gone. I mean,
just like … clean and all that. I miss penetration.”

Grim laughed in relief. At least
it was a conscious decision on Misha’s part, not one spurred by the moment. “Oh
... wow ... I didn’t expect that, but if your body is ready, then so is mine,”
he said and gently slid his hands up and down Misha’s thighs.