Page 9 of The Fighter

I was losing it. Bona fide losing it.Light reflecting in his irises? What the fuck?

The phone on my desk beeped. “Mr. Stafford.”

I straightened from the window at the sound of my secretary’s voice. “Yes.”

“Mr. Marshall is here to see you.”

“Let him in.”

I didn’t bother turning around as the door to my office opened. Ben wasn’t someone that needed a proper greeting. The squeak of the leather from my sofa let me know where he’d settled himself. It was a matter of time before he showed up in my office, because I’d avoided his calls for the last week and only answered his texts to tell him I was busy, and we’d catch up later. But Ben wouldn’t be put off forever, and this was his breaking point. He didn’t speak for a while, and neither did I. Finally, he huffed, “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m looking out my window,” I said dryly.

Ben didn’t respond, so I turned around. He was staring at me pensively.

“What?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re not really the meditative type. Usually I come in here and you’re yelling into the phone, squeezing someone’s balls in a vise.”

Tav. His full balls in the cock ring. My pants felt tight. “I don’t yell into the phone.”

Ben snorted.

I walked behind my desk and sat down, propping my elbow on the arm rest and resting my chin on my fingers. “What’s the reason for the visit?”

“I looked for you at the club, and you’d left.”

“Don’t pout.”

“I was just curious if you found someone.” He was fishing.

I never had a problem talking to Ben about men who’d fallen into my bed. But this time… “No, I had a headache, so I left early. Sorry about that.”

Ben’s eyebrows drew together, and he studied me. I stared back. I dismantled entire corporations; I could handle a couple of looks from my best friend.

I didn’t keep secrets from him. He knew I worked in mergers and acquisitions at Stafford Investments, that I was gay, and that I liked my sex with a kink. He knew that I had another private business buried under so many layers that no one could trace it back to me and why. Sometimes, he even helped me run that business.

Ben and I had been inseparable as kids in the White Hills Trailer Park in Rathburn, Michigan. Along with Devlin, we’d been a trio of delinquents who dreamed of one day holding court in an office like the one we were in now. Of living in apartments like the one I owned in the Reverent. And we’d made it, somehow, through blood, sweat, tears, and by other means that weren’t quitelegal. No one got to where we were with clean hands. But I tried, I tried so hard to make up for the damage I’d done, and Ben did too. While Devlin…Devlin reveled in thedamage. In the chaos. In the depravity. Just the thought of him made my guts twist.

Ben squinted at me, choosing to drop his inquiry of my plans from that night. “So what’s your opinion of the club?”

That it’s a cesspool?“I think it’s a bit of a fixer upper.”

Ben burst out laughing. “Since when do you mince words?”

“I’m trying to spare your feelings.”

Ben laughed even harder. “Since when do you spare my feelings?”

“Okay, I think you should douse it with gasoline, light it on fire and burn it to ashes. Then bury those ashes in a pauper’s grave and start over.”

He smiled. “There’s my Conrad.”

“I’m notyourConrad.”

He looked affronted. “Well, excuse me.”

“Excused.”