Anti-Hero (Wild Heart Ranch Book 4)

It turns out Philadelphia died two months ago when he tried to lure away the daughter of an ex-football player. The investigation into the still massively jacked athlete-father who waited outside Philadelphia’s house with a baseball bat is ongoing. Erik talked to Anders about it, and Wimberley is on it.

It’s the least we can do for the father, considering he saved us a trip.

Looks like the universe is giving us a two-fer because now we’re in Fort Lauderdale’s condo, and he’s on death’s door. Makes sense—he is almost ninety years old, after all—but it’s still a little bittersweet.

His hospice nurse is, at best, inattentive. We could easily put something nasty into one of his lines, but from what we can tell, his death is slow and agonizing.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” I mutter.

Erik lets the joke go without commentary, so I look at him.

“You okay?”

He scratches his nose. “Mostly.”

“You alright with us leaving him here?”

He nods. Seeing my curious stare, he shrugs. “I’ll explain later.”

We get into our loaner car, a gorgeous convertible, and ride with the top down and the sun on our faces. It’s glorious.

Still, when Erik goes quiet, it’s absolute. He’s not fidgeting or messing with the radio or making calls. He’s just driving the car, his loose hair whipping about as he stares ahead.

It takes every bit of my self-control to not wheedle an answer out of him. I’m rewarded for my patience about halfway through the drive when he starts talking, so I sit back and listen.

“My mother is dying. I don’t think they wanted me to know, but one of my cousins in Norway posted something on social media. That was about three months ago. I don’t know if she’s still alive. I don’t know if I care. When I was a kid, my father would hit me, but it was my mother who hated everything about me.”

Oh.

“I’m sorry. That sounds heavy.”

“It fucked with me for a few days, but then I looked around and saw the family I’ve made for myself, and I didn’t feel so bad, you know?” he says carefully.

“Yes. I know exactly what you mean.”

“Thing is, being gay was just the convenient thing for her to hate about me. In the end, there wasn’t anything I could’ve done to make her happy. When I was a kid, I never knew what I did to deserve being treated like that. When I began to understand I was gay, I initially bought into the narrative that it was a bad thing and a perfectly reasonable excuse for her to hate me.”

“What changed for you?”

He sends me a thoughtful glance. With a small grin, he answers, “I got laid.”

I crack up. “I know I’m new to getting properly laid, and I know it’s a whole thing to say sex can’t fix things. But…having sex with someone who wants to have sex with you for all the right reasons? I don’t know. It definitely makes me feel better.”

Erik’s soulful eyes find mine again. “Really? It helps?”

“Of course it does. I don’t have anything positive to compare it to, so I needed this experience to understand sex wasn’t the problem.”

Erik nods in agreement. “My first time wasn’t anything to write home about. We’d gotten drunk and admitted to each other we were both gay and terrified. He’d had a blowjob before but wanted to see what it would be like to be fucked. He thought he might like it, but he wasn’t sure.”

“Did he?”

Erik’s proud little smile makes me laugh. “He did. It was messy and quick but kind of nice, even though we were bad at it. We knew we weren’t a love match, but we both wanted to practice things before it counted. So we kind of practiced all over Ålesund.”

I crack up, leaning over the console to kiss his cheek. “Classy.”

“The number of times we were almost caught…was not a small number. When my mother almost caught us, however, things got so much worse. She could tell what we’d been doing, so she went onto some American website about praying the gay away. It was funny because we were not a religious family, but she would quote scriptures at me. Tell me what some countries do to their gay people. She told me I was not gay, and I had no choice in the matter.”

“I fucking hate people sometimes,” I say. “I’m sorry. I know she’s your mother, but—”

Erik shakes his head. “You heard what Anja called her. She wasn’t wrong. My mother was all about the humiliation. When she discovered I was still texting my fuck buddy, she made me eat dinner out of my jockstrap.”

‘Fuck, that’s awful,” I say, shuddering as a hard knot of hatred for this woman finds its way into my chest.

“Yet she would still never acknowledge my sexuality.”

“How?” I ask, incredulous.

“She pretended I was doing it to be disrespectful. To test her.”

I let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

“Exactly. I started working at the docks after high school, and when she found out that I would sometimes stay and entertain sailors coming into port, she drove out there and made a scene. Called me every name in the book in front of all those dockworkers.”

“What happened?”

“My boss told her to go home, and a couple of my work buddies came up to me and told me they didn’t care. One of them offered to blow me, so I let him.”

I crack up. “Of course you did. You are such a slut.”

“Who are you calling a slut?”

I laugh. “Nacho made the same joke, but unlike you, he fell all over himself apologizing.”

“Why? It’s a great joke,” Erik says, flashing a grin.

Rolling my eyes, I ask, “How did you get to America?”

His expression goes serious as he knots his hair in a bun at the base of his neck. “I called Anja and Georg. I had some money, but they helped me buy the ticket to New York and stayed with me for a few days while I got set up.”

“That’s where you met Charlie, right?”

“Ja. I rented a place and put an ad in the paper. Charlie responded and said he was from Texas, a Buddhist, and sober, and that he was looking for a quiet roommate. We didn’t have anything in common, but I was quiet, so I had him come by the apartment, and we hit it off.”

“Wait—hit it off how? Did you sleep with him?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.

“We shared a friendly hand job once,” Erik says, laughing at my adorable snarl, “but we kept trying to give each other directions, which didn’t really work. Charlie and I are great as friends, but we would have been completely incompatible in the bedroom.”

Erik’s easy laughter makes me smile.

“How did you get into doing all of this?” I ask.

“As you can imagine, Charlie was active in recovery. Someone from his group went missing. Charlie knew the guy pretty well and thought he might have luck finding him if he tracked down the guy’s dealer. Since the dealer was in a bad neighborhood, I wouldn’t let him go alone. Things got a little hairy, but Charlie was pretty well trained, and I did okay for myself. So, we got his friend out of there and asked him where we should take him. He gave us his parents’ address on Park Avenue.”

I whistle under my breath. “Damn, that’s some high-dollar real estate.”

Erik dips his chin. “The family was so grateful for our work that they gave Charlie and me a reward. It was essentially our first paycheck for doing that type of private bounty hunting. As it happens, rich people have troubled kids just like everyone else. Even if it’s not a child, it’s not unusual to go after someone in their organization who absconds with intellectual property. We got several customers from that first family. Pretty soon, we were known in the wealthier circles as the people to go to when someone had gotten themselves into trouble.”

“That’s when you discovered how many rich people are plain awful.”

Erik nods. “Money doesn’t corrupt you. It reveals you. Which led us to running parallel operations. Get the money for the bounty, and if we discovered the client was involved in something terrible, like trafficking, we’d find the people and help them to get out.”

“I don’t know anyone who would’ve done that,” I point out.

“Well, what would you do? The first time we broke into a warehouse full of young kids, we knew we couldn’t leave them there. Even if we didn’t know what we were doing.”

“What did you do?”

“That first time, we just shoved them into the van and brought all of them with us. We had at least a dozen kids in our little one-bedroom apartment. I called Odd and Anders because they were active-duty Navy SEALs then, and I figured they would know what to do.”

“Did they?”

“Not really, but Odd trusted his commander, and his commander helped us out under the table.”

“Damn, that was lucky.”

“It was. Fun fact: that commander is now Odd’s husband.”

“DB?”

“Yes.”

“Small world.”

“Very. Afterward, we reached out to different organizations. Turns out some of them were willing to look the other way, even if our manner of finding the kids didn’t exactly follow the letter of the law. Many had been trying for years to get the authorities to do something, and they were grateful to find a small team willing to do the dangerous part.”

“Yeah, the cops don’t give a shit about us.”

Erik tilts his head. “You’d be surprised at how many agencies do want to help but can’t go into places without the proper warrant.”

I snort. “You and Charlie didn’t give a shit about warrants, did you?”

“Not one cold shit,” he answers with a grin. “We did most of it on our own, but sometimes the people we helped would help us while they got back on their feet.”

“You know, one of the worst things about the life was feeling like nobody in the world knew where I was. Nobody was looking for me. Nobody cared. I was just lost in the system.”

“Of course people were looking for you, and people did care, but the traffickers work very hard to make you think otherwise,” he says wisely.

I sometimes wonder if he’s seen things that are worse than what I went through. I don’t think I’m ready to ask that question though.

“Look, I’m sorry your family was like that, but I’m grateful—you have no idea how grateful—you didn’t stay in Norway. Your decision to build a better life here saved my life and a whole bunch of other lives, so thank you.”

Emotion clouds my voice as I say the last part, confirming how much I really mean it. I’d been mad at him for months for not seeing me as an adult, but maybe I’d forgotten all the decisions they’d made to put them right where I needed them.

“So, uh, Miami,” Erik says, changing the subject. “He should be a simple one. Want to take him out, check him off the list before we hit the hotel?”

“Sure.”

MIAMI WAS ANYTHING BUT SIMPLE. Motherfucker was a biter, and I made a mess of the body because he pissed me off. Erik wasn’t too happy with me, and we had to set the place on fire, but the guy had the biggest collection of Princess Leia Pops I’ve ever seen, including a few limited-edition ones which may or may not have made it into my bag.

When Wimberley had researched him, it seemed most of the guy’s finances were on the up-and-up. When I chopped off his baby toe, however, he started blubbering about a safe full of cash. I’m no dummy, so I had him open it, and I emptied it.

The look of betrayal on his face when I still ran Erik’s curved knife across his jugular was chef’s kiss. Honestly, I don’t know what he expected after taking a chunk out of my forearm. It’s a damn good thing I’m up to date on my tetanus shots.

Bonus, we got to drop garbage bags filled with his body parts into the ocean, Dexter-style. It was a real full-circle moment for me. After, Erik and I dropped anchor and swam nude in the crystal-clear water until sunset.

Still naked and smiling, I lie on the padded bench and watch as stars appear in the evening sky above us. Erik, also naked, walks up to me, the boat’s lights casting a ridiculously huge shadow of his semi-hard cock across my belly.

Threading my fingers together behind my head, I give him a long, slow look up and down.

“Come here often?”

“Not often, but I do plan on coming here,” he says, running his fingers over my lips.

Dork.

“If this were a hentai video, you’d be the sea creature with the enormous cock taking advantage of the little human.”

“You like anime porn?” he asks, grabbing the railing as he presses his saltwater cock into my mouth.

I nod, loving how he dwarfs me, pushing inside until my comically stretched-out lips meet his soft, wiry pubes. He reaches for my dick, stroking it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

I lazily nurse him to match his delicate touch, each of us teasing the other enough to make us harden but not enough to make us come.

“Look how tiny and perfect your cock is compared to mine,” he purrs as he changes the angle, hitching a knee on the other side of my head to deepen his thrusts.

I drown in the pleasure of Erik’s massive thighs squeezing my skull, and he groans as he arches forward and takes my cock in his mouth. I’m sure we’re nothing like the sick, twisted, sexy monster porn we’ve apparently both gotten off on and are instead more like a hilariously hunched-over sixty-nine that would be sexy by no one’s standards. Well, save for the two men whose cocks are being sucked at the moment.

I relax my throat, letting him fully invade me, loving how his pull on my tiny cock has slowly increased from teasing to just this side of too much. I let him take everything he needs from both ends, loving how he just walked up to me, expecting my mouth. Like he’s subverting everything that ever traumatized me.

In turn, his many contradictions coalesce and soften in my mind.

Maybe it’s his musk mixed with the salt air, or maybe it’s his soft grunts and the gentle ocean waves as our soundtrack, or the grounding magic of his heavy cock in my mouth, but I’m feeling philosophical about the man.

His occasional silences, deep and impenetrable, are where he retreats when the memories of his mother’s vicious words and his father’s painful fists try to drag him back to that place. His possessive, bossy ways speak to a need for control because he had to build himself back from nothing.

His insistence that we’re not fuck buddies seemed so at odds with his entire sexual history until I think about our history, his and mine. Having helped on a few rescues and lived with some of the survivors who were guests at the bunkhouse, I think I get it.

Biyu, Katrina, and Elias, just to mention a few…there was no way I could manage anything close to neutrality with them after witnessing the moment they truly understood they were safe. I illegally downloaded a Chinese social media app to follow Biyu, the little girl from a farming community who has become the Greta Thunberg of child trafficking.

Katrina, with her focus on international law, made the dean’s list and has a sweet boyfriend who was visited not too long ago by Anders and Hopper. Hell, I sobbed when Elias’s mom sent me a picture of his first day of school.

As much as I wish Erik would stop thinking of me as that terrified kid in the back of his truck, it means something to know he carries that night with him. That I wasn’t just another stray they tossed into the back of the truck and drove out to the Central Texas Hill Country.

Yeah, we were never going to be fuck buddies. Even now, his satisfied grunts aren’t from taking pleasure but from giving it. I have no doubt that he has always been an excellent lover, but something about this feels different. He feels different.

Like giving myself to him is as freeing to him as it is to me.

He pulls back to let me breathe, and that heady realization, plus the oxygen, makes my head spin. I blink up at the stars, drunk on the way they twinkle and shine.

The moment passes, and philosophy gives way to carnal need when he lowers his body, commanding my mouth all over again. I revel in the musky smell of his sac pushed up against my nose as he shivers and pulls on my balls, sucking me as if I hold the elixir to life itself…all of it swirls together, firing up the nerve pathways from my belly to my taint to my thighs.

Suddenly, as my own orgasm overtakes me, Erik’s pained shout fills my ears as his thighs squeeze around me and cum pulses down my throat.

As we spill into each other, lost and drunk and perfect, a Coast Guard horn sounds in the distance. Erik, still sucking me through my orgasm, chuckles, dripping my cum down over my balls, causing me to laugh and choke on his cum.

I don’t let him leave my mouth until I’m certain I’ve chased every drop of his pleasure. Even then, I suck until he pulls away, groaning and spent. Quickly, he flips around and palms my overworked jaw.

“Are you okay, baby?” he asks, kissing my eyelashes, his breath smelling like mint and cum.

My voice is a lost cause, wrecked by his enormous, pitiless cock, so I nod, unable to wipe the grin off my face. “Yes,” I rasp, pulling his weight down on me for a dirty, cum-drenched kiss.

Thankfully, he’s mature enough to pull away and throw me some clothes as he gets on the phone with Wimberley regarding our good buddies in the Coast Guard. By the time the boat reaches us, the captain—who is laughing his ass off—waves us on.

It’s good to have friends in high places.

I curl up in Erik’s lap as he steers the boat back to the marina, pressing kisses along his jawline as I skim my nails up and down his neck. By the time we get to the hotel, we’re anxious for each other again, this time trading fevered hand jobs in the shower.

After that, all we have energy for is room service and a quick check-in with Charlie before falling into bed. I give myself over to sleep, wrapped in Erik’s arms.

Gossamer-wrapped violence shows up in my dreams. Sexy visions of killing awful men with my Silent One at my side, a montage of blood spatter and the schling of my Murderer’s Row notifications.

Hopper: Excellent kill, my friend.

Anders: Proud of you, buddy.

The dream shifts, and I flash to Erik’s stern face, a look I’ve come to associate with care, protection, and something…more. Something both softer and fiercer than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s in my bones, in the air in my lungs, and I have to kiss him. We’re surrounded by clouds. Or maybe fog? Something wispy and romantic.

Definitely not fuck buddies.

I pull from his intoxicating embrace to turn back to the dead bodies in my wake, which have transformed into ash. Where I expect satisfaction and a sense of righteous revenge, there is nothing. I feel momentarily cheated, yet when I look into Erik’s eyes, that soft-fierce feeling overwhelms me again.

I wake with a start, relieved to have the weight of Erik’s arms around me, even as I shake off that impossible feeling. Looking for something to distract me, I check my phone. It’s just after five a.m., the dawning of the day I’ve been looking forward to nearly my whole life, it seems.

This is the day we take down the island.