When I stepped off the elevator and onto the penthouse floor, I was assaulted by the sound of music blasting from our apartment. What the hell? Rolling my suitcase behind me, I approached with caution. It was late, and Kage rarely played his music that loud.

Was he having a party? The idea was unthinkable, and yet I had to admit there had been lots of unthinkable things happening lately. As I slid the key card into the slot, my skin prickled with apprehension. Images flashed through my mind, possibilities of what I might find in that apartment, yet none of them even came close to the horror show I found when I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The apartment had been turned into a nightclub, with pulsing music and strobing lights, and it smelled like alcohol and sweat. When my eyes finally adjusted to the lights and I spotted Kage on the sofa, I think my heart actually stopped.

He was laid back on the cushions, eyes closed, with his pants down around his ankles. A young man—or a boy more like it—was kneeling between his legs with his hands resting on Kage’s thighs. I dimly registered another couple on the sofa beside him. An older, long-haired man had a carbon copy of Kage’s boy between his legs. The boy’s head bobbed rhythmically to the music, while the man’s face was turned toward Kage.

I wasn’t able to observe unnoticed for more than a few seconds, because the light from the hallway spilling into the room brought everyone’s attention straight to me. Well, everyone but Kage, who seemed to be completely oblivious to life going on around him.

The shock of what I was seeing held me frozen in place, my broken heart stuttering in my chest, and it took everything in my power to speak. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Kage turned his face toward the sound of my voice and looked sluggishly up at me with eyes that didn’t seem able to focus properly. It took him a few seconds to narrow his gaze on me, and his words were like molasses as he said, “Jamie. You’re home.”

Something—the faraway look in his eyes or the lethargic sound of his voice—snapped me out of my shocked daze, and suddenly my feet were carrying me across the room toward him. As I went, I barked orders at the vagrants who were currently stinking up the place. “Anyone who doesn’t live here needs to get the hell out. Now.”

The two pretty twinks hopped up from the floor and started fumbling around, presumably trying to locate their personal effects. One of them ran to the wall and snatched the strobe light cord out of the outlet, plunging the room into near darkness. The only light came from the hallway, where I had left the door open, and the master bathroom, which cast a faint glow that was only visible if you looked directly at the bedroom door.

The long-haired older man, whom I assumed to be Theo Brown—because who else would it be?—got slowly to his feet. He towered over me, long and lean and intimidating. And it wasn’t just his size that made me tremble. He had an aura about him that was unmistakably evil. Never in my life had I gotten such a strong negative vibe from a human being, and I had spent time with Peter Santori.

If Santori was the devil, then Theo was the devil’s henchman, and that was infinitely more frightening. Because how fucking bad did you have to be to do the devil’s dirty work?

“What did you give him?” I grated, pulling myself up straighter under Theo’s contemptuous gaze. I sensed the dark-haired twinks lurking near the door, but they were of no consequence. Theo was the problem here, even if one of the boys had been about to take my man’s cock in his mouth.

Or had he already? The thought sickened me.

“Why don’t you ask him what he’s taken? He’s not a child.”

I glanced at Kage, who was still embarrassingly uncovered and vulnerable to every eye in the room. “Compared to you he is a child,” I sneered. “Especially in his current state.” I bent to pull his pants up over his limp legs and work them under his ass, getting little help from him besides a twitch here and there. I sucked in a breath when I noticed the gun. Terror gripped me. Was there a chance it might go off and shoot me in the face, or maybe blow Kage’s dick off? Mine shriveled just thinking about it, though it might serve the bastard right.

“He was having a perfectly good time before you got here,” Theo said. “He said you were sort of provincial, and he wanted to blow off a little steam while you were out of town. Don’t be too hard on him. He’s a young, vibrant man, and he deserves to have a good time every now and then. You can’t expect him to give up everything he loves just because he has a boyfriend.”

My heart clenched. Had Kage really called me provincial? I knew he thought I was sheltered, but I had a hard time imagining he could be so condescending, whereas I had absolutely no problem believing Theo would make up such a thing. I went with my instinct, at least for the moment, and got a little feisty.

“Well, excuse my provincial ass for depriving the poor guy. I had no idea he had given up drug overdoses and date rape to be with me.” I heard the twin twinks murmuring from the corner near the door, and I turned to face them, unsure of which was which. It didn’t matter; they were interchangeable. “That’s right, boys. Sucking someone’s dick while they’re passed out is rape, and last I checked that’s a criminal offense.”

One of them said, “We’re just gonna head out, Theo.”

“He wanted it,” the other mumbled unconvincingly.

Theo waved a hand without even looking in their direction, and they took off down the hall. Thankfully, they left the door open. Otherwise I would have been plunged into darkness with Theo, and it wasn’t as if Kage would be of any use in defending me. He couldn’t even fend off a hundred-twenty-pound twink. Assuming he’d wanted to.

I had the sudden urge to grab the gun from Kage’s holster and blow Theo away. With him out of the picture, things would be like they used to be. But I remembered everything Kage had told me about him. The fact that Theo intimidated him enough to break up with me on his order. I think at that moment, I wanted to kill Theo worse than I’d ever wanted to kill Santori—and that was something I had actually done.

Funny there was no guilt when I thought of it this time.

But what could I do? It wasn’t like I knew how to use that gun, even if I could have managed to get it out of the holster. I’d probably have been dead before I’d even gotten my hand on it, like in those old gunslinger movies where some smug asshole gets blown away by the fastest gun in the west. And good luck luring Theo out onto the balcony and trying to throw him over like I’d done Santori. More likely, Theo would have locked the door after me and left me there to watch impotently through the glass while he debauched Kage in myriad twisted ways.

No, I had to tread carefully. Kage had said he needed to protect me from Theo, and I believed him. I had to swallow my ego and my instinct, which were both telling me to hurt Theo before he hurt us. I had to be smart. If I played my cards right, maybe I could get rid of him until Kage came to his senses.

“Look, Theo. We don’t know each other, and I’m afraid things have gotten off to a rocky start between us. I just don’t like coming in and seeing my man in this condition. Let’s call it a night, and I’ll get Kage cleaned up and tucked into bed.” I looked at Kage’s face again. He was pale and sweaty and completely out of it. I could tell he wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t responding to anything that was going on, and that scared the shit out of me. “You don’t think he needs to go to the hospital, do you?”

“No,” Theo said. “And I doubt he’d want you to take him there. It would be all over the news tomorrow. Better to ride it out. He’ll be fine when the cocaine is out of his system.”

Cocaine. My heart jumped. “He’s not used to cocaine. And he’s been taking hydrocodone for days since the—” I was going to say mugging, but then I remembered it wasn’t a mugging at all and that Theo had been the one behind it.

“The beating,” Theo supplied, unrepentant and almost gloating. He stepped closer to Kage and bent to run a hand down his bruised side, glancing at me once with steely eyes as if daring me to stop him.

I didn’t. I just stood there, feeling like the most impotent lowlife that had ever lived, and let the devil’s henchman touch the man I loved. My stomach lurched, and the taste of bile burned a trail up my throat.

Thank goodness Theo wasn’t in the mood to torture me long. He pulled his hand back and smiled coldly at me. “Healing nicely,” he said. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t think he took any pain pills today. He was perfectly lucid when I offered him the coke, and he didn’t mention it.”

Perfectly lucid. I was perfectly sure Theo’s comment had been a passive-aggressive dig at me, letting me know that Kage had done everything of his own free will. In fact, most everything he’d said to me so far seemed designed to push the illusion that Kage wanted me gone, and that it had nothing to do with Theo.

Fucking asshole.

Theo went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of liquor. “This one is mine,” he said, waggling the bottle at me. “Tell Kage I’ll be seeing him soon. Or don’t. I’ll be seeing him whether you pass along the message or not. Tootles.”

I gaped at his back as he sauntered from the room. Tootles? What kind of self-respecting bad guy said tootles?

He pulled the door closed behind him as he left, knowing full well he’d be leaving me to stumble around in the dark. Why the hell didn’t we have lamps on the end table like normal people? As I made my way to the nearest wall switch and flooded the room with light, I found myself wondering how much coke Theo had snorted. He wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. Probably had a bad ticker. Maybe he’d have a heart attack on the way out and put us all out of our misery. Doubtful considering how in control he had seemed, but a man could dream.

“Come on, Kage. Let’s get you to the bedroom.” I slid my arms around his muscled frame and tried to lever him off the couch. I got him about halfway up, but his limp weight was too much for me, and I lowered him back down with an irritated grunt. “Get your big ass moving. I can’t carry you.”

He opened his eyes and stared at me, his brows coming together in confusion. Then recognition seemed to dawn. “Jamie.” He spasmed and went for the waistband of his pants, as if he was still living the moment where he got caught cheating on me.

“I’ve already pulled them up,” I snarled. “Now get your butt up and move. We need to get you to the bed. Can you stand?”

“I think so.” He sat up, suddenly looking much more lucid, and scooted to the edge of the sofa. “Where did everybody go?”

“Away, where they belong.”

He made a move to pull himself to a standing position, but something on the floor caught his eye, and he bent to retrieve it. When he sat back up, he had a rolled bill stuck up his nostril, and he was sucking on it so hard it sounded like there was a tiny elephant loose in the room. Before I could react, he had pulled the bill away from his nose and inspected it for residue before shoving it back to his nose and unleashing the elephant again. It was pathetic, and it hurt my heart to see him like that.

I snatched the bill from him. “No more of that,” I said. “You’ve had enough.”

“But I think there was a little left on there,” he said, his words unnaturally slow. “Wait, I spilled some on the carpet earlier. I don’t think I got it all up.” He dropped to his knees and started crawling around on the floor.

I shoved the rolled-up bill into my pocket and dragged him up just before he face-planted in the rug. “Kage, please. You’re not in your right mind. Come get in bed, and I’ll take care of you. Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

He scrunched his face in thought, and it was clear he wasn’t going to be much help. I made the decision for him, walking him into the bathroom and holding him steady while he emptied his bladder. I avoided looking at his dick, because all that did was remind me of what I’d walked in on. At the time, I had just wanted those guys out of the apartment so I could deal with Kage, but now I was having retrospective fantasies of dragging the little twink up by his hair and slamming him face first into the coffee table. Or stomping his guts out like Theo’s men had done to Kage.

Jesus, I’d had more violent thoughts in the last half hour than I’d ever had in my life, and they were still coming. It seemed the more I thought about it, the more pumped I got to do some damage. God, I should have beaten that kid’s ass. And then Theo would have beaten my ass. And then probably shot me. Okay, so maybe I did the right thing.

When Kage was done, I maneuvered him into the bedroom and helped him onto the bed. He was already barefoot and shirtless, but he still had that damn gun on. It looked like it had to be uncomfortable, especially with him so bruised and sore, and I wondered if he’d been wearing it for protection. If so, I guess that went out the window when his pants hit the floor.

I fumbled around with the holster and managed to get it off of him without shooting anyone. Then I hid it in the back of the closet. When I returned, Kage was snoring loudly, as if his nasal passages had been roughed up with 40-grit sandpaper. But at least he was in bed.

When my body sank into the mattress, I groaned, realizing for the first time just how tense my muscles were. I tried to relax, twisting my neck from side to side and taking slow, even breaths. After a couple of minutes, I felt a little better. The snoring stopped, and his eyes flew open. After a minute of looking around the room, he closed them again.

“God, Kage. What were you thinking?” I said quietly, not expecting an answer but needing to get the words out anyway. “I’m just so confused and scared right now. It’s like I’m living in a nightmare and can’t wake up.”

I turned to face him and kept vigil all night. His eyes were usually closed, but he was in and out of sleep and moving constantly. Every now and then he’d start talking, but his words were so garbled up I couldn’t understand what he was saying. At one point, he started coughing so violently, he doubled over in bed and curled into the fetal position while the coughs wracked his body. I wondered if he had swallowed wrong and choked on his saliva.

“Kage, are you okay?” No answer. “Kage, please tell me if you’re okay. Do I need to call 911?” When he still didn’t answer, went into a dead panic. I rubbed his back and kept talking to him, occasionally demanding that he answer me or at least give me a sign he was okay, but he seemed unable to respond at all even though his eyes were open.

For a solid minute he gasped and convulsed, sometimes coughing out so hard and so long I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to breathe in again. Then he’d catch his breath, and my heart would start up again. Just when I was about to call 911, his hacking coughs slowed to the occasional quiet puff of air, and he settled back down. I rubbed his head lightly, not wanting to disturb him now that he was calm. When relief finally set in and I reached up to run a shaky hand over my face, I felt tears on my cheeks.