When I find myself checking the clock for the fifth time in twenty minutes to see if it’s ten o’clock yet, I realize I have a serious problem. A five-foot ten size problem covered in sexy tattoos, to be more precise. Gunner Harris, aka Heart. The boy—well, technically at twenty-two, he’s a man and not a boy—is everything I should stay away from. Too young, way too damn sexy, a fucking porn star, and not in the last place, a client.

He’s a client.

It’s what I’ve been telling myself since the second those impossible gorgeous eyes of his focused on mine. They’re not green and not blue, they’re both, with some golden flecks thrown in for extra effect.

It’s like his face and his body and his whole appearance: it shouldn’t work, this mish-mashed combination of sharp angles and smooth skin, of full lips and those colorful tats, of this tight body with the impossible round ass. But it does. Oh, god, does it ever.

He’s invaded my dreams, this man who oozes sex out of every pore in his skin. I cannot stop thinking about him, and it’s unhealthy. It’s sick. And the fact that there are videos of him online, beautifully shot videos where he…

Dammit, I’m hard all over again. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m thirty-three years old. I’m a Marine Corps veteran who has fought and survived two tours. I’m an experienced parole officer. And yet this man, this twenty-two-year-old boy, has me all twisted up inside. He’s a client, but he’s making me feel like a sex-crazed teenager.

Can’t say I appreciate feeling like this.

“Lucky, your ten o’clock is here,” Sasha, the front office girl, calls out.

I sigh. I had better keep this professional. Hopefully my cock is reading that memo, too, because sweet fuck, it’s still hard. Luckily, I’m wearing a dark blue polo shirt that covers my groin.

“Thanks!” I call out to Sasha.

Heart—I really shouldn’t think of him by his porn name, should I?—is sitting in the waiting room, his Converse-clad foot tapping impatiently. I’ve rarely seen him sit completely still. There’s always some part of him moving: his fingers, his foot, his lips. It accentuates the fluid moves of his body. Everything he does is graceful, and it fucking annoys me. Probably because it’s so damn sexy.

“Mr. Harris,” I say, keeping my voice as cool as I can.

His head shoots up, and that damn smile is on his lips, the one that says he knows exactly what I’m thinking, that he can see right through me.

“Mr. Stone,” he fires back.

I jerk my head to indicate that he should follow me, and I lead him into my office, which is a fancy name for a glorified cubicle. I take my place at my desk chair, and he drapes himself in the folding chair across from me.

“How have you been?” I ask with equal amounts of obligation and true interest.

“Fine.”

I hope we’re not back to the monosyllabic answers he gave before we had our little tête-à-tête last week, because that was like pulling teeth. But I need to get the required stuff out of the way first before I can dig deeper. “Have you been in contact with any known criminal elements this week?”

He shakes his head.

“Verbal answers, Gunner. You should know the drill by now.”

He smirks. “I do, but I like it when you get all displeased.”

I bite back a sigh. He’s in a defiant mood, it seems. He can’t ever see how much he gets to me. That would be like giving this kid a weapon. And we both know he’d use it. “Stick to the rules, please.”

“No.”

My eyes widen for a second before I realize he’s answering my previous question about contact with felons. Little smart ass. “Have you used any drugs, including weed?”

“No.”

“Have you had any alcohol or been to an establishment where alcohol is being sold?”

“No.”

“Have you traveled outside the state of California?”

“No.”

“What activities have you performed this week to ensure gainful employment?”

He quirks his left eyebrow. “You really wanna know what activities I performed this week at my job? Well, I rimmed this guy—”

“Knock it off.”

He shrugs. “You asked.”

“I wasn’t asking for details about a shoot you did.” I try to make my tone as stern as possible.

His right eyebrow joins his left. “You asked me about my job, didn’t you? That’s my job, you know. Fucking men. Getting fucked.”

He’s. Killing. Me. As if I needed even more mental images of him with… No, not going there. Absolutely, definitely not going there.

I’ve never been more thankful for my poker face. At least, I hope I still have one, because he can’t know how much he affects me. “There’s no need to be crass, Gunner.”

His face darkens. “I hate that name,” he says.

“Why?”

He slouches in his chair. “It was my father’s name. Or rather, his rank.”

This, of course, was not in his file. His rather impressive file, I might add. “He was a gunnery sergeant in the Marines?” I ask, ‘cause that’s the only rank that would fit the name.

“Yeah. Killed in action in Afghanistan. Good riddance.”

I frown. “That’s a pretty harsh statement.”

His eyes drop to the Semper Fi tat on my right arm, and then his face distorts into a sneer of derision. “Should’ve known you’d take his side. You guys always stick together, right? God forbid you’d actually turn against a brother, even when he’s a total asshole.”

There’s so much venom in his voice I almost recoil. What the hell happened to him? Or to his dad? “I’m not choosing anyone’s side, Gunner. I was merely pointing out that it’s a pretty harsh thing to say to be glad someone got killed. I lost friends over there, you know.”

He makes an angry gesture with his hand. “This is not about you or your friends, so don’t take it personal. I have every right to be glad my father got killed, because it saved me from having to kill him instead.”

His words echo between us, and his face tightens as he realizes what he just said—and to whom he said it.

“You can’t make statements like that to me, Gunner. You know I have to report this, and if I do and someone interprets it the wrong way, your ass will be sent back to jail.”

There’s a flash of something in his eyes before he covers it up, though he’s still radiating pure anger. “You gotta do what you gotta do. I’m not taking it back, ‘cause it’s the fucking truth. And for the love of everything holy, will you please stop calling me Gunner?”

“What would you like me to call you?” I know what he’s gonna say, but I need him to say it anyways.

“Heart. Call me Heart.”

I sigh. “Are you sure it’s a smart idea to be so open about your career in the adult entertainment industry?”

He leans forward in his chair, his mouth pulling up in a sexy smile. “You can’t even say it, can you? It’s called porn, Lucky. Gay porn.”

“Don’t call me Lucky. I’m Mr. Stone to you.”

“Don’t change the topic…Mr. Stone. And it’s colloquially referred to as gay porn, not the adult entertainment industry.”

He’s pushing my buttons, and I have to force myself not to react. “Whatever you call it, it’s not a job that will help you reintegrate into society. If you want to make better choices—”

“I’m not interested in your Hallmark power of positive thinking BS,” he cuts me off.

I sigh. “Don’t you want a real job at some point?”

“What I do is a real job. Trust me, porn is hard work, and I’m earning every penny of it. Besides, I’m damn good at it…as I’m sure you know.”

I gently shake my head, ignoring his little challenge to get me to admit I’ve seen his videos. Which I have, but torture couldn’t get me to confess that. “Why are you making everything in your life about sex?”

Heart’s tapping foot comes to a sudden stillness as he looks straight into my eyes. “Because it is, and it has been for a long time. It’s all people want from me. Sex. And don’t you dare claim you’re different, because I’m not fucking blind. You try to be professional, but you want just the same as everyone else.”

I release a slow breath. I don’t know how he spotted it, but maybe I haven’t been hiding it as well as I thought. Now I have no choice but to admit the truth, because lying would permanently damage the already fragile relationship I have with him. A working relationship, obviously, not the other kind, which would be impossible.

“I don’t want to be attracted to you,” I say softly.

“Join the fucking club. Nobody wants me for anything else but sex, and I’ve stopped believing people who say differently. The last guy I believed when he told me he loved me got me sent to jail for three years for something I didn’t do. So you can take your judgmental attitude, Mr. Stone, and shove it up your ass.”

Before I know it, he’s out the door. I lean back in my chair, pissed at myself beyond words. I fucked up big time. Heart was absolutely right. Who am I to judge him for the choices he’s making when I haven’t taken the time to understand how he got to where he is?

I know I tend to be black-and-white in my thinking. Morally rigid, a date once accused me of being when I objected to him downloading illegal software. I still don’t think what he did was right, but maybe he did have a point that I could try harder to put myself in someone else’s shoes. I do tend to dole out snap judgments…and while it’s often necessary in my job, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing as a human being.

I have no right to judge Heart for how he’s rebuilding his life, especially since he’s not violating his parole in any way. I should be applauding him, not criticizing him. If I want to have even the slightest chance of helping him, I have to do better than this.

And I’ve had many clients who claimed they were innocent, framed. But I’ve never had one I want to believe as desperately as Heart.