Dim Sum Asylum(64)

A few old area rugs and I’d called it done. I didn’t need much—not anymore—and the loft was close to the Chinatown station, so I could walk to work if I wanted to.

The sun was dropping from the horizon, staining the sky with orchids and pinks. Chinatown stretched out beyond the loft’s bank of windows, a confetti of lights and sounds spread out to the Four Point gates. The western dragon was awake, arching its wings in the failing light, the sun’s dying rays turning its iridescent membranes to a fiery opal. It stretched and yawned, sparking the air with light motes from its gaping maw. A flock of somethings shot by, but with their dark forms cast into silhouettes against the glass, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

A few cranks opened the window panels, letting the city bleed into my loft. Even five floors up, the clink of plates from nearby restaurants accented the indistinct murmurs of conversation and street noises slipping in. The fickle rain began again in earnest, and seconds later, the clouds swallowed the city, a torrent nearly obscuring the gate and its dragon. There was an odd calm to the shushing sound of water pouring from the building’s roof tiles. A carved gargoyle waterspout jutted out from under the eaves, its fins and tail wrapped around a thick pillar running up the side of the building.

The stone sentinel had kept me company through many a bottle of whiskey as I lay in my bed and watched the city slip into darkness.

I’d chosen the loft because of its view. It was also miles away from the home I’d shared with John and the girls. I’d needed distance from the suburbs, away from backyard barbecues and mowing lawns on my days off. I needed a space empty of school bus stops and hordes of power-walking moms with strollers. My life was different now, barren except for a cat named Bob and a quasi-uncle who was both my boss and my mentor.

But I still kept my family’s photos on the mantle, their smiling faces as bright and hopeful as the day I’d last seen them. I hated my cousin for taking them from me, but I hated my grandfather more for seeking retribution in my name. Donnie’s death made me a bigger target than I already was. The family knew then the old man was serious about having me stand at his side, intent on grooming me to take over the Takahashi and become something I’d never wanted to be. His promise to go legit was as thin as shoji screen paper. It would take a hundred years for the Takahashi to extract themselves from their spiderweb of illicit dealings and connections.

“Son of a bitch is trying to lead me by the nose there, Bob,” I told the cat, who, in typical feline fashion, ignored me without even so much as a flick of her tail. “He’s hoping I’ll say yes. Then he’ll edge me around to his way of thinking. Drug running isn’t too bad. We only hire assassins on a contractual basis. We hardly have any actually on the books for the family. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t say I’m too smart to be a cop, then think I’m too dumb to see what’s going on in the family.”

A shower revived my skin but energized me too much for me to collapse into the enormous bed shoved up against the north wall. After pulling on a pair of black sweats and a T-shirt and padding back into the living space, I debated checking my small kitchen for food, then settled on a cold bottle of beer. Bob came by once she heard the snick-whoosh of a cat food can being opened, but after I dumped the sickly pink-and-orange blob into her bowl, she lost interest in my existence. Popping off the bottle cap, I saluted my disinterested cat and took a deep swig.

Since I didn’t get many visitors other than the stray white fluffball with a death wish, I couldn’t have been more surprised by the knock on the door than if Bob suddenly began to sing a Korean opera for me.

I was wrong. I was definitely more shocked to find Trent Leonard standing on my doorstep.

And I choked on my beer.

If he was hot in his dark suit and loafers, he was deadly in old blue jeans and a tight white shirt. I couldn’t imagine him looking so… unkempt. The casual clothes I’d seen him in before were pressed and too clean to be called broken in, and even when things were exploding around us or engulfed in a raging firestorm, he’d looked aloofly perfect.

That distant perfection was not who was standing on my doorstep eying me with his stormy chopped-glacial-ice gaze. There was no mistaking why he was here. Need burned in his face, in his body, and I could smell the kiss of biting want rolling off his skin.

I liked that he was a bit bigger than me. It balanced out the sheer bulk of musculature perfection he’d worked himself into. His T-shirt was from an old tearoom up the street, a place I often hit up in the dead of night for xiao long bao and char siu, and so worn nearly to transparency his nipples were dark murmurs on his chest, their points pricked hard and firm. He’d left his shirt hem out, but it cut close to his body, fitting against his ribs, then tucking in toward his lean hips. His jeans had at some point objected to holding back his thigh muscles, because there were tiny rips through the pale denim, giving me peeks of tanned skin dusted with faint golden hair.

“Hey.” Master of wit that I was, it was all I could say around the burn of beer in my throat.

“Can I come in?” Trent rumbled. “We need to talk. I think. I don’t know. What are you drinking?”

I stepped back, and he brushed against me to get by. The back of his hand barely skimmed my thigh, but it felt like my skin was on fire. I emptied my beer before closing the door behind him. He was a ripple I didn’t need in my life at the moment, but my brain and cock didn’t give two shits about listening to my common sense tolling its warning bell. I just wanted him, and I didn’t even care if it was because I was finally sick of being alone.