Black Collar Beginnings: New York (Black Collar Syndicate) by AN Latro Read Free Book Online

quiet section to a small, unobtrusive door.
    The office is messy, the desk filled with papers and a smoking cone of incense. A small altar is in the corner, an homage to Rama’s home and faith. It smells of male spice and—faintly—cigarette smoke. Caleb smirks, watching as Rama takes a breath, his shoulders relaxing as the big bodyguard closes the door, leaving the two princes alone.
    He moves quickly, slamming into Rama and pinning him to the wall. The aggression takes them both by surprise, and he can feel the tense anger in Rama for a second, the urge to fight. Caleb forces himself back, just a little, fitting himself against the other man, bracing his hands on either side of him. Rama’s head turns, a curse on his lips. It dies, suddenly, and Caleb tracks Rama’s gaze to his bloody, torn knuckles.
    Rama’s head drops against the wall with a soft thud, all the fight going out of his body, leaving him pliant against Caleb. He hisses a breath as Caleb bites down on his earlobe, aggression still fighting for an out. Rama tips his head slightly and the action soothes Caleb—it’s a wordless trust, baring his neck to another syndicate.
    He leans down, softly brushes his lips against the golden satin skin, his tongue tracing over Rama’s pulse point lightly. The foreign prince sighs, and Caleb smiles against his skin, before pulling away.
    He can’t watch Rama, not with his emotions buzzing so high. He needs space to breathe. He moves quickly across the office to crouch next to the bar.
    Rama groans and shoves away from the wall, throwing himself into a chair to glare at Caleb. “ Yet mae.”
    Mother fucker. Caleb grins at him, tugging his shirt off to expose a smooth chest rippling with velvety muscle. Rama’s eyes grow lazy and hungry, and Caleb laughs outright.
    “No,” he says, shaking his head. He crouches next to the bar, and comes up with a clean button down and some dress pants—too many nights partying with the Asians have taught him to keep clothes on hand. “But if I go back down there like this, I’ll scare her.”
    Rama’s eyes narrow. “Who?”
    Caleb doesn’t respond as he finishes dressing, doesn’t speak at all until he’s sitting across from Rama in a low chair. The easy company he shares with this man is settling over both of them, and the emotions that run too hot under his icy surface are beginning to cool. He speaks softly, without censoring himself. “I brutalized a guy, tonight.”
    “Why?”
    “He touched Emma,” he says, shrugging.
    Rama frowns, and Caleb can see the questions brewing in his eyes, that he isn’t ready to answer. “When I was twelve, Dad took me on my first run. He picked it. He knew there was a guy being disciplined for stealing from us. And he took me there. ”
    “Why?” Rama asks, again.
    “Because it is who we are,” Caleb says, looking at him. “We’re royalty, and raised apart from it. Protected from it. But we all have to face the ugly truth eventually. So we went down and I watched as my father beat a man to within an inch of his life. That’s not the first time I was afraid of my father, but it’s the first time I understood why other people were.”
    Rama is quiet, watching. Caleb heaves a sigh, and pulls out his cigarettes. He lights one and takes the first puff, lazily. Staring at the dirty ceiling and wondering if that decision—that introduction to the truth behind the glittering façade of their empire—haunted his father.
    Was he wrong, to show Emma? But if he didn’t—who would? Who would teach her what being a Morgan meant, and how to live this crazy, dirty life with honor? Who was left to teach her?
    “Did you talk to your king?” Rama asks, carefully, pulling him from his thoughts. Caleb watches him, watches the way he rolls his glass of sake between his hands. He is loose and indolent in his chair, but there is something tense about him that calls to mind a predator.
    Rama is Asian civility wrapped in liquid dark good looks,