Neon Red [Order The eBook] [Zayn]

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(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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Whatever the calamity, I did this for myself

Zayn - Calamity

I shot up in the dead of night mid panic attack and hyperventilating. The room was warping before my eyes, shadows racing up the walls. Lurching behind the furniture. Grinning at me. Haz woke up behind me, rubbing my back, trying to coax me to lie down again.

"I...can't..." I gasped, head spinning. "Babe....I can't...I can't calm down..."

He flicked the light on and dragged me out of bed into the bathroom. There he got me a bath towel to wrap around my naked bottom, then helped me to sit on the side of the sink. Now he ran cold water over a washcloth, wrung it out, and set it onto the back of my neck. I watched him in the piercing light, noticing his eyes were puffy and his lips were bruised from kissing and sucking on my body. He was only half away. He looked down on me perplexed, and I wanted nothing more than to soothe the wrinkles from his brow.

"Hey..." he whispered. "Just breath. In and out...in and out..." He locked eyes with me and we took several deep breaths in unison. Each one becoming a little easier. As my heart subsided, the chill of the restroom settled around us. I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged his bare flesh. He was on fire. He took the towel from my nape and ran it's coolness down my back, tracing the bumps of my spine.

"You scared me," he muttered into my hair.

"Call me love..."

He pressed his forehead to mine with a sleepy groan, then whispered, "Hey, love."

We didn't go back to sleep. We road around on his motorbike and took in the town's quaint scenery and empty cobbled roads. Later we wandered up Primrose Hill and watched the sunrise blaze over the cityscape like a softly unfurling fire. When I told him I was hungry, he took me to his favorite diner and we ate in peace with none of the early rising locals caring who we were.

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"We must first assess the potential impact on your life," the gentlemen in the grey suit asked, seated across the desk from me in a high-rise office building in downtown London. He was a handsome sucker. Dashing even. Salt and pepper in the painstakingly trimmed beard. A dash of it at his temples. Sharp blue eyes. Broad shoulders and large hands. I was glad I'd been assigned to him and that Haz had gotten the older tubby gentleman down the hall. That way I wouldn't have to worry about leaving him and this guy alone. Hell, even I was finding difficulty to resist his subtly deployed charms.

"Mr. Malik?"

"Please call me Zayn..."

His name was Tobias Muller. Haz's team had linked us with an elite German intelligence firm who specialized in extortion, counterintelligence, and private investigations. Founded by the chubby bloke down the hall. Tobias had been his partner for a few years, and was apparently ex-military black ops. I looked at his pictures along the rear wall and saw him posted up with vicious canines and massive guns. A certified badass who I was glad to welcome on board.

After the introductions, he had asked me to walk him through exactly what occurred in March while his bumbling secretary offered me coffee. I declined, hoping to discourage further interactions with her. It was clear she knew who I was from the second I stepped foot in the office, and I hoped this fact wouldn't pose a problem. Tobias assured me it wouldn't. Any information exchanged here would be protected by radical measures of confidentiality. His secretary remained ignorant of the challenges his clients faced. No details would be exchanged that were specific to my case. She was strictly there to answer the phones, schedule appointments, and do his personal bidding.