His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels) (7 page)

Chapter Eight

Fucking charades.

Alexander had gotten pretty good at rich-people pursuits. He had developed a decent game of golf, as stupid as he found the game, and he could hold his own in a tennis match. If you wanted to run in moneyed circles, you had to play their games—literally.

Somebody needed to tell Don Liu that charades was not a rich-person game.

Alexander glanced around at the assembly. The Lius had invited representatives from all four firms that were competing for their business up to King City for a “games day.” Alexander had assumed that was going to mean croquet and martinis, but, no. Apparently it meant trying to get Marcy Halloran, the CEO of Evergreen Capital, to guess that the ridiculous movements he was making with his hands were meant to signify Farrah Fawcett’s hair and not the royal wave.

“A day of friendly competition,” Mr. Liu had called it. Well, friendly or not, Alexander hated losing. Marcy was a business genius, but when it came to charades, she was nothing but dead weight.

The timer went off, and before he could tell her what he’d been acting out, Cary said, “Charlie’s Angels, right?”

“Right,” Alexander confirmed. Cary got all his clues. Why couldn’t his actual partner?

“Oh, of course!” Marcy said. “I’m so bad at this!”

The play moved to Cary and Linda, Don’s daughter. Alexander reminded himself of his goal for the day. When he did “social” stuff like this with colleagues, clients, or potential clients, he always set small goals for himself. Today’s had been to meet and get a sense of Linda Liu, who was one of the VPs in her father’s empire, and, from the looks of things, a trusted deputy. It was clear that her father respected her, and he would probably take her advice into consideration when it came to deciding where to put their money.

Cary was acting out a five-word clue. Unlike Alexander, he seemed completely at ease playing this ridiculous, undignified game. But that had always been Cary, hadn’t it? He was at home in any situation, no matter how fancy or lowbrow.

“Ring!” Linda shouted when Cary used one finger to approximate a band around the other. “The fifth word is ring.”

The Lord of the Rings.

Just like Cary knew his clue, Alexander knew Cary’s. They had traded the books in that series back and forth that last summer at camp and had spent many a morning talking about the world of Tolkien.

Cary was trying to act out the word “Lord” by holding his arms out like he was Jesus on the cross. Alexander snorted before he could stop himself, drawing Cary’s attention. Cary responded by lolling his head back and sticking out his tongue. Alexander outright laughed this time. He couldn’t help it—Cary was hamming it up, and the clue was so obvious. He hoped the Lius weren’t devout Christians.

Cary had moved on to making the Catholic sign of the cross when the timer ran out. Linda and Marcy looked bewildered, and Cary gestured to Alexander, who said, “Lord of the Rings.”

Linda nodded, still looking a bit confused. “I never saw that.”

“It’s a series of books,” Alexander and Cary said at the same time.

“Well, it’s a movie, too,” said Aaron Nelson, the head of private wealth at First Canadian.

“Shall we move on to something else?” Linda asked.

“Yes!” Again, he and Cary spoke simultaneously. Alexander raised his eyebrows and turned to his nemesis, who responded with a quick wink. That wink made him angry. If Cary thought they were in some kind of secret cahoots, he was dead wrong. He schooled his face. He was done laughing at Cary’s jokes, no matter how stupidly funny they were.

“How about Cranium?” Linda said, pulling out a board game and setting it up without waiting for any of her guests to agree.

“We love Cranium,” Mr. Liu said. “Shall we shuffle the teams?”

Given today’s goal, Alexander was about to suggest that he and Linda team up, but Marcy said, “Linda, let’s join forces, show these guys how it’s done.”

“Yes!” Linda agreed. “Woman power!”

Liu moved over to sit by Aaron.

And Cary—damn him—moved over to sit next to Alexander.

…

They were killing it.

Cary had never played Cranium before. It was kind of a hybrid trivia-Pictionary-charades thing, along with some clay so you could sculpt clues for your partner to try to guess.

Alex got every single trivia question put to him right. Cary knew many of them, but he didn’t even try to answer, just let Alex keep answering. It was likely unwise. He should probably be demonstrating that he was smart. But, really, was knowing what was the first music video ever played on MTV going to make a difference in whether he got the Liu account? And watching Alex just…
know
everything was, he had to admit, totally hot. There was something about the other man’s utter competence that was addicting.

And any time one of them had to draw or sculpt a clue, the other came up with the answer in seconds. They were so in tune, it was like they had ESP or something.

Their only downfall was the stupid “Sensosketch” cards, where the person doing the drawing had to do it with his eyes closed. That turned out to be not their forte, so much so that after a series of missed clues in that category, the next time Alex drew one, he stood up, took off the linen suit coat he’d been wearing, and cracked his knuckles before sitting back down and looking at the card.

“They’re terrible at these!” Linda said, elbowing Alex. He didn’t notice because he was so fixated on thinking about his strategy, but Cary did. Was it his imagination, or was Linda kind of…overly charmed by Alex? Not that he blamed her. The man’s single-minded concentration was compelling. It was easy to fall into the trap of imagining that single-minded concentration directed…elsewhere.

“You ready?” Alex asked, and when Cary nodded, Alex put on his blindfold.

“Uh….spoon?” Cary guessed, trying to make sense of the drawing emerging. “No. Ladle. No! Um…” Alex was stabbing the top of the paper vehemently with his pencil. “Top?”

Alex kept shaking his head but also making those jerky moments to the top of the paper.

“Not top?” Cary asked, puzzled. “Bottom?”

As soon as it was out of his mouth, he cracked up, and Alex swallowed a guffaw. It was weird to see Alex trying to suppress laughter. Cary was overcome with the need to make him actually laugh. Out loud. He’d done so while they were playing charades, and he wanted to do it again. He looked around the room, and no one else seemed to be catching the gay double entendre of his answers. “Well, you
are
wearing a blindfold,” he said, injecting his voice with studied innocence. “Are you
sure
it’s not ‘bottom?’”

Cary wanted to pump his fist in victory when Alex threw back his head and laughed unreservedly. The timer went off. Alex pulled off his blindfold and shook his head at Cary, but he was still smiling. “It was slam dunk.”

Cary made a face and tilted his head to look at the drawing again. “Oh, so the ladle is actually a basketball hoop.” He glanced at Alex. God
damn
, the man was criminally attractive when he laughed. “I was so sure it was
top
,” he added. He shouldn’t have said it—shouldn’t have poked the beast—but he couldn’t help it.

Alex stopped laughing immediately, and something sparked in his eyes as he whipped his gaze to Cary’s, something hot and possessive that made Cary shiver. Then he licked his lips a little, and Cary was a goner. He had to pull the game box onto his lap to hide his arousal. He began cleaning up the pieces.

“Am I missing something?” Linda said, her brow furrowed.

“No,” said Alex, the heat draining from his expression as he turned to Linda. Cary felt the chill settle around them. It was just like when he’d seen Alex at social events all these years—there was an iciness emanating from him that he seemed to be able to switch on at will, like a force field. Cary wanted to turn it off, to get back the smiling, laughing Alex—or, if he was being honest with himself, he wanted to get back the predator who could give him a boner with merely a look. He wanted it more than anything.

But, no, that wasn’t right. What he wanted more than anything was to win the Lius’ business. The fact that he had to stop and remind himself why he was here was not good. Not good at all.

“You’re not missing anything,” Alex said to Linda, replacing his previous, genuine smile with a more calculated one. “Have we had about enough of this game? Let’s move onto something else where you and I can be partners. I haven’t had the pleasure yet, but I’d like to.”

Chapter Nine

Alexander awoke to pounding on his door. That was, generally, not a thing that happened, given that he lived in a penthouse with a dedicated elevator. His first thought was that something had happened to his mom. But he’d spoken to her before bed, and she’d been fine. He worried about his mom out of proportion, he knew. It’s just that it had always been them against the world.

He glanced at the bed. It was empty. David had been over, and the last thing Alex remembered was parting ways with his non-boyfriend in the den around ten o’clock. David had settled in to watch a basketball game, but Alexander had begged off. He hadn’t been able to shake the image of Cary from earlier in the day, looking at him with those damned baby blues and saying, with faux-innocence, ‘
I was so sure it was
top
.’” Alexander had been sporting a half woody since leaving the Lius’ house, and for some damned reason, he hadn’t wanted David to touch him. So he’d just taken himself and his poor dick to bed.

The pounding continued. Alexander sighed and pulled on a pair of underwear. David had probably run out for a smoke, which he sometimes did when he thought he wouldn’t get caught. Alexander abhorred smoking. He didn’t even allow it on his balconies. So David pretended he didn’t do it, and Alexander pretended he didn’t know that David sometimes pilfered his key, disappeared for a while, and then made a beeline for the bathroom to brush his teeth when he got back.

But the secret smoking wasn’t enough? David had to lose his goddamned key now, too?

Staggering toward the door and blinking against the lights he turned on as he went, he paused to stick his head into the kitchen to check the time on the microwave’s display. It was only midnight, but it felt much later. He’d been dead asleep.

The pounding continued.

“All right!” he snapped. “Give me a second.” He’d had about enough of this shit. David wasn’t his boyfriend, so Alexander hadn’t presumed to try to control his behavior, but enough with the smoking. It was disgusting, and it showed a lack of self-control.

Ready to make his thoughts on the matter known, he swung open the door.

And was blindsided by Cary Bell, leaning against the wall in the small vestibule between Alexander’s elevator and his front door in jeans and a black leather jacket, looking like fucking James Dean paying a house call.

They stared at each other for several seconds, before Cary pushed off the wall and came to stand at his full height, which put him exactly eye to eye with Alexander. After another few moments of silence, Alexander’s dick stirred, which made him angry as hell.

They both spoke at the same time, Alexander saying, “How did you get up here?” and Cary saying, “I came to apologize.”

The simultaneous attempt at speaking sent them both back into silence. But it wasn’t truly silence. Alexander could hear his blood pounding and Cary’s rapid breathing. Apologize? That was the last thing in the world Alexander had expected, and it had him reeling. A glance at the other man’s heaving chest confirmed that he was as unsettled as Alexander. He lifted his eyes to Cary’s face, only to find that his midnight visitor was checking him out, and not very subtly. Alexander, who was wearing only his underwear, straightened his spine. He might have been scrawnier than Cary the athlete back at camp, but he’d bet next quarter’s returns that with his disciplined jujitsu and lifting routine of the past two decades, he’d caught up.

He watched Cary’s eyes slide over his boxers. There was no mistaking what was going on there because the partial erection he’d been battling since he’d left Cary at Liu’s house had escalated to the full meal deal. He was tempted to say that Cary had woken him up, but he bit his tongue. He didn’t need an excuse. He was allowed to have a boner in his own house, for fuck’s sake.

Slowly, so slowly, his gaze feeling so much like a physical caress that the skin on Alexander’s chest started to prickle, Cary raised his eyes to meet Alexander’s. Alexander had been expecting one of his nemesis’s trademark smirks, raised eyebrows that suggested bemusement, since that seemed to be Cary’s attitude toward everything. He expected him to somehow twist the apology into a prank. But no. All he saw in those eyes was heat. Those blue-gray irises were usually the epitome of cool. But not now. No, right now they were nearly subsumed by dilated pupils the color of night.

Alexander tried to think what came next, but his brain was full of tar, even as his limbs were on high alert and his senses heightened.

Cary shook his head, as if to clear it. It had the effect of wiping that dazed expression off his face. Alexander could swear he saw the heat leaving Cary’s expression. One corner of his visitor’s mouth turned up.
No
. He didn’t want that fucking holier-than-thou, punk-ass smirk. Not here. Not while he was standing in the doorway of his condo in his underwear, harder than steel.

Cary unzipped his leather jacket, revealing a worn white T-shirt. Alexander had forgotten how well Cary did casual. Then Cary shoved his hands in his jean pockets, perfecting his
Rebel Without a Cause
look. Alexander lifted his gaze back up to Cary’s face. The proto-smirk was a little more advanced, as if it were emerging in slow motion. Again, the thought that filled his head was, simply,
no
.

He grabbed the jacket, the slide of the old, soft leather over his fingers torture for his over-tuned senses. He wasn’t sure if relief lay in feeling less or feeling more. But he didn’t care, because his only mission was to stop that fucking smirk in its tracks.

So he yanked, hard, crashing his mouth down on Cary’s and swallowing his visitor’s gasp of shock. The last time they’d kissed had been a surprise, too, but this time he was in the driver’s seat.

Maybe. He’d intended to be, anyway, but when Cary didn’t pull away, didn’t even hesitate as he opened his mouth under Alexander’s onslaught, Alexander was no longer so sure. Because if you were in the driver’s seat, that meant you should be able to stop at will, right? There should be a goddamned brake pedal associated with the driver’s seat. Even if you didn’t plan to use it, you should
be able
to.

The awful truth was that he couldn’t stop. He let go of the jacket and palmed Cary’s face, angling Cary’s head back and plunging his tongue into the hot velvet of his mouth. It was just like the last time—the first time. He couldn’t get enough. But also not like last time because now they were men. Cary took everything Alexander could dish out, his lips hungrily pressing against Alexander’s, and his tongue meeting every lick, every thrust.

Hands still on Cary’s face, Alexander pushed his head back even farther, deepening the angle so he could sweep his tongue even more intimately into Cary’s mouth. He was rewarded with a ragged moan as Cary sagged against his chest. The drag of leather against his bare chest turned the fire inside him into an inferno. Not wanting to stop touching Cary’s face entirely, he wrapped one arm around him, hoisted him up, and propelled him backward until his back hit the wall just outside the door of Alexander’s condo. When Cary slid his hands across Alexander’s bare chest and on around so they were chest to chest, their bodies flush, Alexander lost his mind. He slammed his hips against Cary’s. They were so perfectly matched in height and proportions that this put his cock, covered only in the thin cotton of his boxers, directly in line with Cary’s, which was straining against its thick denim constraints.

Cary let go of Alexander, and Alexander growled before he realized it was only because Cary needed his hands to undo the buttons of his fly. So he seized the moment to press his mouth to Cary’s neck. There it was still, that combination of mint and coffee. How could a guy smelling like Starbucks and Doublemint gum be so fucking irresistible? And then Cary was back, grabbing Alexander’s hand and shoving it into his crotch. Alexander didn’t need any encouragement because nothing else mattered. Nothing mattered except that this never, never stop.

“Ahem.”

Cary’s head shot up. He had nowhere to go, Alexander having backed him up against the wall and caged him in, but the recoil was unmistakable. He was looking at something over Alexander’s shoulder.

Confused, Alexander turned. Correction: he was looking at some
one
over Alexander’s shoulder. “Fuck,” Alexander muttered under his breath.

“Indeed,” said David. “By all means, though, don’t let me stop you.”

There was nothing to say. Well, there was nothing to say that could be said while he was standing outside his front door going at it with a guy who looked like an extra from
Grease
. In the last few minutes, he’d managed to totally forget about David, who, it turned out, had not run out for a clandestine smoke.

David ran a hand through his tousled hair. “I fell asleep on the sofa in the den.”

Alexander cleared his throat and stepped away from Cary. “Uh, Cary Bell, this is David Tinsdale.” As he came back to himself—as he came back to his fucking senses now that Cary’s mouth was a safe distance away—he realized that having had their little grope-fest interrupted by a sleepy-looking model was not the worst thing in the world. Because where would it have ended otherwise? Nowhere good.

Cary had gone pale. “I should go.” He turned toward the elevator but stumbled a bit. Without even thinking about it, Alexander reached out to stabilize him, but Cary pulled away like Alexander had burned him. Cary pounded the elevator call button, and the doors opened right away—one of the perks of having your own elevator. He got in and looked at Alexander, his eyes impossible to read. They weren’t their usual cool pools of amusement, but all the heat that had flooded them earlier was gone, too. They were blank, really, to match a face that was utterly expressionless. They stayed latched on Alexander’s until the elevator door shut between them. It didn’t seem possible that such an inferno should end so unceremoniously.

Behind him, David said, “I should go, too.” He said it with conviction, which Alexander respected. He wasn’t asking a question; he was making a statement.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander said. “You probably should.” He sighed. “Not because of that guy, though.” David raised his eyebrows. “I just…don’t like things to get too…”

“Yeah,” said David. “I know.” He walked back into the condo, and Alexander followed. “I tried to be cool with that. I
was
cool with that. And maybe I’m having a fucking quarter-life crisis because of the career stuff or something, but the truth is, I want more. And I don’t think I should have to settle.”

“You shouldn’t. I’m sorry,” Alexander said again. Objectively speaking, David was stunning. Ripped, slightly tanned, and in possession of sharp cheekbones and perfectly symmetrical features, he was a Greek god come to life. But Alexander felt nothing. It was like looking at a marble statue of a Greek god rather than a flesh and blood version. Alexander’s eyes were probably as empty as Cary’s had been just now.

“Can I just say one thing?” David asked.

“Of course.”

His soon-to-be-ex non-boyfriend hoisted his bag on his shoulder. “You could be really great if you’d just let yourself.”

I am great,
he wanted to protest. He had everything he could possibly want. He was at the top of his game.

“You could be
happy
if you let yourself,” David added, laying his hand on Alexander’s cheek for a moment before pulling away.

That was too far. Who was David to say what would make Alexander happy? He was happy. “That’s two things,” he said.

David just smiled. “Well, here’s a third thing. You never kissed me like that.”