His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels) (9 page)

Chapter Twelve

Party time. As Cary stood on Don Liu’s porch Saturday afternoon, he rotated his head around like a boxer preparing for a fight. After several meetings and that surreal Cranium experience, he was still in the game. Liu had eliminated First Canadian, informing Cary, Alex, and Marcy that they were still in the running and inviting them to a party at his house.

Cary accepted a glass of wine from a server who greeted him at the threshold of a great room filled with guests in cocktail attire. He scanned the room looking for one guest in particular. There was no point in even trying to be subtle about it, was there, given how fervently they’d been attempting to suck each other’s faces off exactly a week ago today?

Cary didn’t know whether he should still try to apologize for camp. Maybe going over to Alex’s in the first place had been a mistake. Ruthless people didn’t apologize.
Successful
people didn’t apologize. His uncle sure as hell never had. He’d be laughing at him right now for even considering it. You didn’t start a company and will it into life by being soft. He
knew
that, but after their joking games day—after the way Alex had turned so coldly away from him that day—Cary hadn’t been able to stop thinking about doing what Marcus had suggested and trying to make amends.

But if he’d been worried that he’d made Alex feel bad all those years ago, possibly even broken his heart, clearly he needn’t have, what with the appearance of the sleepy, disheveled
model
who had obviously been in Alex’s bed even as Cary had been about to blow a load in his pants merely from kissing Alex. It would have been totally humiliating if it hadn’t been so clear that Alex, model boyfriend aside, had been as into it as Cary had. At least in the heat of the moment.

The problem was the heat of the moment was by definition transitory. Not real. In real life, a person had to work and go to parties and generally comport oneself as if one was entirely in control of one’s emotional life and in possession of sound judgment.

“You never answered my question.”

Case in point. That voice, from behind, low in his ear, was a jolt to his system. It reminded him, paradoxically, of how much they had
not
talked last time, of hands and mouths and bodies moving silently, purposefully, with no need for language.

“And what question would that be?” he parried, without turning around.

Alex came around to face him, and though it should have been impossible, he was even more gorgeous in his signature slim, perfectly tailored suit than he had been in his underwear. “How did you get up to my condo last Saturday night?”

“I have my ways.” That sounded better than the truth, which was that there had been no one at the concierge station and what looked like a fob for the elevator lying on the empty desk, so Cary had impulsively conducted a little petty crime. And that he hadn’t expected it to work—that he’d been as surprised as Alex when Alex’s condo door had swung open and put them face to face.

“How did you even know where I lived?”

“My friend Dax Harris used to have a place in your building.” Dax had sold his condo a few months ago, and he and his girlfriend Amy split their time between Dax’s house on the Toronto Island and Amy’s condo on the mainland.

“The software guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice guy.”

Hearing Alex call someone “nice” was strange. The grown-up Alex didn’t seem like the kind of guy who registered such a bland emotion. “Yeah, I’ve only recently met him, but…” Wait. Was he having a normal conversation with Alex Evangelista about something as mundane as a mutual acquaintance? Weren’t they in a war or…something?

“I suppose you know him through your cousin. Don’t their companies both have offices in the Lakefront Centre?”

Cary nodded, wary. “Yeah, I’m there, too.” He braced himself for something. An explosion, maybe, or at least a sneer. Surely bringing up the topic of his office would remind Alex of how much he hated Cary.

“Ah, if it isn’t my two leading contenders.” Don Liu clasped Cary on the back and then shook hands with both men.

“What happened to Evergreen Capital?” Alex asked the question that had immediately come to Cary’s mind when Liu called them the leading contenders. Cary had known that First Canadian was out of the running, but this was the first he’d heard about Evergreen.

“I’ve further winnowed the list,” said Mr. Liu, leading them farther into the crowded room. “You’re the last men standing.”

Cary glanced at Alex, but the pronouncement seemed to have no effect on him.

“You mentioned that you two go way back,” Mr. Liu said, “but I don’t think you ever said how you knew each other.”

“We went to summer camp together as kids,” Alex said without hesitating.

There’s also the part where we made out in his hallway last week
.

Mr. Liu laughed. “Well, that wasn’t what I expected. Outdoorsmen, are you?”

“Not anymore,” Alex said.

“Not enough time, I suppose,” Mr. Liu said.

“It’s more that I lost my taste for it,” Alex said, talking to Liu but looking at Cary. He didn’t seem as angry as Cary would have expected. Was it possible that their insane make-out session had smoothed things over?

Alex’s look turned into an icy glare.

Apparently not. No smoothing going on there. Alex’s apparent civility earlier had probably just been an act, a strategy. Like at the gala, when Alex had arranged it so they were seated next to each other. Should Cary try to apologize again? Finish what he’d started?

The truth was he
did
want to finish what they’d started, and he wasn’t talking about the apology.

“If you’ll excuse me,” said Mr. Liu, “I must greet some other guests.” He echoed both men’s good-byes and left them standing staring at each other.

More silence. Cary shifted uncomfortably, unable to stop his mind from returning to last Saturday, where they’d also stood and stared at each other in silence—before Alex had pounced on him. God, this was going to be hard. If he couldn’t even stand and look at a fully clothed Alex in public without his dick stirring, how was he going to get through this party, much less this war? Because they were still at war, right? He should say something. He opened his mouth to do just that, not to apologize exactly, but to suggest that maybe they call a truce, but before he could get a word out, Alex turned and walked away.

…

“Alexander!”

Alexander stifled a groan and turned in the middle of putting on his coat. He had almost escaped. He had put his time in, gotten face time with Liu and turned on the charm with Linda, who had been all over him with questions and compliments. It had been a little much, actually, but he’d invited it, hadn’t he, since he’d been so solicitous of her at the games day?

Regardless, he was jumpy, getting that caged-in feeling he hated. All he wanted to do now was go home to a blessedly empty condo, pour a glass of wine, and take a long, hot shower.

His mind flashed back again, as it had been doing so frequently the past week, to the image of a leather jacket. To the feel of said leather jacket sliding over his bare chest.

Maybe he would make that shower a cold one.

“Alexander, wait!”

He forced a smile. “Barbara.” They were in the crowded entryway of Liu’s house, where a traffic jam of guests coming and going created a din.

“Not so fast, I need to speak to you,” she chirped, giving him no choice but to halt his progress. The thing about their weird relationship was that at any given time, you never knew if you were getting Friend Barbara or Dominion Board Member Barbara. And since he reported to the board, Board Member Barbara was technically Boss Barbara. She beckoned him, and, resignedly, he followed her through the house and out a pair of French doors that led from the kitchen to a patio with a pool. Leave it to Barbara to have the whole place scoped out. It was a chilly May and too early in the season for the pool to have been opened, so they had the patio to themselves. The cool air was a relief. He wasn’t usually bothered by parties and social interactions. Hadn’t been for years and years. But ever since he’d spoken with Cary, he’d been counting the moments until he could get out of this one.

Barbara steered him to a corner of the patio. “I understand the bank is courting Don Liu.”

Crap. It was Board Member Barbara. And how the hell had she found out? He’d instructed Sara to keep it on the down low. They were going to win, but it was better to hit the board with a huge and unexpected piece of good news than to have them riding him about it as the process unfolded.

He bowed his head, not wanting to show his frustration. “We are.”

She waited until he looked up to say, “You should have told me. I can help.”

He didn’t want to win the account because Barbara worked her social connections. He wanted to win it because he was the goddamned best. But, a little voice in his head piped up, if he won, it
wouldn’t
be because it had been a fair fight. So many times he’d almost called Johan, told him to call off mailing Liu the court document. There was just no way Cary had done it. He wasn’t a predator. But then Alexander would stop with his hands poised over his phone and tell himself that all he was doing was sharing information that was already public. He would tell himself that Cary’s appearance at his house, his bullshit apology, had all been designed to shake him. It was all warfare. And then he would put down the phone.

“Linda Liu seems to have taken a shine to you,” Barbara said.

He nodded. “She runs some of her father’s companies. And she has his ear.”

“Does she know you’re gay?”

He shrugged. “It’s common knowledge.” He’d wondered the same thing himself in there, but it wasn’t like he was going to start making “in case you’re attracted to me—not that I’m assuming you’re attracted to me—you should know I’m into guys” speeches to Don Liu’s daughter.

“The board will want you to do everything in your power to get Liu,” Barbara said.

“Jesus, I’m not playing straight, Barbara,” he snapped.

She shook her hand and waved her hands around in front of her face. “I know. It was a foolish idea. I dismissed it as soon as it came out of my mouth. But you need to understand how high the stakes are. Your successful courting of Liu will reflect well on you when it’s performance review time.”

It almost sounded like a threat, like she was implying that his job might be in trouble if he didn’t win the account. Forget the fact that the bank had done nothing but thrive and post stellar returns under his leadership. “Are we done?” he asked, trying to keep the anger out of his tone. Barbara didn’t deserve his anger. This wasn’t personal. It was just business.

“No.”

He sighed and leaned against a deck post, settling in for more strong-arming by the board via Barbara.

“I also understand that you broke up with your model boyfriend?”

And quickly enough to give him whiplash, Board Member Barbara had transformed into Friend Barbara. “He wasn’t my boyfriend. We weren’t dating, per se.”

“Well, I for one would love to ‘not date’ a model.” She made quotation marks with her fingers.

He sighed. “How did you hear?” Though why was he even asking? Barbara knew everyone in this damned city. She was the poster child for the term “well-connected.”

“I ran into the poor dear at Edwina Campbell’s garden party.”

Ah. Alexander couldn’t help but smile at that. David had been hinting about wanting Alexander to go to that high-society party with him. Maybe it was heartless, but he took a kind of smug satisfaction in not having had to.

“Is it true?” Barbara asked.

“Well, since we were never really together, I’m not sure you can precisely call it breaking up.”

Barbara waved her hand dismissively. “Not together, my ass. Looks like a duck…”

“We spent time together, sure, but—”

“Well,” she interrupted. “That’s what he called it. ‘Broken up.’ In fact, I think his exact phrase was “Alexander dumped me Saturday night.”

Alexander waited for the rest of it. Surely if David had been that chatty with Barbara, he had told her the rest, trotted out the story of his midnight visitor. When she said nothing, merely stood there with her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised, he said, “He was crowding me. I’ve told you that. I told
him
that from the beginning. I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”

“What are you looking for, then?”

Another one of those goddamned visions of a black leather jacket flashed into his mind. He didn’t answer.

“Well, apparently not that nice boy. That nice,
criminally attractive
boy.” Barbara shook her head and
tsked
, but she patted him on the arm as she did so. “It’s a good thing you’re better at banking than your social life. Still, though, I’d like to know what you think you’re holding out for. The second coming?” Laughing at her own joke and giving him a final
tsk
, she turned and headed for the house.

Alexander sighed.

And Cary Bell stepped out from behind a tree.

Chapter Thirteen

Aww fuck.

There was no way to spin what Cary had heard in any way that didn’t make it seem like Alexander had dumped David because of what happened with Cary.

But damned if he wasn’t going to try.

“He had made a customized channel list on my TV,” Alexander said.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t like people getting too presumptuous. I don’t like people in my space.” Alexander mentally replayed his conversation with Barbara. Though he hated that Cary had probably heard Barbara telling him how invested the board was in the outcome of the Liu situation, he consoled himself that nothing truly proprietary had been said. He wondered what Cary was doing out here. Hiding? That’s what Alexander had been doing, but here he was face to face with the man he’d been trying to escape.

“You don’t like it when other people exert agency, is what you mean,” Cary said, raising his eyebrows and taking a step closer.

“No, I mean exactly what I said: I don’t like other people in my space.”

“Like this?” He took another step. “You don’t like it when you’re not in control, do you, Alex?”

Jesus. Maybe there
was
some truth to those sexual harassment allegations. Not that Alexander felt harassed. But this aggression-bordering-on-belligerence was a side of Cary he hadn’t seen before. “The name is
Alexander
.”

Cary took another step. Alexander would be damned before he’d take a step back, though. He planted his feet, even if it did prove Cary’s point. What was wrong with wanting to be in control of your own life? It had served him pretty well thus far. “What do you want, Bell? I was just getting ready to leave.”

Cary didn’t answer right away, just stared, his mouth a grim, unforgiving line. When he finally spoke, what he said took Alexander’s breath away. “Honestly? I want to finish what we started last weekend.”

The astonishing proposition was so at odds with Cary’s forbidding expression that it would have been funny—if it weren’t so hot. But the impulse to laugh was obliterated by the jerking of Alexander’s cock, by the fact that every hair on his body stood on end, like they were all leaning toward the suggestion, as if they could somehow propel him forward as they screamed, “Yes.” But his higher mind, the part that was into concepts like self-preservation, hesitated.

Until Cary licked his lips. Alexander remembered what those lips had felt like parting beneath his own, opening so fully and readily and hungrily. Those lips that had haunted him for so many years. He wasn’t sure that Cary wasn’t playing him, but he was confident that Cary’s reaction last weekend had been genuine. You couldn’t fake that kind of desire. He cleared his throat. “If we…did that, it wouldn’t mean anything.”

“Of course not.” Cary agreed so quickly that Alexander felt a little foolish for even implying he might think the contrary. Then Cary flashed him an evil grin. “We’re at war, right? All I’m suggesting is a temporary suspension of hostilities.”

Alexander waited a beat before saying, “Your place.” He meant it about not wanting people in his space. He wasn’t making that mistake again, at least not this soon after David.

“Follow me.”

And eff him if Alexander didn’t then do exactly what Cary told him, following him around to the back of the pool. Cary tried the back gate, but it was locked. The only way out was going to be through the house, and Cary apparently didn’t like that option because he rattled the lock in frustration. Alexander didn’t either. The party was stifling, and they were likely to get pulled into conversations. They might have to see Liu, which would be the human equivalent of a hundred cold showers, so surely would it remind them why this was a terrible idea.

Alexander moved next to Cary to look at the gate, which was secured shut with a flimsy, rusty padlock. Cary rattled it again. “I guess we’ll have to go through—”

No.

If they went back through the house, Alexander wouldn’t be able to continue suspending his disbelief enough to actually go through with this.

So he pushed Cary aside, retracted his leg and kicked—a hard, swift blow that was rewarded with the breaking of the lock.

Cary inhaled sharply and glanced at Alexander. Alexander merely opened the gate and gestured to Cary to precede him.

They covered the large estate quickly and in silence, bypassing the valet stand outside the front door and continuing to the open field where the guests’ cars were parked. They passed Cary’s BMW first. He paused with his hand on the door and turned to look at Alexander. The heat was back in his eyes, and he was smiling a little proto-smile, like he had a secret. Alexander almost groaned right then and there as a rogue thought exploded across his consciousness.
That mouth will be your undoing. Again.

“Three-fifty Kendall Avenue, main floor,” Cary said, still smiling, giving no sign that he felt any of the turmoil that was roiling around in Alexander’s chest.

Alexander nodded. It was a long drive back to the city from the Lius’ bucolic country spread. A long time to think, to come to his senses and realize why this was the worst plan in the world.

He needed to do something to prevent that from happening.

So he grabbed Cary’s wrist and pulled him against his chest. “Will you do something for me?” He was surprised at how raspy his voice was. He shouldn’t have been—it merely sounded like he felt, which was on the verge of losing control.

Cary nodded, and his cheeks flushed. Good. Finally an outward sign that Alexander had gotten to him.

“Turn off your goddamned music for the drive home.”

Cary must not have appreciated the directive, because he pulled back against Alexander’s grip.

“Why the hell do you care what I listen to in the car by myself?”

“Because I want you to concentrate—no distractions. I want you to spend the whole drive thinking about what I’m going to do to you. I want you to be ready for me.”

Cary raised his eyebrows, but he stopped trying to free his wrist from Alexander’s grasp. “And what are you going to do to me?”

“Everything.”

…

When Cary pulled his car into the driveway forty-five minutes later with his cock aching so badly he thought it might fall off, he turned his music way up. He turned it up enough so that Alex—his brain still refused to add the “ander” to the name—who had arrived just ahead of Cary and was waiting on the porch, would be sure to hear it.

Yep. Alex turned and scowled as Cary pulled past him to park in the drive, keeping an eye on Alex as he jogged down the steps and came toward the car. Cary would have thought he was going to open the door for him, all gentleman-like, except for the fact that he looked supremely pissed.

Good. Cary needed to appear in control. Obviously, Alex was getting to him—he wouldn’t have propositioned him otherwise, would be? But there was no need to let Alex know how much. How much the idea of Alex’s hands all over him had him practically drowning in desire.

He could only hope it was mutual. He didn’t flatter himself that the whole thing about dumping the model boyfriend had anything to do with him. Cary was pretty sure Alex did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, damn the consequences. The way he’d talked to that Dominion board member back at the party was a prime example. Cary
did
flatter himself, though, that the heat in Alex’s eyes was genuine. That the urgency with which he’d kicked open Liu’s gate meant that he wanted Cary as much as Cary wanted him. They were about to have meaningless sex, sure, but Cary was pretty sure it was going to be
spectacular
meaningless sex. He just needed to remember that they were still at war, and that he had as much power here as Alex did.

So, in service of that aim, he paused a little too long with the door open so Alex could get a proper earful of Metallica.

“Turn that shit off.” An annoyed Alex reached into the car as if he were going to cut the engine.

Cary relished a surge of triumph that almost made him want to pump his fist at having gotten a rise out of Alex so easily. It was like pushing Marcus’s buttons, except…not at all like pushing Marcus’s buttons. “Don’t touch my car,” Cary said, turning the keys himself and avoiding eye contact as he brushed past Alex and walked up the porch steps.

As Alex followed him into the entryway, Cary wondered if Alex had ever hooked up with someone in such a humble abode before. Cary had sold his house when he started the new company, wanting to free up as much cash as possible to get it started. Renting suited him right now, and he had grown quite fond the nearly two-hundred-year-old house whose main floor one-bedroom apartment he called home. But though it was nice enough, it was certainly a far cry from the luxury Alex would be accustomed to.

He didn’t have to ponder the question for very long, though, because before they even got inside, while he was unlocking the door to his apartment, Alex pushed up against him. Not overly aggressively, but enough that Cary could feel his erection against his ass.

“I thought you didn’t like people in your space,” he said, unlocking the door but not moving. It took everything in him to just stand there, to tamp down the onslaught of desire that made him want to climb Alex like a tree.

“That’s true.” Alex’s cock pulsed and Cary bit the insides of his cheeks to prevent himself from making any noise. “But I have absolutely no problem getting in other people’s spaces.” Cary let his head fall back. The effort of holding it up was, suddenly, too much. He couldn’t hold his head up and keep himself from moaning at the same time, and right now, in the name of maintaining
some
dignity, he was concentrating on the “not moaning” part.

Alex lowered his mouth to Cary’s exposed throat. When his lips made contact, it was a jolting wake-up call. Cary jerked away and pushed open the door, which put some distance between them. He couldn’t let Alex drive this whole encounter.

Resolved, Cary pushed open the door, which led directly into his small living room. He didn’t bother turning on any lights. It wasn’t like this was a date. Or a seduction. It was a temporary ceasefire, which didn’t require mood lighting. Turning the tables on Alex in an echo of what Alex had done to him last time, Cary turned and pressed him back against the door, sliding his hands inside Alex’s suit jacket and pushing it over and off his shoulders and arms. The jacket dispensed with, he moved directly to the tie, undoing the double Windsor knot with hands he willed not to shake. Unlike last time, they didn’t kiss. Alex just watched him as he stood passively, letting Cary slip his shirt buttons from their holes.

Cary took a shuddering sigh when Alex was bared from the waist up. He lifted his hands to stroke that magnificent chest, was so single-mindedly focused on it, in fact, that he didn’t notice Alex’s hands come up until they had grabbed his wrists.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Alex said, his voice rolling like warm honey through the empty, dark apartment.

Cary tried to free himself. He needed to touch Alex’s skin. The compulsion was just as strong as it had been the other night. Just as strong as it had been that night twenty years ago on the lake. Stronger.

“While I fully endorse the concept of nudity here, I don’t think I should be the only one to do it this time,” Alex said.

Raising his eyebrows at the unexpectedly playful tone, Cary took a step back, waiting for Alex to do his worst. But nothing happened.

Alex nodded. “Go on.”

Cary shrugged out of his jacket. He’d lost his tie in the car, so he started right in on his buttons. But after he was halfway down, he realized what was happening. God damn Alex. He stopped undressing and took a step back. It was all about control for Alex. He might genuinely want to see Cary naked, as he’d said, but he wasn’t going to be the one to make it happen. Cary was beginning to understand the man Alex had become. To express desire now would make him feel weak. He wanted Cary to want him more than he wanted Cary.

Well, fuck that.

He started buttoning the shirt back up.

This time, when Alex’s hands circled around his wrists again, he was ready. He stopped working his buttons back into their holes, but he didn’t lower his hands, just stood there gazing at Alex, his balls aching and his cock hard as a rock. After a few seconds of the standoff, he allowed his gaze to drop, just for an instant, before lifting it back up to meet Alex’s eyes again. But it was enough to validate his theory that Alex was as turned on as he was. The tenting in his guest’s pants didn’t lie. Cary pulled back ever so slightly and said, simply, “Pity.”

It worked. Alex lunged, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning them both a hundred and eighty degrees so Cary’s back was to the door. He hadn’t wanted to be in the same position as last time, had wanted to be more hunter than prey, but hell, if this is what it took to get Alex to break his nonchalance and fucking
act
, he figured he was still coming out ahead. But when Alex reached out and grabbed one side of Cary’s shirt in each hand and ripped, causing the buttons on his shirt to scatter, hitting the hardwood floor at their feet with series of
pings
, Cary wasn’t sure anymore.

But he stopped caring because—holy God—Alex didn’t stop with his shirt. He took a moment to run his hands over Cary’s chest, causing goosebumps to rise on flesh that had, a moment ago, been overheated, then went straight for the pants buttons. There was no intermediary step—no cupping of Cary through his pants, no press of their hips together through their clothing, like last time. It was as if once he’d decided that undressing was what was happening, he wasn’t stopping until the job was done.

Cary had no problem with that. Or almost no problem. As Alex shoved Cary’s boxers down and tapped his leg, prompting him to lift it up so he could step out of them, Cary entertained a fleeting thought of how pliable he was being, despite his earlier vow to maintain some dominance. But as Alex slid his hands back up, one on each side of Cary’s outer legs, lightly gliding up, up, over his thighs and hips and coming around and parting so one grabbed an ass cheek and the other slid around to cup his balls, he could no longer hold on to that thought. “Fuck, yeah,” he groaned as Alex wrapped a hand around his dick, squeezing only lightly, experimentally pumping a few times. Cary heard Alex’s breath hitch and he bucked into Alex’s hand, chasing more pressure,
needing
more pressure. But then Alex pulled away, starting to work on his own pants, and Cary thought that he’d been wrong a moment ago when he’d thought he needed more pressure. What he really needed was Alex’s cock. Like, right now. So he moved to help, shoving the unbuttoned pants and the boxers underneath them down in one fluid motion. And
Oh My God.