Lovers and Takers (2 page)

“He’s going to kill JoNathan, honey!
 
Daddy’s in the bedroom and he’s going to kill JoNathan!
 
You’ve got to stop him!
 
You’ve got to stop him, Aubrey!”

Aubrey’s heart was pounding as he ran past his mother toward the master suite.
 
He had no clue who this JoNathan was, or why his father was even in town yet, and why his good father would want to kill anybody.
 
But he didn’t ask questions, and kept on running.

He entered the wide open doors of his parents’ bedroom in a dead run, rounded the foyer, and saw his father plummeting some naked man on the side of the bed.
  
There was blood everywhere, including all over his Dad’s expensive suit, and the guy was already barely conscious.
 
But his father kept beating on him.

Aubrey ran to his father, and tried to pull him away, but his father was too strong.
 
Jake didn’t budge.

“Daddy, you’ll kill him!” Aubrey was pleading, his beautifully thick eyebrows furrowed in concern.
 
“Please stop!
 
Daddy, please stop!”
 

But nothing was stopping Jake.
 
He wanted his pound of flesh tonight, and he was going to get it.

“You’ll go to prison, Daddy,” Aubrey said, tears in his big, brown eyes.
 
“If you kill him you’ll go to prison.
 
What’ll happen to me and Pammie if you go away?
 
Who’ll take care of me and Pam?”

And it was that sentiment, that
who would take care of his children
reality, that stopped Jake cold.
 
Ever since his children were born he’d been more their caretaker than Dena ever had been.
 
They were so young when Aubrey was
conceived,
both were eighteen and just starting college, that he understood her lack of motherly gifts.
 
But as time went on it didn’t get any better.
 
She continued to be more about going to beauty spas and in-crowd parties, than PTA meetings and piano recitals.
 

He never liked that particular quality in his wife, but that was just the way carefree Dena had always been.
 
She never made any bones about it, either.
 
Every man in their circle had wanted her, but Jake was the one who had won her, so he knew he had to take the good Dena with the bad Dena.
 
He didn’t sweat her lack of attention because he knew he’d always be there to pick up her slack.
 
But if he was out of the picture, as Aubrey had reminded him, then who would take care of his children?
 
Party girl Dena and this strange man she’d been fucking?
 
Her strict, rich parents who hated his guts for knocking up their daughter and taking her away from them?
 
Or would his beloved, precious children end up in foster homes, the way he was raised?

And the fire within him left.
 
It died right out.
 
His hatred of a man whose name he didn’t even know could never be stronger than the love he had for his children.
 
And that realization caused him to release his rage, and stand up.

The guy wasn’t unconscious, but he was close.
 
And that dick that seemed so magical to Dena had shriveled up into a wrinkled, pink nub.
 
He seemed hardly worth the energy now to Jake.

But not to Dena.
 
She ran back into the suite, and looked at her lover in horror.
 
“JoNathan!” she screamed in agony when she saw the state he was in, and ran past her son and her husband and dropped to JoNathan’s side.

And for Jake, that moment said it all.
 
He placed his arm around his son and pulled him to him, hoping to shield him from further disgust.
 
How could this woman, the mother of his children, be so outwardly attractive but so worm-infected rotten inside?
 
Aubrey was only eleven, but Jake knew it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize what kind of woman they had on their hands.
 
And Jake also knew that only a fool would still want to have anything more to do with a woman like that.

Aubrey looked his big, anguished eyes away from his mother and up at his father.
 
Jake placed his son’s small brown hand into his big white hand and walked with him out of that master’s suite.
 
He hated Dena for her betrayal.
 
He hated her with every fiber of his being.
 
But the pain of that betrayal, from the woman he loved so completely, was even more excruciating than his hate.

Jake and Aubrey walked steadily to Pam’s room.
 
Aubrey could see tears in his daddy’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
 
He was so confused and so scared that he didn’t know where to begin to understand this night.
 
He just remained silent, and followed his father.

Jake lifted Pam into his arms, and without waking her they left her bedroom.
 
He didn’t take a stitch of her clothing, nor any of his son’s or his own.
 
He just wanted to get away from there.
 
He owned a condo in Miami proper and they would go there for now.
 

But for right now he wanted to get far away from Dena Varnadore.
 
Because he knew what her betrayal would really cost him and his children.
 
He knew that her actions tonight would emotionally cripple all three of them, to varying degrees, for the rest of their lives.

And with one arm carrying his sleeping daughter, and another arm holding his traumatized son, he walked down the stairs, across the marbled floor, and left their
Bal
Harbour home in a heartbroken daze.
 
But even in his unbearable pain he vowed to never return to that home, or to such a place of helplessness, ever again.

ONE

Fourteen Years Later

Druce Lincoln never had it so good.
 
Once considered trailer park trash out of those blue ridge mountains of West Virginia, he fought and clawed and conned his way to the top.
 
And now, he thought, as he stretched out on the bed, parted his thick thighs, and relaxed to the masterful strokes, he never had it so good.
 

He was the top sales executive of all the sales executives at Varnadore Global.
 
He was tough, and smart, and filled with the kind of self-assurance a weaker man would view as pure arrogance.
 
And his body, he thought, as the strokes became licks and his manhood responded, was what every woman in town wanted a piece of.
 
Sometimes he had to beat them off with a stick.
 
Because they saw what he saw every time he looked in a mirror: a superfine, blond, blue-eyed prince with a long, lean body, and with abs as ripped as a Bentley grill.
 
And his manhood was as thick and juicy as a steak.

And the strokes, the licks, the nibbles made him feel as if he really did have a steak between his legs.
 
He closed his eyes and enjoyed every moment of the feel.
 
Although he was lying across a bed in a shabby apartment so far removed from his urbane lifestyle that he normally wouldn’t be caught dead in such a deplorable place, he felt like he was on top of the world even there.

He was senior sales executive at Varnadore Global, and although Aubrey Varnadore was his boss and the heir-apparent to his father’s company, Druce viewed that annoying fact as only a temporary blip.
 
Because someday he would be running that empire.
 
He was obsessed with that goal.
 
He would be Jake Varnadore’s second hand man even if it killed him.
 
And eventually, when Varnadore did pass on, he would run it all.
 
Aubrey was tough as nails, and could be a real asshole if you crossed him, but he didn’t have that killer instinct.
 
Druce Lincoln had it in spades.

“
Ooh, baby
,” he said in a lustful groan as the licks felt like fire against his skin.
 
He could lie there all night, losing himself in the feel, but time was a problem.
 
Unfortunately, when you work for Jake Varnadore, time was always a problem because there was always some meeting, some dinner, some event you had to attend.
 

This night would be no exception.
 
Although he didn’t want to leave, and he didn’t want to move an inch from where he lay, he wasn’t about to mess up his plans.
 
Tonight was the Varnadore's weekly family dinner, and Druce was invited.
 
He was, after all, Pam Varnadore’s boyfriend.
 

What her old man didn’t know, however, was that Druce was going to take the first opportunity tonight to propose to Pam, and right in front of the big man himself.
 
It could backfire mightily, and Druce knew there were serious risks in his plan.
 
But if all went well it would codify his position forevermore.
 
It would show to Mr. V. that he was bold, and daring, and the kind of outside-the-box leader that could take his company to heights even the big man didn’t see possible.
 
Aubrey was a good son and a nice guy and everybody liked him, but he was hardly a mover and shaker.
 
Druce made his reputation shaking things up.
 
Tonight, he was about to shake it loose, and take his career, he hoped, to an entirely different level.

But time was a problem, he thought again as the full-mouth strokes slowed to a sensual rhythm that caused him to grunt.
 
He
was loving
it, but he knew it couldn’t go on much longer.
 
He had to get going, especially if he expected to impress Mr. V. and his obsession with perfection.
 
And that was it: Jake Varnadore was a perfectionist.
 
Even down to those fake supermodels and rich socialites he dated.
 
Every one of them seemed like perfection in motion.
 
All superficial, all obnoxious, all dismissive of Druce.
 
Good thing Aubrey wasn’t like
that,
and Pam certainly didn’t inherit that trait.
 
But as long as Mr. V. was in charge, and he was fully in charge, they all had to dance to his sorry ass tunes.

“You have got to speed it up,” Druce said as the strokes, though wonderful, began to slow again.
 
“Time is not on our side.”

“But it feels so good, baby.”

“Don’t I know it,” Druce said seductively.
 
“But I’ve got to go.
 
Do it and do it hard.”

The young black male looked up from between Druce’s thighs, his big, innocent eyes reminding Druce why he was attracted to him in the first place.
 
“You can always fill me up now,” the young man said, his face almost bursting with glee, “and come back for more
later
.”

Druce looked at that beautiful face, and those wondrous eyes, and was at first repelled by the thought.
 
This was a dude for crying out loud!
 
What the hell was wrong with them?
 
He could only imagine what Pam would think, and Aubrey, and he didn’t even want to entertain what would happen to his career if Jake Varnadore found out.
 
Geez.

But he looked again at the young man.
 
His name was Troy Brackston, an admin assistant in Druce’s office, who was up and coming and more than willing to please the boss in any way he could.
 
And Druce’s overpowering need overruled his sense.
 
He stood up, positioned Troy on the bed’s edge, and entered him.
 

He sighed relief as he did, and moved slowly at first and then savagely aggressive.
 
He knew what he was doing was wrong on every level.
 
He knew he should have on protection for his sake as well as Pam’s, but he didn’t give a fuck when he was doing Troy.
 

Besides, he knew who he was.
 
And he knew it wouldn’t be him if he didn’t live dangerously.
 
That was the beauty of it, he thought maliciously, as he pounded Troy.
 
Having your cake and eating it too, or, in Druce’s case, having your man and woman, too, was what he lived for.
 
It started when he was a kid getting abused over and over by men and women alike, and he wasn’t about to slow his descent now.

He came almost immediately, as he filled the younger man up with the kind of ass-slapping release that repulsed as much as it invigorated him.
 

“
Damn!
 
Damn!
 
Damn
!” he yelled as he pounded and filled, and then screamed in satisfaction as the danger, the excitement, the pure nastiness of what he was doing completely overtook him.

By the time he was poured out, he slumped against his partner’s back.
 
His entire long, lithe body was now bent and bowed in exhaustion and sadness.
 
Like a man completely cloaked in his own satisfaction.
 
Like a man completely cloaked in his own sense of shame.