TAKING OVER TROFIM (Dominion of Brothers series Book 4) (6 page)

She shrugged, “He said he was.”

“Well, he’s not.” He let out a heavy sigh.
Shay deserved more credit than that
. “We were a long time ago. Now— he’s engaged to be married, to a girl no less.” Trofim couldn’t even say it without sounding like he was venting.

“Oh, one of those.” Bethany rolled her eyes and turned her back, so he could do what he needed to do without her watching.

“What do you mean?” Trofim suddenly felt guilty, like he’d caused some misinformation to start by what he’d said.

“Guy’s gonna play it straight for the society or family, whatever his motivation is, but he needs to get a few last chances in to sow his oats before he does it.” She quirked a shoulder in emphasis to what she said, “I take it you two were really hot together in bed then, huh?”

“I suppose.” The last thing he wanted to do was start discussing it. His cock would never go down.

Bethany went on. She obviously had a point for all this. “Usually when a guy is sowing his oats it’s with strange, but if you two had a connection, that’s even better, 'cause at least then he knows it’s worth the effort. I’d say go for it.”

“And why would I want to?”

“Beats fucking someone who doesn’t know how to please you. Might as well get the good stuff while it’s being offered. Then you can be mad at him for using you and that helps you get past the pain.”

“You know with logic like that it’s no wonder men go gay.”

She snapped back around, “
Ha.
”
Her eyes flashed wide at him, “You’re one to talk. Your
gay
boyfriend is going to marry a girl. And I’m the one out of my mind?” Her eyes dropped checking him out. Trofim felt the scrutiny under her gaze and quickly grabbed the towel, but as he wrapped himself he discovered he wasn’t hard anymore.

She gave him a smirk, “See? It worked.”

Trofim couldn’t help but feel a little dismantled watching her tramp out the tent like she’d had it all planned from the beginning. But it also had him thinking about just what Shay was really up to and he wondered if Bethany might be right.

~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~

That evening Trofim relented to Shay’s pursuit and agreed to meet him for dinner.  But now there, he wasn’t sure it’d been his best idea. Nor was it Bethany’s.

Trofim sat at the table picking at the last few morsels of his meal while Shay watched him with some growing impatience. He still wasn’t sure why he had let Shay convince him to meet up with him. Of course, when Shay suggested picking out a place to eat that was real close to his apartment, the growing suspicions Bethany had put in his head drew to the surface of his emotions. He knew then what Shay’s intentions were. That they went to someplace conveniently close, said the meal was just ceremonial, and to fuel up for the real purpose of their night, rather than it being a date. And just that alone ground at his injured heart strings like a non-resigned bow.

“How much longer you going to play with your food?”

Trofim ignored the comment, since what he was likely to say wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Shay had clearly had about enough of watching his returned lover brood over his plate. He reached over shoving Trofim’s plate away and leaned in to kiss him, “Let's go back to your place. I’m so ready to strip you down and eat you for dessert.”

Trofim rolled his head just enough so that Shay’s attempted kiss missed its target and he pushed up from the table. He didn’t even look back to see if Shay was coming, didn’t say anything to suggest he should follow either. Just took off, pushing his hands into his pockets and started down the sidewalk towards his place only a few blocks away. He was silent, eyes glued down at the passing concrete under his feet. Even when Shay caught up and fell in stride next to him, Trofim said nothing.

He wanted to know what this was. What Shay wanted and why him? He wanted to know why Shay was so willing to use him this way, but didn’t know how to ask, so the hurt just stewed inside. He also didn't like feeling so vulnerable. But Shay’s presence always seemed to do that to him— strip him of his walls
.
Though before, that had never been a bad thing, Shay had a way of making everything seem right so long as they were together. Love did that to them. Maybe that’s why Trofim caved so easily to meet with him. Only Shay wasn’t here to encapsulate him in happy-go-lucky lover frolicking followed with a night of slumbering together. Not this time.

They walked the few blocks it took to reach the cast iron gate that let them into a small garden courtyard. Trofim used his key to let them in then took the first flight of metal stairs, then down along the balcony to the last door on the left.

Shay followed him in and glanced around the room a moment, but his attention was quickly back on Trofim. He reached out, pulling Trofim against him and moved in for a kiss. Trofim dodged it like before, making Shay’ lips finding his cheek instead of his own lips. Shay undeterred pushed Trofim’s jacket from his shoulders and tossed it to the sofa.

Trofim remained quiet, almost lifeless. He neither fought Shay off nor encouraged him.

“You know this would feel so much better if you were in a better mood.” Shay tried and failed once more to kiss Trofim. “At least serve up something that shows you’re alive.”

No matter how Trofim tried to interpret that, it only seemed to confirm what Bethany had told him earlier that day. Shay was just out sowing his
gay-oats
one last time before settling in with his bride to be. The only thing Trofim could do was try to have this one last moment with the man he still loved.

On auto pilot, Trofim’s hands came up to Shay’s shirt and started undoing the buttons at a quickened pace, while he walked backwards towards the bedroom. Shay’s hands gripping at his hips to keep their bodies touching as they moved. Pushing their shirts off each other, the items found their way to a nearby chair just as Trofim’s legs hit the bed and the two fell back on the mattress together.

On cue, Shay’s hands were all over Trofim, one with the intent to remove the rest of his clothes, the other still trying to bring him around to be kissed.

Trofim continued to dodge the kissing part. His lips were attached to his heart. He might be able to survive some meaningless sex with Shay, but he couldn’t withstand the intimacy of their kissing. Shay had the power of making him melt into the man and he couldn’t allow it to happen.

“So you have a place of your own now.” A statement rather than a question. Trofim used conversation to thwart Shay’s advancements barricading against any emotional attachment.
With Shay out of college, he would no longer be living at the dorms. Shay’s dad lived Up-State and Trofim knew damn well Shay would never volunteer to live under his father’s roof.

~  *  ~

“Yes.” Shay tried again to kiss him only to have Trofim pull away before he even got a taste of the man’s lips. “I like yours better.” Frustrated, Shay moved to Trofim’s neck and licked over the sensitive skin until he found an ear lobe and sucked it into his mouth.

“So she lives with you there?”

“She who?” Shay whispered, keeping focused on his own intentions. He nipped at Trofim’s neck some more while his gaze dropped to his hands releasing Trofim’s belt.

“She, as in your fiancé.”

“No.”

“What’s her name again?”

Shay let out a frustrated sigh, “Sarah.”

“She know you’re with me?”

“Of course not. Now stop talking and let me kiss you.” Shay grabbed Trofim’s jaw and pulled him around.

Again Trofim pulled free. “Where does she think you are then?”

“What? Why do I care what she thinks?”
Trofim’s questions were becoming more than disruptive, they were pointless, especially right now
.

“So how did you two meet?”

“Friends of the family.” Shay answered, turning a shade disgruntled with the onset of twenty-one questions.

“She know you used to be gay?” Trofim unzipped Shay’s jeans and ran his fingers over the erection that was beginning to deflate.

“Enough about Sarah.” Shay leaned up on an elbow and gave him a hurtful glare, “I’m trying to make love to you. I think that constitutes me still being gay. Now, will you shut up and kiss me, Trofim?” Shay caught Trofim’s face and pulled him around to look at him.

~  *  ~

A bomb of suffering went off inside Trofim, he wasn’t going to have any of this. All his emotions clicking over inside him.
He couldn’t go through with it. It hurt too much to be used like this
. He shoved Shay from him, “No. This is just a fucking! One last chance for you to get your gay on before tying a straight knot!”

“What?” Shay pushed off the bed and stumbled back, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your engagement to that woman!” Trofim lifted up on elbows, glaring at Shay. “That’s what I’m talking about. How can you stand there and lie to me? Pretending that this is supposed to be meaningful, when you’re soon to be married. Bad enough you want to use me like some quick cheap fuck, but to lie to me as well? And when you leave here and go home to her, will you fuck her just to remind yourself you’re supposed to be playing it straight?”

Shay’s expression turned horror struck. “Fuck her?! I’ve never even touched her before in my life! Why the hell would I leave you to fuck her?”

Trofim jackknifed up in the bed, “Because you asked her to marry you!” He was fuming with anger and pain.

“I didn’t ask her! My father set it up! I never got to have
any
say in it. The only thing I’ve managed in that respect was to keep putting it off for the last four years.”

Trofim stilled, “Four years?”

“Yeah— four years! Sarah’s the daughter of some political heavy weight family. My dad and her parents set the whole thing up. I’ve used school as an excuse to push it off. Now it’s my internship that’s the excuse. It wasn’t until I floundered on the river when I saw you that they went behind my back and announced it in the paper!”

“Then why not just say no?!”

“Because he seized everything when you left, Trofim!” Shay belted out, revealing to Trofim what he’d kept bottled in all this time. “My money, my inheritance from my mother. Hell, even my passport! Everything, so I couldn’t go after you. He got some judge to declare me incompetent and then he
took
everything!”

“Wait, what judge? What do you mean incompetent?” Trofim’s anger dropped, being replaced with concern, but Shay was raging and didn’t hear or chose not to answer.

“I needed that money to pay for my medical school! I only have to finish my internship so I can start on my surgeons’ residency and then I can walk away from the rest. I’ll be able to finally draw a decent enough salary income to pay my own way. I can walk away from him forever. But I have to complete my internship first. I’ve come too far to let him steal that from me.” Shay zipped his jeans back up, snatched his shirt and jacket from the chair, “You think I just carried on about my normal happy life after you left? The only thing that changed was that at least when I did have you with me it made everything else bearable.” Shay stormed out of the room and in a matter of seconds Trofim’s nerve endings jumped when he heard the door to his apartment slam shut.

~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~

CHAPTER THREE

~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~

Several days passed and Trofim never got a call from Shay. He thought surely Shay would come sneaking back around to taunt and tempt him into the man’s bed. Seduce him into believing in fairy tales and that they had a chance to be together.

He wished it were true, that they could be together, but he couldn’t see how, and yet he couldn’t get Shay out of his head either. He saw him in his dreams. He even looked for Shay on every bridge they passed under when they practiced yesterday.

He checked his voice mail diligently, convinced the missed caller ID wasn’t working on his phone. But no calls came.

He’d be leaving for London in a couple of days for the summer line fashion show. The pounding weight that bore him down meant every bit that he couldn’t go without resolving this in himself. He no longer knew what to think or how to act upon any of it. And he knew of no one else he could turn to but his brother.

Trofim stopped by Pyotr’s office and went in when the last patient of the day stepped out. He knocked lightly on the door as he stepped in. “Do you have a minute?”

“I have all the minutes you need.” Pyotr waved him in, closing the psychiatric files he had on his desk.

Trofim closed the door and took a seat then waited as Pyotr came around the desk, and sat in the chair facing him. “It’s about Shay.”

Pyotr said nothing, just looking at him with some inner amusement, some inside joke; as if Trofim actually thought he needed to say it was about Shay.

“He wants us to get back together.”

“Is this about Shay or about you?”

Trofim licked at his lips a moment, “It’s about me.”

“Then let us talk about
you
.”

“I think I still love him.”

“You think?” Pyotr repeated the two words, but his face filled with a warmth that assured Trofim he wasn’t chastising him or mocking his rattled feelings.

“I don’t know.” Trofim rolled his head a bit, as if the movement might actually get some more stable thoughts to the forefront of his brain. “I mean, he touches me and— and everything just turns on, and I’m flying. It feels like we’ve never been apart and I want it to stay that way because it hurts too much to not be with him. If he were here standing on the other side of the room, it would be too far away.”

“But—?” Pyotr leaned his head forward a bit, looking for the catch in the system. There was always a
but
in there somewhere. The one word, regardless of how it was created, was the tripping point to most people’s happiness.

“
But
— he’s married. I mean, he’s engaged to be married. To some woman his parents set him up with. I mean, that’s insane, Pyotr.” Trofim suddenly began to ramble, “Who does that anymore? And why would he live under a lie just for them? I wouldn’t.”