The Hunter (Mistress & Master of Restraint) (14 page)

Cortez Abernathy
: Present
-Chapter Fourteen-

Headlight
s slice across my body as I lean against the back wall of the cavernous garage at Whittenhower Estates. Behind the large yellow orbs rolls a black SUV that I drive more often than the Aston Martin the driver bought me as a birthday present. I love my
Vanquish
, but it’s not something you can tool around the streets with or drive your children around in. You drive a
Vanquish
with intent- the intent to speed, which Azriel finds most entertaining as we drive ninety-five miles per hour down the desolate interstate in the early morning hours when she refuses to sleep.

I hop forward, mock screaming with my arms out to my side. I pull a face knowing Ezra is laughing inside the dark of the SUV. I plaster myself to the hood as he puts the car into park.

“You’re such a dumbass,” the affectionate words flow to my ears as Ezra exits the car. “You’re an adorable dumbass, though.”

“How’s Zane?” I ask, knowing that Ezra never breaks his routine. It’s how I knew where to find him at three a.m. on an average Wednesday morning. It’s a good thing I don’t have a day job, and it’s a bad thing Ezra does. His insomnia mixed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder frightens me for his health.

“Good?” The upward inflection turns the word into a question. Ezra squints at me, unsure where I am leading with my question. I never, ever, ask about Zane’s welfare.

I don’t blame Ezra for being wary. Usually bringing up Zane starts a
war between the two of us. It’s always Ezra who tries to talk to me about his son, and I always shut him down. I don’t pick the fights because I don’t want to know about Zane and his everyday life. I’m eager to know everything there is to know about the boy. I pick the fights because it hurts so much. It’s not the betrayal, it’s the missed opportunity to be an active participant in Zane’s life instead of a faraway observer. Talking of Zane feels like Ezra is rubbing it into my face. Ezra and I have shared everything… with the exception of Zane. I’m trying to play nice right now, and not only because Marcus told me to, but because I
need
to in order to move my life forward in a positive direction.

“Have you thought about… I don’t know… shared custody?” I hesitantly ask
as I lean against the SUV’s front bumper. “I don’t like you driving around in the middle of the night when you’re exhausted. Plus, how can you bond with Zane if he’s asleep. It’s was easier at Edge when all of us were in one place and all you had to do was cross the street to visit your son. It’s a twenty minute drive into the city each way. Maybe ask Faith if she’d be willing to start off with a few days a week after school or something.”

“What?” Ezra gasps as he rounds the big vehicle. “You know no one knows about Zane.”

“That’s not true,” I counter. “Most of us know.”

“The people in the game- which might I remind you,
they loathe me at the moment. Don’t think for a second that I don’t know what the Game Master and her united Elders are up to right now, and I even know why they are distracting me. I’m just letting it go, and trying to live my life. I’d love to shout that Zane is my son, but my home life isn’t exactly Kosher at the moment.”

Anger rolls off of Ezra as he backs me into the wall. He tries to intimidate me with his power, but it doesn’t affect me in the way it w
ould most people. I love Ezra… unhinged. It’s sexy as hell.

“I’m not trying to start a fight… I’m trying to make that home life… Kosher? Hey, does that word even work for that?”

“You’re the word weaver, you tell me,” Ezra mutters, allowing the anger to dissipate. He leans into me, but not out of affection. Ezra tries to provoke me by pressing his groin into mine. My eyes flutter shut on their own accord.

Trying to gain some semblance of control, I say,
“By the way, it’s not just the game players. Well, he’s an inactive game player, or a reluctant one… whatever, Marcus knows about Zane. He has for at least a few years. Faith caved,” I admit.

“What?” Ezra gasps in utter amazement. “What?” he repeats as if he didn’t understand me.

“Yeah, every other day after school, Marcus picks Zane up and they go somewhere- anywhere. It’s your kid’s choice. Half the time Torian Spencer joins them- both boys call Marc Papa, and he loves it. God, it feels really good to admit that. It’s sucked holding that in.” I take a deep breath and sigh it out.

“I guess I don’t know everything like I thought I did,” Ezra mumbles, bewildered. “I’m… pleased… not about Boyd’s spawn, but the kid does need a good influence, especially since he’s sniffing around the girls. I hope Tori doesn’t catch our daughter or my sister. I’d kill the little fuck.”

“Torian reminds me of me,” I say with a laugh, and receive a death glare in response. “Yeah, we better lock those girls up tight.”

“Why were you waiting for me?” Ezra asks, voice filled with suspicion. “Waiting to spill
your secrets, were you? Doubtful.”

“Walk?” I point out the back door of the garage that leads to the large expanse of Whittenhower Estate’s majestic lawns. Ezra doesn’t answer, but he does link his fingers through mine
, and then pulls me out the door. I try to stifle a shiver when our flesh meets and fail. I love it when Ezra touches me. Sometimes just holding my hand is more emotional than sex, meaningful, possessive.

“I miss this,” Ezra says, squeezing my hand. We silently walk the lawn for a few minutes “I miss home. I miss walking around ShadowHaven at night, sitting out in the yard. I miss our
woods and our tent. I’m homesick. Misery Castle is magnificent, but it’s not our home. I want to go back. I… I need ShadowHaven.”

“I know,” I whisper, feeling the urge to cry.
There is a spot in the lawn that you can just make out the rooftop of ShadowHaven. Whittenhower Estates sits atop a hill with ShadowHaven on the opposite hill, and Crestview Drive is settled in the valley between the large estates. Our area makes up a gated community that houses most of the game players.

“You can’t possibly understand,” Ezra
despondently murmurs, trying to let go of my hand.

My fingers tightly bite into Ezra’s. “Can’t I?” I defensively hiss.

Thoughts
of inadequacies roll through my head. I’m just the orphaned bastard child of a Hunter and an unnamed dad. Who knows if Julian Abernathy even sired me or if he was a fictitious character in the story of my life…

“Just because the house was deeded to the Holden family doesn’t make it any less important to me. You lived there one month before I was born, but I lived there for years while you were over at Edge. ShadowHaven is just as much mine as it is yours. It
was
half mine- Divina gave me Pearl and her half during the divorce, thinking you and I would raise our children there, and then our grandchildren and their children’s children.”

“Cort,” Ezra cries out, pulling us to a stop. “There is nothing of mine that isn’t yours. That isn’t what I’d meant. I… I’m the one that lost ShadowHaven during a game play. I lost our future, don’t you get that? And now I just feel… lost.”

“Well,” I sigh out. “I guess it is a night of revelations,” I sarcastically mumble. I lower to the ground, not caring that the dew dampens my pajama pants. “If it was a game play, then I know who to go to in order to find out. Only one of them has the knowhow, and his strings get pulled by his sister.”

“You think Faith has our house?” Ezra utters in disbelief as he sits on the grass next to me. “If only,” the relief in his voice is so strong that I shudder.

“Yeah, I do. If Faith doesn’t have it, then she knows who does. But I’d bet my house,” I stress, smirking. “I guess I already did that, now didn’t I…I know how Faith operates. Years past or not, we know her. I bet that Faith took the house for Zane. She wants to punish us, but not really. Faith doesn’t have it in her to truly hurt us.”

“You still miss her?” Ezra asks, surprise thick in his voice.

“Every day,” I say without hesitation.

“You still pissed at her?” Ezra asks, and this time his lips curve up at the corners.

“Every day,” I sarcastically grumble. “Ah… jealousy is such a bitch.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have a jealous bone in your body, then,” Ezra gives my snark
right back to me.

I snort while shaking my head, trying not to laugh outright. I lay back on the lawn and stare up at the sky. “Out of everyone, and I mean everyone, Faith is the only person who even came close to stealing you from me.
If Faith hadn’t met Wil… I know you could have been happy with her. Faith is… funny and snarky and mean, beautiful, and strong and stubborn. She’s loving and faithful, and she scares the shit out of me.”

I cover my face in my hands and spill the real truth. “
I’m jealous because Faith got to share something with you that I didn’t get to experience. I was pushed out. It wasn’t the same with Katya, and I know you used the twins’ conception to appease me- to right the wrong. We’ve done everything together: learn to talk, walk, shit in a toilet and piss all over ShadowHaven’s front lawn, how to masturbate and kiss and fuck and make love, how to drive, elementary school and Hillbrook and all the universities, our jobs and homes, our family and our Hunter bloodline, our wife and kids, abductions and rapes and violence and the game- all of it. Other than a womb, we’ve shared everything but Zane. I missed out on his life, and I wanted it. I wanted Zane to know me, to call me Dad, to love me.” My voice breaks from emotion as tears stream down my cheeks. Even in my head, I’d never thought the words that just spilled from my mouth, but every word of it was truth.

“Oh, Cort,” Ezra cries as he rolls to the side and tries to pry my fingers from my face. I hide behind my hands, but give up when Ezra budges my fingers out of the way.

“I fucked Marc tonight,” I shamefully blurt out. “And I’m no longer blocked. I wrote twenty-thousand words today. It just poured out of me like water.”

“Back up,” Ezra growls. “Congratulation on the writing, I know how much that was tormenting you. But did you just say you fucked my dad tonight?”
His words twist with confusion, and I would rather tear out my own heart and hand it to Ezra than explain how I had sex with his dad less than two hours ago.

I turn my face to the side so that Ezra can’t look at me, or maybe so I can’t look at him. The guilt is suffocating me. I wish I hadn’t done it, but I’m glad I did. Ezra’s fingertips grip my chin and bruisingly squeeze until I turn my face back to him.
Angry gray storm clouds meet my gaze. Ezra’s mouth is drawn in a tight line and fury is radiating off of him. He’s never been violent to me when I wasn’t begging for it, and he’s holding himself back from physically hurting me right now. But this is Dr. Ezra Zeitler, he doesn’t need to punch me when he can bore into my mind and scramble it like eggs.

“Truthfully, I did it because I needed comfort
,” I softly begin, trying to calm Ezra and alleviate my suffocating guilt. “I needed someone that has always trusted me and loved me and respected me and cared for me. I needed to forget and I needed to remember. I feel guilt and shame and remorse, but I feel high from the fact that I made a straight man bend his own principals. I feel vindicated by getting back at you for all the betrayals, hoping that you hurt as much as I did. But I hurt for you, knowing how painful it feels to be betrayed. I wish I hadn’t done it, but I’m glad I did.”

“You’re always so wordy when you’re
feeling guilty,” Ezra murmurs out, sounding highly amused.

It’s my turn to bark out, “What?”

“If we were talking of any other man, I ask if you fucked him or if he fucked you. But I doubt that Marcus would give his ass up to anyone, even you. Am I shocked? Yes. Do I hurt? I think you have an idea of how awful I feel right now,” Ezra’s voice breaks. “But I know that Marcus won’t give up the life he’s building with Regina to steal you from me. I’m just as jealous as you are, Cort. How you feel about Faith coming close to stealing me… if a person gets anywhere near you like that… I won’t hesitate to murder them, and I won’t even care if it emotionally hurts you when I kill your lover.”

“You’re not joking, are you?” My voice quivers in fear. I know what Ezra is capable of, especially when he isn’t himself.

Ignoring my question, Ezra demands, “What I want to know is if you plan on doing it again?”

“Never,” I promise
, not only worried for Marc’s safety and Ezra’s sanity, but because I don’t think I could live with the guilt. “Truly. Never. I can’t handle the guilt. It felt wrong and right. The right made it worse. It shouldn’t feel right. I’m pretty sure Marc won’t talk to me for weeks because of this.”

“Marc
didn’t enjoy it?” Ezra eyebrows reach his hairline. He seems shocked that it wouldn’t be any good. But I can still hear Faith’s girly voice telling everyone that would listen that I sucked at sex. That kind of talk gets to the best of men.

“Too much,” I
grumble, and a heartbeat later my spine bows off the ground as I bust out with nervous laughter. “Fuck me. It was very good.” My laughter turns to choked snorts, and then to coughs. “Way too good.”

“Do you plan on doing it again?” Ezra asks again, and I can tell he’s trying not to smile.