Fascination Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Sky McCoy

  Then I saw him touch the man’s arm and they were laughing. A pain hit me in my stomach. There was no mistaking it for jealousy. But wasn’t it me who had turned away from Jeremy choosing to go home and not speak to him? Wasn’t it me who didn’t turn around and elected to walk away and not look at him?

  Jealousy, envy, and anger boiled up, rushed through me like a fire through dry wood, setting off a sparks that aroused me, and tortured me at the same time. I wanted him now. I wanted to walk up to the other man and tell him to fuck off, because Jeremy Westbrook was mine, and I belonged to him, but I couldn’t.

  I gazed over at Jeremy thinking that he had to be the most stunning and elegant man alive, and what man dare walk alongside him but me. I’d paid a price to be with this man. It was me who told him to own up to who he was, and damned if he wasn’t doing that—without me.

  Had I missed my chance? Was it too late? I’d find out now. I sucked down the saliva lodged in my throat. Now my mouth felt dry.

  When Jeremy and the other man strode close to me, Jeremy hadn’t seen me because he appeared enthralled with the young strawberry blond. Fuck me, but another blond had invaded my life to fuck it up. What was it with me or what was it that the men I’d fallen for, dumping me for blonds? At that moment I declared...No. I would find me a blond now, but where would I find one? On a dating site that’s where. I didn’t care if he wasn’t a true blond. If I had to dye his hair, I’d have me a blond on my arm.

  Now I knew I’d lost my mind and it was Jeremy Westbrook driving me fucking nuts.

  I’d never seen Jeremy that happy. Every time I’d been with him he’d been despondent and wouldn’t tell me things. He’d been hiding his twin brother from me and before we had an argument he’d said that there was more he had to reveal to me. Was this his lover he’d wanted to admit to me? What the fucking difference does it make now? I thought. I could see that it was over between him and me.

  When the bartender placed our beverages on the bar, I was too busy watching Jeremy and that blond, so the waitress scooped up my drinks, placed them on her tray, and headed in the direction where Phillip sat. I turned to return to my table with Phillip, but he was talking on the phone and I thought I knew who it was. Probably Eric, and from the look on Phillip’s face it had something to do with sex. He too blushed and smiled broadly, looking like a Cheshire Cat.

  Phillip was the one person, if I’d ever gone completely crazy, I’d want to strangle him for leaving me out here floundering, searching for love in all the wrong places, and nothing could be more wrong than standing in a restaurant watching the man of my dreams walk by me with another man.

  I turned on my heels and strode over to Jeremy. Maybe I had lost my mind. I didn’t know I would go to him. Something said to me, “Go ahead, what have you got to lose?” So I did.

  My heart beat loud where I thought the people in the restaurant could hear it. I placed my hand over my jacket to calm it. My legs should have weakened, but they didn’t. My mind controlled my movement. My heart controlled my body, something inside me, my desperation for Jeremy sent me over to him. I was in love with this man and my mind said I couldn’t let another man have him.

  They strolled on the outside of a table following the host when I sauntered on the side of Jeremy and crossed my arms. “Are you Jack or Jeremy?” Now, I thought I knew the difference in the two brothers. However, I needed him to say it just in case I’d been wrong. How could I not know? He’d been intimate with me in a way no one else had been, and I felt the electricity that flowed between us as I stood staring into his blue eyes.

  When the young strawberry blond reached the table, he turned looking back before sitting, and that’s when he saw Jeremy and me. He spotted the look in my eyes and my tight jaw and furrowed brow. The blond couldn’t hear my voice, but he had to have seen the angry look on my face, and he returned to where we were standing and stepped on the side having a clear view of both of us as we faced off each other.

  “Do you have a problem, Jeremy?” My face turned to the blond, then back to Jeremy. He looked like I could handle him because he was a few inches shorter than me, and I’d been angry as hell.

  Jeremy chuckled as if he’d enjoyed me making a fool out of myself. “No, nothing I can’t handle,” Jeremy added.

  I turned to the short blond, “Who the fuck are you?” He glanced over to Jeremy.

  “I can handle this, Parker. Order your food.” Jeremy placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Go, and order me a steak—”

  I turned to the blond once more. “He likes his steaks rare, a hard ass, tight hole, and his potato with lots of butter. And after our conversation, he’ll have Scotch, no ice.” When the guy narrowed his brow, bit his lip and made a step to turn and walk away, I leaned over and whispered, “He’s a top. You won’t last long with that attitude.”

  “And neither will you, if you continue like this.” The young man about twenty-seven, give or take a few years, aimed the widest smile at me. I’d never been more pissed than now and when I turned to look at Jeremy, he had this smile crawling up to the side of his mouth which turned into a wide grin.

  “I see you’re wearing that scent you wore with me. I think you called it Lost Cherry. Did you tell him you just recently lost that cherry to me? Jeremy stared at me without that smile. “You’re not going to answer? What are you doing here with your boyfriend? Coming back to the scene of the crime.”

  “I don’t have to answer you because you refused to hear me out, Dorian. You let your stubbornness ruin a relationship. But I’m not as obstinate as you. If you remember, it was Jack who you met here, and not me. This is my first time coming here.”

  Jeremy had been right, he didn’t owe me an answer, and especially since I’d thrown away everything I’d wanted within a few minutes of knowing him.

  “Who are you dining with?” He’d thrown that back at me.

  I quickly answered. “That’s Phillip. My ex.”

  “I’m supposed to believe you. I don’t know you. I thought you were a man I could confide in, tell you how I felt. Tell you everything my deepest—”

  I interrupted him because he’d been right and I was still angry at myself mostly. “Yes. If that’s what you wanted to do, but you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t want to lose you. I asked you to marry me,” Jeremy said, his face and eyes softening.

  He looked as if he’d be open for a reconciliation, but I didn’t know how to open that door, especially since I’d just about closed all my doors with him, and burned down that bridge leading to his heart. And then there was this case of jealousy and bitterness that started with Phillip and I felt I had to make someone pay for my loneliness.

  “After you’d asked Annalisa and she’d turned you down. Why were you so anxious to get married anyway?” He looked away at the table where his boyfriend was sitting.

  “My drink is at the table and I think yours is too. We can talk another time if you want to. When can I see the final plans?”

  “I’ll bring them to your office, or you can come get them. You choose.” When he looked at me, I could feel the intensity build between us. We stared at each other and I could swear if we’d been anywhere else, in the car together, on a beach, even in a stall in a bathroom, I’d have his warm hard cock in me, and dare him to take it out.

  “What if I bring the plans to your apartment?” I was trying to meet him halfway.

  Jeremy stared at me and then said, “Business and pleasure doesn’t mix. We just went through this. My office please. I don’t think we should meet at yours for obvious reasons.”

  “The memories are too painful?” I interjected.

  “You could say that.” And Jeremy turned on his heels, as I watched that tall gorgeous man amble away from me, I thought I’d die because of how empty I felt.

  Chapter 9

  Jeremy

  When Dorian left and walked to his table, I sauntered back to my own table where Parker sat waiting and glancing up at me. All I said
was, “Don’t ask, it’s complicated.” And you don’t know me well enough to judge me yet, and with all the fuckup shit that’s happened to me in a short time, I’m not in the mood for anything, let alone answering any questions about my life.

  I could have, probably, should have, introduced Parker to Dorian and said that he was my baby’s nurse, but then I would have had to explain why I hadn’t told Dorian at my house when I had the chance, and why I didn’t tell him that I had a child. Not an adopted baby, but my own child. It just dawned on me the responsibilities I had waiting for me.

  If I fucked this up the way I’ve been doing lately, I wouldn’t be able to help this little child understand and navigate her life, where she’d lost her mother, and her father was gay. I was finally coming to terms with the idea that I was indeed gay. I wondered how that would sit with all my brothers when I called a meeting.

  Glancing at Parker after I’d sat alongside him, then turning to him, I said, “It’s too complicated, and we don’t have enough time. I need to eat. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten.” Parker smiled, handed me my drink. Oh yeah, I needed a drink more than I needed to eat. I’d probably tell him later because he’d find out one day since he would be living in my house, and it was always better to hear it out of the horse’s own mouth than from Jack.

  Jack would include shit I wouldn’t tell my therapist, or doctor. The complete story, leaving out the part where I’d been out of my mind with grief, and gone to Dorian’s house, went to my knees—. I doubted if Jack would express it the same way, therefore, I concluded a bar was no place for that, unless I was the bartender and someone else had been drunk enough to tell me that sordid sad story, and I wouldn’t believe it either.

  After I’d had my first drink, I relaxed and Parker leaned in and asked, even though I said not to. “Who was that, Jeremy? He’s a handsome fellow. He looks like he’s jealous. And why didn’t you tell him who I am? You don’t have to tell me, but he’s one serious dude, and he’s in love with you. I thought he would lose his cool, that’s why I walked between you.”

  “His bark is worse than his bite, and I must say that I didn’t expect you to come to my rescue. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but Dorian is going to be my husband, he just doesn’t know it yet. I can’t have my nurse challenging my boyfriend and making the wrong impression with my husband, or become enemies.”

  “Your husband? Your nurse? So you’re hiring me.”

  “Hell yeah, because I’ll get a nurse, a bodyguard, and a cook. How the fuck can I not hire you?” Parker wanted to hug me, but I settled for his palm over mine and a squeeze because Dorian was watching us intently. “We don’t want to make him too jealous, just enough where he’ll listen to me and see me,” I chuckled.

  When I’d finally said the words, ‘Dorian is going to be my husband, he doesn’t know it yet,’ a load that I’d been carrying lifted from me, freeing me, enabling me to say it—“I’m a gay man and now I can own it, be who I am, marry the person who makes me feel alive, marry the only human being who ever stirred passion and desire in me.”

  I wanted to lie down beside Dorian at night, hold him in my arms and sleep in peace, knowing that when I woke in the morning, it would be with a man who I wanted to make love to, cry to, and surrender myself to him.

  I didn’t want to go through this life and wake and discover that I’d lived someone else’s life. I wanted my own.

  When I looked across at Dorian and his friend Phillip, I smiled at them, knowing and feeling Dorian’s desire to be with me even as he tried to hide it. Dorian narrowed his gaze because I knew that he thought that I’d laughed at him. I took out my phone and texted him. Now that I knew I’d gotten under his skin, I wanted to bury deep inside his mind where no matter what he did, he couldn’t get me out without a lobotomy.

  Jeremy: Be at my office at one o’clock Tuesday with the finished plans.

  Dorian: They will be finished and then we can bring a close to you and me.

  Jeremy: That will not be an end to this arrangement. Remember, I paid to have you on site when the house is being built. I think the payment should more than cover your time and expertise.

  Dorian: It won’t cover nearly enough for what I paid for your time and expertise at that auction.

  Jeremy: I think you got your money’s worth the morning I showed up at your door, and in your office.

  Dorian: You’re the one who got his money’s worth.

  Jeremy: Let’s say we’re even.

  Dorian: Dominant bastard.

  Jeremy: Submissive slut.

  Dorian: And proud of it.

  I threw my phone down and picked up my knife and stabbed at the uneaten steak on my plate, then I looked over to see Dorian and Phillip having a laugh on me, or so I thought.

  Dorian and I, and our parties hadn’t planned to walk out of the restaurant together, but the timing was such that we ended up at the door after we’d paid and tipped the waiter and waitress serving our respective tables. I aimed daggers at Phillip for a number of reasons. Obviously there was no love lost there between me, and his ex.

  I should have checked to see if there was a knife in my back as I headed for the elevator with Parker. I glanced around and saw Dorian and Phillip heading for the glass doors to the outside of the building. I prayed Dorian wouldn’t turn around because he’d jumped to the wrong conclusions as usual. I couldn’t blame him. I should have explained to him who Parker was, but then that would have been a new set of problems that I would have to explain. It couldn’t be done in a restaurant.

  Hope springs eternal as they said. Dorian had seen Parker hit the elevator button. I saw Dorian step outside, wave off Phillip, then rush back through the doors, heading our way and that was when I realized that our texts had gone too far, and he wanted to have it out with me. I’d tugged at his string of jealousy too often.

  If ever there was a hot-blooded man it was Dorian. No one could confuse or call Dorian cold. His face reddened, his breathing accelerated, and his chest moved up and down.

  I knew the level of the heat rushing through him, I’d felt him. I felt his insides and with his body quivering underneath me, he’d been more passionate than any one human being I’d ever met, or made love to.

  He’d been like a hot spring warming my body when I’d been detached and couldn’t feel anything. Before I’d only fucked, but when I made love to Dorian, every part of his body inside and out heated me, and filled me with need. However, as much as I wanted that hot passionate man, I had to accept that this volatile man was coming my way, and his face wore unquestionable rage.

  “Really, Dorian, are you going to do this now?” He stood facing me, his green eyes glowing like large emeralds. I placed my palm against his chest and felt his heart thundering. If he’d done the same thing to me, he would feel mine hammering in my chest, because he’d been near me. “Can’t you wait until our office visit?”

  Dorian pushed my hand down. Parker stood looking at us and thank goodness he’d taken to heart what I’d told him and stayed out of men/men relationships. Someone could have gotten hurt and it probably would have been me since I’d kept too many secrets from Dorian.

  “You were the one who said business and pleasure doesn’t mix. I need to tell you exactly how I feel, now.”

  “I think I know how you feel.” I tried to act as if I was cool with everything, but in reality I’d been nervous that he’d take this wrong, and he did.

  “I have to say this to you, Jeremy. And hear me, if you go to that man’s room and fuck him, then I will never want to see you again.”

  “You don’t understand, Green Eyes.” When I called him Green Eyes, his face softened. I’d called him that when I made love to him, and that took him back to the first day we met, and how we knew that we were attracted to each other, and needed to be with each other, under one stipulation, I had to say it, that I was gay, and now that I had said it, there were still barriers we had to overcome.

  “Then make me u
nderstand.” His eyes sparkled like I’d never seen before. They showed pain, jealousy, and need.

  “I can’t tell you today, but I’m not going to this man’s room for what you’re thinking. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “I’ve put my trust in too many men and they’ve hurt me. The way you’re doing now.” His voice shuddered from remembering how he’d been hurt by the last man—Phillip.

  “I would never hurt you, Green Eyes. I asked you to marry me, remember. I wouldn’t have done that unless I wanted you. Please believe me.”

  Parker stood holding the elevator door waiting for me. I should have told him to go without me, but I didn’t. I had too much to do today, therefore instead, I placed my palm along Dorian’s jaw line and ran my thumb along the soft ridges of his mouth and he closed his eyes.

  “When you come to my office, I’ll tell you everything that’s been eating at me, and if you love me, you will understand, and forgive me for not telling you the things I should have the first moment we were together.”

  Chapter 10

  Dorian

  I had no choice. I had to believe him because I wanted this man. I’d told myself that I’d be willing to be his fuckboy and slut if he married Annalisa, when those things were as far away from who I’d been, but now that he was no longer marrying her, then I needed to hear him out.

  When I reached the office, Phillip had gotten there already and was looking up at me when I walked through his door. “What the fuck was that about?”

  “What? Do you think you’re the only one who has a life and has drama?” I said, dismissing Phillip.

  “I wouldn’t call that drama, that’s a full-blown tragedy waiting to happen.”

  “Oh, like that relationship you have with that pet doctor isn’t going to turn into a tragedy?”

  “I’m just saying, Dorian, he’s in the closet.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “They don’t come out just like that, and for a man like you.”