Dark Illusion

by Daniels, A. J.

  “If I said I wanted you, would you deny me?”

  Silence.

  When I can no longer see the man on the street below, I drop my hand from the glass and turn back to face Kai. A face of indifference stares back at me. He’s so still that if it weren’t for the blinking of his eyes, I’d think he was frozen by Mr. Freeze’s gun.

  I grew up watching Batman, sue me.

  “What did you mean your best friend would kill you if he found out you were gay?”

  Ignoring his question, I walk around the desk until I’m standing directly in front of him. Leaning my ass against the solid wood, I fold my arms across my chest, trying not to smirk when Kai’s eyes snap down to my biceps and he visibly swallows.

  “Spend the weekend with me.”

  Kai averts his gaze at the sound of my voice and clears his throat. “Answer the question, Toni.”

  “No.”

  Wrapping my fist around his tie, I pull, forcing him to stand or be choked by the silk. I shiver imagining him in a private room at the club, bound with silk and gagged, spread out for me to do with as I please.

  I tug again, forcing Kai to brace his palms on my chest or risk toppling over. Running my nose along the sharp line of his jaw and down his neck, I inhale the scent of wood and spice.

  “Spend the weekend with me.”

  “Will you stop asking if I keep saying no?” He sucks in a sharp breath when I sink my teeth into a patch of skin just above the collar of his shirt.

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to be your dirty little secret. Some little experiment you keep from your girlfriend.”

  I growl, giving another tug on the tie, pulling him impossibly close. “There’s no girlfriend.” To prove my point, I slant my mouth over his and kiss him.

  When I finally let us up for air, Kai is panting, his blue eyes hooded with lust and desire.

  “Spend the weekend with me,” I repeat, cupping the growing bulge in the front of his pants.

  “Okay,” he concedes, almost purring when my hand moves lower to cup his balls. “I should get back to work,” he pants.

  “You should.” I nip his earlobe.

  “You going to make me go back out there with a steel pipe in my pants?”

  “I should.” I give his dick one last squeeze for good measure and begin to pull away.

  Kai growls, gripping the front of my shirt in his hands. “Fuck you,” he says before slamming his mouth down on mine for the hottest kiss.

  “Lock the door,” I command, sidestepping Kai’s attempt to lean in for another kiss and walk around the side of the desk.

  It takes a few moments for what I said to slowly sink in. Kai stays rooted to the spot, slowly blinking at me, his blue eyes still filled with desire.

  “Lock the door, Kai,” I repeat.

  After another moment of staring at me, he does as he’s told. Turning the lock on the office door then coming to stand in front of where I’m leaning back in the leather high back chair.

  “Get on your knees,” I demand, undoing my belt and pants. Sucking in a harsh breath through my teeth when Kai does exactly what I’ve told him, even going as far as to not touch me until I’ve granted him permission. I groan envisioning him at the club in nothing but a cock cage. He would make such a good submissive.

  “Take me out and suck me.”

  My fingers comb through the soft strands of his hair as he works to free me from my underwear. When his fingers wrap around my cock it takes what little self-control I have left to not force him to take it all. That thread of control snaps when the heat of his mouth envelops the head. I grip the back of his head and force my length down his throat, groaning when my cock hits the back of his throat and he gags.

  Kai’s fingers dig into my thighs but when I retreat to allow him a breath, he shakes his head and takes my full length to the back of this throat again; gagging and drooling down my cock. It shouldn’t be hot as fuck but it is, and when he adds his teeth with the barest of tugs along the Jacob’s Ladder, my eyes roll back, and I see stars. I fuck his mouth like it might be the last time, grunting when my entire body goes rigid and I’m coming down his throat.

  Kai barely has time to swallow my load and pop my dick out of his mouth when there’s a knock on my office door and the last voice I’d ever expect to hear at the office calls out my name from the other side.

  “Who the fuck’s that?” Kai asks, rising to his feet, his tongue slipping out to licking along his lips. I can’t help myself. I stand up as well and follow the path of his tongue with my own, chasing it inside his mouth. I can taste myself on his tongue and it makes my dick twitch behind the fabric of my underwear. My hands roam down his sides and along to grab his ass, yanking him closer to me until there’s nothing between us.

  “Don’t care,” I murmur against his lips, grinding our pelvises together.

  “Antonio, I know you’re in there. Open the door,” the voice whines with a hint of seduction in it. Months ago, it might’ve been enough to still get me hard. Not the voice itself, but the promise of what it held, of what the person it belongs to being here meant. Now? Well, now I want nothing to do with it. I curse myself for stringing her along all these years.

  “Is that…?” Kai trails off, searching my eyes.

  When I don’t respond the way I know he wants me to, he shoves away from me in haste to get out of the enclosed space as fast as possible.

  “K… Mr. Black,” I call after him, but it’s too late. He’s already ripping open the door and storming out.

  I curse, and hastily do up my pants before Siobhan pushes her way into my office and locks the door behind her. Her button nose crinkles the farther she steps into the office.

  “Smells like sex in here,” she comments, taking a seat on top of my desk, her heeled feet coming up to rest on the arms of my chair, her long legs on full display. I keep my eyes on hers and not on the lace covered pussy currently in front of my face. The one I can tell is already wet and ready if the smell of her desire is anything to go by.

  “What can I do for you, Siobhan?” I clear my throat and straighten up in my seat.

  “You left in such a hurry last night. I miss you, Antonio.” She pouts. A red stiletto runs down the middle of my chest. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve been busy.” I swat her foot away and push back my seat, forcing her to remove her feet from my chair.

  Standing, I head over to the bar in the far end of my corner office and pour more than a couple of fingers’ worth of my favorite whiskey. Movement down on the street below catches my eye and I look down just in time to see Kai slip into a cab and drive away. I know I should go after him. I want to go after him, but if I leave now I’ll be forced to answer twenty-one questions from Siobhan and no doubt from Klara, after Siobhan gets ahold of her.

  “You look stressed, baby,” Siobhan says from behind me, her manicured fingers gliding up my arms. “Let me make it better,” she purrs, a hand running down the expanse of my abs, to rub against the front of my pants. “Unless he already took care of it.”

  Slamming the glass back down on the makeshift bar, I spin, grabbing Siobhan by the arms and pining her back to the window. The outside sun like a halo around her dark hair.

  “Careful, Siobhan. You know what happens when you test me,” I growl, pinching her cheeks between my fingers.

  Her hips buck, her pussy rubbing against my thigh because I was the idiot who accidentally forced a knee between her legs when I shoved her up against the window. “There’s the Antonio I like. C’mon, baby, do me right here, up against the window overlooking the city.”

  Cursing, I take several steps back from her. Running a hand through my hair, I take in everything around me. The immaculate office, Siobhan in a tiny black dress that barely covers her round ass and sky-high stilettos still leaning up against the glass where I left her. If anyone walked in right now they’d think I took her up against the window like she suggested. Lust dances in her brown eyes,
her hair’s all mussed and sexed up. Everything in my life dictates that she’s exactly the person I should end up with. I should do as she requested, and then marry her like we had planned. Pop out a baby or two. It’s what’s expected of me. But I just… can’t. Because the one person I want to do all those things with is the man who just ran out of here and losing him is a fate worse than death.

  I grab my jacket from the back of my chair and throw it on as I make my way to the door but stop just inside the office. “See yourself out. And don’t ever come back here, Siobhan.”

  He was mine again for less than an hour and I already fucked it up. I am an idiot.

  Kai

  SUGAR BEACH HAS nothing on Caye Caulker, Belize, but I needed out of the city and away from Toni. When I asked a local where the closest beach was, they pointed me in this direction. It’s definitely closer than the lakes they call beaches in Toronto.

  The drive went a long way in helping me calm down after the fiasco in Toni’s office. I only wish I’d had enough sense to drive to work instead of taking a cab this morning. I would’ve been at the beach a lot sooner, but traffic in downtown Toronto is nuts.

  “Another round?”

  I look up and into the warm, whiskey eyes of the bartender. He’s the personification of the surfer dude. Dirty blond hair flops down over his forehead and into his eyes, and a shell necklace adorns his neck. The one thing that does surprise me is the inked sleeve on his right arm. He’s smaller than Antonio and for a moment I debate whether coming here was a good idea.

  I swallow hard and nod for another round. Fuck Antonio. Maybe surfer dude is what I need. I didn’t miss the slow perusal he did of my body when I first entered the bar, or the way his gaze stayed glued to the front of my crotch for longer than necessary, or the slow lick of his lips when I took a seat at the bar.

  I don’t know what Antonio’s problem is, but it is clear that he is so far in the closet, he’s in Narnia. I am not about to go back in there myself.

  “My break’s coming up in five minutes,” surfer dude says when he places my drink in front of me. A suggestive smile curling his lips when I peer up at him.

  My entire body stills at what he’s suggesting, and I war with myself if this is really the way I want to play it. If I do this, if I go out back with this guy, there is no way Antonio will be able to forgive me and I would’ve ruined any chance of being with him. But then again, if Antonio is content to stay in the closet the rest of his life then is there any chance to begin with? Could I live the rest of my life basing my decisions off the what-if possibility of him owning up to who he is and coming out? He’s probably already balls deep in that chick anyway. Knowing that he could be having sex with her right now after I sucked him off in his office has my stomach rolling and my earlier lunch threatening a reappearance.

  With a clipped nod, I grab my drink and chug it back. “Meet you ’round back,” I say, slipping off the barstool and heading outside.

  I’ve just barely rounded the corner to the alleyway behind the bar when I’m grabbed by the front of my shirt and forced back into the brick wall. Warm, unfamiliar lips meet mine in a hungry kiss, a knee too boney to be Antonio’s shoves between my legs.

  I whimper at the unfamiliarity of it all; the soft hands wrapped around my neck, tilting my head back for better access, the too small body pressed against mine. This isn’t what I want.

  “Get the fuck off him,” a voice growls from somewhere behind us. Every molecule in my body freezes because I know that voice and he sounds beyond angry.

  “Fuck,” I curse, dropping my head back against the brick wall of the bar.

  “You know this guy?” surfer dude asks, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.

  I chance a glance behind him and sure enough, Antonio is still in his suit from earlier, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he’s seething. Veins popping up his forearms, muscles bulging. I have to swallow back a groan when my cock begins to perk up, and… that’s when I remember surfer dude still has his body completely pressed against mine, a knee between my legs. No doubt thinking the hard-on I’m now sporting is because of him. It’s not.

  “Yeah.” Dropping my hands from his chest, I give him an apologetic look and breathe a sigh of relief when he takes a couple of steps back.

  He looks over to Antonio and back to me again like he’s not entirely sure if he can or should leave me alone with the raging bull standing at the end of the alley.

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, um…” I blank on his name. I was so focused on calling him surfer dude I forgot what he introduced himself as earlier.

  “Brock,” he grins, running the back of his hand down the side of my face. When he leans in to place a kiss on my lips, a growl from directly behind him gives him pause. I swear Toni must be part wolf or whatever because, if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought the growl came from a wild animal.

  Well, he is an animal in bed so not far off there, Kai.

  I shove the thought away and offer Brock a small smile before he turns and heads back into the bar to finish his shift.

  “Do I want to know how you found me?” I sigh, leaning my back against the wall and popping a foot up to brace against it.

  “I traced your phone.”

  “Okay. Do I want to know how or why?”

  “Probably not,” Toni says, crowding in closer to me until he’s forcing me to drop my leg or literally knee him in the balls. He braces his palms on the wall on either side of my head. “Thought you were spending the weekend with me then I find you in a dark alley with another man.”

  “You going to tell me what Siobhan was doing in your office or why you tracked me down?”

  “Fuck Siobhan,” Toni hisses, pinning me to the wall with his hips. He frames my face in his hands. “You are the only person I want.”

  “Why will your best friend kill you if he finds out you’re gay?” I repeat the question I’ve asked him multiple times. The same question that’s constantly playing on a loop in my head. I know there’s something he’s not telling me, and it fucking guts me. I think it’s also part of the reason why I haven’t been able to give him a straight answer about us, about whether or not I want to pursue what this is between us.

  Toni curses, dropping his forehead to lean against mine. He pecks a kiss on my lips and then steps away, shoving his hands in the pockets of his dress pants.

  “The lifestyle I grew up in…” he starts, but then shifts from foot to foot like he can’t get comfortable, and I know whatever he’s getting ready to tell me isn’t going to be something I’m expecting. Toni begins pacing the short length of the alley, stopping just before reaching the end and then turning back. “Our families had… have a certain way of doing things. When Braxton took over the family business…”

  “Luca Enterprises?” I ask, still not understanding where he’s going with this.

  “Luca Enterprises and Club Nineveh are the legitimate businesses. The businesses that are on record.” He stops pacing right in front of me, eyeing me like I should be able to guess where he’s going with his explanation, but I just stare back, willing him to continue. Toni sighs, dropping his chin and running a hand through his already mussed hair. “Have you ever heard of the De Luca family?”

  “The crime family? Yeah, who hasn’t? They’re supposed to be at the helm of all organized crime in Ontario.”

  Nobody really knew who exactly was at the head of the De Luca Famiglia, unless they were part of the organized crime circle or ‘in the know.’ They were very careful to keep their identities a secret from the public eye. I pause. Luca Enterprises. De Luca.

  “Are you telling me that Braxton Luca is really Braxton De Luca, the Boss of the Famiglia?”

  Toni nods, waiting for me to continue putting it together. It really should have been glaringly obvious. Luca… De Luca… I’m a fucking idiot.

  “Are you part of all that too?”

  He nods again. This time i
t’s clipped like he’s waiting for me to take off. I see it in the subtle way he steels himself; posture rigid, arms crossing over his chest instead of hanging loosely at his sides. He’s waiting for me to tell him to get lost, that now we definitely cannot be anything more than what we allowed to happen on the Belizean Island and in his office.

  “So, what? Being gay is an automatic death sentence in organized crime?”

  “Not in organized crime as a whole. Just in the Famiglia. The Italian mafia is very… traditional.”

  I scoff, “Yeah, because solving everything with death and running guns and drugs and God knows what else is ‘traditional.’”

  Toni relaxes his stance, dropping his arms when he realizes that I’m not running. At least not right this minute.

  “I didn’t say it made sense just that it’s the way it is and has always been.”

  He’s right of course, he didn’t say that any of it made sense. But it does. The mafia has been around for years, probably before his father was born. It’s a very traditional organization, founded on traditional views. The ones that say business should be kept strictly between the men, and the women were expected to turn a blind eye and ear, and have dinner ready without question, and homosexuality was seen as a threat to masculinity and the family dynamic.

  “So, if we do this, it has to be kept a secret. We can’t ever go out to dinner and I can’t ever hold your hand while walking down the street. Can’t steal a kiss in the hallway at work.”

  “No,” Toni answers, regret swimming in his eyes.

  “I’ll basically have to go back in the closet again.”

  “Voglio stare sempre con te, but I’d never ask you to do that, Kai.”

  My brows furrow. “What was that first part? What did you say?”

  Toni smiles, “I always want to be with you.”

  Glancing down one side of the alley and then the next, I notice that we’re still alone. There’s not even a homeless person who’s set up camp by one of the dumpsters. Then my gaze sweeps over him and Toni looks so unsure, standing out of arm’s reach from me in his dress shirt and tie, dress pants that fit him like a glove. He doesn’t look like the ruthless businessman I know him to be, but more like a man in danger of putting his heart out there only for it to get stomped on either by the person he’s falling in love with or the organization he considers his family.