“Nice to finally get to meet ye in person, Rusty. Feel like I already know ye, we’ve talked so often.” Colin’s Welsh burr sounded even more pronounced in person than it did on the phone.
Rusty sat behind his desk. “I’m surprised they let you away from your office. What’d you do, use bolt cutters to cut the chain holding you to your desk?”
Colin laughed. “Yer not half wrong. How do ye stand this bloody heat, anyway?” He wore a tie and blazer.
“I was born and raised here. Native Floridian.”
“Ye poor sod.” Colin smiled. “Then again, I guess ye wouldn’t survive in our cold, rainy winters.”
Rusty suspected they’d dance around the issue all afternoon if he didn’t bring it bluntly to point. “You said you wanted to go through the Masterson report?”
Colin’s expression grew serious. “I do.” He withdrew a tablet from his satchel. “Ye warned me I likely wouldn’t care fer what I saw in there, but I need some clarification on a few of the finer points…”
Rusty had spent the past twenty-two years working for Davis, Schilling, and Cox—the last name which always made him inwardly giggle like a fourteen-year-old boy. The economic think-tank, based in Sarasota, had hired him right out of graduate school based on a recommendation from his doctoral advisor and the strength of his dissertation. He’d started out as an economics analyst for them, compiling numbers and running reports and processing statistics.
Now, he was an expert in European-American commerce, as well as Caribbean and Central American influences on the US markets. His advice was highly sought by companies and even government organizations from all over the world. As one of their senior analysts, he earned the big bucks they paid him. He’d refused dozens of job offers over the years that would have taken him to New York, Washington DC, or even overseas. First because he didn’t want to move away from Corey.
Later, after Corey graduated college and was on his own, because Rusty refused to uproot Eliza and Kailey, even though Eliza had told him she’d be fine moving if that’s what he wanted to do.
Except he hadn’t wanted to. Not only did Kailey have school and friends and all her activities, all his friends lived around here. It was comfortable.
They lived in the house he’d grown up in.
The house his parents had died in.
Sure, he could be making much better money had he moved, but he was making decent money now, he could support his family, had a good life, and was generally happy.
Couldn’t ask for much better than that.
He knew how damned lucky he was to have the things he did and the job he did.
They spent nearly four hours going over the details, Rusty detailing finer points of the report best not put into writing, or even said over a Skype call. Greeson wasn’t only in Florida to talk to him, he was also here on vacation with his family, then had several appointments in Washington DC and New York City the week after, mixing business with pleasure.
Rusty had warned Eliza before leaving for work that he’d be meeting late with a client, and that if she wanted to eat without him, he’d grab something on the way home. Once he’d seen Greeson out, he texted her.
Just finished, Ma’am. Leaving work shortly. Do You want me to bring anything home for You?
He’d made it out to his car when she replied.
Just you.
He couldn’t help but smile over that.
On his way home he grabbed Taco Bell. Since it was less than five minutes from the house, he held off trying to eat in the car. He’d eat at home, curled up on the couch with Eliza and letting the day drain from him.
He’d definitely needed the extra beating she’d given him last night, but today he felt steadier as a result. Didn’t hurt he was busy at work today, keeping his mind off other things.
Boo greeted him at the door when he walked in, and he held his Taco Bell bag out of her reach. “Hey, sweetie, where’s Mommy?” He toed off his shoes. Usually he stripped in the foyer as soon as he was through the door, dodging Boo’s slobbery tongue the whole time, but he didn’t want to set his food down where the bulldog could snag it.
Eliza stepped into view from the kitchen. As he looked across the living room at her, he knew something had happened. The only time she had that look in her eyes was when she had bad news to unwillingly share.
“What’s wrong?”
Instead of indicating for him to go ahead and get undressed, she motioned toward the couch.
His heart fell.
“Just tell me, Li, please? Is Kailey all right?”
“She’s fine. This isn’t about her. Or Marcy and Corey,” she quickly added, anticipating his next question. She crossed the room and sat on the end of the couch, patting the cushions in the middle, next to her.
He walked into the living room and set his laptop case on the floor next to the couch. His gaze never left hers as he sat, the Taco Bell bag in his lap.
She turned to face him, sitting cross-legged. “Got a call today, sweetie. And you need to know about it.”
Boo was trying to nose her way into his lap, shnurfling over the aroma of his dinner. Eliza snapped her fingers without looking at her and the bulldog’s plump rump dropped to the floor. Still, she gave Eliza an impatient snort.
“A call from who?”
“It was from an ALF in Orlando. Your uncle died last night. They had our house number and you were listed as his next of kin.”
He didn’t remember shoving the bag of food at her, or bolting down the hall. The next thing he remembered, he was kneeling in the guest bath and retching into the toilet just before it turned into full-on puking.
Eliza followed, kneeling next to him, her arm around his shoulders and talking to him but he couldn’t hear her over the dull roar in his ears. He didn’t just feel sick—he thought he might be close to passing out.
His stomach hurt, from puking, from the dry heaves that followed once his stomach was empty, from the ragged sobs rolling from him like thunder over the Gulf during a summer storm.
“I’ve got you, Rus,” she said, the first clear words to pierce through the storm and reach his brain after who knew how long. “Breathe. Keep breathing.”
He spit, still not sure he could move yet. He felt Eliza stretch, reaching for something, the sound of water running. Then she draped a wet hand towel around his neck before she loosened his tie. He closed his eyes and struggled against all the darkness and demons beating on his mental doors, doors he’d long ago locked but through which things sometimes seeped around the edges. Rarely anymore, but it felt like all the locks had busted open deep in the dungeons of the gothic manor of his mind and filled his soul with toxic sewage.
All the things he’d struggled not to think about or let consume his life now threatening to overwash him like a rancid tsunami.
“Rus?”
He sat back on his heels, body trembling. He couldn’t talk yet. He…couldn’t.
* * * *
Eliza knew it’d be bad, but had hoped it wouldn’t be this bad. That time and healing and her love would make this easier on him. Maybe even a celebration, of sorts. Banishing the demon for good.
This was a pot she hadn’t stirred in years. A pot she’d hoped would fall away into oblivion and never be mentioned again, much less have the lid ripped off it to reveal it was still in full boil.
His flesh was white and clammy and the distant, haunted look in his eyes shredded her soul.
She wanted to do nothing more than wrap herself around him, binding his wounds with her body, but knew all the love in the world couldn’t take away the memories of what he’d been through.
She didn’t speak again, waiting, knowing he’d have to center himself and pull out of this tailspin on his own. She couldn’t do it for him, no matter how badly she wanted to.
He crumpled to the floor, crying, his head in her lap. She pulled the towel from behind his neck and wiped his face with it, stroking his hair and trying to soothe him as best she
could. It took him another good twenty minutes to come back to her, finally meet her gaze when she tried to get him to look at her.
“Hey,” she softly said. “Let’s get you into the shower, okay?”
He nodded.
They stood. She flushed the toilet while he washed his hands and rinsed his mouth out. She held out her hands to him. He took them, letting her lead him down the hall to their bedroom and into the master bath. There, he docilely stood while she undressed him, dropped her own clothes to the floor, and led him into their shower.
With the hot water beating on them, she held him under the spray, stroking his back, his head on her shoulder. After a while, a long, sad sigh escaped him.
He lifted his head from her shoulder and kissed her. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
She debated flipping him back into equals, or letting him pick. He’d avoid dealing with this if he could. Maybe it was time she forced him to face it head-on now that there had come a natural “deal with it” point.
Cupping his face in her hands, she kissed him again, opting to let him decide. A long, slow kiss, sweet, opening the door to wherever he wanted it to lead.
She felt his cock stir against her stomach, and there was her answer. His flesh couldn’t lie to her about what he needed, even if his mind had no clue.
Before he could stop her, she dropped to her knees, her hands sliding down the backs of his legs and holding on.
His.
Always his.
His cock fully hardened in her mouth as his low, sweet groan rolled through her. Rusty grabbed her head, burying his fingers in her hair for a good grip as he slowly took charge and started fucking her mouth.
In some ways, she could soothe her barbarian’s soul. Reminding him he was able to take control when he needed to for him, that they were a team, that she was always on his side.
His.
Lightly raking her nails up and down the backs of his thighs encouraged him to go harder, deeper, until her eyes streamed and she was drooling and happy that he’d found his groove as his cock buried deep in her throat. Every thrust slapped his balls against her chin, and she reminded herself to breathe through her nose and ride it out for him.
It didn’t take long. Anger and pain and sex were irreparably hard-wired together in his brain, long before she’d met him. Salty cum filled her mouth and she swallowed, swallowed, everything, including his rage and his pain.
She didn’t move at first, holding his wilting cock in her mouth and letting him breathe and settle, but then he yanked her up off the floor, practically slamming her against the shower wall. He dropped to his knees in front of her, shoving his face between her thighs and reaching up to squeeze her breasts with his hands.
Eliza’s eyes dropped closed. She slung one thigh over his shoulders to give him more access, met with an approving growl. She braced herself with a hand on his other shoulder.
This wasn’t making love—this was raw and hungry and scratching his claws on the bark to announce his territory. Not over her, but himself.
Reminding himself of who he was.
Who they were together.
He ate her pussy like a starving man, using every trick he had to make her quickly explode with his lips wrapped around her clit and two fingers fucking her cunt. He barely gave her time to recover from that one before he did it again, and again, until she finally realized he wasn’t going to stop.
She patted him on the head. “Rus.”
Panting like he’d just run a marathon, he sat back and stared up at her.
Eliza slid down the wall, straddling his lap and wrapping her arms and legs around him.
When he wrapped his arms around her and tightly squeezed, she knew he was back. All of him.
His kisses, sweet and slow and tasting like her pussy, feathered across her lips. “Is there anything I have to do?” he softly asked.
“I’ll have Ed take care of it, sweetie.”
“Okay.” He rested his forehead against hers, eyes closed. “How?”
“Stroke. But he had Alzheimer’s.”
He nodded a little, without losing contact with her. “Okay. Why us?”
“He was being covered by Medicaid, I guess. Indigent. Somewhere in his case file, your name and information was listed. But we’ve lived here a long time, so no telling where it came from. Might even have been him, or someone looking us up through voter ID records. We have your mom’s old phone number for the landline. Our address never changed.”
“Yeah.” The heavy sigh escaped him and floated around in the steamy shower for a few minutes before being sucked down the drain with the water.
“Can I make you some soup or something?”
He finally opened his eyes. “I guess my tacos are cold, if Booger didn’t eat them. I really wanted tacos.”
She smiled over the dog’s nickname. “No, I put them up high. But I’ll run go get you more, Rus.”
He started to say no, she knew he was, and let him pause, then reconsider it. “Thanks, honey. I appreciate that. I’m not going to argue with you tonight.”
They untangled from each other and she soaped his back. Then she rinsed off and stepped out before he did, and in five minutes, she was on her way.
* * * *
Rusty stayed in the shower, leaning against the wall and letting the water beat against his flesh.
Motherfucker.
He’d honestly hoped the fucker had died years ago. He’d never looked, never researched. He didn’t want to know. The guy had already been dead to him, as far as he was concerned.
It was preferable that way.
He hadn’t seen him since he was a kid, had no contact with him. Had almost expected to see him at their mom’s funeral, but had he shown up he knew Eliza would have taken care of him.
Kailey didn’t even know she had a granduncle on his side. She only knew Corey and Marcy, and Eliza’s family.
He’d made it out of the shower and dried off by the time Eliza returned with hot food. He was naked, but hadn’t put on his collar and cuffs yet. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel like wearing them, but he knew she might want to talk more and she preferred when they had to deal with weighty stuff to do it as equals.
Rusty sat with Eliza on the couch, with Boo looking on and drooling, as Rusty ate Eliza told him about her day, brunch with her friends, that she was going over to Cali’s tomorrow, the plan to help out at the fetish convention, and the R&D party on Friday.
“Is it a need-to-know party?” he asked.
“Yeah. Not general knowledge.”
“Okay. Sounds like fun. I don’t mind helping make stuff after work, if they need the extra help.”
He knew she was watching him, the way she always did.
The way he loved.
“I’m okay, Ma’am.”
She pressed a kiss to his bare shoulder. “You sure, Rus?”
He didn’t want to be Rusty. He wanted to be her pet, her barbarian.
Hers.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She brushed his damp hair back with her fingers. He leaned into her touch, loving it, loving her. She took damn good care of him and always had.
That was just one of the many reasons he loved her.
Chapter Five
Then
“Roll for initiative,” Rusty said.
The other six kids around the dining room table, including Eliza, all rolled D20s.
At seventeen, he and Eliza, along with his friend Mike Kennedy, were the oldest, and they would be juniors in high school when it started up again in August. Then there was Corey and his friends, Darryl, Grant, and Susie. They were all younger than Rusty. Corey was thirteen, and the other kids were in the same grade as him, and about the same age.
Rusty didn’t mind the younger kids, because this was kind of his job, taking care of Corey. The other kids weren’t any trouble to look after. With their mom working her ass off, Rusty was the default babysitter.
He had to be.
The
other option…wasn’t. He wouldn’t let their mom go there, anyway, not that she’d ever know that, or know why.
He’d take care of Corey if they weren’t in school. And he had Eliza there helping him, so it wasn’t like he was by himself. Plus Mike, even though Mike was there to play, not to babysit.
It was summer vacation, just another Tuesday for them. Today, they didn’t have a LARP game or anything else going on. His mom had asked him to please make taking care of Corey his part-time job for the summer, and Rusty didn’t have any trouble doing that. Corey even helped him mow neighbors’ lawns, and they shared the money from that. Kept both of them busy and able to buy little things here and there without asking their mom for money they knew she really couldn’t spare.
Rusty missed their dad. Corey had been so young when he’d died, he barely remembered him. But Rusty would never complain to his mom about helping out.
Not and risk the alternative.
“Oh, shit,” Corey muttered.
“Language,” Rusty said. “You roll a 1?”
Corey nodded.
They were teaching the younger kids the game, and so far, they were picking it up really quickly. Dungeons and Dragons was a lot of fun to play, and Rusty enjoyed being the DM—dungeon master. That meant he was in charge of the play. He had one module, the basic box set. But using the rules, he’d written his own adventure for them since he couldn’t afford to buy pre-made modules. His world was a quasi-gothic version of Florida in an alternate timeline, with dragons and wizards and all sorts of bad nasties to fight, castles to conquer, and knights and ladies to rule the land.
So far, the younger kids were loving it.
Even more importantly, so was Eliza.
She’d let her hair grow out in the time they’d been dating. Not that he’d asked her to, but it was like she’d sensed he liked long hair and let it grow.
If anything, he was under her spell, ready and willing to follow her, at her beck and call. Some of their friends teased him that she had a pet—he wouldn’t deny it, either, and it didn’t offend him in the least.
Almost Gothic Page 4
