“What should I do in the meantime?” she asked.
“Um, I guess you should just keep working with Louis,” I said, only then remembering my friend and partner, what Jeremiah had said about Victoria being with both of us. I knew that it wasn’t my place to say anything about it, but I was curious nonetheless.
“Okay,” she said, a look of guilt crossing her expression.
I found myself leaning in to kiss her, despite everything in my head telling me not to. She kissed me back for a moment, tasting my mouth, sighing against my lips before pulling away.
She left without another word.
15
Louis
I woke up and pulled Victoria against me, wrapping my arms around her body and burrowing my face into her neck. She stirred and sighed contentedly, snuggling into my arms. I’d never felt so at peace in my life before, never felt like I could be happier. I traced her waist with my fingertips, her hips, down to her thigh before I flipped her over to look at me.
“Good morning,” I said to her.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling at me. “It’s time to go to work.”
“No, play hooky with me today,” I said. She frowned, a worried look crossing her face. It was an expression she’d given me a lot in the past few days, a look of concern that I couldn’t seem to figure out. She shook her head.
“I can’t. You know I have a lot to do.”
“I’m the boss and I say you can have a day off, Victoria,” I said, kissing her softly.
She smiled. “You promised you wouldn’t play favorites,” she said.
“I can’t help it,” I told her. “You’re most definitely my favorite.”
“You can’t show it,” she chided, but was smiling as she kissed me back. She sighed and got off me, a sad, anxious look returning to her face.
“Victoria,” I said. She looked at me, in the middle of getting dressed. “Tell me what’s wrong, angel. There’s something bothering you.”
“It’s—haven’t you talked to Xavier?”
I looked away from her guiltily. The truth was, I’d been selfishly avoiding Xavier, instead wanting to spend all my time with Victoria, trying not to think about him. This had never happened with Xavier and me before—there had never been a woman we’d both been attracted to, and I hated the idea I might lose my best friend over this. But Victoria wasn’t just any woman—I was in love with her, completely and utterly, and I had been since I’d met her. I hadn’t told her yet but I didn’t need to; I knew that she could tell by looking into my eyes, just like I could tell that her feelings were developing in much the same way. It was something I wanted to revel in, something I wanted to cherish for as long as I could before I had to have that confrontation with Xavier.
“So he hasn’t told you about Jeremiah and Zachary?”
“No,” I said, furrowing my brow. I sat up in bed. “What about them?”
“They both know about Xavier and me. They’re blackmailing both of us.”
“What?” I asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”
She nodded. “He says he wants to make Zachary junior partner. That he wants him to take the lead on the Walker case.”
“But that’s my case,” I said. “Why didn’t anybody tell me about this?”
“I thought Xavier would. You said—you told me you’d talk to him about us. I thought you had already.”
“I haven’t told him about this yet,” I said. “I haven’t found the time.”
“You have to,” she said softly. “And I told you, I’m not going to come between you two. If it’s between me and him, you need to choose him.”
“Hey,” I said, taking her arm, pulling her back onto the bed with me. “I’m not choosing anybody. I’m keeping you both, okay? Just trust me.”
She sighed, tracing my arm with her fingertips.
“Xavier thinks it was Zachary who vandalized the lobby.”
“Did you tell him about your brother?” I asked.
“I mentioned him.”
“Do you really think it’s him, Victoria?” I asked her. “I know you’re estranged, but—”
“A slut was the last thing Justin called me,” she said. “He was angry. He was so mad. He said—he said he was embarrassed that I was his sister.”
I shook my head, kissing her cheek.
“He’s wrong,” I whispered to her. “You have to believe that.”
She sighed, nuzzling my neck before she got up again.
“I really do have to go to work,” she said. “Are you staying here?”
“Can I?” I asked. I’d been staying the past few nights at her apartment and it was comfortable, more welcoming than my own massive, cold house.
“Yes,” she said, smiling at me. She kissed me one more time as she finished getting dressed, then disappeared into the bathroom for a moment before darting out of the apartment with one last kiss goodbye. I got out of bed and got dressed, making sure she was gone before I pulled out my phone. I dialed the number of an old friend, a contact at the police department. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Hey,” I said. “Ash?”
“Hey, man,” came the voice of my friend, Ash Parker. “What’s up?”
“I need you to get me an address,” I said to him.
“Uh oh,” he said. “You busting down doors again? Going after the bad guys?”
“Exactly.”
“Who are we looking for?” he asked.
“A man named Justin Eaves,” I said to him. “Should live in town, maybe a little outside. Can you find him?”
“Sure thing,” said Ash. “I got him up now. I’ll send you an email with contact info. What’s this for?”
“Just someone I need to visit for a client who doesn’t know where he lives. No big deal. Thanks, Ash.”
“You bet,” he said, before hanging up the phone. A few moments later I got an email with the address and I put it in my phone to find out that it was only a half hour away. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do when I saw Victoria’s brother, but I had a vague plan to convince him to stop what he was doing and leave her alone. If there was one thing I was good at, it was persuasion, and if I was lucky I would be able to make Justin see sense before anybody got hurt again.
I took my time driving, trying to plan what I was going to say to Justin. It was something I often did before a big court case, though in most cases I found that when I went in to argue my side, I winged it, let the words come out of my mouth in a natural way that I knew would persuade both jury and judge. I was good at my job, and I only hoped my skills as a lawyer would help me in dealing with Victoria’s brother. From what I’d heard about him, I didn’t like him, though Victoria hadn’t told me much. She mostly kept quiet about her family and what had happened with them, and she always avoided my questions.
I arrived at a small house in a suburb just outside of the city and pulled up to it, double-checking the address before I got out of the car. I went up to the front porch and knocked on the door, relaxing my body, sliding into work mode as the door opened to reveal a young man who looked just like Victoria.
“Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Justin Eaves?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said suspiciously. “Who are you?”
“My name is Louis Sylvester. Your sister Victoria is employed at my law firm.”
The man’s face went blank. “What about my sister?”
“I wondered if I could speak to you for a moment about her. May I come in?”
He grumbled, and for a moment I thought that he would tell me no. Instead, he turned around and let me inside, leading me into a living room where he gestured for me to sit on a couch covered in plastic. I sat down and it crinkled uncomfortably underneath me. All of the furniture in the room was covered with plastic, protected from dust, although Justin looked perfectly comfortable as he sat in one of the chairs.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You’ve been harassing your sister,” I said to him, deciding not to waste time. He snorted.
“I have not,” he said.
“You didn’t break into her apartment?”
“Why would I break into her apartment?”
“She says you had a disagreement last time you were together,” I said. He snorted again, and I shot him an annoyed look. I didn’t like how flippant he was being about the whole thing.
“She came to church and she thought she could be all forgiven for what she did,” he said. “And for whoring around with two men at once.”
I gritted my teeth. “She’s not—”
“You don’t have to defend her. She admitted to me that she was seeing two men at once. And after what happened with Jacob, I’m not surprised.”
“Who is Jacob?” I asked him.
“She didn’t tell you?” he asked.
I shook my head and he laughed.
“Jacob is her ex-boyfriend. Everybody knows that. She says otherwise, of course, but everybody saw them together. She was all over him. So when she said that he, like, molested her—”
“He what?” I asked angrily, my spine going rigid.
“It’s not true,” Justin said. “Nothing she says is true. Jacob is in training to be a priest himself. He would never do anything like that.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He gave me a haughty look. “Everybody knows that my sister’s a slut. Whatever he did to her, she probably asked for it. I’m assuming she got embarrassed about it afterward.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. These were words that I’d heard from men over and over, words that were almost never true.
“What exactly did she say?”
“She said she was on a walk with him and he felt her up. Nobody believed her. She had to leave the church right after that.”
My heart sank in my chest just thinking about it, how lonely Victoria must have been.
“That’s why she’s estranged from you,” I said.
“Is that what she called it? I’d call it disowned. I’ve disowned her.”
I gave him a cold look. “Do you know what a monster you sound like right now?”
He shrugged. “Why do you care?”
I didn’t say anything, but stood up.
“Don’t come after her again,” I said.
“I didn’t come after her,” he told me. “But whoever is doing it, she certainly deserves it. She’s a nasty—”
I cut him off with my fist to his jaw, knocking him down to the ground. He crumpled to the floor, groaning, and I leaned over him and punched him again, my anger out of control. He was knocked out after the second hit, his eyes closed, completely passed out on the floor.
“Shit,” I breathed, realizing what I’d done. It was something I’d never done before. Violence wasn’t my thing. But his words paired with the memory of the look on Victoria’s face was too much to take. “Oh, shit.”
I sat back down on the couch, reaching forward to feel for the man’s pulse. I’d hit him pretty hard, and I was glad to feel it was steady and that he was just knocked out. My hand was swollen, knuckles bleeding as I picked up the phone and sighed. I called Xavier, not knowing what else to do, not wanting to admit to Victoria that I’d come here.
“Hey,” came my friend’s voice.
“Hi, Xavier,” I said. “Um, I need your help.”
“What’s up?” he asked. His voice sounded stiff and irritated.
“I kind of got myself into some trouble that I need you to get me out of,” I said.
He sighed. “Where are you?”
“I’ll send you the address.”
“Are you in trouble?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said.
He sighed again. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I hung up, texted him the address, and waited on the couch for him to arrive. When Xavier got there, he walked right in, raising his eyebrow when he saw the man on the floor.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Victoria’s brother,” I said.
“What?” he stared at me blankly, then down at Justin. “Why?”
“Victoria’s apartment was vandalized the night before the lobby was. She called me to come over and look at it—”
“She called you,” he said evenly. “To come and check out her house.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Jeremiah and Zachary?” I asked him. “That was something I needed to know.”
“That’s not the point right now, Louis,” Xavier said. “The point is that you’ve got Victoria’s brother knocked out here on the ground. Why?”
“She thought he was the one doing the tagging. He says he wasn’t. I just wanted to talk to him and try to get him to stop.”
“But you somehow ended up knocking him out?”
“He was…” I paused, not knowing how much I should tell Xavier. But I’d called him over here to help me, and I’d been keeping my relationship with Victoria a secret from him. The guilt over both of those things caused me to continue speaking, though I knew that it was probably not what Victoria would want. “Victoria was attacked by someone she used to know. Her family didn’t believe her and sent her away. Victoria went to her brother the other day and told them about us—”
“About us?”
“The fact that she’s, uh, interested in both of us,” I said.
“I see,” he said.
There was an unreadable expression on his face that made me nervous.
“I told him to stay away. But he was saying the most terrible things about Victoria and I just—I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand it, Xavier.”
Xavier was staring down at Justin, that blank look still on his face.
“You spent the night with Victoria,” he said. “The other night.”
I cleared my throat, meeting his gaze, knowing I owed him that.
“I’ve been staying with her for a few nights,” I said to him. “But Xavier—”
“What exactly did you say to me when I told you what happened between Victoria and me? That it was inappropriate? That I should control myself?”
I sighed. “Xavier, I know. Trust me, I know… But I can’t help it.”
“That’s exactly what I said, and you told me to do better. You’re a fucking hypocrite, Louis.”
“Xavier, I am sorry,” I said. “I love Victoria. I really do. It’s something I can’t control.”
“Looks like you can’t control a lot of things,” Xavier said, glancing at Justin. “But this is your mess to clean up. I’m not getting involved. Not with you or Victoria.”
“We need to talk about this, Xavier,” I said. “We’re partners. I need to know more about what Jeremiah said to you.”
“That’s work business,” he said, and his voice was cold then. “I can talk to you at the office.”
“Xavier, come on,” I said, but he turned to leave me there alone with Justin, who was still lying prone on the floor.
16
Victoria
I smiled when I heard the doorbell ring, getting up naked to answer it, knowing that it was Louis. I’d wondered where he’d been all day and had been looking forward to seeing him since the moment I got home, but he hadn’t been there when I’d shown up and it was well past dinner by the time he came.
I opened the door, gasping in surprise when I saw that it wasn’t Louis, but Xavier. I stood there with my body on display, staring at him in shock, captivated by the look that flared in his eyes as he took in my nakedness.
“Xavier,” I said, finding that my voice was breathy and uneven. I tried to cover myself with my hands, placing them over my breasts, but he held my eye and took both of my wrists, pulling them away so that my breasts were bare in front of him.
“Xavier,” I repeated, but was cut off when he took my mouth in a hungry, fervent kiss, backing me into my living room. His
hands found my hips and he traced them up and down, his hands reaching around to cup my ass, a finger dipping underneath to stroke my soaking wet folds from behind. My body responded to him immediately despite my mind’s protestations—I found myself pressing against him, eagerly accepting his mouth with my own. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until he kissed me again, but it was true that every moment I wasn’t basking in Louis’s glow, I was thinking about Xavier and what was going on with Jeremiah.
“Victoria,” he said, lifting me into his arms, wrapping them around my waist as he carried me into my bedroom.
He laid me on the bed and crawled on top of me, not hesitating. I found myself eager and desperate for the raw sex he could give me, the anger he put into it, the lust that I craved. It was different with him and yet somehow equally as good as it was with Louis.
“I hate this,” he said, even as I pulled his cock out of his pants and I started to stroke it up and down in my palm, out of control. I was lost in him, completely overwhelmed by my desire. I had no time to think about what was right and what was wrong. All that mattered was having him inside of me. I didn’t even get all his clothes off before I guided his cock into my pussy and lifted my hips up to take him deep in one push. He gave a soft growl and started to grind inside of me, looking into my eyes.
“Tell me how good this feels,” he said. “I want to hear it.”
“It feels good,” I breathed as he rode against me, rocking my body upward, clenching around his cock to pull him even deeper. He felt so good, so good that I wouldn’t ever be able to get enough of him, though his cock was long and thick enough to fill me completely. It didn’t stretch me as wide as Louis’s did, but it felt just as good in its own way. I bit my lip, looking into his eyes as he fucked me, moving slowly, not giving me what I craved. I tried to make him speed up, but he didn’t.
“I want more from you. What feels good? Me fucking you?”
“Yes,” I said. “It feels so good when you fuck me, when you kiss me. I can’t—I can’t control myself.”
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