Alluring Passion: A MM Contemporary Bundle

by Peter Styles

  “I have a private instructor that I see three times a week. It gives me an escape. All movement and no thought, like sex.”

  Jeremiah moaned in pretend despair as Chris dragged him onto the dance floor. “I’m a chronic over-thinker.”

  “So don’t think,” Chris teased. They held their hands between them, looking into each other’s eyes. “Just act. Move with me. A slow dance, just like prom.”

  Jeremiah stepped in close so that their bodies pressed together, arms around one another. “I didn’t go to prom,” he said.

  “Really?” Chris started to slowly sway with him. He felt as limber and ready as always, but the man in his arms was like a plank. “What did you do prom night?”

  “Same thing I did for homecoming. I stayed home and read.”

  Chris pressed a kiss to his cheek, the sway turning into a slow turn. “Why am I not surprised?”

  Turn completed, they swayed together again. Jeremiah didn’t relax so much as he seemed to channel the band, putting his body in motion with the sound. Every bit of it was ungraceful and Chris loved it. Jeremiah’s delicate, musky scent surrounded him. The soft feel of him was everywhere. They were as close as two men could ever be outside of the bedroom, and they had already been there.

  Another couple passed them by, laughing and smiling. The lights made Chris feel like he was drunk. Everything swam before his eyes, and he was startled to realize he was constantly blinking back tears.

  I think I could love this man.

  Just as he finished the thought, they collided with someone else. “Sorry,” Chris grunted.

  The other man just laughed and waved them off. “You’re fine, you’re fine. Keep dancing. You’re beautiful.”

  Jeremiah is beautiful.

  He couldn’t stop himself. He leaned in and pressed his lips to Jeremiah’s. They were still moving as they kissed, still dancing as their lips moved between them. Their tongues danced. Everything danced. The world was movement and light and pleasure.

  For but only a moment, everything was perfect. Only perfection wasn’t meant to last.

  A voice broke through the crowd, separated from the din because of how quiet it was. “Jeremiah Bird?”

  Chris blinked and looked up. Someone was here who knew Jeremiah? Curiosity tingled in his chest, deepening immediately into a dark dread as every last bit of Jeremiah’s relaxation went away. The thin man’s body went tight and anxious, and he pulled away from Chris as he reached out for him.

  Something’s wrong.

  Chris turned to look, to see who had interrupted them, but he didn’t see anyone distinctly. It was the same dancing crowd; the same blur of faces.

  Then, someone stepped forward. A tall, handsome man with coffee-colored skin and shock imprinted on his face. “Jeremiah Bird?” he repeated.

  Jeremiah cringed slightly away from the strange man, one hand rising as if to hide behind it. “Tyler Simmons. Go away. You need to go away.”

  Chris saw red, an abrupt film that descended down over his eyes and took hold of his senses. He shoved his way between the two. A small hand grabbed at his shoulder from behind.

  “Chris, no.”

  “Chris?” The man named Tyler raised an eyebrow, the shocked look on his face turning to one of malice. “I can’t believe it. Chris Finley and Jeremiah in his arms. Did you fly to him when Markus wasn’t looking, you stupid bird?”

  “I broke up with Markus,” Jeremiah said, his lips pressed together tightly.

  Pain lanced up through Chris’s stomach at the words. Jeremiah belonged to Markus Worth at one point? To his rival? Why hadn’t he heard of that before now? Maybe Jeremiah didn’t even know that Chris had a rival.

  “Oh, really? You did?” Tyler leaned around past Chris’s shoulder to stare. “Because, last I knew, Markus never lets anyone do anything to him. He couldn’t let me just quit. He had to fire me and force me out.”

  Another piece of the puzzle. This was a former employee, seeking revenge. Yet, Chris couldn’t be quite sure of that. Tyler wasn’t acting like a man out to destroy his former boss. In fact, he spoke almost reverently of the other. Something more was happening here.

  “Move out of the way, Chris.”

  Chris turned, stunned at the way he was being spoken to by the delicate man he cherished so much. Jeremiah looked furious, practically boiling alive with rage. He moved past Chris, their sides brushing, and now it was Jeremiah who stood in the middle of the confrontation.

  “Markus fired you because you were a terrible worker and you creeped him out. He told me once he thought he would need to get a restraining order. You were so inappropriate to him.”

  “Really?” Tyler jabbed with a finger to make his point. “Is that what he told you? Or was he just trying to hide the fact that we had something you didn’t know about?”

  This was getting far too heated, and they were attracting attention. They weren’t fighting or yelling—yet—but they were definitely attracting the attention of other partygoers. A cleared circle appeared around them, with a few bodyguards watching from the edge of the crowd. They couldn’t do anything until things got physical.

  Jeremiah looked taken aback for all of three seconds before regaining his ground and shaking his head. “Yeah, no. You were a creep and sexually harassing my boyfriend, and your boss.”

  “He wouldn’t have thought it was creepy if you weren’t in the way! For some fucking reason, he likes your skinny ass.”

  “Well, maybe you should have a second try,” Jeremiah snapped. “I said I broke up with him.”

  “You really did?” Tyler looked stunned. Everyone in the area who knew of Markus Worth also looked stunned.

  “I… I did! Yes, I did! I think you need to leave us alone now.”

  Chris could take the suspense no longer. He threw out one arm and caught Jeremiah, dragging him away from the dance floor and the accusing and curious stares of the other partygoers. Once they were far enough away to be forgotten, the only looks given to them were from the people they bumped into on the way out.

  Jeremiah dragged his feet the whole way, head down. His heartbeat was audible even through the empty space between them. The presence of that space pained Chris immensely. It shouldn’t have been there at all, but he had to know the truth.

  Once they were all the way out in the parking lot, Chris pulled Jeremiah over to a random truck and leaned against it, staring at the man he thought he might love. “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me about Markus? That you dated someone else in this business?”

  Jeremiah stared at him, raking his fingers through his hair very slowly. “Do you really think it’s that important? I’m minoring in business, that doesn’t mean I know every intimate detail of actual business and the people involved! You weren’t anything to me all that long ago.”

  Another jab of pain struck Chris directly in the stomach, nearly bowling him over. Nothing… how could he be nothing?

  Wait.

  “Jeremiah,” Chris said. His voice was slow, cautious. He didn’t want to know the answer to this coming question. “Why were you at that business party when we met?”

  “I told you that I got roped into it, Chris.”

  “By who?”

  No response.

  Chris tilted his head back to look up at the sky full of airplanes and clouds of smog, and then he closed his eyes. “How long have you been broken up with Markus?”

  “That’s not important. What’s important is I… I did.”

  And there it was again. The uncertain stammering. That had happened twice now, for the same question. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Finally, all the pieces of the puzzle were right where they should have been and Chris hated the picture they made. There were too many feelings inside him to figure out, to know how he actually felt.

  “Did you?” he whispered.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Opening his eyes again, Chris saw Jeremiah standing th
ere, looking defeated. He looked half his usual size, slumped over and diminished. Chris straightened up from the vehicle he leaned against. His heart pounded in his chest, but he forced his voice around that obstruction.

  “Did you ever break up with Markus?”

  There was no answer, and that was an answer in and of itself.

  “Let me tell you what I think,” Chris said. His eyes ached from tiredness and it was all he could do to keep standing. Fatigue washed over him, all energy and light swept away by this realization. “I think you never broke up with Markus Worth. I think he sent you to that business party to get an eye on the competition, and I fell for it. I fell for the bait. You manipulated me for him. And you would have kept doing it too, wouldn’t you? If not for that lovesick jerk back in there, you would have just kept doing it.”

  There were tears on Jeremiah’s face, streaking down his cheeks. The moisture looked alive in the dark of night. “You have it all wrong, Chris.”

  “Tell me what I got wrong, dammit!”

  “I wasn’t going to keep doing it!” Jeremiah shouted. He spread his arms, eyes beseeching and full of shame. “For the past several days, I’ve been trying to break up with him but he won’t listen to me long enough for me to actually say it.”

  “Why would you bother doing that?” His face felt like ice; his words were frozen. Chris was an igloo, but burning so hotly on the inside.

  “So I could be with you.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore, Jeremiah.”

  The relieved look that crossed the other’s face was almost enough to kill him. “I don’t?”

  “No.” Chris turned his back on his lover. “You don’t. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore, so Markus can have you all to himself.”

  “Chris, no! Please stay and listen to me, I can explain!”

  Chris started walking away, toward his car. Every step taken felt like a sprinted mile. “You hurt me. You betrayed me and lied to me, and to think that I thought you were special. I thought you were different from all the other cheaters and liars of the world, but you’re nothing at all.”

  “Chris, please.” Jeremiah sounded broken, and low. Physically low, as if he was crouching on the concrete. “You’re the only one who ever listened to me.”

  And I never should have in the first place.

  Each step tore his heart out but Chris kept walking. He left Jeremiah behind and walked the rest of the way to his car. Numb, he drove all the way to his office building and sat in the car in his spot. The parking lot was completely empty. There was no one else around, and not even a car driving past on the street. He had never felt so alone, in the aftermath of losing the one who he treasured most.

  Chris turned the car off, leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, and wept. He wept like a grown man who has endured terrible things and doesn’t know how to process it, with shuddering gulps of breath and a clenched face. The muscles in his throat were tensed, utterly constricted to strangle any sound he might have made in his mourning. His eyes burned and streamed hot salt, which dripped steadily from his chin and formed a river on the steering wheel. His chest ached, yet through it all his heartbeat was steady. His heart had broken. That was the only speed possible now. No more nervous pattering or racing for joy. Only monotony.

  When he was done, he dried his face as best as he could with his hands and a used McDonald’s napkin. A long sigh left his dry lips as he climbed out of the car and headed into the building.

  The night guards greeted him casually, pretending not to notice his swollen red eyes.

  Susan wasn’t about to pretend anything, however. Chris wasn’t exactly surprised to find her in the office at this hour, though this time she actually seemed to be working when he stumbled across her.

  “Tough break?” she asked, blandly.

  “Yeah,” he croaked. “You?”

  “Same. There’s fresh coffee in the break room, and I was having a pizza delivered. You’re welcome to some of my hot pepperoni, since you couldn’t get any of your own.”

  The crude joke, coming at a time like this, somehow got through to him. A smile cracked across his face like a fault line. “No, the pepperoni wasn’t the problem. It was the guy attached to it.”

  “It usually is,” Susan muttered. Judging from the look on her face, she’d been deep in the coffee pot herself.

  Well, at least he wouldn’t be alone. Chris went to go get some coffee of his own.

  Chapter 15

  “I can’t believe you.”

  I’ve been hearing those words a lot lately.

  Jeremiah hugged the toilet, leaning against it to take some of the pressure off his knees. He wandered around last night before coming home and falling into bed. Sleep crashed down like a torrent of rain, surrounding him without any sort of gradual drowsiness at all. And when he woke up again in what seemed to be the morning—the light behind the curtains hinted at some hour of day—he was hit with a roiling wave of nausea that sent him stumbling toward the bathroom. The lack of a headache told him this wasn’t a hangover. It was anxiety and despair, a horrible brew of emotions all wreaking havoc on his insides.

  After throwing up a few times, he had enough time to realize that Markus hadn’t been in bed with him. Jeremiah lay his cheek down against the toilet seat to rest, not entirely sure that he was done. Faint words came to him, but not faint for very long. They grew louder and louder as a one-sided conversation continued, until he could just almost make out the words from within the bathroom. Then, the conversation abruptly ended right outside the bathroom door and Markus threw himself inside.

  “Jeremiah!” he had roared. His anger immediately fogged up the mirror. “You little… You… I can’t believe you.”

  “Ugh,” Jeremiah groaned in response, tasting bile at the back of his nervous throat. “What?”

  “You know what exactly! Running into Tyler last night… saying too much… did you even check to make sure you weren’t followed when you ran outside with that bastard Chris?” Markus slammed his hand against the wall, leaving a sizable dent. Bits of plaster clung to his dark flesh. “Apparently not, or else none of this would have happened?”

  Fighting back another heave, Jeremiah whispered, “What happened?”

  “My phone! I have dozens of emails and calls and texts. They were there when I woke up and there are even more of them now. It’s the press, wanting to know how I feel about my boyfriend cheating on me with my rival. It’s our friends, wanting a piece of you, wanting all the details. It’s my employees, it’s my parents… Everyone fucking knows! All you had to do was spy on Chris Finley! How the hell did you make such a mess of it?”

  Suddenly, Jeremiah couldn’t stand this any longer. Vomiting be damned. In fact, Markus deserved it if Jeremiah was going to vomit on him.

  The two men faced each other, one dark and angry and the other paler than usual. Jeremiah stuck one finger into his boyfriend’s chest and glared up at him. The gesture was futile, like poking a tree trunk and expecting it to be swayed. “Listen here, dammit.”

  “I don’t have to listen to—”

  “Shut up!” Jeremiah screamed.

  Markus not only shut up but he stopped dead in his tracks. He was finally swayed, finally knocked off-balance. His mouth and throat worked but wouldn’t produce a sound.

  Jeremiah took advantage of that while it lasted. His hands clenched into fists. “You asked me to do this and I wanted to do it for you because I loved you. I did spy on Chris for you. I got to know him as a man. Everything I told you was true, dammit. He isn’t doing anything shady. He’s a better businessman than you are! You treat your clients like they’re business. He treats them like they’re family!”

  “They are business!” Markus snarled, but he looked almost perplexed. “That’s my job.”

  “But how many clients don’t return to you because of how coldly they’re treated?” Jeremiah fired that one off without knowing whether or not there was
anything to back it up. Judging by the way Markus flinched, he’d hit a sore spot. “There are tons of people like you but only one of him. But you just didn’t listen to me when I tried to tell you that.”

  Suddenly, Markus laughed. He clutched his stomach and guffawed like some child’s nightmare version of Santa Claus. “You think you love him, don’t you? Well, if you love him so much, why don’t you just go run away to him?”

  “I tried! I tried to break up with you for days but you never gave me a chance to talk!”

  Jeremiah immediately regretted ever speaking. He regretted everything that led up to this, all the way back to their very first meeting on that crowded bus when they were forced to sit together. He regretted it all because of the clear snapping of Markus’s self-control, that huge body surging toward his and slamming him against the wall. Sour water filled his mouth as Markus held him by the wrists, glaring into his face with their eyes only inches apart.

  “No one breaks up with me,” Markus hissed.

  Jeremiah heaved and threw up on him. Not much, but enough to make the gigantic oak of a man squeal and jerk back from him. As Markus looked helplessly down at the front of his shirt, Jeremiah shoved past him. “We’re done,” he tossed over his shoulder.

  Every part of him chose that moment to remember the fraction of the horror story that he’d started to watch with Chris. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His vision narrowed down to pinpoints, and his spine gave that dreadful tingling. At any moment, Markus was going to come rampaging out of that bathroom to kill him. It would happen at the most cinematic moment, right as Jeremiah stepped through the door to freedom; two enormous hands would yank him back inside, and the door would close on him forever.

  That didn’t happen.

  Jeremiah was out the door before he even knew it, passing down the hall and riding the elevator down to the parking lot. He instinctively headed toward the car he always took, and then abruptly swerved away from it; the way things were going, he wouldn’t put it past Markus to become vengeful and report him for a vehicle theft.

  Actually…