Robert rolled his eyes. “Please. Act the innocent all you want. I know what you planned to do. You had your crony, that ass fucker Brock, call me and make demands. He said he would expose me, that you were ready to go to the press unless I paid up. Well, I’m not paying. I have insurance of my own to rely on. You try to blackmail me again, and I swear to God I will have your ass in jail so fast you’ll think you’ve died and gone to Heaven, what with all those big strapping men just waiting to get a chance to rape you. Understand me?”
“Brock isn’t my crony!” Allen shouted. “He threatened you on his own! I had nothing to do with it!”
“You keep telling yourself that,” Robert said coldly. “Maybe someday, someone besides you will believe it. Just remember what I said. One word to the press, and these photos get posted to every news network on the planet, instantly. I am not bluffing.” His hard brown eyes swept back and forth between Tatum and Allen, contempt and hatred clouding his visage. “Go crawl back in your hole, Allen. Don’t ever bother coming out again.”
“And who are you to speak to us that way?” Sidri said, striding up to them like a warrior queen defending her territory. She stopped next to Allen, swooped down to pick up the envelope, and stood directly in front of him so he was protected on both sides. Her green eyes were alive with repugnance as she looked Robert Whitman from head to toe. “Who the fuck do you think you are, to come threatening one of my employees?”
“Ms. McKenna,” Robert said in an oily, false tone of voice. “I apologize for the inconvenience. It seems this man has deceived you for some time. Were you aware he used to be a gay whore when you hired him? I thought you should know—no company should have to put up with sodomites as well as prostitutes working for them. If you don’t believe me, ask him yourself. He and his sicko boyfriend here were just making out, right in front of me. I would call security if I were you. No one wants to see that kind of thing around a respectable business like yours. I’m certain your other partners will agree that getting rid of these two gay freaks is in all your best interests.”
Sidri laughed, the sound so cold and threatening, all the hair on Tatum’s body stood on end. “That’s rich, coming from you, Robert Whitman. Someone who holds the Bible up as the penultimate proof of God’s will shouldn’t thwart it so terribly himself.” She paused, raised a delicate eyebrow as Robert’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Or am I to understand that you don’t believe adultery to be a sin?”
Robert blinked in shock. Then he rounded on Allen, obviously too terrified of Sidri to confront her directly. “You sick freak, what did you tell them? How many lies have you spread about me?”
“The only liar here is you, Dad.” Allen sneered the last word, making it the worst sort of curse word ever used. “You used my mother like a tissue to collect your cum while you were in Columbia, then abandoned her knowing her parents would never let her come home. When she followed you here, you tricked her into giving me up so you could adopt your own son and pretend he wasn’t yours, then had her deported just so she couldn’t go telling anyone who fathered her child! Your whole life is a lie, you bastard!”
“You’re the bastard!” Robert roared, his lips drawn thin like a feral animal. “You never should have existed, you sick monster! I knew God was punishing me for giving you life when we realized you were gay. I knew you would be an embarrassment to me and my whole organization from the moment you were born! How dare you try and act righteous when you know you stand in defiance of the Lord’s will!”
“No, I do not,” Allen said coldly. He met his father’s astonished gaze squarely. “If God didn’t mean for men to enjoy having sex with other men, He never would have given us the capacity to enjoy it in the first place. Unless you’re choosing to deny that God created men, you have no choice but to admit that is the simple truth. You can’t claim that God created everything, that Divine Will exists, if you also claim there are things that happen outside the Divine Will. To do so is to contradict yourself and the Bible on every level possible.”
Robert shook his head violently. “I don’t have to listen to your self-justifications. God speaks to me, and I know what He says is right and wrong. You are an abomination. From the moment of your birth, you were an abomination.”
Allen laughed bitterly. “Then you must have sinned horribly, Dad, to have gotten a son like me as your punishment. What did you do, huh? Did you fuck other women besides my mother? Did you rape little girls while you were preaching in those horribly poor villages? I bet you enjoyed it, too. Every moment.”
“Blasphemy!” Robert roared, crossing himself. “I will not stand to listen to you speak to a man of God this way. I washed my hands of you thirteen years ago. I should have let it lie there. But I never expected you to sink so low as to threaten me with blackmail. Just remember what I said about the photos. Cross me again, and you really will wish you’d never been born.”
And he turned and hobbled away, as fast as his cane could take him.
The moment he was out of sight, Allen sagged to his knees between Tatum and Sidri. Tatum cursed, kneeling beside his lover and wrapping his shoulders with both hands. Allen shook endlessly, gasping for breath, as he reeled with reaction to that confrontation with his father. Sidri squatted in front of them, unable to kneel in her tailored wool skirt, and met Tatum’s eyes with a concerned frown.
“Allen, baby? Talk to us. Are you all right?” Sidri asked gently.
Allen shook his head violently but otherwise made no response. Tatum exchanged pained looks with Sidri as he tried to draw Allen against his chest, tried to offer comfort. But Allen refused to accept it, scrambling out of his arms and crab-walking backward until he fetched up against a concrete barrier near the elevators. Sidri and Tatum followed him, slowly, both of them dying inside as they watched him suffer. Tatum lowered himself to his knees, far enough away so he wasn’t crowding the smaller man, but still close enough to touch if Allen decided he needed him. Sidri did the same on his opposite side, sitting cross-legged despite her expensive suit skirt riding up her hips. Clothes were the least of their problems right now, after all.
Allen had his head resting against the concrete, his eyes blank and staring at nothing. His knees were bent, both wrists balanced on his kneecaps, fingers lax and listless. Tatum wanted to gather him up, hold him tight, tell him how much he loved him. But he didn’t. He waited, as did Sidri, for the man they loved to find his voice.
When he did, it was a shattered, broken whisper. “This is my fault.”
“What is, baby?” Sidri said gently, quelling Tatum’s angry denial with a look.
Allen closed his eyes. “Everything. Brock. My father. The photos. The blackmail. It’s all my fault.”
“No, it most certainly is not,” Tatum growled, ignoring Sidri’s warning look. “You didn’t make Brock contact your father. You didn’t make your father take those photos. You didn’t do anything to make any of this happen. You aren’t responsible for the actions of other people, baby. You can’t blame yourself for their psychoses.”
Allen just shook his head, eyes still closed. With a sigh, Sidri snapped the tape on the envelope and pulled out a stack of eight-by-ten photographs. She thumbed through them, her frown growing more and more ironic. Tatum waited until she met his gaze, raised an eyebrow in inquiry. She rolled her eyes and passed them to him.
“No wonder he didn’t think I was involved with you two,” she said. “We were always careful to play in the bedroom, behind closed doors. Except for last night, in the dining room. Seems they didn’t stick around long enough to see me get on the table.”
Tatum looked at the photos and cringed inwardly. It was last night, all right. Someone had apparently snuck into their backyard, taken photos through the open French doors. The biggest and most graphic photo showed Allen laid out on the table, his head and shoulders centered in the frame. His face was contorted with ecstasy, his muscles rigid and sweaty. Tatum stood behind him, both hands wrapped around his hips, his face
intent as he fucked his lover. From the angle of the shot, the photographer must have been in a tree or something, because he could only see a tiny patch of color under the table, indicating where Sidri sat. If one didn’t know she was there, it would appear as if Allen were being fucked by a man alone, and clearly loving every minute of it.
He cursed heavily, stuffed the photos back in the envelope—but stopped when Allen suddenly held out a hand for them. Sighing inwardly, Tatum handed it over. There was nothing wrong or sinister about the photos themselves, only the fact that they existed at all made them a violation of their privacy. But for someone like Allen, just coming to accept his own sexuality, they were damning evidence of an unnatural sexual orientation.
Tatum shot Sidri a pleading look while Allen thumbed through the photos, staring at each one for a long, long time. She met his eyes, shook her head slightly. Tatum closed his eyes for a moment, heart breaking.
Sidri could read people better than he could. Always had been able to. She was telling him Allen wouldn’t be able to get past this.
He was going to leave them.
Tatum choked back a sob, determined to show a brave face. They would get through this. Even if Allen left for a little while, he would come back. He loved them. And he knew they loved him. Love that strong was a one-in-a-million miracle. He had to come back.
Allen heaved a sigh, letting the photos drop from his fingers and slide to the ground in a messy heap. He let his head fall back, hitting the wall so hard Tatum winced in sympathy. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“You keep saying that, baby,” Sidri said quietly. “But that isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is. My father doesn’t bluff. He also doesn’t like leaving loose ends. He’ll release these photos whether he thinks I’m going to blackmail him or not. Just to get ahead of it. Before you know it, MM&M will be in the middle of a sex scandal. Your reputation will be ruined.”
“I fail to see where there’s a scandal here,” Sidri refuted mildly. Her voice was light and arrogant enough to irritate, causing Allen’s eyes to pop open in shock.
“Are you serious right now? Did we not just look at the same photos?”
Sidri reached out a hand, scraped the photos into a neat pile. She shrugged, her face expressionless. “What I see is nothing more than a violation of our privacy. But a sex scandal? I don’t think so.”
Allen stared at her, mouth hanging open. Sidri huffed impatiently. “First of all, there is no law against gay sex, not even in Texas. Second, we’re all adults over the age of eighteen, well above the age of consent. Third, none of us are married, or otherwise engaged in another relationship, so there’s no adultery or cheating. And finally, we were having sex in the privacy of our own home, where, I am told, it is perfectly legal to do so. Where, exactly, is the scandal in that?”
Allen shook his head furiously. “You don’t understand. The press won’t see it that way. It won’t matter to them that there wasn’t anything wrong going on—the fact that it went on at all is reason enough to run the story. It’s sensational, newsworthy, because you and Tatum are bigwigs at a multi-million-dollar company. A sex scandal like this could tear the whole company apart.”
“If one of us was married, or underage, or being forced, sure,” Sidri said reasonably. “But we did nothing wrong, nothing illegal. They can try and sensationalize it all they want—but in an hour or a day, something else will happen, and people will forget all about it. There’s just not enough juice to keep this story alive, and your father knows it. That’s why he didn’t release the photos in the first place. He knows he has nothing to go on. He just wanted to scare you into doing what he wanted. It’s an empty threat, baby. Nothing more.”
“What about your parents?” Allen asked incredulously. “What about the board of directors? What are they going to say when they see this?”
“‘Damn, I wish I could have been there?’” Tatum said cheekily. Allen shot him a glare, earning a grin. “Oh, come on, Allen. Our parents are well aware of our sexual escapades. And since Sidri owns fifty-one percent of the company, the board of directors can’t do jack shit against her. Or me, for that matter. Not that they would in the first place, since clearly, there is no illegal activity taking place. If anything, this is a statement promoting gay rights. They’ll be all for it.”
“But have you gone on record saying you’re bi or gay?” Allen replied hotly. “If not, they’ll try and say you were covering it up, trying to hide, and this proves it.”
Tatum snorted. “Of course not. The question has never been asked. If it had, I would have answered with the truth—that it’s none of their business who I sleep with, unless they were offering, in which case I would have to refuse, since I’m already taken.”
Allen groaned. “Charm won’t get you out of this, Tatum,” he said urgently. “This could destroy you.”
Tatum met the younger man’s eyes squarely. “No, baby, it can’t. Stop looking at this from the point of view that everything is about to fall apart. Start looking at the actual facts. Just because something sounds sensational and exciting at first doesn’t mean the public will give two shits about it later. So what if the pictures get out? Who’s going to care?”
“I’ll care!” Allen shouted, a freshet of tears brimming. Tatum winced inwardly, having expected the outburst yet still unprepared for the veracity in Allen’s tone. The poor man was aching, still reeling from Brock’s attack and the confrontation with his father. He couldn’t see anything right now except his failures—not Tatum’s love, not Sidri’s, not the respect and loyalty of the people who worked with him. Nothing they could say at this point would convince him, either.
Sidri sighed and stood, brushing the seat of her skirt with her hand. Tatum copied her, offering Allen a hand up as well. He stared at it for a long, tense moment—then allowed himself to be brought to his feet. But he wouldn’t look at either of them, wouldn’t take his eyes off his shoes, and he pulled away immediately. Sidri shot Tatum another look, this one filled with so much pain he knew she was hurting just as much as he was. But this, like his punishment the other night, was what needed to be done in order to help Allen accept himself, accept his relationship with them. If they didn’t let him go now, he would run away one night and never look back, just as he had when he was a child.
Allen had to believe, body and soul, that they would be there for him, no matter what. And the only way they could convince him would be to let him go—and still be there when he returned.
Tatum heaved a sigh. “Look, I know this has been exhausting. Let me drive you home.”
Allen shook his head, face still hidden. “I drove here. I can make it on my own.”
“Look at me,” Sidri said quietly. Allen cringed a little then met her gaze with blank, dead eyes. “You are in no shape to drive right now, baby. Let Tatum drive you. I will follow in the Viper so you’ll have it at the house. Please, let us take care of you this much, all right? We’d never forgive ourselves if you got into an accident just because we allowed you drive home in this state of mind. Please.”
Allen swallowed convulsively, finally nodding. He fished his keys out of his pocket and dropped them in Sidri’s outstretched hand. She took two steps closer to him, cupped his cheek. Tatum could see the effort Allen made not to pull away from that gentle touch. That he wanted to pull away in the first place tore something deep in Tatum’s chest—but that he hadn’t done it gave him at least a little hope.
“I love you, Allen,” Sidri said simply. “I have since the day I met you. I know you are in pain right now. I know you are frightened and reeling and feeling like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once. Just please know I will love you until the day I die. I will always be here for you, no matter what. Come hell or high water. Understand?”
Allen closed his eyes again, sending a fresh wave of tears down his cheeks. He opened them, his brown eyes wet and sorrowful as a puppy’s, and nodded. Sidri smiled softly, leaned forward and
pressed a chaste kiss against his lips. She shot Tatum one last look before she walked away, heading for Allen’s Viper.
Tatum sucked in a breath. Do or die time. He couldn’t push the younger man, couldn’t do all the things he yearned to do so desperately—like hug him and kiss him and fuck him senseless. Right now, Allen needed the friend, the confidant, more than he needed the lover. And Tatum was determined to be exactly what he needed.
“Come on. Let’s get you home.”
Chapter 24
Allen was numb.
He wasn’t sure exactly when it happened. One minute, his heart was hemorrhaging in his chest—the next, it felt as if his mind and body had been wrapped in thick cotton bandages. He could still hear, still see—he just couldn’t feel anything anymore. Which was good. Very good. The bandages were the only thing keeping him together right now.
Without the cocoon of numbness, he’d fall completely apart.
And he was seeing things so much more clearly now. Without his emotions hammering away at his logic, he could finally see the truth. He’d spent the last two weeks in a fantasy world, where three people could be in a relationship and be happy with no consequences. Had somehow convinced himself that it wouldn’t matter even if other people did find out about his relationship with Sidri and Tatum—he loved them, and that was that. He’d actually let himself believe, just for a little while, that he could be happy with his life.
He’d convinced himself that God didn’t hate him.
Now, of course, the numbness exposed the truth. No matter what good things happened in Allen’s life, God would always be there, ready to destroy it for him. Allen was a freak, an abomination, an affront to Him. No matter how many times he managed to pick himself up, God would be there to send him crashing down again.
Demons Within [For Love of Authority] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 26
