by Lilly Black
“He’s always been the one to make her crazy, but putting her in her place like he does for you? I hope he marries you.” I smile politely, not knowing what to say. If the Cain Ballantyne I know at this moment is the man he truly is and always will be, I hope he marries me, too. It’s a happy thought, driven away too soon as I realize that Caleb has disappeared. Shit! I quietly slip away and find him with Nicole on the balcony in the master bedroom.
“We were just…” Caleb starts.
“He was just showing me the view,” Nicole says. “Cain was asleep in here when you gave me the tour.”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask, and in a sweet, cliché, and inappropriate moment, Caleb answers my question with a yes while looking only at Nicole, who giggles like a doe-eyed, Disney heroine. I roll my eyes. That bit is only cute when Cain uses it.
“Caleb, I was hoping you might come back in and be a buffer between your mother and Cain.”
“Sure thing, Evan,” he says. “By the way, last night when he was called onstage, I saw you under the spotlight and headed straight for you, but when I got there, you were already gone. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know anything about the award. None of us did.”
Caleb walks down the hall, Nicole goes to the guest room, and I linger for a long time in the shadows in the hallway, not wanting to face Catherine. With all of her sons now her captive audience, as she continues to bitch about the fact that the Ballantynes have become a blip on the detectives’ radar, Jack approaches me in the hall.
“So what do you make of all this?” he asks.
“I think it’s just procedure. I did speak to Elizabeth, but I wasn’t the last person to see her. I doubt it’s anything more than hoping we picked up on a clue.”
“I wish it were that simple, dear,” Jack says.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what you said to Elizabeth, but Sunny Meriwether and two other women stated that she overheard you threatening her.”
“Threatening her? How?” I ask, and Jack sighs.
“The detectives didn’t give us a direct quote, but the story is that you said something to Liz about staying away from your man or else,” he says apologetically, and I wince. I would never use the term “my man.” It sounds like a bad country song, not to mention that I would never have claimed Cain like that in front of those women lest one day I find myself embarrassed to have said it even if no one but me remembers or cares.
“If you knew me better, Jack, you’d know just how out of character that would be for me. What I said may have been hurtful, but it wasn’t a threat at all.”
“Perhaps if you told me,” Jack suggests.
“It’s too embarrassing.”
“Better to be embarrassed than the center of the investigation of a murder you didn’t commit.”
“The center?”
“I think they are taking a pretty serious look at Cain on this. Detective Calderón called his alibi weak.”
“I should never have said anything to Elizabeth, but when all of the exes corned me, I just…”
“What do you mean the exes cornered you?” Jack asks, and as I tell him about what the X-bitches did last night, he becomes very interested. Like Caleb, he had started to walk toward me when Cain was called to the stage, but Catherine had protested, urging him to watch his son’s speech. Although I could dismiss her behavior on the same grounds, when Jack tells me that she received a text just before the spotlight hit Cain, it feels like a slap in the face.
“When Cain took the stage, how long before the girls approached you?” he asks, his voice stern.
“Almost immediately,” I say.
“Then it was planned,” he says, exasperated. He pauses for a second and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Evan, I am very sorry you are being subjected to this. I’ve enabled my wife for too long.”
“Catherine!” Jack shouts, striding into the great room as I watch from the hall. “Give me your cell phone!”
“You have your own,” she mutters dismissively.
“I need yours.”
“Use Cain’s. I left mine in the car.”
“I know you have it on you, Catherine. Give me your goddamned phone! Now!”
“What’s the problem, Mother?” Cain asks suspiciously. “Give him the phone.”
“I don’t know what you are all getting so excited about,” Catherine says as she takes her phone out and begins pressing the touch screen before handing it over. Cain snatches it from her and gives it to his dad.
“Why were you one touch away from deleting a message from Sunny Meriwether, Catherine?” Jack demands.
“I must have pressed it by accident,” she insists.
“What does it say?” Cain asks, his lips in a thin line.
“10:11 pm, ‘Show time,’” Jack reads.
“What does that mean, Mother?” Cain growls.
“It was supposed to be a surprise, but Sunny told me about the award so I didn’t miss seeing my son on stage.”
“Bullshit, Catherine!” Jack snaps. He’s pissed. “Why would Sunny have copied Elizabeth Chadwick and Victoria Trappano on the message If that were the case?”
“How did Sunny know Evan would be there?” Cain asks, his eyes furiously set on his mother.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she scoffs indignantly, but all four men now see through her.
“Did you have something to do with those plastic whores coming after Evan?” Cain demands, but he doesn’t wait for her to admit it because her true answer is written on her face.
“Out!” he rages, pointing toward the door. “Leave your key on the counter, and get the fuck out of my house.” He hisses as I duck out of sight, hoping Catherine won’t notice me as she struts toward the door in a huff, slamming her keycard down on the breakfast bar as she goes. Jack follows, shaking his head.
“I’ll let you know what she has to say for herself on the ride home,” I hear Cary whisper to Cain, and when the door closes behind them, Cain turns to look for me.
“There you are,” he says, his arms open as he hurries toward me where I stand in the dark hallway. “Evan, I am…”
“Don’t.”
“But…”
“You don’t have to keep apologizing for her. We both know she’s never going to accept me, but I can deal with it,” I say, “as long as you defend me.”
“I will always defend you…and protect you…and take care of you…” Cain says, looking into my eyes. He kisses me and folds his arms around me. It’s been a very trying day and I’m looking forward to falling asleep in these arms, but the peace is interrupted once more.
Caleb is at the door, claiming to have left his cell phone in the bedroom. While he looks for it, Cain and I sit down in the living room, and I tell him that three of the six living witnesses in that ladies’ room last night have already lied to the police. One is dead, one is missing, and the other will probably follow her leader. It will be my word against theirs, but Cain isn’t worried. He has full faith that Trent will be able to persuade the X-bitches to tell the truth.
Fortunately, we are soon distracted as we realize that Caleb has been looking for his phone for over ten minutes. Cain and I go looking for him, and stealthily opening the guest room door, we catch him kissing Nicole. They both jump.
“Aren’t they waiting for you downstairs?” Cain asks, amused.
“I told them you’d take me home later or loan me a car. I’d prefer the loaner because I’d like to take Nicole out.”
“Well, I’m sure as hell not driving you to La Jolla tonight,” Cain says. He gives Nicole his mother’s passkey so she can get back in the building and into the lockbox with the car keys. I suggest that they take the Bugatti Veyron, and as usual, Nicole knows exactly what that is.
“Oh my God, Evan!” she says, then she whispers loudly. “That’s like a million dollar car!”
“It’s about a million-five,” Caleb says, also whispering loudly to show Nicole tha
t she did a terrible job keeping her comments for my ears only. She always does.
“Cain?” I ask, shocked.
“It may have been something like that,” he says, which tells me it’s worth at least that much. I roll my eyes on principle.
“Take whichever car you want,” he offers. “I’ve already added drivers under twenty-five to the insurance policy if you want to drive, Nicole.”
“I’d be afraid I’d wreck it,” Nicole says. “But I’d love to ride in it.”
“You got it,” Caleb says as he leads her out the door. “Thanks, bra.” It’s almost comical to see this side of Caleb after watching him last night with his wife. His wife. Why did I think of his wife?
“Don’t worry,” Cain whispers as he puts his arms around me from behind. “Nicole’s a big girl, and Caleb’s a good guy.” I tilt my head back and look up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Okay, he’s married, but that’s not what I meant. I meant that he isn’t the family playboy. That’s Cary.”
“If Cary is the family playboy, that must make you the family whore.’”
“Not anymore,” he corrects me with a laugh.
“Because I’ve changed you overnight,” I say, rolling my eyes yet again.
“Because you’ve changed me overnight, and I have absolutely no desire to even touch another woman…unless it’s at your command,” he adds with a wink.
“Unfortunately for you, I won’t be in command any time soon because of those three nasty, little words that are so important to you,” I balk as I turn to face him, my arms snaking around his neck.
“I could make an exception. I do have a birthday coming up, you know.”
“If a threesome is the gift you’re expecting from me, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” I say.
“You could never disappoint me,” Cain says, pinning me against the wall, and suddenly I lose all interest in talking.
With Nicole out of the apartment, I don’t have to worry about being quiet, which is good because I don’t want anything distracting Cain. As long as his mind is on sex, he’s not worrying about all of the stress that walked into his life this morning at 7:05.
“This really turns me on,” he says. Having yanked off my clothes, he stands on his knees before me ogling the plain, surgical steel ring with the hematite bead. I can’t switch it out for over a month and though Cain isn’t allowed to touch it until then, as he kisses around it, I see that it will be a constant source of temptation and self-denial for him.
“I can’t wait to put in a new ring, something platinum, sparkling, maybe dangling…” he trails off, and I give him a moment before dragging him into the bedroom to get him naked, too. I push him onto his back on the bed so I can see this tattoo, having forgotten all about it last night after I accidentally cut him, and in that subtle dip where the muscles of the abdomen meet the hip on his left side, I find it. I love this spot on him, how it feels when I’m touching him there when we’re lying in bed at night, and now it will forever have my mark upon it. I flip on the bedside lamp for a second, and though still reddish and swollen, I can make out the small, perfectly drawn version of the chastity belt key in indigo blue.
“I love it,” I say, looking up at Cain from where I’m rested on my stomach between his legs. “What do you think?”
“It’s perfect, but you do realize what permanently marking me as yours means, don’t you?”
I shake my head no.
“It means that you can never leave me,” Cain says.
“Oh, it does?” I ask playfully.
“Uh-huh, and it means that you have to let me always take care of you.”
“I guess I can live with that…”
“And it means that you have to fall in love with me.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really,” he says, very matter-of-factly, smiling as he looks down at me, and I wonder if he’s trying to coax me into saying it first. My issues won’t let that happen, but hearing it one time from him is all it will take for the floodgates to burst open. Then I realize that maybe he can’t say it first. He can’t even admit that he cared about Elizabeth, and he was going to marry her.
Is my strong, dominant, otherwise fearless Cain afraid of those three little words? The thought makes me smile as I gently trace the outline of the tattoo with my fingernail.
“Do you know what else my mark on you means?” I ask him.
“It means I’m yours.”
“Uh-huh, but it also means I make the rules.”
“Oh, you do?”
“I do.” I kiss him just under the tattoo.
“Not without the words, you don’t,” he warns.
“Oh, don’t I?” I ask as I grasp his already rigid cock firmly in my hand, taking the head in my mouth and pulling it back out quickly. He moans. “Who makes the rules?”
“You do, Domina,” he humors me.
“And are you going to make me call Lucy to get the riding crop from the dungeon, or are you going to be a good boy just because I ask you to?”
“I’m going to be whatever you want me to be, Domina,” Cain says, surprising the fuck out of me. I love it when this man calls me Domina in a voice that says he’s powerless against my spell, and though my dominion over him is entirely contingent upon his whims, it’s mine now, resonating through me, settling deep inside.
“Good boy,” I say, luring him to his feet with a come-hither finger motion. The curtains Nicole and Caleb left open have given me a naughty idea.
Killing the lights, I lead Cain to the wall of glass overlooking the city. Facing outward with him behind me, I spread my legs and lean forward, rubbing myself against him. I don’t think anyone can actually see us, but the possibility of it drives me wild as I invite him to fuck me in front of downtown San Diego.
“God, you’re so wet,” Cain breathes as he slides his cock inside me. My tits pressed against the cold glass as he begins fucking me, he slams my body into the window again and again, and though it’s only an illusion, it feels like each thrust brings us closer to shattering the glass and plunging to our deaths, bound as one eternally. In the end, only I shatter, falling to pieces as I cry out from a devastating orgasm, my whole body trembling and spent, but Cain doesn’t stop. He grabs my hips and pulls me back onto his cock, fucking me savagely until he joins me, crying out as he bores into me, crushing me against the window. When he collapses, his face lost in my hair, his breath heavy against my neck, I know nothing in the world could amplify the bliss of this moment short of three little words.
Cain and I talk into the night. He isn’t going to the office tomorrow on his attorney’s advice, and as we discuss Trent, Elizabeth, and the cops, I know I’m going to have to bring up my concerns about the investigation.
“Baby, I don’t want you to worry about anything,” Cain says. “I’ll talk to Trent tomorrow about what those bitches are saying, and if I have to, I’ll set Sunny straight myself.”
“Doing that would only draw more attention to us,” I argue.
“The only attention we need to avoid is the press. It doesn’t matter what the cops think of us. We can’t be arrested for a crime we didn’t commit no matter what lies Sunny tells.”
“People get wrongly convicted all the time,” I say, terrified of the police thinking we’re involved, fraught with a sense of gratuitous guilt as the secret of my past makes me seem as if I am hiding something when I am telling the truth. I always fear I won’t be believed.
“The police are just doing their job, but if you don’t trust them to do it right, Trent will make sure they do. And if you don’t trust him, trust me.”
“I do,” I say, my forehead against his as we lie facing each other on the bed, “but I think Sunny wants the police to think you killed Elizabeth.”
“When they finish processing all of the DNA, Sunny will be shown to be just what she is - a bitter, lying cunt.”
“But Cain, our DNA is at the scene,” I finally blurt out. He looks confused for a second,
but when he remembers the stain, in typical Cain fashion, he composes himself and handles it like only he can.
“Well, looks like we’re going to have to tell the detectives about fucking in the dressing room, too,” he says with a smirk.
“It’s not funny, Cain. We could be in serious trouble.”
“Don’t worry, baby. I’ll tell Trent about the dress. Pierce from Entrance will be able to confirm that you tried it on, and that nosy bitch probably knows what we did in there, too. It’s the only place they’ll find my DNA on Liz, end of story.”
“I hope you’re right,” I say with an exhale.
“I am right,” he assures me, kissing me on the nose. “And I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”
“Okay, but you probably don’t want to talk about the other subject on my mind right now either.”
“Try me.”
“Nicole. She’s not like me, Cain. She believes in romantic fairy tales, but your brother never will leave his wife for her, will he?” I ask, and he sighs.
“I know he wants to. He has for a long time, but he can’t. If he leaves her, he walks away with nothing.”
“But even if he has to leave with nothing and pay her alimony, surely he still makes enough money to have a nice…”
“There won’t be any alimony,” Cain says, “because there won’t be any income.”
Catherine Ballantyne was not always the family matriarch. Though her mother had died before Cain was born, his grandfather ran the distillery and controlled the money until Cain was nine. When he passed, everything went to his two daughters - the manor, the business, cars, yachts, vacation homes, etc. Catherine’s sister Stephanie, whom the boys call Aunt Stevie, wanted the family estate most of all, so she made a deal with Catherine. Stevie got the mansion, and Catherine got the AsgÃ¥rd distillery. Though I don’t know what this has to do with Caleb’s marriage, I’m still fascinated to learn the family history. It seems Catherine has been a self-serving bitch for as long as Cain can remember because the mansion she gave her sister came only with expenses while the distillery was the source of income, so Stevie’s worth dwindled, eventually forcing Stevie under Catherine’s thumb as well. But there was still hope for Steph.
