The memory of dancing between them was almost a little too much to bear. Caz, at least, seemed to respect that. He had dressed me modestly instead of taking advantage of me. He had backed off whenever I needed him too. And it was entirely possible that this was yet another game, but if I was being totally honest, there was a part of me that got a charge thinking Suzanne would know very shortly that at least one of her boy toys had traded up for me.
That was the most important reason of all to invite Caz to stay with me, to let her know once and for fucking all that she didn’t get to win all the time.
Fuck that pussycat shit. I was ready to roar.
Well, sorta. I still had to hide Caz from Father for a little while longer, while I figured out exactly what I was going to do with him.
He ran his hand along my leg as he sat next to me on my sofa. “I can think of a few things,” he grinned.
“Stop,” I said.
He raised both hands in surrender. “Just keeping it on the table,” he explained.
I, however, knew enough to keep it off the table. That night I made up the sofa in the living room for him to sleep.
Even though I probably shouldn’t have been, I was surprised when I felt him crawl into bed next to me around one o’clock in the morning.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
He covered my mouth with his hand as he nodded to the window. I saw a shadow pass over it. My eyes widened. “You really didn’t think this would be as easy as that, did you?” he whispered.
I moved his hand from my mouth. “Who do you think it is?”
“My guess would be Dev. He knows the premises. He has easy access to the home, if yesterday was any indication. Plus he has the most incentive to find out if I really am living with you. If I’m right, he’s going to use your spare key, let himself in, and appear in that doorway in about,” he referred to his watch. “Ninety seconds.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re in my bed,” I gritted between clenched teeth. I felt his cool skin against me. “Naked,” I gritted.
“Think about it, CC. If he sees me sleeping on your couch, he’ll just turn up all his efforts to win you back. If he finds you in bed with me, he’ll be so overcome with rage that seduction will be the last thing on his mind.” His hand slipped under my nightshirt and he ripped away my panties, tossing them on the floor.
I started to panic as he positioned himself in between my legs. “You’re right. He’ll just murder you. And me too!”
Caz shrugged. “We all gotta go sometime.” He craned to hear in the darkness, holding his finger to his lips as we waited.
Since he’d left the bedroom door open, we could faintly hear my front door open and shut. I was so scared I didn’t stop Caz from gathering me into his arms. My heart raced with every creak of the floorboards in my hallway, as our intruder drew ever nearer to the bedroom door.
Before I knew what was happening, Caz covered my mouth with his for a kiss. He leaned me back against the pillows, his hand on my breast as he broke the kiss just long enough to nuzzle my neck. “Just go with it, CC,” he whispered ever so quietly as he rubbed himself against me, simulating sex to anyone who might happen up on the scene in the darkened room.
I heard the door of my bedroom creak open just a tad. It reminded me of the night I had walked in on Devlin and Suzanne. I remembered how badly that had hurt to see them together, like my spirit had been pierced by a thousand flaming swords.
Would Devlin feel the same way if the situation was reversed, and he walked in on me fucking the one person in the world he hated most?
And if so… shouldn’t he?
Because of this, I wrapped my legs around Caz’s waist and kissed him back. I moaned loudly as I arched my back towards him, coaxing him on between my legs.
Caz’s eyes met mine. “Goddamn, pussycat.”
I let my gaze drift towards the doorway, and sure enough, there stood Devlin, looming like an angry shadow man. I could smell the booze on his breath from across the room.
I grabbed a handful of Caz’s hair as I pressed him into me. “Fuck me, Caz,” I begged in a whimper as I kept my gaze locked with Devlin’s. He braced himself against the doorway as his face screwed into an angry scowl. My heart nearly burst right out of my chest, it was beating so hard. I was terrified, especially after the night before, what he might do if pushed far enough.
Instead he pushed away from the door. Minutes later I heard a loud crash right before my outer door slammed shut.
I breathed a sigh of relief and Caz looked down at me. “You okay?” he asked again, as if he really did give a shit.
I nodded. “As well as can be expected, I guess. Considering.”
Caz’s hand slid across my stomach, just under my breasts. “I can make you feel better, you know,” he promised as he looked down at me. “It doesn’t have to be fake.”
I could tell from his erection he wasn’t lying about that. But still… I simply put my hand on his. “Not tonight, Caz.”
He nodded before he slid from my bed. He paused slightly beside the door, as though he might be pondering something.
“What?” I finally asked.
“I just realized you didn’t say ‘never.’”
My breath caught as I realized he was right. “Caz,” I started but he simply silenced me with a small smile.
“Goodnight, pussycat,” he murmured before he disappeared down the hall.
CHAPTER THREE
I spent the first weekend of the new year with Caz Bixby in my private bungalow. We ordered in. We didn’t return phone calls on either of our cell phones. I barely even saw Father, who had overexerted himself at the party and preferred a quiet weekend to himself as well.
It was like all of the Cabots had locked down the estate from outside influences.
For me this meant changing my door locks yet again and finding a new place to stow my spare. If Devlin Masters wanted to come into my home again, he was going to have to wait for an invitation.
I didn’t want to think about Dev at all during that weekend, but it was inevitable. Both he and Suzanne tried, unsuccessfully, to get ahold of Caz. His phone rang almost non-stop until he turned it off. Whether it was a client he could no longer see through the agency, or it was Suzanne calling to pull his chain, he had no desire to make contact with the outside world either.
I could tell by Sunday evening just how much it had controlled his life for so long. The longer he went without talking to her, the more open and genuine he appeared. Despite how he had pushed the envelope in the past, he seemed positively gentlemanly.
It was freaking me out.
“So what’s next, Caz?” I finally asked. “You can’t hide out here forever.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s strange to have the keys back to my life. I get to decide where to go or what to do, without any of the old shit influencing those decisions. It means I’m free, but it also means I don’t know what to do with that freedom.”
I knew a little something about that. “What did you want to be growing up? What were your dreams before Suzanne came along?”
He chuckled. “Believe it or not, I wanted to be a famous. I didn’t want to act or anything. I just wanted the life of a celebrity. I wanted people to know who I was and love me for it. If my adoptive parents are to be believed, that was because I had a hard time bonding to people as a kid. Apparently my natural mother had been arrested for neglect and I was removed from her care as an infant. She worked at a motel, where she got the room for free for performing tasks around the property. According to the police reports, there were days I’d cry for hours because he left me alone in that room while she juggled the front desk or maid duties. I was probably nine months old by the time the Gabourys adopted me. Great publicity, too. They got a rare infant to adopt and it made them look like regular saints to our community. So when I started fucking up in school, it wasn’t because of their parenting. It was because there was something inherently wrong
with me. I think I went to six therapists by the time I was sixteen, when I was arrested for smoking pot. The Gabourys made all that go away too.” He sighed as he rested his head on my sofa. “Probably one of the reasons they were so pissed when I didn’t want to walk into the life they had cultivated for me. I owed them and they couldn’t collect.”
I shook my head. “They’re your family, Caz. Maybe not by blood, but there had to be some affection or concern there.”
“I exhausted it,” he admitted simply. “And I probably exhausted them. I always wear my welcome thin. Haven’t you figured that out by now?” He took another deep breath. “I think that’s why Suzanne always appealed to me. The process was so… simple.”
“She wanted, you gave,” I supplied and he nodded.
“Every single time. No matter what.”
I studied him for a long moment. It suddenly made sense why he always felt like he had to please her. In his experience wealthy people in particular could make life very easy or very hard for him, but it was usually their choice alone which was which. In the hands of a cruel person, this power was a deadly weapon.
“She would buy me stuff, give me money, introduce me to all the right people… it was like being a celebrity in a way. And all I had to do in return was fuck her. I’ve been fucking since I was twelve years old; it seemed like a no-brainer. It wasn’t love, neither of us do love. It was just… honest. Brutal, maybe, but always upfront. She told me what she wanted me to do and told me what would happen if I didn’t do it. I guess I respond well to that.”
“So are the videos of you with men the only thing she has on you?”
“That’s a very blunt question, pussycat,” he said.
“Then answer it as bluntly,” I suggested.
He took a deep breath. “There’s only one thing she ever asked me to do that no one else knows about.”
“Which is?”
“It’s not illegal,” he assured up front. “She never wasted those errands on me. She knew about the Gabourys, so I think she was afraid of them having the power, clout and authority to fight back if I ever got painted into a corner.”
“Then what is it?” I asked again.
Another deep breath. “I fucked Darcy.”
“You what?!” I exploded.
“Dev doesn’t know, of course. Or else he really would kill me.”
“But why?”
“You control Darcy, you control Devlin. And Suzanne wanted to control Devlin. She cozied up to Darcy, instant best friends who bonded over fashion, two women roughly the same size. I mean, Darcy was bigger of course, and I always thought that made Suzanne think even less of her. We’re all peons to her anyway, but she hates women in particular. She’ll latch on any reason at all to rip them down. Pretty, ugly, fat, thin, rich, poor… she hates them all. She just knows how to play nice to the right ones. Keep your friends close and your frenemies closer, that kind of thing.”
“But what does that have to do with you?”
“You’ve met Darcy. You know that she’s extraordinarily skittish. She didn’t want to have much to do with Suzanne at all… until she had a problem that only another larger woman could understand.”
“Wanting a hot guy.”
He pointed to himself. “So I had to romance her. Suzanne would tell her what to do and she’d do it, then I’d reward her with my affection. This built the trust on both our parts.”
“That’s despicable.”
“I already told you that we’re not nice people, CC.”
“So what happened?”
“The plan was always that I’d leave her after fucking her. You know, so she’d lean on Suzanne even more. But it took a while to get past those walls. It took me a good six weeks to get her into bed, and by then she was in love with me.”
“And you fucked her anyway.”
His eyes met mine. “Yep.”
“Dev will kill you for that.”
“Yep,” he repeated. “I guess she was too humiliated to tell him what happened, because in all of our dust-ups, he’s never mentioned her name to me.”
“Were you…,” I struggled for the words. “Was it bad?”
He reflected on the question. “No, it wasn’t bad. She was actually really sweet. I wasn’t her first, but I felt like it. I’ve had clients like that before, usually locked up and repressed, with no way to express themselves sexually. They need someone to guide them. To show them.”
I thought about Devlin with a sinking stomach. I knew that was how he saw it too. I guessed that being a gigolo offered those kinds of insights on human sexuality.
“I gave her a pretty epic night if I do say so myself. I finally got her to let go with a few powerful orgasms, then after that I left her apartment and never saw her again. I ghosted till she got a clue I wasn’t coming back. I felt like a shit, too. This was around the time they were trying to take her stepfather to court because of what happened to their mom, so she was more vulnerable than usual.”
My brow furrowed. “I thought he killed himself.”
“He did,” Caz confirmed with a slight nod. “But not right away. He went through the arraignment and got all the way up until a jury was chosen, maybe three or four months after I started fucking around with Suzanne. He appeared once and then they found him dead twelve hours later. I guess he thought that the jury of his peers would send him up the river anyway, so why not?” He sighed. “Needless to say, it was stress that Darcy didn’t need on top of everything. Yet that was Suzanne’s plan. Get her so emotionally dependent upon Suzanne that she can control every aspect of Darcy’s life–including her brother.”
“She’s evil,” I decided.
He nodded. “There are only two people I ever fucked that I regretted later. Both of their last names were Masters, and both were because of Suzanne Everhart.”
“So tell me about Dev. What happened?”
“The rivalry started almost from the moment we met, mostly thanks to Suzanne. She wanted to keep the upper hand in that relationship and decided to do so by showing this poor besotted fool that she’d fuck whoever she damn well pleased. She tried to manipulate me into goading him about it, but I just told her that I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what she wanted and why. I told her that I’d do almost anything she asked provided she just ask me. After that, I was her go-to guy. Needless to say, my relationship with Dev became and remained antagonistic from there.
“Dev decided to get even. He cozied up to Lydia, which naturally pissed off Suzanne. Bing, bang, boom, Lydia’s up the river and the competition is effectively squashed. But that wasn’t enough for Suzanne. She wanted to make Dev pay. So she went after his never. He only had a few rules, and guy-on-guy action was never his thing. No problem, unless you have someone powerful and sadistic like Suzanne holding your future in the palm of your hand. So she let him know that was the only way he could make it up to her. And the only guy for the job? The guy she knew Dev hated. She wanted to make it as bad as possible for him. Again, a guy does this to a woman and there’s hell to pay. But not Suzanne. This is her playground.”
I held my breath and waited.
“Because we knew that, we showed up that night, though neither of us wanted to go through with it. This was something we had to endure, and we knew it. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that the further we got into it, the angrier Dev got. I thought he might actually throttle everyone in the room when she told him what she wanted. She wanted to see him bound and fucked, because that’s her favorite kind of kink.”
Again I was reminded of her bound to Devlin’s bed. Or, more accurately, her bed.
“She told him there was only one way he’d know just how much she needs to trust him for their playtime. He had to be bound and dominated every bit as much as he had bound and dominated her in the past. He almost got there, but the minute I tapped on the back door, he snapped. He tore through those restraints and damn near killed me. Suzanne saved my ass. She said one word, and that sent him fro
m that penthouse suite. Within a weekend, he was terminated, homeless and right back where he started.”
“For us outsiders, we got sent back to the end of the line. Like usual.”
Caz actually looked remorseful as he went on. “I might have helped him, but there was no way he would forgive me for everything. So that’s us in a nutshell. Emphasis nut.”
I processed the story silently for a moment. Finally I said, “What was the word?”
“What do you mean?”
“The word she said, the one that stopped him.”
He thought back. “Overture.”
“What?” I repeated.
He shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It was strange. He was ready to bash my head in with a chair and she simply said that one word. Didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t change her inflection at all. Just, ‘Overture.’ He stopped mid-swing and turned to stare at her for a minute. She said nothing. He said nothing. Finally he nodded, put down the chair and left.”
My brow furrowed. It was a musical term, so most likely it was some reference to his musical prowess, though I couldn’t understand why such a word could stop him mid-assault, especially as mad at Caz as I had seen him.
Caz settled back into my sofa as he perused the guide on the TV. “Maybe it was their safe word. That bitch is a freak.”
I glared at him. “What’s her safe word with you?”
He spared me a glance. “More.”
“You’re hilarious,” I snapped, before hopping up and heading to the kitchen for more wine.
“That’s what you love about me,” he called after me.
Though I was grateful to get a little more insight on Dev’s history, it still didn’t solve our immediate problem. I had to figure out what to do with Caz.
I decided to keep using Father as a shield against Suzanne by bringing him to work for Cabot’s. My first impulse was to hire him as a model, given how physically flawless he was. “You didn’t go to Stanford, did you?” I asked, determined not to make that mistake twice.
“Princeton,” he corrected with that damnable smirk. “Family got me in, but I managed to get myself kicked out within a semester. Honestly I think Dev has always resented me for it. According to him, I had it too easy. Poor little rich boy, he called me.”
Masters Forever (Masters #3) Page 4
