Cake (57 page)

Don’t think, I told myself. Do what you have to do. Check the bodies. Don’t linger. Don’t fucking stand there looking down at them. Move!

I used my internal radar and searched for others thoughts and possible alarm, my ears ringing from the sound of the shots I’d fired in the enclosed room. So far, so good. No one had been alerted.

Creeping out from the monitoring room, closing the door behind me, I began working my way down the corridor, pausing to mind sweep into any rooms I came across. But I didn’t encounter any more security.

Finally though, I felt someone. He was moving closer, and he walked with a purpose. Arrogance and self importance just radiated off that mind.

Silas Monahan.

I slid the gun I was holding into the covering foliage of a potted plant and dropped down to my knees, adopting a submissive pose, allowing my damp hair to hang forward. It was a chore to get my shoulders to slip out of their stiff line. Relax, I chanted to myself.

“
Terry!” Monahan yelled, coming around the corner of the corridor. “Where the fuck are you? You should have gone and picked up that twink by now. I don’t pay you to…Well, well, well. What have we here?”

I felt his hand tangle in my hair, and he jerked my head up. “Edward…Damn, you’re beautiful. Who would have thought something amazing like this was hiding underneath all that fat?” He snapped the fingers of his other hand in front of my nose, and I blinked. “And you can see too! What a bonus for me. Those thick-rimmed glasses you used to wear hid those lovely green eyes of yours.”

He grabbed my chin and forced my face to turn left and right as he continued to stare at me. Then, taking his fingers from my hair, he transferred his hold to the ring on the collar I was wearing. He was strong, I realized as I found myself being jerked upwards. And I had to practically run after him or risk being dragged as he manhandled me back towards his room.

Silas Monahan was a sadistic, opportunistic bully who had always surrounded himself with sycophants and pretty, vacant airheads in order to make himself appear godlike in his own fucked-up empire. He had to be a good, solid six-footer, so hiking his wrist over his shoulder while holding onto the ring at my neck was intentionally done to cause me grief and also made sure I was almost climbing his back to keep up with him.

The newspapers and other multi-media loved him. He was the ideal figure of what an up-and-coming, future corporate giant was supposed to be like. His hair was always coiffed, to the point it looked like he had just emerged from a hair salon. Tall, fit, with perfect, white teeth and blemish-free skin. All of these perfections hiding a rotten, perverted, and twisted soul.

Aside from all that, and him ordering me killed, which was a big enough reason within itself, I hated this man.

Monahan marched us deeper into the bowels of his mansion. I probably should have kept my radar sweep up, but I was too intent on pretending I was a scared, lowly human while keeping my body from making as little contact as possible with him. He never said anything as he continued to drag me along, but the smug satisfaction that rose off him was almost overbearing. It made me want to vomit.

We came into a large room that was fully furnished and obviously decorated as a tribute to the movie
The Great Gatsby.
I didn’t have time to admire the view, though, because Monahan slipped his hand off his shoulder and threw me over the back of a nearby couch.

I bounced off the padded cushions and slammed into a glass and metal coffee table, catching my breath. I didn’t need to see Monahan’s face to know that he was wearing that same damn, condescending smile he’d always worn whenever he would stop by my desk to belittle me or criticize my work. He’d hated that I knew more than he did.

As big as I was, I must have intimidated him. I might have been fatter, but I was smarter than he was. And I may have been socially inept, but that was a skill that could be learned by anyone. Intelligence wasn’t, and being a dickhead came naturally to him. When I’d been one of his employees, I doubted that he could ever overcome being so intellectually inferior to me. And now, he was out of time to even try.

Tic Toc. Tic Toc. Your time’s just about up, Silas.

“
I never thought that if I crooked my finger, you’d come a running, Xavier,” he was saying. “Then again, you wouldn’t have been able to see me beckoning you, anyway, being a half-blind, four-eyed, fat-faced freak.”

Now that I could breathe easily again, and the back of my neck wasn’t getting rubbed raw from the leather collar around it being pulled on, I was able to concentrate on reading his mind.

It didn’t take much more than a brush against his thoughts to feel his dark joy at having me here in his house, in his power…in his bed. Pretty face; tight, little hole.

My back was scraped from hitting the coffee table, and a small groan escaped me as I forced back a shudder and climbed to my knees, assuming submissiveness again. I was stronger as a vampire, and if I wanted to, I could probably kill him here and now with my bare hands. But I had to find out from him first how many more there were after us.

Monahan laughed, and the sound of his laughter sent chills down my spine. “Marcus taught you well. He should have been a trainer rather than a hired killer. I can see that he had an affinity for it,” he said, his voice mocking. “Too bad he decided to take his work home with him. He had a good eye though. I never saw this in you, Xavier. I knew you had a brain, but…” He let out a whistle. “Marcus could do things to people’s heads. Did he fuck with yours? Is that how he got you so skinny and hot? He fucked you in the head as good as he fucked you in the ass. I bet you screamed like a little girl when he bent you over and did you.”

“
Yes, Master,” I agreed meekly, thinking about how I was going to rip his contemptuous tongue right out of his head.

There was a pause, and then Monahan let out a loud belly laugh. “Oh my God, this is great. You used to be so arrogant. I couldn’t stand looking at your podgy face, with that brilliant mind trapped inside. I always had to bring you down to earth. Who the
hell
did you think you were?”

I figured on it being a rhetorical question, so I just bowed my head in answer and counted to ten to keep my temper in check. There was a chinking noise as ice fell into a glass, followed by the sound of liquid being poured over it. I continued to count to twenty.

“
Marcus gave you a fuckable frame, Xavier. Phew! I could have swallowed my tongue when I saw that big billboard up by the highway. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I noticed the hair immediately. Never seen anyone else with those shades of reds you’ve got.”

His fingers suddenly raked through my hair, and I barely kept from twitching as his thumb ran along my bottom lip, pulling it down so the slick, moist, inner skin lubricated his fingertip.

“
You know what did it? You know what made me realize that it was you, Xavier? It was the mouth,” he told me. “Even when you were a fat son of a bitch, I thought you had the sexiest mouth I’d ever seen. I mean, the rest of you didn’t do a damn thing for me, but if you’d offered to get down on your knees to suck me off, I would have let you.”

I couldn’t contain a dry heave, and Monahan shoved me roughly to the floor with a hand in my face. “I know, the thought repulsed me too. You would have had to pay me to touch you. But that was then. Look at you now, Xavier.” He tipped his glass at me. “Did Marcus leave you that brilliant mind?” he asked.

“
No, Master,” I lied. One more ‘master’, and I was going to go postal.

“
That’s okay. You can’t have both beauty and brains. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of us mortals,” he said, taking a sip of his drink and standing over me.

It was hard to read him. The sexual scenarios rising to the forefront of his mind were strong, and they were making me feel ill. I needed something to distract him so I could dig a little deeper.

Claudius had said that mind-delving would get easier the more I practiced. The only problem was I’d been out on the farm when he’d told me, and there was no way in hell I was going to practice binding and persuading skills on my own family. So I wasn’t as experienced at this mind-reading thing as I should have been. How was I going to break through Monahan? Give him what he wants, and how he wants it, I decided.

I couldn’t get back up to my knees with the way he was standing over me so I laid flat on my back, lifting one arm up and brushing the bangs off my forehead. I hooded my eyes and made sure to take a long time licking at my bottom lip. Yuck, he smoked. The heavy tang of tobacco coated the tip of my tongue as it brushed over where Monahan’s thumb had touched me. My lip tasted ghastly. Quickly retracting my tongue I lowered my other hand and let it rest on my bared strip of stomach, my fingers swirling over my exposed skin.

“
Are you going to fuck me now, Master?”

Monahan’s eyes widened, and for a brief moment his thoughts stilled as he watched me. That was all I needed to get inside his mind, and I discovered that there had been just the one team sent out tonight after Marcus, though others were on standby in case the first group had failed. He blinked just as I picked up that he hadn’t issued stand-down orders yet.

“
You’re a tempting little slut, Xavier, but not right now,” he said, moving away a little, breaking my mental contact with him. “You aren’t for me. Not just yet. You’re a birthday present for my son. Maybe when he gets tired of playing with his toy, I’ll get a chance. The family that plays together…Ah, here comes your new master now.”

“
Jeez, Dad, what the hell is the big idea in waking me up at this time of night?” someone complained.

“
It’s morning. And I think I’ll be forgiven when you see your present, son,” Monahan replied, gesturing at me and spilling some of the liquor out of his glass and onto my stomach in the process.

“
Present?” A younger carbon copy of Silas stepped around the couch and into my line of view. I shuddered. “You got me a man?”

“
A slave, actually,” Monahan corrected. “Sit up, Xavier, and show your master your pretty face.”

I rolled over onto my stomach, drawling my knees up under me, and I purposely pushed my bronze, leather-covered rump towards the boy before kneeling upright and pulling the hair back from my face with a flourish.

“
Sex? You got me Sex!”

Oh, how I am living to regret using that name. It’s going to haunt me forever, I know it is.

“
His original master finally paid off his debt,” Monahan was saying. “Sex belongs to me, and I am giving him to you.”

“
What can I do with him?”

“
Xavier, tell Jason here what he can do with you.”

“
You can fuck me, Master,” I purred huskily.

‘
Holy shit.” Jason came closer and stared down at me. I saw that he had a prominent hard-on, but feeling that it had nothing to do with me, I brushed his thoughts quickly. His sleep-addled brain swam with the images he’d been dreaming about, of a black-haired girl he had raped the day before, because she hadn’t held the elevator button for him. Like father, like son. “I’ll mix you a drink, Jason. You’re legal today,” Monahan said, retreating to the bar and turning his back on us.

“
Shall I kiss you, Master?” I asked Jason. He nodded, looking at me as if I was his birthday, Christmas, and graduation present all wrapped up into one enticing, bronze, leathery package.

Getting to my feet, I stepped over to him and took his head in my hands, pulling him forward for a chaste kiss. He blinked, not expecting that. “Happy Birthday,” I whispered to him. And then I gave him my own present…a quick and painless death, even though he deserved worse for raping that girl. She wasn’t the first he’d hurt in that way, but I made sure that she would be the last, as with a quick, powerful twist, I snapped his neck and dropped him where he stood.

Monahan had continued talking as he mixed up a couple of drinks, relating how he and his son would spend the day together, breaking me in. He turned around now with a shaker in his hand, and found me standing right behind him.

“
What the…Where’s Jason?”

“
In Hell, where you wanted to send Marcus.”