His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels) (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Life had become very surreal. Exhibit A: Cary Bell had apologized. He had
fucking apologized
. And he had appeared to sincerely mean it. Alexander…didn’t know what to do with that. Hadn’t Saturday night when it was happening and still didn’t. “That was the worst thing I ever did,” Cary had said. The adrenaline that had spiked in Alexander’s body at hearing those words was still coursing through his veins. He had kept it together in front of Cary, but the minute he was back in the safety of his car, he’d started shaking like a fucking lost kitten. He knew that day at camp had made him into the man he was. Hell, he’d changed his whole life plan as a result. But he’d never considered what would happen if the instigator of that day looked him in the eye and said, “I was wrong.” What did it mean when you based your whole life on a mistake?

He shook his head. It didn’t mean anything. He was more than satisfied with his life, so who cared if it was the result of some childhood bullying? He was the nerd savoring his sweet revenge, and he was more than fine with that. Cary’s apology was neither here nor there.

That was the worst thing I ever did.
Would Cary consider sexual harassment a worse thing than what he’d done to Alexander?

His personal phone beeped, signaling an incoming text. Good. He needed to stop all this fucking angst-ing. It wasn’t serving him.

The text was Exhibit B in the surreal-fest that had become his life.

I’m almost at your building, but I’m realizing, shit, should I have brought my kneepads?

Alexander stood up from his desk and prepared for Exhibit C: astonishing Derek by leaving at five on a Monday. “Call the concierge at my building,” he said on his way out, “and tell him to let a visitor named Cary Bell up into my condo if he gets there before I do.”

Wide-eyed with surprise, Derek nodded.

Alexander waited until he was outside of the Dominion suite of offices before texting back with shaking hands.

You have your own kneepads?

I like to come prepared.

Before he could think what to say, another text arrived.

It’s just that I can’t get a certain metaphor out of my head.

Alexander’s cock stirred as he pressed the button to call the elevator. He waited until he got on to type his reply, hating that he was fronting with a bravado he was semi-faking.

You’re going down, Bell. In more ways than one.

He stood in the elevator watching the little bubble thing that indicated that Cary was typing a reply for a good twenty seconds before he realized he wasn’t moving. He had been so distracted, he’d forgotten to press the button for the parking garage.

In one way. But I don’t do metaphors, remember? So, yes, I’m going down in the literal sense, but I’m still winning Liu.

It wasn’t until Alexander was in another elevator, the one at home, on the way up to his condo, that he realized something that put a considerable damper on the anticipation that had been dogging him all the way home.

He had instructed Derek to tell Monty to let Cary right up. Without even a second thought.

What the hell?

He’d wanted to cut out any awkwardness, eliminate the need for small talk, and just, well, go at it. But obviously, he hadn’t been thinking. Not with his head, anyway. It wasn’t like he had anything incriminating in his house. It was more that he…didn’t do that.

He had officially allowed his space to be invaded without even really realizing it. He sighed. Well, fuck it. It was done. As he faced his own front door, a replay of last time they’d been at this threshold starting running on a loop in his head. Finally,
finally
, he was going to get his hands on Cary Bell in a sustained way, was going to take his fill and not be left wrecked with need. He was finally going to be sated.

Feeling like a feral animal, practically ready to growl, he pushed open his front door, made his way into the silent, dark condo, and came face to face with Cary Bell…

…fast asleep on his sofa.

Asleep, Cary looked different. Younger. More like the boy Alexander remembered. His heart twisted.
That was the worst thing I ever did
. As much as he tried to keep shoving them out of his consciousness, those words were starting to chip away at something inside him, something he’d thought had hardened into immutable steel. And if that happened, if too many shards were chiseled away, he had no fucking idea what would be left of him. Possibly nothing. So he forced the apology out of his mind and considered the man in front of him. The
opportunity
in front of him.

He wanted to touch Cary’s face. It came on suddenly and strong, the wanting.
What the hell?
Alexander didn’t do tender caresses, much less when the caressees weren’t even conscious to register them. But he wanted to feel that hint of stubble, scratchy on his fingers, then let his hand slide down that tender neck—God, that neck had driven him apeshit when they’d been going at it two days ago—and let his fingers rest on the pulse he could see beating there, slow and steady. Then he wanted Cary to open his eyes and see him watching. He wanted to feel that pulse quickening, and he wanted to be the cause.

“Hey.” Alexander whipped his eyes from that fucking mesmerizing neck to Cary’s eyes, the skin around which was crinkling in a sheepish grin as Cary added, “I fell asleep.”

“You have a talent for stating the obvious,” Alexander said, but he kept his tone gentle.

Cary yawned as he sat up and stretched.

“Long day?”

“They all are. So are the nights.” When Alexander raised his brows, Cary grinned again and shook his head. “Nah, just burning the midnight oil pretty much every night.” Then he rolled his eyes. “I’m probably not supposed to admit that. But hey, now we’re even. I know you have a board of directors riding your ass over Liu, and you know that I’m chronically sleep-deprived because of him.”

It was a demanding industry. They all worked long hours, but Alexander couldn’t imagine being a start-up. He’d always been in established banks, working his way up from the junior trader job he’d gotten out of college. As he grew more senior, with each new position, he stepped into existing systems at large organizations where processes and operations had already been established. Objectively speaking, what Cary did was probably a lot harder. “It’s a tough business,” Alexander said, lowering himself to sit on the sofa, but leaving some room between them.

Cary cocked his head. “I thought you were going to become a teacher. What happened to that?”

All those early morning walks to the dining hall. They’d talked about so many things. But he was surprised Cary remembered.

“Science teacher, right?” he went on. “And you were always so good with the younger campers. You seemed so sure that was your path.”

Alexander did a quick cost-benefit analysis of what the truth would cost him. The truth was that he had changed his mind that last day at camp, at the scene of his humiliation. He didn’t know then that banking would be where he would end up, just that a measly teacher’s salary wasn’t going to be enough anymore. He couldn’t change his sexuality, he’d known that. But he
could
change his class. And so Kitchen Boy had started plotting his own demise that very day, in the dining hall at Camp Blue Lake. He was going to harden his heart, he was going to get as rich as possible, as quickly as possible, and he was going to show all those assholes they couldn’t keep him down. And he had.

But he couldn’t tell Cary that. They’d reached a…not a resolution, per se, but a détente when it came to the personal stuff. They had the “sex” box decisively disentangled from the “war” box. But that did
not
mean Cary needed to know that he had been the cause of…everything. And, to be fair, he hadn’t, really. He’d been the start. And then when Alexander’s mom’s cancer hit, it had been inspiration to double down on his “harden heart and become obscenely rich” quest. He
could
safely tell Cary about that. “My mom got sick my last year in undergrad. Breast cancer.”

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry.”

If Cary remembered that he’d wanted to be a teacher, he no doubt also remembered that Alexander was the kid of a single mom. It had always been Mom and him against the world. “I decided I needed to make more money than I would as a teacher, so instead of a biology degree and teachers’ college, I did econ and then an MBA.” It was part of the truth, never mind that he’d made that decision long before he’d even started undergrad. Never mind that he’d made that decision standing in front of a toaster while Brooks Martin III taunted him and Cary betrayed him.

Cary whistled.

“Yeah,” he said, not knowing how to explain how the prospect of life without his mom had scared the shit out of him, even as it had cemented his resolve about his life’s path. The doctors had swooped in, and Alexander had been powerless to help her. Money was the only thing he could think of that might smooth the way, and luckily, he was on the path to making serious amounts of it. He settled for, “She sacrificed everything for me. She ended up beating it, but the stats for recurrence were real. She was only forty-five. I thought if I could do something more lucrative, she could retire after the treatment. Take care of herself.” It was all true, even if it hadn’t been the original reason he’d turned away from teaching.

“So you went into banking.”

“I did.” Those early years were a blur now. He’d worked nonstop and slept hardly at all. “I finished my MBA early and applied for junior trader jobs at all the major banks.”

“You’re a good son,” Cary said softly. He reached a hand out and rested it on Alexander’s cheek.

Whoa. Alexander’s uncomfortable little stroll down memory lane had prevented him from noticing that Cary had come closer to him, closing the gap between them on the sofa, but the physical contact jolted him into the present, where he had to work harder than he would have liked not to lean into Cary’s hand. “She was a good mother.” He cleared his throat to try to break through the shakiness in his voice. “She
is
a good mother.”

Enough. He didn’t talk about shit like this. And he certainly didn’t need Cary feeling sorry for him. He brought his own hand up to meet Cary’s and pulled it down from his face. Time to get on with the show. He brought Cary’s hand to his mouth and kissed his palm with an open mouth before asking, “Still tired?”

Cary shook his head, pupils dilated, and that mouth that drove Alexander so batshit fell open slightly. It made Alexander feel powerful to have been the cause of the obvious desire visible on the other man’s face. But that was absurd because Alexander already
was
powerful—at least when he wasn’t letting himself wallow in past hurts and fears. Time to remember who he really was, who he had become: a man who wielded his authority with ease, at the bank and in the bedroom. Hell, he could have David moaning in ecstasy inside of five minutes and then get up and fire off a report to the board on the next quarter’s projections in the next five.

Cary leaned in and pressed his lips softly against Alexander’s. He kept his lips closed, his touch feather-light, enough that it almost tickled. Gently, Cary pressed considered kisses along Alexander’s jaw as he threaded his hands through Alexander’s hair. Alexander sighed, a deep, involuntary sigh that he could feel blowing away what felt like a lifetime’s worth of tension along with it.

It shouldn’t have been so arousing. Hardly anything was happening, objectively. Yet need pooled, sure and insistent, low in his belly, just as it had last night. It wasn’t a frantic need, though, not yet. It was heavier, bigger—relentless but soft, which should have been a contradiction but somehow was not.

“You’re so beautiful,” Cary whispered, coming back to Alexander’s mouth as he untucked Alexander’s shirt and slid his hands up inside it, applying a bit more pressure than before as he stroked up Alexander’s ribcage. The pressure on his mouth deepened, too, and Alexander opened, his usually tense jaw turning to jelly as Cary’s tongue sought entrance. They kissed and kissed and kissed, tongues tangling, licking deep into each other’s mouths as if they had all the time in the world. Cary took his time undoing the buttons on both his and Alexander’s shirts, never breaking their kiss.

This wasn’t how Alexander had pictured things going. He’d imagined a repeat of their insistent, almost frantic coming together from the other night. This was the opposite of that; it was slow and measured. Slow and measured wasn’t really Alexander’s style, but he couldn’t quite make himself break the spell in order to speed things up.

When they were finally chest to chest, skin to skin, Alexander moaned. The sensation of Cary’s hairless chest rubbing against Alexander’s was unbelievably erotic. As Cary drew his hands lightly up Alexander’s sides, Alexander was seized with the strongest desire to fall. Holding himself upright no longer seemed like it was possible, so he gave in to the impulse, but not before wrapping his arms around Cary and pulling him down, too.

They landed in a tangle of limbs, Alexander on his back on the couch and Cary sprawled out along his body. As they made eye contact, Cary’s smile boiled over into laughter. Alexander almost didn’t recognize the sounds coming out of himself. He was laughing, too, but it felt like it was coming from somewhere else, like some external source of joy was pouring itself into his chest. It was just like at that stupid games day. He couldn’t staunch the laughter.

“We have a problem,” Cary said, still grinning as he touched his nose to Alexander’s.

Alexander stopped laughing. “We do?” His mind ran through all the possible things that could derail what was about to happen. He had condoms. The door was locked. They had the whole goddamned luxury penthouse to themselves. “What is it?”

“Pants.” Cary made a goofy face that made Alexander laugh again.
Goddamn
, laughing during sex was also not Alexander’s style. But again, objection didn’t seem possible, especially not when Cary levered himself off Alexander and stripped off the rest of his clothes. God, he was beautiful. He always had been, had always been that compelling mixture of muscle-bound and graceful. But Cary the man, as opposed to Cary the boy, was something to behold. The close-cropped hair, the stubble. The glorious cock straining toward Alexander.