Sarasota Sin (9 page)

6

“Damn, A.” Dylan was fast on his heels, closing the double doors behind him. “Drake said you dodged the council meeting yesterday, ignored his phone calls, and your assistant officially declared you AWOL.” Moving closer, he studied Avery with the intensity of a stalking tiger. “He’s pissed. Doesn’t do politicians even if they’re small time.”

“Doesn’t do politicians?” Avery mocked, his voice low and strained. “Drake does anything that moves. A little work wouldn’t hurt him any. Your brother could actually earn his paycheck for once.”

“Don’t diffuse.” Dylan’s aqua eyes narrowed as he turned his attention to the floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the bright winter morning made complete with a summer temperature of eighty-three degrees. Since their headquarters relocated from New York, this weather would be the norm from now on. “What’s happening? You’re drinking at nine in the blazing morning.” When Avery stayed quiet, Dylan added, “Tell me you didn't bury the body on any of our properties and that you remembered to wipe your fingerprints from the crime scene.”

Avery gave him a look and grabbed water from the fridge, downed it without coming up for air. It had taken all the willpower he possessed to leave Payton yesterday. She’d refused his dinner invite, said she had to work. Only to find out from his private investigator he’d assigned to Payton, that she’d come home early while toting pizza for a private dinner with Noah Wyatt. God that burned. The water bottle whined under his grip when he thought of Payton’s business partner living with her, not only in the firehouse but also in the same apartment. According to his investigator, Noah Wyatt was a small-time local celebrity with a habit of devouring women and leaving them crying. If Noah had his sights set on Payton, he’d soon understand why he should stay out of Avery’s way.

Avery tossed the bottle in the trash bin. “I’ll tell you what happened.” He loosened his tie, trailing his fingertips over his scars. All night he had thought of nothing other than Payton: Payton this, Payton that, Payton in his arms, kissing him atop The Easton Tower. How he remained a gentleman that night, ignoring her pleading body and sending her to bed so she could sleep off the champagne, he’d never know. Avery faced Dylan. “I had a women secured in a tower suite night before last, during the benefit. I’d placed a guard on her while she rested. Why did you have Michael take her out? I wasn’t finished with her.” He hadn’t even started. “She wasn’t yours to make such decisions.”

“You had a woman in the tower?”

“Stop fucking with me.” He wanted Payton in that four-poster bed again, her auburn curls floating across his pillows, her arms and legs spread into an inviting X after he’d secured her to all four bed posts. Her expression nothing short of exhausted because he’d worn her the hell out from claiming every place a man could claim a woman. And he had every intention of doing those things…one way or another. Before long, Payton Calloway would be his, and that time couldn’t be soon enough.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Dylan snapped. “I left the tower after Candice and I fought.”

“I thought her name was Caroline.”

“It doesn’t matter now.” He shrugged, tugging at his too-long hair. “She’s gone.”

“She’s gone? What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“She moved out of the penthouse, won’t answer her phone.”

“I thought she was your one-shot for a singular relationship,” Avery replied curiously. For years, Dylan and Avery took women together, keeping long-term mistresses who catered to their specific desires. In return, those mistresses were cared and provided for, living the life of luxury few people experienced. Their family had long gotten used to their tastes, had understood the issues Avery and Dylan collectively suffered. However, two weeks ago, Dylan had changed the rules, completely blind sighting Avery.

“If you’re going to take a jab at me because I wanted normalcy, wanted a family, then stop. I needed this relationship to work out and I’m at a loss, disgusted with myself, actually.”

“Normalcy in whose eyes? For the most part, our long-term relationships had worked out, especially after you grew up and left behind your bed-hopping ways.” Though the tabloids still printed lie after lie, and Dylan refused to counter their claims, not dignifying them with demands of retractions or lawsuits for slander.

“Only two weeks have passed, but, honestly, I’m nearly lost without you and I sliding our hands and tongues over one women, making her so crazy with lust from two men handling her that she’s nearly incoherent from her multiple orgasms, dripping crazily for us. I’m missing the thrilling satisfaction of us finding that all-consuming release that we can’t seem to get otherwise.”

But Dylan had a plan, and Avery decided to remind him. “I understand your desire to find a wife, that you want children and whatever additional security you need.” Just as many of the Easton men, Avery had been adopted into their powerful family from an early age, and a family unit of his very own would be an answered prayer. “Caroline was the longest you’d stayed in a relationship without me involved.”

“You have no idea how hard it was, and I tried. I really tried.” He sat down, rambling, his hand rubbing the tension from his neck. “I told her I was drunk, but I wasn’t drunk. Would never do that again…She knows this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I had Caroline in a corridor, the lights were dim and I figured I could nail her against the wall to take off the…edge.”

And what an edge Dylan had, but he shouldn’t have taken a mistress or committed lover in a damned hallway like a whore. “Go on.”

“She had red hair…and I lost it. Said shit I shouldn’t have said. Offered a threesome though, secretly, I only wanted the redhead.”

“Payton.”

“What?”

“Payton Calloway, the woman I secured in the tower after watching you kiss her. On. The. Lips.” Avery rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe your interaction with my Payton is the reason you lost Cindy.”

“Caroline.”

“Whatever, it’s still pathetic. I mean - I watched your lover slam through the door of the tower in a fit of jealous rage, long before I saw you and Payton on the stairs.” He’d never forget hardening to the sight of Dylan caressing Payton. The needs he had rivaled Dylan’s on any given day.

“And I don’t kiss anyone on the lips.” He shook his head. “I mean…not for at least a decade.”

Because it meant marking his territory, finally giving up his past. “Then you must have been drunk.” This was a shock, considering Dylan hardly touched alcohol.

“From champagne? Hardly. I think I was in a state of fear, wanting to want Caroline but understanding I couldn’t make that final commitment. Maybe I’m not cut out for marriage after all.”

“You always stayed faithful to our mistresses, no matter what was thrown your way.” Women flung themselves at the Easton men, always, a pussy free-for-all on any given day. Money talked and their stellar good looks didn’t slow down the action. Avery, on the other hand, had certain limits even he couldn’t cross…unlike his adopted brothers and cousins. “Wait a minute,” he growled, rubbing a palm over his throat, “if your reluctance to go solo is about these” — he flicked open the top button of his shirt and pointed to his scars — “I never expected you to stay with me forever. We’re nearing thirty now.”

“It has nothing to do with your physicality. It is what it is. I am what I am,” Dylan argued. “I think the main reason a proposed marriage would never work out for me is because you wouldn’t be there anymore. I want to share. It feels right and not just in the physical sense.”

“It’s not the guilt?”

Dylan crossed his ankle over his knee, sinking into the black leather of the chair. “Not anymore.”

“Still, it’s the post traumatic…whatever the over-priced shrink named it.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Avery said flatly.

“Fuck you and fuck the shrink. Trey and Drake don’t share tragedy between them the same as us, but after they dabbled in the lifestyle we enjoy, they stayed with it. Then Evan and Julian…I could go on; it’s in the Easton blood.”

“Between us, only you have Easton Blood.”

“Doesn’t matter, you grew up in this family. You're an Easton through and through.”

That’s for sure, since Avery had the bulging bank accounts to prove it. “So no more Caroline, Cindy, Coleen, Claudine…You no longer want to go it on your own.”

“Nope, and I’m going to give our attorneys free rein over the papers and the internet. They are to clean up the disparaging remarks on my character,” Dylan explained with a curled lip.

“You’re telling me the billionaire playboy image of Dylan The Casanova Easton will be laid to rest? Truly,” Avery teased. “What will the tabloids do for fodder?”

“Follow Trey more, I guess.”

Avery gave him a cut-the-shit look. “Two nights ago, I watched you enter Level 69.” They all had keys to Drake’s exclusive club, which was buried within the tower in a shroud of secrecy.

“I heard you were there, too, embarrassing Marla.”

“I’m not in a committed relationship,” Avery countered. Though he would change his relationship status very soon.

“Well, after the sultry redheaded Payton distracted me and Caroline stormed out of my life, my dick was really bothering me that night.” Dylan crossed his arms over his chest. “My things are being moved from the penthouse as we speak.”

“You’re leaving your penthouse. How much did that place you back, fifteen mil? Good luck flipping it.”

“Caroline picked the place out, and it is as cold and lifeless as…never mind,” Dylan said pointedly, his frustration lining his face. “So long as you’ll have me back in the capacity we shared, I’d like to look for a house on the water. Find one lover to share and have her move in with us, like a family. I was even thinking of taking father’s old house on Coconut Palm, what do you think?”

There was only one woman for Avery: Payton Calloway. Now that Dylan was crawling back, Avery was afraid he would lose Payton before he had a chance in cementing their relationship. “You really want a house.” Something Avery wanted for years, but Dylan refused, and they’d lived in the private, Easton family quarters at their various hotels, mostly New York.

“I want everything I denied myself, everything I denied you,” his confession genuine. “If we moved to Coconut Palm, the property allows for horses. Kids love horses. Hell, even after all these years, the stables are still superb when compared to the modern convenience found on neighboring properties.” He shook his head in wonderment. “No one knew how to build structures like Dad. God, I miss him.”

“Speaking of structures,” Drake Easton interrupted, bolting through without so much as a knock. His hair as black as Avery’s, his height also six-four, but he was a bit thicker in the shoulders. Those who never kept up with Easton history often considered Drake as Avery’s biological brother. When they shared no blood between them. “When are you scheduling demolition on that damned firehouse?” Flames of greed leapt from his Drake’s amber eyes. “I have a golf course to build.”

Avery sighed wearily. “Good morning to you, asshole. Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit?”

Trey was right behind him, a scowl on his face when he adjusted his long cane and sat on the edge of Avery’s desk. His chestnut-colored hair fashioned in perfectly tousled brush cut, his long thick body imposing, but his tourmaline eyes had long clouded with pain and the day had just begun. “Since when do you not jump the gun?”

“I’m tired, Trey,”

“You’re never tired.”

“I’m getting old.”

“You’re twenty-nine.”

“I arrived home two weeks ago,” he complained, shifting in his seat. He had to find a way to help Payton with her business, and the first step in that would be calling off the Easton wolves. “I’m adjusting to the new office, okay? Takes time to grease the gears with new staff.”

“I may be half blind,” said Trey, plopping down files next to the ones Avery hadn’t looked at yet, “but don’t insult me, when I know you so well. It’s more than that. Maybe it’s memories of this place, even I can see that you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Trey had no idea.  “I’ll work late until I catch up,” Avery evaded, turning the subject entirely to work. “Everyone in this company knows I’m not a slacker. Your assistant can send over anything needing my approval.”

“It’s all here,” Trey said, inclining his head at Avery’s desk.

Drake waved his hand over three stacks of files neatly placed on Avery’s desk. “Today’s worth…yesterday’s worth,” then tapping his fingertips on the top file, he added, “first three are priority. Fourth down regards the firehouse; the rest can wait until tomorrow.”

The top three looked like two days worth of reading. The fourth, regarding Payton, he would manage to stall indefinitely. “Fine, consider it done.” He waved his hands in a shooing gesture. “Run along to your respective throne rooms. I don’t need either of you riding my ass all day.”