Loverman Page 10

  Finally, Maxine said, “You’d really do it, wouldn’t you? Ruin my daughter. Ruin your father. Just to deny me my rightful share. Don’t pretend it’s anything else. It never is. It’s always the money, the fucking, fucking money. No wonder Richard despised you.”

  The challenge to the will had been dropped. But Charles had understood that he’d made a terrible enemy in her. One misstep, one error, and she’d do her best to ruin him. He’d cost her many millions.

  He’d been aware, later, when he’d begun to explore his preferences, begun to find the truth of himself in certain very elite, very private clubs, that if Maxine ever learnt of it, could gain any evidence of it, of what he’d permitted in those places, that she’d do her best to throw it into the world—or at least the circles that he worked and moved in.

  Nobody gave a damn that he was gay. But some of the games he’d played, he’d prefer to keep within the walls of those establishments.

  Which was exactly why when Stephen had interrupted that burglary, Charles had been riven by guilt.

  His gut had told him that the target had never been Stephen, but himself. Learning that Maxine’s financial situation had imploded only made that a certainty.

  Dear god.

  Now, hungry for Kemp’s brand of oblivion, Charles allowed himself to be pushed down onto one of the huge, wrecked couches. For a split second, he flashed on Kemp’s absentee parent walking into the place that morning. It had been an ugly reunion. Being confronted by her after all these years had been an almost physical shock.

  If it had felt like that for him, what had it felt like for Kemp?

  Not that the man was about to confide any secrets. Standing over him, eyes still smudged dark by the remains of last night’s eyeliner, Kemp threw him a smutty wink and pulled off the loose black tank he wore. And then he was leaning over him like the living embodiment of sin itself, pale skin gliding silkily over his ribs as he ran a hand up over Charles’ chest, nails grazing his nipples, inky, bladelike swathes of hair tumbling over his face as he dragged at Charles’ shirt, a seam tearing as he pulled it free.

  “That was a Ralph Lauren.” The protest was automatic. He loved Kemp rough like this.

  It wiped away the last ugliness of that morning’s confrontation.

  Kemp grinned. The grapefruit scent of Charles’ own shampoo clung to him, seemed to fill the space between them, and Charles felt a surge of possessive pleasure. Mine. Kemp branded with Charles’ own scent.

  Good.

  Black strands of hair lashed his skin as his musician ran his tongue from one nipple to the other, grazed one of the nubs with his teeth. Charles arched, moaning under him, fisting that black, silken hair, and Kemp took that moan with a kiss, suddenly devouring, eating at his mouth, before he shifted, dragged the chinos off him, hooking his roughened fingers in his briefs and peeling them off.

  Charles’ cock—almost painfully hard, thick and straining, the darker blond curls at its base trimmed—thumped back against his belly, and he tried to breathe, shifting under Kemp’s narrow stare.

  “Fuck, you’re beautiful.” The words were gritted, almost distracted. A deep flush ran up Kemp’s throat, and that stare shifted down Charles’ body as he grasped his knee and slowly and deliberately pushed him open, focus sliding from Charles’ guiche piercings to his hole.

  Under that heat, his balls were drawn up tight. His cock throbbed. Kemp was devouring the sight. Aching for more, Charles opened himself even further to that abandoned stare and was rewarded when Kemp’s teeth caught hard at his lower lip and gaze still fixed on him, he got to his feet, stripping off his trackpants. Naked, Kemp stroked himself, and Charles watched him for a moment in fascination, mute, aching for that thick, rigid cock, the head deeply flushed, wet and silky. Abruptly, he pushed Kemp’s hand away, replaced it with his own as he moved to blow him.

  As Charles’ tongue lapped delicately into the slit, swiping up the taste of him, he heard a fuck yes fuck torn out of Kemp’s throat.

  His eyes went up to meet Kemp’s as he took in his length.

  “You look even more beautiful like that,” Kemp bit out. His voice was so rough, whiskey and smoke and gravel. “Mouth full of my cock. Yes, yes. Just like that—”

  Kemp grunted as he fucked Charles’ mouth, his willing throat, and the long fingers that drove against his scalp and held him captive grounded him to this room, this moment, this man in exactly the way he needed. Kemp had grown impossibly hard, saliva slipping down Charles’ chin, when he halted.

  “Christ,” he said. “What it does to me, seeing you like this.”

  Kemp’s thumb ran over the lips stretched taut around his own flesh. He thumbed the spit from Charles’ chin, drew away, and replaced his cock with his fingers, allowing Charles to suckle on them.

  Charles’ eyes closed against the intensity of Kemp’s. He suckled hard on that salted skin and reached out, dug his fingers into Kemp’s arse.

  “This can’t keep going on,” Kemp muttered, almost abstracted. “All she sees with us together is dollar signs. And we’re not exactly the healthiest choices for each other.”

  When had Kemp ever been interested in healthy choices, emotional or otherwise?

  He remembered Palm Beach. Kemp so young, himself so young, but watching Kemp’s sullen disdain and contempt for his father and being fascinated by it. His father terrified people. His father broke people. Not Kemp. Kemp had been scruffy and rebellious and his attitude had all but screamed a giant Fuck You.

  Kemp hadn’t cared about the Durant fortune. Maybe he’d been the only one, except for Charles, who hadn’t. It had amazed Charles because Richard Durant’s first rule had been that everyone had a price.

  Not Kemp. At least not dollars. No, Kemp’s price revolved around family.

  But oh, how that endless Fuck You had fascinated Charles. Because maybe, if he watched hard enough, maybe he could learn how to do that himself.

  He’d never exactly managed it.

  He bit at Kemp’s fingers and tumbled him down onto the couch beside him. Kemp burst out laughing, and that was so rare and wonderful, and they met in a tangle of limbs and clashing teeth as they kissed hard. Maybe it was that separation. The time he’d spent in that hotel in the appropriately named Eden. His unlikely sanctuary by the sea.

  He’d spent his time in that neat little room thinking. His thoughts had revolved around the past, around Palm Beach and Kemp and Viva and betrayal, and later, around the boarding school he’d been shuttled to because his guardians hadn’t known what else to do with him. By then his mother’s family, such as they were, had scattered overseas. There had only been his father’s legal team and a cousin of his father. It had left Charles to be shuttled about as those adults saw fit. What do you do with the fourteen-year-old orphaned son of a man richer than god?

  Send him away, out of public sight. It had been a rare mercy. And then he’d found out Kemp would be sent to board as well, and after that… well, it had saved him, as little as Kemp might realise that.

  “Chaz, where have you gone?” Kemp drawled in that low-pitched voice, all smoke and sex, and Charles looked up to find that laser focus of concentration fixed on him.

  It was incredibly erotic.

  Kemp’s fingers cupped his balls, slid lower, played for a moment with the rings piercing his flesh before, still slick with his spit, he ran them over Charles’ hole. Sensation raked through him. Kemp smiled against his mouth. “I love it,” he murmured. “You, so cool, losing yourself in this. Pity we couldn’t take this a little more public. That’s the thing you like the most, isn’t it, Chaz?”

  The clubs he’d been amused to try and to shock Kemp with.

  But yes, public… That rooftop patio above the gallery. He’d gripped the edge of the parapet, staring down into the street. People spilling out of the gallery onto the sidewalk below.

  The hum of their conversation, the scent of their cigarettes drifting up.

  Kemp kneeling behind him, unseen, fingers
bruising as he rimmed him. His tongue circling that sensitive flesh, thumbs holding him open as his tongue finally drove inside, hot and wet and decadent before Kemp totally unleashed himself on him.

  Trying not to scream for their unwitting audience below. Dear god, yes—

  A hot shudder of remembered reaction went through him.

  Eyes fixed on his now, Kemp sucked on his own fingers, slid them down between their bodies to rub them over Charles’ hole again, teasing him until he was arching his hips up. “Please,” Charles gritted. “Please. I want you in me.”

  “Mmm.” Kemp slowly pushed one finger inside, eyes glittering at Charles’ betraying gasp. He played with him for a moment longer, Charles pushing back on his finger. Saliva made terrible lube, but right at that moment, Charles wanted more, more fingers, fingers finding that place inside him, Kemp’s cock stretching him, filling him, and he didn’t damn well care about the burn. Kemp grinned and caught Charles’ lower lip between his white teeth before he drew away.

  He’d almost reached the stairs before Charles said, “My overnight bag. I left it by the table.”

  By the time Kemp had found the bag and rummaged through it for supplies, Charles was slowly, deliberately stroking himself, the precum running down his hard prick slicking the glide. Kemp stood by the couch, watching him while he tore open a condom pack.

  “Christ, that’s hot.” Kemp’s voice was pure gravel. “Fuck, harder, yeah, that’s it—” Charles shifted, putting on a show for the man watching him as he worked his slippery flesh. Abruptly, Kemp bit out, “Get over the back of the couch. I wanna fuck you.”

  He’d barely scrambled into position before Kemp ran a possessive hand over his arse. Lube was smoothed over his hole. Slicked inside him. One finger, a second slid inside him. Scissored him open. Brushed over that knot of nerves inside until sparks lit up behind Charles’ eyes and he cried out, burying his face against the cushions.

  “Good?” Kemp ground out. His lean body was bowed over Charles’ broader, more muscular one, and his lips brushed Charles’ ear. He felt the curve of Kemp’s lips in response to his shudder of reaction. “Good. I want to give you pleasure, Chaz. In fact, all I want is to hear you scream.”

  “Then don’t stop—” The head of Kemp’s cock replaced those fingers, broad and blunt, demanding entry, and without a word, Charles pushed back hungrily. The handful of days since they’d last been together felt an eternity.

  Kemp drove inside him with that combination of lust and patience that had devastated him from that first fuck. It was cruelly slow. Finally seated, he paused, panting, pubes wiry against Charles’ skin, breath hot against Charles’ nape, fingers gripping his hips hard enough to leave bruises as he waited for Charles’ body to adjust to his invasion.

  Charles didn’t want him to wait. He didn’t care if he was brutal. He hungered for those bruises.

  God, where were they headed with this? This was no game. It was compulsive and dark and dangerous, and there was far too much history between them. And he couldn’t even begin to open up to Kemp about just what he knew.

  “Now?” It was a husk of sound against his ear.

  He didn’t wait. The answer didn’t matter. Kemp began to fuck him hard. The snap of his hips was wonderful. Oblivion. It was a wall they were both racing towards. And then he changed the angle and with every thrust drove his thick cock over Charles’ prostate. Charles moaned, face buried, suffocating in the best way, and came before he’d even touched himself, in a blinding rush that finally gave him the silence he needed. That silence, that deep velvet calm, was Kemp’s special gift to him. It always had been.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I want you to pull apart the last ten years of Maxine Durant’s life. Every move she’s made, every associate of hers, past, present, new, since my father’s death. I want it all—the status of her current husband, exactly what their domestic arrangements now are, were, ever were, all of it. And then a full financial breakdown on them both, do you understand?”

  Charles sat back in the black leather-and-chrome chair and looked across the mid-century beech desk at his head of security, Edward Williams. Behind the man in the expensive suit, the large window afforded a mundane grey view of Sydney’s central business district. They were five floors up, in a discreet, tastefully furnished office in one of the older landmark buildings in this block of the city.

  It was just what Charles liked. At least in those working for him. Nothing ostentatious, just the classics, with a little spice added. And total discretion and reliability. He’d once debated switching firms—they had been his father’s security provider of choice—but since any issue he had was not with them, and since their work had always been sterling, he’d kept them on. Plus, a large amount of any groundwork had already been done through their years of service. It gave their relationship, such as it was, a useful shorthand. No explanations, no irritating backstory was required to smooth their rare interactions.

  He hadn’t seen the man across the desk from him in many months, but he was in Charles’ permanent employ. Usually Williams—and his associates—kept Charles’ life cleared of any potential hazards, both virtual and physical. He preferred contact via email or phone when required. Face-to-face contact only when essential.

  This was different. Factors had changed.

  With the reappearance of Maxine, Kemp was drawing back, and that should not have been a surprise.

  Yes, Maxine wanted Charles’ inheritance—as much of it as she could claw her way.

  Having Kemp in his life made Charles vulnerable to such thinking. Kemp had not been wrong, but he’d been wrong if he thought that would drive Charles away.

  And he’d been very, very wrong if he thought that having Charles in his life endangered that formidable, driven creature of a sister.

  Charles did not want to hurt Viva.

  No, like Kemp, if for totally different reasons, he wanted to protect her. Shield her. He knew better than most just what she was capable of. Better than the man sitting before him ever would.

  His head of security looked at the screen angled to one side. “At your father’s instruction, we had been observing Mrs. Durant from the moment she entered his life. That surveillance only ceased with his death. Would you like me to forward you a copy of those observations or brief you on them now? Along with actioning your current request, of course.”

  Charles drummed his fingertips on the arm of his chair. Did he want this? Any information on his one-time stepmother would doubtless contain information on her son and daughter.

  Could he do that to Kemp? Invade his privacy in such a manner? Or indeed, Viva’s, as much as she loathed him. The thought stung, as it always had, although he’d always told himself he didn’t care.

  He cared. He liked Viva despite her sharp tongue and her own explicit dislike of him. He was that much of a fool. He actually admired her, her talent, her utter refusal to be broken, and her determination to never be less than brilliant. Perhaps he’d inherited it, the caring gene, from his mother, the way Kemp’s lazy charisma was a reflection of Maxine’s ability to own a room. Dear god.

  He studied the tough, ex-military, fortyish man across the desk. Dressed in that discreetly pinstriped suit, pepper-and-salt hair cropped short, the man was a sexy daddy, if that was what you were into.

  Charles’ tastes ran more to sullen rock stars in ripped jeans. It had complicated his life in more ways than he cared to consider. He shook his head. “No. Prepare me a copy of the earlier information, certainly, but don’t forward it unless I request it. Frankly, I’m far more interested in how the lady’s life has progressed since my father.”

  “It would have been a simple matter to have continued the surveillance discreetly, in a much more basic form, than ending it a decade ago. It could have headed off any surprises.”

  It was a gentle rebuke. Charles’ stare iced any further comment. “As I recall, that was suggested at the time. At my request it was vetoed, and I was supported
in that decision.” He remembered that discussion. He’d been in his mid-teens, and his advisors had quickly learnt any condescension wouldn’t play. Now he rose to his feet and buttoned his own suit jacket, armour against the day. “Just do as I ask and collect that information. You have my number. Use it the minute you find anything of particular interest. Otherwise, send me through the usual updates.”

  The man nodded and came around the desk to shake his hand and see him out of the office.

  Charles restrained his sigh. At moments like this he was reminded of just how thoroughly he was still a part of his father’s world, still constrained by the fortune, status, and responsibilities that formed a part of his birthright.

  As the elevator doors closed before him, cutting off his view of his security chief and closing him in with a reflection of himself in the darkly mirrored walls, he pondered the twin guiding factors in his life: that obscene amount of money and the one-time stepbrother who’d never given a fuck about it.

  Fool or not, he’d give anything to rid himself of one and give anything to keep the other.

  The question stood: Was he insane to think that either option was possible?

  As he drove his black Lexus SUV through the city streets, Charles drummed his fingers on the leather-bound steering wheel. The meeting had left him feeling unsettled. He’d known it would. He had an innate dislike of rummaging through others’ lives. Unleashing his security team once more upon Maxine Durant-Carreton—as she now was—was most certainly going to result in a massive invasion of her privacy.

  It felt like a hypocrisy. Protective of his own secrets, hungry for such anonymity as he could snatch, while at the same time authorising her life to be torn apart, analysed, and reduced to a fat file.

  He rolled his shoulders in the perfectly fitted jacket of his Zegna suit. She’d given him no choice.