CHAPTER 15
Michael and Griffin didn’t linger long at Sin Tax after Nora ran off to do whatever it was she did—Michael still wasn’t quite sure. Together he and Griffin watched the rest of the pony show. When it ended, Michael leaned forward in anticipation of the next act but froze when he felt fingers on the back of his neck.
Every muscle in his body tensed, every nerve tingled as Michael slowly turned his head to face Griffin, who watched him with hooded eyes.
“Let’s go.” Griffin gave Michael’s neck a gentle squeeze and Michael had to concentrate extremely hard not to enjoy it as much as his body wanted to. “Our bird’s here.”
Michael nodded slowly, not wanting to dislodge Griffin’s hand. But sadly Griffin left the booth and took his hand with him. Michael followed closely behind as they made their way through the crowded club toward the back exit. So intent on watching Griffin walk, Michael didn’t notice the foot in his path until he’d accidentally kicked it.
Spinning around to apologize, Michael came face-to-face with a pale and handsome man in his mid-twenties with curling blond hair and smiling, empty eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Michael stammered as the man took a step forward.
“I’m not.” The man looked Michael up and down. “What’s your name?”
“Um…” Michael looked around for Griffin but had seemingly lost him in the crowd. “Michael. I need—”
“Here, Michael,” the man said, pulling a chair out with his foot. “You kicked my leg and scuffed my shoe. The least you can do to make it up to me is to sit down and have a drink with me. Then we’ll talk about the most you can do to make it up to me.”
Michael’s heart raced. Where the hell had Griffin gone?
“I can’t. I have to find—”
“You can. You should.” The man smiled. “You will.”
“He won’t.”
Michael heaved a sigh of relief as Griffin appeared at his shoulder.
The young man’s eyes lit up in recognition.
“Griffin Fiske…what the hell are you doing here?” the blond man said, giving Griffin a wide and obviously fake smile. “Shouldn’t you be sucking Kingsley Edge’s cock?”
“I get Friday nights off,” Griffin said.
“I get every night off. No, wait. I get off every night. That was it. So you’re sort of interrupting here, Griff. I was making a new friend.”
“Your new friend is my old friend, Jackal.” Griffin edged in closer to Michael.
“Can’t we all be friends?”
Griffin smiled. “No. We’re leaving.”
“You’re leaving. He’s staying. He’s my date.” Jackal grinned and reached out as if to pat Michael’s face. Griffin’s hand snaked out and grasped Jackal’s wrist with such a display of lightning speed that Michael flinched.
“Don’t touch my property, Jack. Not with any part of you that you wanna keep.”
Michael could only stare at Jackal’s fingers hanging impotently in the air inches from his face, Griffin’s hand clasped around his wrist in a viselike grip. Even in the low light of the club Michael could discern the barely concealed pain on Jackal’s face and the color draining from his hand.
Jackal’s jaw clenched.
“Sorry, Griff. Didn’t know he was yours.”
Griffin raised his chin and stared Jackal down. “Well, he is.”
“Honest mistake.”
Nodding, Griffin let Jackal’s hand go. “Of course. Could happen to anyone. Ready, Mick?”
Michael looked at Griffin. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed half the club now watching them. With such attention, Michael knew he should have felt humiliated. But to be publicly called the property of Griffin Fiske, even as a lie, made his heart, and another part of him, swell with pride.
“Yes, sir.”
At the “sir,” Griffin’s eyes widened slightly before he quickly recovered. With an air of casual dominance, Griffin put his hand on Michael’s lower back and steered him away from Jackal toward the back exit.
“Who is that guy?” Michael whispered when they got to the exit.
“Jack Albrect.”
“Ex-friend?”
Griffin didn’t meet his eyes as he opened the back door. “Ex-dealer. Not a fan of me now that I’m not his best customer anymore.”
“Oh.” Michael couldn’t think of anything else to say to that. They took the stairs to the roof, and Michael already missed Griffin’s hand on his lower back. “Well, thanks for getting me away from him. You know…pretending we were together. I mean, we’re together but we’re not…I’m not…”
Griffin turned around and looked at him. He started to say something but the helicopter blades drowned out all sound. In silence, they flew all the way back to Griffin’s estate. Now night, Michael couldn’t see much below them so he merely stared into the darkness and remembered the burning look of fury in Griffin’s eyes when Jackal had tried to touch him and the incredibly comforting sensation of Griffin’s fingers on his back guiding him through the crowd. Don’t touch my property, Jack…. Even Nora’s books and the erotic orders she whispered in his ears at night hadn’t aroused him as much as those five words of Griffin’s had. My property.
If only.
In silence they walked back into the house. Michael wanted to say something more to Griffin but once more couldn’t find the words. Or maybe he had the words but didn’t have the balls to say them.
At the top of the steps they started to go their separate ways. But Griffin stopped him with a word.
“Just a sec, Mick. I forgot I had something for you. It’s in my room.”
“Really? What is it?” Michael nervously followed Griffin into his massive bedroom. Michael had only peeked his head in the room once or twice but never actually crossed the threshold. It seemed like hallowed ground to him. He didn’t feel quite worthy to be in the presence of the bed Griffin slept in, the sheets he fucked on.
“What is it?” Griffin repeated. “Nothing. Just a line to get you in my room.”
Michael froze. Griffin laughed and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Don’t look so terrified. Everybody who comes into my bedroom leaves it smiling. Except for Alfred, but that’s only because he hates being the bottom.”
Michael burst into laughter as they entered Griffin’s room.
“Nora says it’s not for everybody,” Michael said as Griffin started digging through drawers.
“Next butler I hire, I’ll make sure to ask his positions preferences first. You know, it’s a good thing I’ll never have to get a real job. I’m a sexual-harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Nora said she put ‘being sexually harassed’ in her old intern’s job description.”
“She’s a smart lady. Could have been a lawyer but wasn’t enough of a sadist.”
Griffin pulled a bag out from under his bed and handed it to Michael.
Michael stared at it a moment before opening the bag. From it he pulled out something square and wrapped in linen. He pulled off the linen wrap and found a large black book covered in the softest, supplest leather he’d ever touched.
“It’s just a new sketchbook,” Griffin said as he started to unbutton his shirt. “I saw you’d nearly filled up your other one.”
Griffin tossed his shirt over the back of a chair.
So moved by the gift, Michael could barely speak. It took a few seconds to gather the words up.
“Thank you, Griffin,” he whispered. “It’s awesome.”
He’d never had a sketchbook so obviously expensive and high quality.
Shrugging, Griffin unbuckled his belt and pulled it off. The sight of the black leather belt in Griffin’s hands…Griffin shirtless, his usually perfect hair slightly mussed from the flight…Michael suddenly found it nearly impossible to take a full breath. He kept inhaling and forgetting to exhale.
Griffin stood right in front of him. If a bomb had gone off out in the hallway, Michael still wouldn’t have been able to wrench his eyes away from the flat plane of Griffin’s hard stomach.
“I liked ‘sir’ better.” Griffin tilted his head, raised his eyebrow and looked at Michael.
Michael could only blush.
“You’re welcome, Mick.” Griffin stepped away and sat on the edge of his bed, the belt still in his hands.
“It’s really nice. I’ll go, um…draw.” Michael started to back toward the door.
“Have fun…drawing.” Griffin gazed at him without smiling, without irony, without even the hint of amusement on his face or sculpted lips. In a gesture that seemed both mindless and calculated, Griffin pulled the belt taut between his hands.
“Okay…good night, Griff. Thanks again. You know, for everything.”
Griffin finally smiled but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“’Night, Mick.”
Michael turned around and headed for the door. He could do this. He could leave. He was going to leave and go to bed. He was going to keep his mouth shut and not say anything because he always kept his mouth shut and he never said anything. He never asked for what he wanted, never confessed what he needed. That’s how it was and how it would always be.
On the threshold of Griffin’s bedroom, Michael stopped as if he’d run into an invisible wall. Slowly he turned back around.
Griffin still sat on the end of his bed, leather belt in hand, watching him.
“Um…Griffin?”
* * *
Suzanne stirred and sat up straight. What the hell? She rubbed her face and looked around. Dammit, she’d fallen asleep in Father Stearns’s rectory. Søren’s rectory, she reminded herself. If her father had been a rapist, she wouldn’t want any part of his name, either.
Raising her wrist into a patch of moonlight she checked the time—3:53 a.m. Søren hadn’t been kidding when he’d said explaining what Nora Sutherlin was like would take all night. He’d regaled her with story after story of her youth at Sacred Heart…how she’d once asked a nun if she wore holy underwear; how she’d sprained her ankle on a hiking trip after a boy shoved her after she called him a cocksucker for kicking his little sister; how the community service the judge imposed on her for stealing cars changed her from an angry little monster of a teenage girl into a compassionate young woman who wept in his arms when her favorite homeless-shelter resident died of a drug overdose.
“I think I’d like her,” Suzanne had said, smiling into the empty fireplace. “Wonder if she’d like me.”
“Knowing Eleanor and considering you’re investigating me, she’d likely make a pass at you in the first five minutes after meeting you and threaten your life in the next.”
After all their talking, Suzanne came to one single conclusion about Father Stearns—he wasn’t the enemy. She still didn’t know what the possible conflict of interest was and it did concern her. But no way was he a sexual predator. She felt the truth of that in her heart.
Even this stupid situation she found herself in testified to his inherent decency. She’d fallen asleep after hours of talking and one very potent glass of red wine. She’d woken up on his sofa with a blanket over her with her clothes on and her shoes off.
Overhead she heard the squeak of hardwood. She needed to go home, would go home—right now. But she couldn’t just leave without telling him goodbye and thanking him for the blanket. He’d admitted he sometimes had trouble sleeping and usually worked in his upstairs office until dawn. Suzanne folded the blanket, slipped on her shoes and nervously made her way up the narrow staircase to the second floor. At the end of the hallway she saw a pale light spilling onto the floor from an open door. Walking loudly to alert him of her presence, Suzanne came to the end of the hall and inhaled sharply.
Not his office…his bedroom. Next to his four-poster bed, dressed in pristine white linens, Søren stood with his back to her. She saw his Roman collar on the table next to the bed. Watching him, Suzanne froze, unable to move, unable to look away as he slowly unbuttoned his cuffs and let his shirt slide off his arms.
Never in her life had she seen a man with a more exquisite body…every inch of his back rippled with lean muscle, his biceps were ridged with sinewy veins. The long line of his spine was a canyon she wanted to traverse with her lips again and again. She could live and die happy in that broad expanse of smooth skin between his arching shoulder blades. Her hands itched to trace the curve of his rib cage, her tongue ached to taste the nape of his neck. Her fingers tingled, her nipples tightened and liquid heat gathered deep in her stomach.
“Suzanne, are you planning on standing in the hallway all night staring at me? Or are you coming in?”