Chapter Three
My tactical plan didn’t work out well. I was neutralized one step through the front doorway and dropped to the floor.
A first.
A humiliating, infuriating first.
Though why this failed mission surprised me was anyone’s guess. Nothing had gone as I expected it to from the moment I woke to the point I’d charged into the house like a raging bull ready to defend my territory.
In two swift moves the guard posted in the entryway had me flat on my back before I noticed him.
I intended to surprise him; he’d surprised me.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” ordered a heavily accented voice. Not Mexican. Central America, most probably Honduran, though I could tell he’d learned his English in the States.
“Fuck you,” I growled, struggling against the substantial weight atop me and making no progress in breaking free of him.
I felt the cold metal of a gun against my head. “Move again and I’ll shoot you.”
I glared up at him. He would have shot me by now if he’d intended to. “You watch too many fucking movies. And I hate to disappoint you but this isn’t the first time I’ve had a gun pointed to my head. Lower your weapon or before we’re through I’ll make you eat that gun. Count on it.”
Bravado—fuck yeah—but Sun Tzu’s Art of War was right in the need to adapt to shifting circumstances successfully. Pulling his gun was a pussy move that told me all I needed to know about that dipshit and I wasn’t going to let this fucker see me sweat, even if he did have the upper hand for the moment. People didn’t do and say shit like that in real life, only in Hollywood movies. If the man was a serious threat, I’d be dead now.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War again.
Hooah.
He was just fucking with me for fun or ego.
Who was this jerkoff?
His face lifted and he stared in a direction I couldn’t see because his hand clutched at my throat prevented me from turning my head. “Señor, do you know this person?”
From the far side of the hall, laughter echoed between the tile and high ceilings, running my senses like an electrical charge. “Yes, I definitely know this man.”
Oh no.
Fuck to the no.
Adrenaline—of a different kind than hand-to-hand combat infused the veins with—shot through me and I managed to loosen the hand crushing my larynx enough to turn beneath the weight atop me.
My gray eyes locked with amber.
There, leaning in the open doorway, was Leland, sharply dressed in casual Friday clothes on a Monday, blond waves attractively tussled, and a crystal cocktail glass in his hand.
Well, this was nearly as embarrassing as it was maddening. “Are you going to stand there all day watching or are you going to call your goon off, Lee?”
“That’s not the greeting I’d hoped for, baby.” He pouted, attractively—it was insulting. “You can let him up, Emilio. He’s with me.”
Emilio—I made a mental note of the name as he pushed up from my body.
Who the hell was this douche?
I’d never seen him before.
Emilio had the nerve to hold out a hand to me, but I ignored it and sprang to my feet, riveting him in my laser-sharp steely stare and towering over him with all six feet four of me.
“You ever fucking touch me again, I’ll kill you,” I warned. Though his expression didn’t change, his breathing skipped for a second and I knew that had scored a direct hit.
As we stared each other down, I could see on his face we had an understanding.
“Emilio, can you see to our guests?” Lee said into the tense silence pulsing between our three bodies and, when I shifted my gaze from Emilio, I noted two other men standing behind Lee. An all-out thug squad. “You can go, Emilio. I promise I’m safe with him. You can wait for me out on the patio with our guests—”
That phrase twice in one minute made it impossible not to latch onto.
Our guests?
Hello.
When last I’d checked, this was Leland’s and my home, not Lee and Emilio’s, and my anger kicked up. My lover was putting on a flawless sham, playing the gracious host to men who looked little more than criminals, minimizing my role in his life since he hadn’t said word one to introduce me, and I wasn’t sure for whose benefit.
Mine? Sorry, wasn’t working to douse my anger, Lee. Or our bystanders’? The goon three-pack. Well, fuck them.
“—and, Lauren, bring some refreshments for our associates,” Lee finished affably. “We have a lot of business still to get through today.”
I spotted Lauren just outside Leland’s office. “Come, gentlemen,” she said, making a gracious gesture of her arm toward the back courtyard. Footsteps echoed on the tile, the only sound in the foyer, and my riveted stare held Leland’s as we waited for the house to clear.
The backyard doors clicked closed.
Game on.
I crossed my iron arms and lifted my chin. “Why didn’t you tell me last night you were coming home? If I’d had my gun, I might have shot you by mistake.”
Unruffled, he shook his head at me. “I wanted to surprise you. You sounded upset on the phone and here I am. See, I do hear you and do try to be sensitive to your issues.”
“Sensitive, my ass.”
Leland had the nerve to smirk over my poor word choice. “Are you going to kiss me hello or make me beg? I did travel all morning to get here.”
All morning?
No doubt.
First true sentence I’d heard from him in twenty-four hours, since flying from Colombia was a much longer journey than Guadalajara. I had to kill the impulse to pounce on that neat opening into his duplicity and the greater impulse to pounce on his body.
“Who the hell are those fuckers?”
Leland stood in front of me, unmoving, but the way his glance ran my body filled me with zapping need. “No time to explain. Not now. In fact, I can’t even think straight with you staring at me and after seeing you lying flat on your back, wrestling with Emilio.”
My sex-deprived body—fucking traitor—sent my pulse to race though I didn’t want it to. Having Leland near, I was too consumed by the feel of our desire ricocheting around us. Just being in the same room—on a sane day and otherwise, it seemed—was libido igniting for us.
Lee took a few steps closer to me until his face was but a hair from mine and his breath whispered over my hungry lips. “Do you want to waste what little time we have arguing in the foyer or would you rather argue in the bedroom? I’ve got a tight schedule today, but I’ve missed you, baby. I can carve out some minutes of alone time for you.”
Oh no, he didn’t.
He had a lot of explaining to do and I expected a hell of a lot more than a quickie after three weeks of going without. “Who are those men, Lee?”
“You have a one-track mind when you’re upset over something. We’ll talk, but not here. I don’t want to get into it here where they can hear us.”
His arrogance had reached epic proportions if he thought I’d go to bed with him after his deceit, Emilio, and his carve out some minutes of alone time comment.
I lifted my chin, squaring my shoulders. “Fine. Do you want to talk in our room or out front?”
Chuckling, Leland turned on his heels and went down the hallway toward the master suite. Thank fuck he picked door number one because I was just being difficult and would have hated to argue with him in the driveway.
It had been a hellishly long three weeks apart and even as annoyed with him as I was at present, there wasn’t any rule that said once discussion time was over he couldn’t finish banking my irritation in bed.
As I stepped into our room, he turned to smile back at me as though my thoughts were obvious to him, and damn, as I locked the door the tent in my shorts grew.
Between you and me, I thought we fought better when it was a prelude to hard fucking, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, the sight of my naked body always scattered his neurons enough that sometimes I got slivers of honest answers from him. And if he was buzzingly horny—and I could feel that he was—what he told me was more apt to be the truth and nearly complete.
At the bed, Lee stopped with his back toward me, the clank of his belt buckle being undone punctuating the moves of his feet slipping off his shoes. I shrugged out of my shirt, threw it on a nearby chair, and watched as his dark jeans slipped down his narrow hips, then his legs, to be kicked aside. Finally, his shirt dropped to the floor.
The sight of his glorious hot body, naked and ready—I assumed ready since he hadn’t turned to face me yet—momentarily caused me to debate whether to settle our issue before we fucked or after.
Lee’s head turned, and the motion attracted my stare to his lust-filled gaze. “So that’s how you’re going to be after I busted my balls to get home to you. You’re going to be a hardass this morning. Why do you still have your shorts on?”
The omission to remove them was not an error, and damn, my cock got a little harder.
He smirked. “Hurry up, baby. You’re not getting anything from these lips until you put something in them. Logical thought and discussion is impossible until we both take the edge off. Don’t pretend you’re not on fire and ready for some loving. I can feel you even standing across the room.”
That did it, though I told myself his diversion ploy of sex wasn’t going to stop me from questioning him after. The untruths he’d told me and his travel history weren’t issues I could let go for the sake of domestic harmony with my partner. But if he was adamant to fuck before getting into the nitty gritty of his omissions—
I pushed down my shorts, flipped them from my leg, and stood ramrod straight with appendage fully unfurled, and his widening gaze sent even more blood to concentrate in my groin.
I crossed my arms at my chest. “Don’t think I’m letting you out of this room until you explain what’s going on here.”
“What’s going on here…” he repeated. The seductive trail of his words still hummed in the room as he turned to face me and closed the distance between us.
Fuck, some things I couldn’t deny even to myself. I loved arrogant, exasperating, high-handed Leland. After weeks of mano a mano, I was more than in the mood for hand-to-hand combat.
His arm shot out, his palm cupping my nape as his other hand surrounded my cock. His mouth crashed into mine. Even with my suspicions of him, our clashing wills, and our ego battles, we were fucking perfection in this.
My perfect match.
Physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
We moaned into each other’s mouths as I took hold of his bare ass and pulled his body into mine, savoring my flesh rubbing against his anticipation-thick erection.
For better or for worse, I was his man and he was mine, and when we were like this we both knew it.
“Fucking give me your tongue, you tease,” I growled, plunging mine between his lips to claims his as he wrapped his stroking fingers around both our cocks.
“I love you,” Lee responded in a ragged breath between the moves of my mouth attacking him. “Why the fuck can’t you just accept it and move on from resisting us? This is real, all there is, baby. Stop fighting and accept, no matter what, you’re mine. It’s in the way you fit inside me and the way I fit inside you. God made Eve from Adam’s rib. God made Graham for Leland’s hole and mouth.”
My blood boiled to a temperature beyond anything ever registered by a thermometer—pitiful romantic words though those were— and I spun him around and dragged him backward onto the bed.
“Shut up, Lee. My cock. Your mouth. Now.”
“Baby, I thought you’d never ask.”
He eased back to sit on his knees in the space between my legs and his gaze roamed my body in a way that made my cock jump and nearly come. The hold of his tiger eyes transfixed me, but not to the point I couldn’t stoke up his arousal. Slowly, my hand moved to my aching cock, and I gave myself a full stroke from base to tip before I tapped it against my abdomen in a manner I knew drove him mad.
“For a guy who claimed he wanted my cock in his mouth, you’re not doing a damn thing to get it there,” I whispered and his breathing hitched.
My hand stroked his throbbing length this time and his head tilted backward as a rippling shudder rolled his body. “Fuck, Graham.”
“I intend to. Take me in your mouth.”
My balls tightened to a point of pain as, too carefully and with not enough speed, he planted his arms on either side of my hips, slowly moved down my body, and lowered his lips to my twitching erection. I groaned through the tight latch of his mouth tunneling me down to the base.
His tongue taunted my shaft, strumming his trek upward to my crown, and the feel of him, hot and hungry, made my dick weep with urgency to be in him.
Physical overload eradicated suspicion and my problems with Lee, and I surrendered to the anxious want of my body, pumping my hips in time with the rapid plunges of his mouth on my cock.
He laughed, shooting humor vibrations against my near-exploding shaft. Hovering above my length, he murmured, “At least one of you missed me and is happy I’m home. This is definitely much better than the greeting I got in the foyer.”
That comment sent me back to what I was fighting not to think about, and it might have ruined the moment completely if his tongue hadn’t immediately started circling my hole, licking away as though he were starving.
“Stop being annoyed. Relax, baby.” He nudged my legs wider to make more room for his shoulders. “It feels better when you only let yourself focus on what I do to your body.”
Then he let loose fucking me with his tongue and even simple thought was impossible as we both gave over to the greater power of our bodies. He was sweating and shivering with desire, devouring me with expert precision that warned if I rode the pleasure train much farther he’d reduce me to a throbbing, wanting mess that would let him do anything his cock desired to me.
Hell no.
I wasn’t letting him seize the initiative.
Three weeks my body had gone without.
If Leland thought I was letting him in my hole first—
I reached into a drawer, grabbed the lube, and with a turn of my hips, I used my superior weight and size with one hand to get him flat on the bed for me.
God, I’d waited long enough to fuck him.
Foreplay, I sensed, wasn’t needed for either of us to get into the lit zone. Neither of us managed long hitches of abstinence well. We were both rock hard and on fire.
I slicked up my rod and then his hole before I sank a finger inside him, touching his hot button and making him moan. “You want me in you, don’t you, babe?”
I slid in a second finger and his husky groans coming from deep within his chest were my answer. My finger continued to stir against his prostate and I could tell he battled the want of his hips to rise from the sudden pleasure.
Oh no, Leland.
No slow hand today.
I was ready to fuck him.
Hard.
I could tell he was in one of his moods when he wanted to toy with our bodies until we both nearly crawled from our skin. He could draw out foreplay like a virtuoso, but I wasn’t going to have any of that after waiting so long to have him where he belonged.
In our bed.
Waiting for me.
I thumbed his balls while I prepped his entrance with my fingers. His hardened cock begged for attention, as did his eyes with a silent plea for the leisurely play of my lips followed by my deep throat sucking. How he moved to touch himself, savoring his own arousal, betrayed that he wanted me to feed it more. But I wasn’t going to take my time with him. There wasn’t room in my schedule for one of Leland’s seduction hours, letting him take command and do all those delicious things to my body or his, even though it did damn near make me lose my mind when we eventually moved on to the fucking.
But it was a diversion maneuver I’d come to know well in the past year, a means to avoid the conflict awaiting him. Fucking me thoroughly to steer us away from our looming problems was a tactic he used often.
“Do you like that, babe?” And when he didn’t answer, I said it louder. “Tell me you like that, babe, or this cock isn’t going to—”
His lids flew wide and his amber orbs locked on mine. “You better fuck me now or I’m fucking you.”
I teased him a few more times with the plunge and stroke of my digits, then Lee’s grunts were my undoing.
I added more lube to the both of us, positioned myself between his legs, and ran my cock against his slit and then against his hardened length. In instant reaction, Lee’s knees bent and went back against his chest.
“I fucking love you, Graham.” His head lifted from the bed. “I’m on my back for you, baby. Yours to do what you want with. Doesn’t that tell you everything? I can’t stand that you don’t believe we’re everything to me.”
The throb in my cock robbed me of oxygen.
Dominant male begging for dominant male to nail him. Jesus H. Christ, he was my equal in all ways, even in how he gave his body and still held command of my senses.
I ran my hands up his quivering torso and inhaled deeply our scent of sex in the room, and the rightness of this brought home the inescapable truth of Lee’s words.
The anger I hadn’t fully quelled over his deception died inside me. As I sank myself deep into him, I knew he was right.
This was everything.
The rest of our issues were just something we had to work through.
There was no way in hell I was ever walking out on him after having finally found him and known what living was.
As I plunged into him, our grunts a heated chorus in the room as our sweaty bodies danced, we were both breathless and frantic and near blowing our loads.
After easing out of him, I commanded my body to hold back before I rammed myself into him. Leaning down, with my tongue I drank the heady nectar from his skin. His shivering need sent shivers through me.
“Come for me, babe. I want to see you come as I fill you with me,” I ordered, knowing I was on the edge.
Beneath my steady gaze, his hand made rapid work of bringing his cock to orgasm. His jets soon coated his and my flesh.
With the outer curve of his finger, he scooped a taste for me and held it for my lips. My bare cock—monogamy did have its glorious privileges, like skin-to-skin fucking and no more condoms— swelled me to desperate size from the delicious sensation of his tunnel against my unsheathed rod.
He touched his drop of cum to my lips and I latched on to his finger. “Fuck,” I screamed as my spunk exploded from my body.
Drained and panting, I pulled out of him, collapsing down atop him, and reveled in the feel of his limbs encircling me.
His lips moved in my hair. “Three weeks. We can’t be apart that long. Not ever again. Do you want to fight now, baby? Or do you want to fuck me again?”