CHAPTER FOUR
Derek
The session with Katie had been incredible. We’d tasted her insides, confirming that she was a virgin, and it was fucking awesome. So it was only natural to enjoy the victory.
I turned to Mason.
“She’s perfect.”
But my friend had a dark look on his face.
“Yeah, pretty good,” he grunted.
I sat down in my desk chair, swiveling to face him. The motherfucker was gorgeous as always. A classic tall, dark and handsome, Mason had all the girls in college salivating over him, dying to get a piece of the local prince. And he’d taken, oh yeah, it’s not like Mace is some shy virgin. He’d cut a swath through the female population at State, developing a reputation as a playboy, but somehow, it’d never stuck. Despite everything, he’s always come off as trustworthy and dependable, a guy you’d want to manage your money.
And he’s done a good job. We’ve been at Major Enterprises for twenty years now, starting as the low men on the totem pole. Well, Mace was a little better, he was always the son and heir, so he began as a junior accountant. For me, it wasn’t so smooth. With my shitty grades and questionable work ethic, it was the mailroom for me at first. Oh yeah, no one’s ever thought Derek Smith was gonna amount to anything, I was the “stupid one” to Mace’s “smart.”
But lo and behold, my aggressive, commandeering ways are a good foil to Mace’s calm, responsible personality. And we rose slowly within the corporation, moving up the ladder until we got to where we are today. He’s the CEO and I’m the President of this outfit, the conglomerate hums because of the long hours we put in, the blood, sweat and tears that roll down our faces and off our backs.
But despite everything, my buddy’s always been off. I don’t get it sometimes. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’s got a bod to die for, women swooning when he enters the room. Sure, there’s this thing about his grandfather’s will, but still. We’re well on our way to finding him a fiancee, it’s no big deal.
So I swiveled my chair again, brows raised.
“Just pretty good?” I asked dryly. “We just kidnapped a girl and sucked her snatch, and it’s just pretty good?”
He grunted again before seating himself on the couch in my office.
“It’s fine,” he said with a frustrated twist of his head, “It’s just that ….”
“Just what?” I asked smoothly. “What, you didn’t get off? You know we said we weren’t gonna do that the first time around, we were gonna give her some space.” If by space, you mean tying up a pretty girl and licking her pussy, then yeah, the plan had gone perfect. “Why are you upset?”
Mace shook his head, frustrated.
“It’s not that I’m upset,” he ground out. “I dunno, it’s just that …”
I shook my head exasperatedly.
“Shit dude, you have everything. Cars, women, you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. What’s holding you up? Seriously, chill, just chill. I know there’s your grandfather’s will, but we’ll figure it out. We already have it partly figured out, Katie’s perfect.”
“No,” he shook his head again, still frustrated. “No.”
But I didn’t want to hear it. Some dudes just don’t get it sometimes. You could hand them a golden ticket, a free ride to paradise, and they still wouldn’t be happy. So instead, I swiveled my monitor towards him, ready to use a tried and true tactic.
“Look dude,” I said. “How about some porn? You seem really riled up and some good porn will help you settle down. It always does for me,” I said with a smirk, “and besides, we didn’t get off in there. The plan and all that.”
I expected my buddy to jump up and storm out, slamming the door. After all, he’s the good one, the guy who treats girls nice. I’m the one who’s always banging two women at once, leaving used condoms around, and other such nasty shit. So I thought Mace was gonna leave in a huff.
But instead, he nodded slowly.
“Okay,” he growled low in his throat. “Let’s see what there is.”
I goggled a bit before snapping my mouth shut. Seriously? He was gonna go for it? Dude was always telling me what a mofo I was, watching this stuff at work, using a company computer no less. But okay, fine. If he wanted to, then I was game.
“Alright,” I said, flicking to my go-to site. “Let’s see what we have today. Hmmm, MILFs, double penetration, whatever you want, man. What do you feel like? What’s on your menu?”
And coming to stand behind me, the big man put his hand over mine on the mouse. Shit, that was weird, but it felt strangely okay too. Did my friend even know what he was doing? I shot a quick look at him from the corner of my eye, but Mace’s face was intent on the screen, concentrating hard.
“Nah, nah, nah,” he said, scrolling through a couple different channels.
“Slow down,” I protested laughingly. “I could barely even see the girls on that page, you whizzed by so fast.”
But Mace was still intently flipping through different kinks, blue eyes gleaming. And suddenly, he stopped. And once I saw what he was looking at, I stopped too. Because he was on a page for gay dudes, where guys kissed passionately before getting down.
“Um,” I said, trying to joke. “I think you’re on the wrong tube. This is for gay guys.”
My friend was silent behind me, his hand suddenly falling away.
“Mace,” I drawled again. “Any channel. Seriously, any channel, but this is for dudes, not for us.”
He turned away, the expression on his face tortured. And suddenly, the big man swung back to face me, blue eyes blazing.
“This is what I want,” he ground out, devouring my frame. “This is what I want.”
And suddenly, I realized why my friend had been unhappy all these years. Because he was closeted. He’d been sating himself on woman after woman, in fact he’d just licked the juices from a strange female fifteen minutes ago. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more, and right now, he was telling me that that “more” was me.
I sat back, meeting his gaze fully. Because sure, I’ve had thoughts. What human being doesn’t? When you’re presented with a specimen as fine as Mason Major, you acknowledge that the Lord has been kind. You acknowledge that there is a god, that this six foot four slab was a gift from Heaven. So I stared back at him questioningly.
“This is about something else, isn’t it?” I asked slowly.
My friend looked away, the muscle in his jaw tight, big body strained. But then he turned back to me, eyes blazing.
“Derek, shit, I don’t know what to say,” he said in a low growl.
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Can I ask you to be more specific?” I drawled. “There’s been a lot going on lately. I mean, we just tied up a girl and tasted her, she’s still in your office.”
That was true. We’d undone Katie’s cuffs, letting her into the private en suite, affording her a hot shower and a place to clean up. But still, what we’d done was pretty rancid, pretty fucking ballsy.
That dark head shook furiously again.
“It’s that, but it’s also,” he rasped, the look on his face troubled and torn. So I stepped out of character, taking a big, warm hand in my own.
“Tell me,” I rumbled, expression calm. “Tell me what it is.”
Mason didn’t answer for a moment, just staring at our entwined fingers. Even I admit, it looked a little weird, both our palms huge, square, the fingers interlocked. But the thing is there was something right about it too. There was something that was curiously fitting about us linking physically, about reaching out and touching one another. Sure, guy code was being broken, men aren’t supposed to touch one another, especially not in the way we were doing now. But it felt right and looked right, so what was wrong with that?
Mason merely stared more, unable to speak, so I tried again.
“What is it?” I rumbled, linking our fingers more tightly. “What is it?”
And he jerked his hand away suddenly, stalking across the room to drop into a couch, that big frame folding in on itself.
“I can’t, I can’t,” he rumbled, burying his face in his hands. “I can’t.”
This was out of character. My buddy isn’t outwardly aggressive most times, that’s true, but at the same time, he isn’t a coward either. He’s not the type of guy who crumbles in defeat in the face of opposition, so I was surprised to see him in such despair.
“Yo, you okay?” I asked, getting up and sitting next to him on the sofa. “What is it? We’ve done some fucked up shit, that’s for sure, but this isn’t more fucked up than the time we tied up Shirley Magnussen back in college.” Oh yeah, Mason and I have done this before, we’ve shared women, we’ve brought girls to screaming orgasm again and again, begging us for more. The difference was that this time, Katie hadn’t exactly asked for it. We hadn’t checked with her first and gotten her okay, but it’d be fine. Soon enough, the brunette would be begging us for more, her consent just a matter of time.
“Come on,” I tried again, reaching for his hand. “We’re in this together,” I soothed, “things will be fine.”
But this time Mason jerked his hand away, refusing to look at me before swinging around, that bright blue gaze fixing me in place.
“That’s the thing,” he said, shaking his head, an alpha in the depths of confusion. “You’re always with me, Derek. Always.”
I looked at him puzzled.
“I thought you wanted it that way. You know, bros before hos and all that. I thought you wanted my help,” I said slowly.
Mason let out a choked laugh then.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he rasped, shaking his head again. “You really don’t get it.”
I stared at him.
“What?” I asked. “What?”
Mason wouldn’t look at me again, merely staring at the ground.
“The thing is,” he began slowly, “that you’ve always been with me Derek. Through the good and bad.”
“Exactly,” I grunted impatiently. “That’s what buddies are for. Always. You’re the CEO and I’m the president. Your problems are mine, my problems are yours, we’ll get through things together. What, you don’t want that? We’re a team, bro, a team.”
The dark man stared at the floor even harder this time before looking up at me with a soul-searching gaze.
“No, I want that,” he said in a hoarse whisper, so quiet I could barely hear. “I want it maybe too much.”
I cocked my head.
“You got it!” I retorted. “When have I ever let you down? I took the fall for cheating in English years ago, I covered up that mistake in accounting years ago. So what’s the problem? Seriously, be a little more grateful.”
It was clear where this is going, but I wanted to hear the words from my friend, wanted to hear him spell out his needs. And this time, Mason fixed me with a hard look before taking a deep breath.
“That’s the thing Derek,” he said again in a whisper, the words raspy in his chest. “I need you too much.”
“What,” I demanded, still on a roll. “You want to bring someone else in on our hedonistic plans? On that mad shit we do? Is that it? You want a third musketeer?”
He shook his head, this time growling with repressed frustration and rage.
“Naw, it’s not that,” he ground out. “It’s that I want there to be more, Derek. I want there to be more. More of this,” he said, grasping my hand again, clutching my fist so tight that my knuckles cracked. “More of us, more together, more … physical.”
That made me sit back. Oh yeah, this was for real. I mean, I’ve entertained thoughts of a relationship with my best buddy, for sure. We’re forty-five year old men who’ve never married, and my closest, most important connection is with him, and has been for decades. So yeah, I’ve thought about being with Mason. But I always pushed it out of my mind because both he and I kept up reputations as womanizing assholes, as guys who use pussy and then discard it, leaving a trail of destruction in our wake. So it was eye-opening to hear this now, although, in my heart of hearts, not altogether unexpected.
“So let me get this right,” I growled, voice low, staring at our hands. “You want something more than being asshole jerks? Something more than acting like douches all day. Are you sure?”
Mason looked away, tortured, unable to meet my eye.
“I’ve been thinking about it for years,” he admitted, the words barely escaping his throat. “It’s been going on for years.”
I laughed hoarsely.
“All while you were dating Priscilla the slut?” I asked. “I thought you almost put a ring on her finger.”
Priscilla was a gold-digger of the worst kind, a redheaded siren who was clearly only after money. For a while there, I’d been really freaked out, afraid my buddy was going to throw away his life on a bloodsucking vamp. But at the last minute, Mason broke it off, giving her the boot for good. The woman wasn’t happy, clearly, but a parting gift of fifty thou in cash cash had helped her leave quietly.
“All through Priscilla,” he admitted hoarsely, still looking down at our hands. “All through Priscilla, I couldn’t close the deal because of you.”
I stared at him long and hard.
“And what about in college?” I asked. “What about those years where we shared a room, bringing girls home to fuck?”
The dark man nodded slowly.
“During that time too,” he admitted. “All that while too. I dunno Derek, you’ve always been there. You’ve always been there for me, we’ve always been a team. I’m not sure when these feelings started,” he choked, “but suddenly I realized something was fucked up. Because I wanted more than just business, more than just a good time. I wanted there to be something … I dunno,” he ground out again.
But I wasn’t letting him off so easy.
“You wanted there to be something real,” I said with finality. “You want a relationship, for us to be a couple.”
The words were shocking leaving my lips, but it didn’t sound so wrong either. In fact, it kinda made sense. Mason and I know each other better than any two people, I know his shit and he knows mine, for better or worse, the ups and downs have come again and again through the years. And maybe that was it. For better or worse, we’ve had each other’s backs, seeing one another through good times and bad. I hadn’t thought of it exactly in terms in terms of a lovey dovey relationship, but the more I thought of it, the more it was right. So taking this next step wasn’t so crazy, it wasn’t like we were two strangers meeting in the night.
But still, I didn’t want to rush into things. I didn’t want to fuck up something good, something that had worked for decades so I gripped his hand even tighter.
“Let me think about it okay?” I rasped. “This is new, I need some time to process.”
The dark man jerked his hand away.
“Never mind,” he growled, staring at the floor again, shoulders hunched. “Forget it. Pretend I never said anything.”
I stared at him for a moment. I hadn’t said no, I hadn’t said, “Eew, fuck that, you’re disgusting.” I’d just asked for some time. So taking a deep breath, I reached for his hand again.
“Listen,” I said. “We’re in a weird situation, we both need some time to process what’s going on.”
Mason yanked his hand away again.
“We’re in a fucked-up place yes,” he rasped. “I need a fake fiancee. I need to lie, for crying out loud, in order to keep this place going, and so we’ve kidnapped a woman to marry. But it’s doubly, triply more complicated because at the same time, I’ve got the hots for you,” he said accusingly. “A man,” he growled, shaking his head like this was the worst news in the world. “A fucking man.”
I was silent for a moment. It was true, this was a twisted situation, but hey, we’ve always come out of these things alive. Hell, we’d walked the wilds and come out as CEO and President of a business conglomerate, ducking all sorts of hazards. So why couldn’t we avoid lighting again? Why was this time different?
I leaned back in my chair, fixing him with a cool stare.
“Listen,” I said soothingly. “I didn’t say that this was gonna be easy. But I also don’t think it’s impossible. Yeah, you need to pretend to be engaged for a while. And on top of all that, we have this,” I said, gesturing to the air between us. “There’s something here that needs to be explored, something real with potential. So it’s a lot to juggle, but that’s the story of our lives. We’re always putting out fires, always managing a dozen things at once. It’ll work out, trust me,” I rumbled.
Mason swung his gaze to me once again, burning with fire and arousal.
“Really?” he said, that low voice almost a growl. “You think it’s gonna work out?” he asked dryly. “Why, are you gay, and I never realized it?”
I chuckled. Mason knows me well, but he doesn’t know me that well.
“Not gay,” I tossed off casually. “But maybe bi. You’re not the first male who’s wanted me.”
My best friend’s eyes almost popped out of his sockets then.
“But you never did anything right?” he rasped, that voice hoarse yet devastatingly intent. “You never did anything.”
I shrugged.
“Maybe I fooled around a little, but no, never anything serious. But never say never,” I drawled with a lazy grin his way. “There’s a time for everything, and maybe that time is now. Who knows?”
The shock in my partner’s look was flattering for sure. Because suddenly vistas had opened, a whole new world of possibility. I was telling him that no, his admission wasn’t disgusting, it wasn’t crazy, it wasn’t absolutely impossible. Instead, the opposite was true. I was listening and seriously considering his offer, weighing the options with both my head and heart. The difference now was incorporating feelings, moving from friends to lovers between two alpha males.
And Mason’s eyes grew dark then with shock and appreciation, his gaze eating me up. Because the possibilities were endless. Suddenly what’d seemed like a hopeless situation with no way out, was busting open. He might be able to keep his friend by his side as his lover and closest confidante, all the while navigating an engagement to a woman who was sexy as fuck. Oh yeah, it was a twisted situation … exactly the kind I love best.