CHAPTER ONE
Lucas
“Ahh, here’s the playboy now.”
My uncle sat behind his mattress-sized desk, king of his publishing empire. Harvey Huffman was a legend, and even at seventy-eight years old, his salacious blue eyes lit up when the door swung open.
My eyes did something entirely different. They narrowed into slits of disgust as my cousin stepped into the posh office, looking like a women’s porn magazine’s dream with his dark wavy hair and friendly sky-blue eyes. One year my junior at thirty-three, Mason’s gray Armani suit and lighter gray silk tie screamed swanky bachelor.
I gritted my teeth and adjusted my already perfect tie. Hopefully, this impromptu meeting wouldn’t take long. It wasn’t like Uncle Harvey to force us into such tight quarters together. He knew our history.
They said that blood was thicker than water, but in our case, blood just boiled.
Raised by my single-mother aunt, Mason had adopted his father’s ways — moving from one woman to the next, indulging in long vacations punctuated by fine wine and lots of females he was constantly helping out. He was a billionaire bad boy with a heart of gold, who hid his soft heart behind a long string of one-night stands.
I’d never liked him. And the feeling had been mutual.
Mason nodded as our eyes locked. A swift, silent communication passed between us as it only can with someone you’d spent time with regularly as a child, and was forced to reacquaint yourself with at every family function since adulthood. Neither of us knew what this unprecedented meeting was about. Both of us were expecting a big announcement. Both of us planned on being the last man standing.
My leg jiggled, and I forced my muscles into submission before I caused the fine china on Uncle Harv’s sideboard to rattle. Even with Mason present, I could barely contain my excitement. There was only one reason Uncle Harv could have called us both into a meeting at the same time — unless he was jonesing for a bloodbath. He was getting up there in years, and he had to step down as head of his conglomerate sometime. With every fiber of my being, I knew he was about to name me as CEO and wanted to control the inevitable fallout from Mason.
It was time to pass the torch. To me.
I barely registered Uncle Harv welcoming Mason and offering him a seat in the plush leather chair beside me.
Finally, I was going to be rewarded with the role I’d dreamed of all my life. I’d coveted the publishing enterprise. All of it. The fashion magazines, the news and gossip websites. But especially the online publication that catered to a naughty clientele. My cock pulsed as I thought of the fetishes, the bondage that the website was known for. I had groomed myself to take over, and finally, the time had come.
Uncle Harv settled back in his massive desk chair and linked his fingers over his portly belly, a huge grin taking up most of his face. “Well, boys, it’s good to see you sitting next to each other in such an amicable manner.”
Mason stiffened beside me, and the woody I’d been working on deflated. The last time I’d been this close to Mason, I’d been tempted to bloody his nose at the annual Thanksgiving gala. He’d hit on a woman I was going after. Not one I really wanted, but it was the principal of the thing. He’d forever been putting his capricious fingers on what was mine — my coveted model airplane set when I was a kid, my first car when I was a teenager. My mom’s attention and affection. Hell, when he’d charmed my sweet sixteen crush, Amber DeGrasse, into bed, it had been the last straw, and I hadn’t been able to let it go. We’d been at war ever since.
Unc’s smile faltered at our silence, and he sat forward. “I’ll get right down to it. But first, I have a question.”
We waited. The room was so quiet I could practically hear Mason sweating next to me. He was going to be pissed when Uncle Harvey named me as his successor.
“What do you call a virgin on a waterbed?” Uncle Harv’s blue eyes beamed at us with humor, waiting for one of us to take the bait.
I frowned. My uncle was famous for his dirty jokes. It went with the territory. When you were a tycoon with world-famous holdings ranging from fashion to tasteful men’s entertainment magazine to a guilty pleasure website, you were expected to behave somewhat lewdly.
The question could be a test of some sort, but I’d never been too good at jokes. While I was wracking my brain and Mason was shifting around in his seat, the answer dropped like a K-Y Jelly-filled bomb.
“A cherry float.”
Unc reared back in his chair and roared as nausea joined the nervous clenching of my gut. This bawdy man had been my father figure since my dad, his older brother, died when I was nine.
Mason rolled his eyes. “Ha ha. Like anyone has water beds anymore, Unc.”
That was funny, but I refused to laugh at a damn thing Mason said. Uncle coughed then and took a handkerchief, hacking into it. Did he look a little paler than usual? Could something be wrong?
Fear struck me numb so that I almost missed his next words.
“Now, I know you boys don’t go after innocent virgins.” Unc chuckled and shook his head. “But I’m sure you can curtail the skirt chasing for a little while for what I have in mind.”
“Anything for you, Uncle Harvey.” Mason’s jaw twitched.
Good. It was costing him as much as it was costing me to hold up under the suspense. He was about to be crushed, but he hadn’t worked as hard as I had in the business world. He was known to cut out early, take longer than planned holidays at exotic locations.
Uncle Harvey cleared his throat and took a long drink of water before leaning toward us, all humor gone. “I’ll be retiring, boys, stepping down.”
I held my breath.
“I’ve got two nephews and two potential heirs to my company, but neither of you — at the moment — are a perfect fit for the role as I envision it.” The words rolled off his tongue without a pause, impaling me like a spike to the gut.
“I thought, I’d…” I choked on my words, scrambling for the right ones.
His attention turned to me as heat bloomed in my chest and rose above my collar. “Yes, Lucas, I know you thought you’d be the one to run things here. I’m afraid you’d work yourself to death in under five years though, being the workaholic you are, never letting loose for some play.” His eyebrows jumped up and down, punctuating his meaning.
“You said neither of us…” Mason chimed in, his hands gripping the chair arms. “I just assumed I would be the one.”
What? My head swiveled toward Mason. He thought Uncle Harvey would give him the business? I snorted.
Mason threw me a glare, which I met with my own.
Uncle jumped in before we could get started. “I figured you’d both assume, and I’m sorry. I’ve grappled with choosing, but it would be a hard and perhaps unfair choice for me, and the both of you. So I’ve done the fair thing and created a friendly competition.”
“Competition?” Of course, the crazy old coot would conceive of a competition. Mason and I couldn’t be in the same room without competing for something.
A competition was no problem. My spoiled playboy cousin was no threat, never having had a stake in anything other than himself. This was going to be a no-brainer.
Uncle eyed us from behind his desk, his well-known greedy I-can-do-anything-I-want stance making me nervous. He owned a good chunk of the publishing world, a corporation that was worth billions. His next words would seal my fate. There was no wiggling out of this — I was gonna have to play or walk away.
“You’re not too old to run this company,” I surmised. “I expected you’d run the show until they dragged your dead body out of the boardroom. Why retire now?”
“A man can’t live forever. I’ve developed some health issues—”
Now it made sense. “Are you okay?”
Mason sat up straighter. “What kind of health issues?”
Uncle waved our concerns away. “Enough about me. You boys cooperating with what I have planned will go a long way in easing my concerns.” He’d always known just how to manipulate a person to his will.
I’d spent my whole life preparing to take over his corporation. Having been too busy running his empire, he and my late aunt never had any children. I knew I was the mirror image of my deceased father — disciplined, conservative, and no-nonsense. Perfect for the CEO position.
Mason, on the other hand, was a master of nothing except maybe defying the heights of his own ego. Uncle Harv’s younger sister, Marianne, raised Mason as a single mother after a bitter divorce from Donovan Carver, a rich real estate monger. Mason was a wild child who wasn’t grounded in any career, had started and abandoned several. His father left him a hefty trust that he came into when he was in his mid-twenties, creating a billionaire party boy who didn’t know when to quit.
The fact that Uncle Harv included Mason had me worried. Quality was the barometer by which Unc gauged all things. He maintained high standards, was fastidious. Had I been underestimating my cousin?
“I’m going to host a little competition, as I mentioned, for the position of Chief Executive Officer of Huffman International Publishers. Since I expect excellence on all platforms, I need to ensure that the man who replaces me not only does as fine a job as I have over the years but does the job better.” He pinned us both with his stern and emphatic gaze. “Considering the gravity of the matter, I’ve added an element that will make this serious contest fun.”
My insides melted into a mixture of fear and excitement. For the man sitting across from me, fun was a broadly defined expression — Uncle’s tastes ran from the exquisite to the extreme.
“An ad for a contest was recently featured on Hedon.com.” The website, secretly my favorite of all Unc’s ventures, was infamous for its diverse collection of sexual intrigues and deviance. “There will be two winners, women who will join you at my ski chalet in Vail, Colorado. You will each be partnered with one of the winners, and together, you’ll be expected to complete a set of tasks, and will be scored on your competence.”
I looked at Mason out of the corner of my eye as he chuckled. He was gloating, his smug face showing his delight at the prospect of a competition involving tasks to complete with a woman. Mason had never had anything but success with women, and he obviously thought he’d be running all my uncle’s businesses at the end of the contest.
I wasn’t a womanizer. I had a… different appetite when it came to women. I liked to dominate in all things, especially in the bedroom, and my sexual desires ran toward the extreme. I kept my passions fiercely private, and any woman who consented to be with me signed a lengthy agreement ensuring her discretion and absolute secrecy regarding our sexual encounters.
“So what does this competition involve?” I was equally the master in the bedroom as I was capable of being in the boardroom. But Mason had me beat when it came to smooth moves.
Uncle pulled two neat packets out of his desk, one for Mason and one for me. My stomach rolled.
Our mini war had not only disrupted the family but upset Harvey. Which was why, I assumed, he’d called the meeting and decided to pit us against each other to battle for the lead role in his publishing empire. A last-ditch attempt to coerce us into calling a truce.
“You’ll need to make arrangements to be away for a month, boys.”
He had to be kidding. “A month? I can’t be away for a day, much less a month. I have—”
“You will, boy…” the blue eyes turned cold as ice as they settled on me, “or you’ll forfeit.”
Forfeit? I’d never forfeit to Mason. I shot a glance at my rival, who was relaxed in his chair as he considered what I knew sounded to him like an effortless fling slash ski vacation.
My hands fisted in my lap. Glaring my rage at my uncle, I carefully unclenched my hands under Mason’s watchful gaze. Our eyes clashed and held. I hated how Uncle still referred to us as children when we were in our thirties and long past boyhood, even if I did want to take Mason to the floor and pummel him like when we were kids.
“You name it, Harv, I’m on it,” was Mason’s idiotic reply, and he had the audacity to sound excited.
I couldn’t leave my post at my investing company for a month. It would be mayhem.
Hadn’t my uncle — the man who had been interviewed for Forbes magazine five times over his thirty some odd years in business — considered this? Of course he had.
“I like the enthusiasm, Mason,” Uncle Harv said with a rousing, liver-spotted fist to the air.
“Uncle, I have meetings scheduled, client portfolios that need—”
“Always the pragmatist, Lucas,” my uncle scolded as he lifted the packets and laid one in front of each of us on his desk. “Do try to stretch your narrowmindedness a bit. You too, Mason. In the end, you’ll figure out why I’ve chosen the women I have for you.”
I frowned. When he stood, signaling our absurd meeting was at an end, I was shocked to notice that my palms had become damp.
Before turning to the door, Mason picked up his envelope and did a mock bow to me, a humorous glint in his eyes. “Good luck, cousin.” He chuckled on his way out the door.
I wouldn’t let Mason win. I picked up my envelope and exited, making my way blindly to my Jaguar XJ.
I’d do whatever it took to win the title of CEO.