by Cameron Dane
“Thank you,” Sirus murmured. “This piece is very personal to me.” His gaze flashed on Grey, his skin heating before coming back to Rebecca. “Thank you for your interest, but I don’t see myself parting with it when I’m finished.”
Nodding, Rebecca rubbed Sirus’s forearm, and then began to peruse the rest of his pieces. “Of course it’s personal, Mr. Wilder,” she said. “It’s all personal, or they wouldn’t be any good. Grey wouldn’t have contacted me to come take a look at your stuff if he wasn’t damn sure I would be interested in selling it. He retains the nuts and bolts knowledge of every business he ever helped create.” She flashed Grey a fast smile. “Mine included.”
Grey held up his hands, waving off Rebecca’s words. “I don’t have any financial stake in how you run your galleries anymore.” His attention slid to Sirus, the amber chips sparking brightly in his eyes. “I saw something in Sirus’s work, and I thought you two might be able to form a partnership.”
Of course you did. Son of a bitch. Sirus’s entire body itched to ram Grey into the wall and take a swing at his face. You might not directly financially benefit from my art, but you’ll get something you want out of it, and you know it. Sirus looked from Grey to Rebecca, light dawning, and every nerve ending inside him lit like the flint tip of a match.
His heart plummeted right into his stomach. Question answered; I’m not quite good enough for Grey after all.
“All of your stuff is very good,” Rebecca said, swinging Sirus’s focus back to her.
“Although I will be honest and say I wouldn’t be able to sell a lot of it through my storefront. This more literal stuff isn’t really what my clients are interested in purchasing.
Although, damn,” she stooped down and ran her hands over a life-size rendition of a bobcat, “this is insanely good technique and interpretation. I almost think he’s going to arch his back if I scratch him behind the ears.” She rubbed the cat’s head and stood back up. “There is definitely a high-end market out there for work like this as well, even if it’s not with me. I will leave you a few phone numbers for gallery owners who carry them.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.” Sirus bit his lip and behaved with the good manners his parents had instilled in him, even though all he wanted to do was turn around and yell “Bastard!” in Greyson Cole’s face.
Rebecca walked to Sirus’s main worktable, and her eyes immediately lit up as she spotted his array of sketches. “Oh, now these ideas all have a ton of potential.”
Possessiveness slammed Sirus hard. He wedged himself between Rebecca and the table, partially blocking her view. “These are ideas for a specific piece, for a friend of mine.” Sirus turned, gathered the papers up into a neat pile, and slid around to the other side of the table with the sketches trapped beneath his hands. “Whatever I end up creating from them will be a gift for him.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened, but just as quickly, she schooled her features and slipped into a professional smile. Her attention quickly shifted behind Sirus to Grey, then came back to Sirus, and Sirus could tell she now understood that Grey had never mentioned her visit.
“Listen,” Rebecca said, her voice kind, “I have to turn right around and drive back home, so I really can’t stay, but I thank you for allowing me to view your pieces. You have real talent, Mr. Wilder.”
“Sirus, please.”
Rebecca dipped her head. “Sirus, then.” She pulled a business card case out of a small purse and produced a card. “My number is already on here, but I’m going to add two more for dealers that I believe will be interested in some of your work.” Leaning across the table, she snagged one of his pencils and scribbled a few lines on the back of her card. “Take as long as you need, but I would ask you to seriously consider giving me a call so we can talk.” Understanding fused her voice and softened her eyes, giving her beauty a surprisingly motherly appeal. “If you choose to, and if you like, I can tell you more about what I do and how I work. If you find you’re comfortable with me, I’d really love to sell some of your pieces.” Rebecca pressed the card into Sirus’s hand and curled her fingers around his, applying a light pressure. “Please think about it. Can you give me that?”
“I will think about it,” Sirus answered. He had to. Hell, it wasn’t this woman’s fault she’d been thrown into the middle of a manipulation. “Thank you for understanding. It was nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” she said. They exchanged a firm handshake. “I’ll show myself out.”
Sirus turned, watching as Rebecca walked up to Grey and rose up on her tiptoes, giving him a hug. She pressed her cheek to Grey’s and gave him a kiss, then whispered something that made Grey’s brow furrow and his focus shoot to Sirus. She pulled away and gave them both one last smile and wave as she walked away.
Counting each second that went by, Sirus’s kept his focus solely on Grey. Grey drilled him with an equally probing stare in return.
Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.
Sirus waited until he heard an engine rev up, then slammed his fist into the worktable and exploded on Grey. “You son of a bitch.” His voice raged low, sounding like it came from the depths of hell. “You just had to do it. You couldn’t just accept us and leave something that was going pretty damn good alone. You had to go and put your hands on it, try and manipulate it, change it, and turn it into something acceptable and worthy of your time and interest.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Grey shouted, his hands thrown in the air.
“Do you have any idea how successful Rebecca’s galleries are? Do you even understand what a fucking big deal it was for her to take an entire day to come see your work? For her to express an interest in someone she thinks is talented enough to promote?”
“Of course I know she’s successful.” Sirus shot each word into the air with the precision of flying daggers. “She has to be, doesn’t she? You wouldn’t have anything to do with her otherwise.” Grey reared back, but Sirus made up the distance and got right in his face. “Another one of Greyson Cole’s successes. And that’s what you’re all about, isn’t it? Taking something unique, but small and inconsequential, and figuring out how in the hell to pretty it up to sell it to your investors. Me included.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, or why you’re so angry with me,” Grey spat back. “I was trying to help you. You have an artistic gift; Rebecca is one of the best at putting that gift out to the public. She can turn your art into a career.”
“Oh, and you would love that, wouldn’t you?” Sirus’s lips twisted in a sneer. “We start to open up to each other, you start to feel something for me that you want to take beyond a vacation fling—and I know you feel it.” He grabbed Grey and savaged his mouth with a brutal kiss, only to shove him away and point in his face. “Don’t you dare fucking tell me that you don’t. But you can’t possibly feel something for me, this guy,”
Sirus waved his arms up and down his stained jeans and flannel shirt, “a mere truck driver. No, not you. Not Greyson Cole, a successful venture capitalist who owns his own gazillion dollar business and heaven knows what else. You can’t possibly have real feelings for a truck driver. And God knows you don’t dare introduce me to your friends and colleagues. Not as I am right now. If I’m an artist, though, well, that’s respectable, that’s admirable, that’s maybe even a little bit coveted. But a guy who drives a big rig…
That’s not something you can dress up and put on your mantle to show off. That’s not something you even keep hidden in your nightstand drawer.”
“You fucking prick.” Grey grabbed Sirus’s shirt and shoved him into the edge of the worktable, unleashing incredible strength. “You need to be very careful about the words you’re putting in my mouth,” he whispered, his voice lethal. “You are painting my motives with some awfully broad strokes that you know nothing about. You might want to shut the fuck up before you say something you can’t take back.”
“What do you plan on threatening
me with?” Sirus snarled the question. “Leaving?”
His chest heaved, and he put up a token struggle, spoiling for a fight. “You’re doing that in five days anyway.”
Grey shoved hard at Sirus, cracking Sirus’s head back as he took him all the way up onto the table. “We can make it a whole hell of a lot sooner than that, if you keep talking.”
“Hey!” A deep, rough voice rang through the tension-filled air. “Get the hell off him right now!”
Grey was suddenly lifted off Sirus and thrown in the direction of the door.
Standing between Sirus and Grey, like some avenging angel, stood Noah Maitland.
Chapter Nineteen
Noah Maitland.
Oh, this was just fucking perfect.
Grey took a step forward. “Si—”
“Stay the hell back,” Noah said, his voice cutting and low. His eyes flashed with something more than mere friendship. “If you don’t, I’ll tie you down and call the sheriff; I swear I will.” The man loomed large, standing in front of where Sirus kneeled on the table. Sirus shifted and put his hand on Noah’s shoulder.
Grey seethed, at both Sirus and Noah, and fought down the heady desire to do serious physical damage. He wanted to tear Noah’s arm off and beat the shit out of him with it. He hadn’t felt the urge to savage an entire building since he was nine years old, but right now he had to take a huge step backward and curl his hands into painfully tight fists so that he didn’t rip this studio to shreds.
Fucking bastard Sirus, accusing me of thinking he’s not good enough for me. If he only knew how wrong he was…
Great sweeps of swirling, volatile emotion consumed Grey, making his entire body quake. It felt like every piece of his heart— that this fucking man awakened—was exposed and on display for everyone to see. For Sirus to see. To judge. To reject.
Grey could not have that. Nobody got that kind of power over him. Not anymore.
Sirus pushed himself to the edge of the table and swung his legs over the side, stumbling to a standing position. “Grey, listen—”
“No.” Grey held up his hands, praying the tremor vibrating through him did not show. “I think you’ve said plenty enough already. You have a guest.” His tone was pleasantly sarcastic in the face of wanting to snarl. “Stay and talk to him.” Grey looked Noah up and down, his heart growing even sicker at the rough attractiveness he found in every line of Noah’s hard body. He swallowed, and shifted his eyes back to Sirus.
“Maybe you’ll find something more to your liking here.” Blinking, he turned away.
“Goodbye.”
“Grey.” Sirus’s voice held Grey in place. “Stop.”
“Wait, Sirus,” Noah said. Out of the corner of his eye, Grey saw Noah wrap his hand around Sirus’s forearm. “I need to talk to you.” Noah’s jaw clenched visibly. “It’s important.”
Sirus hesitated, his attention going to Noah, and that was all Grey needed. Without looking back, he walked away.
Fast.
“Stupid idiot son of a bitch.” Grey slammed the door to his cabin with a resounding crack, shaking everything on the front walls. He threw his coat on the floor and tore to the bedroom. “Spilling your guts and making yourself vulnerable; showing weakness and giving him the power to use it against you. You fucking deserved exactly what you got.”
Grey yanked the closet door open and snatched his suitcase, throwing it on the bed.
He unzipped the thing, cursing the stubborn zipper that he knew was actually the clumsiness of his own fumbling fingers. Wanting to rail and shout blame at Sirus for this raging hurt eating its way through him, Grey turned it all inward, knowing it was his own fault.
He had broken all of his own rules, and he had done it willingly, so he had no one to blame for this awful twist of anger and heartache but himself. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. On the very first night of his vacation, Grey never should have taken that step to Sirus’s door when he heard the man moaning. And he never should have kissed him that first time, let alone play with fire and start a sexual affair. He never should have come to this cabin in the first place. That was the only way to guarantee he and Sirus never would have met.
Not meeting that man was the only way to ensure Grey wouldn’t be suffering these ridiculous sweeps of emotion right now, ones that had him fighting the urge to run back to Sirus’s house and fuck him right in front of Noah, staking a claim in the most primal of ways.
Grey stalked to the dresser and pulled a drawer right off its tracks, taking it back to the bed and upending its contents into his bag. There could be no peace in this cabin now, not with Sirus right across the lake being all wonderful, sexy, stubborn, passionate …
open, in a way Grey could never be.
He couldn’t do this. He did not have the right skill-set for a relationship. Grey had forgotten his limitations for a few days, but he remembered them now.
Just look at how everything with Sirus went to fuck so quickly after just trying to share a piece of his soul. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it all went to hell only days after Grey cut open his guts and told Sirus about Joe, and then showed him pieces of his childhood. Christ, Grey had become the very man that had caused him to become celibate in the first place.
Someone weak, clingy and needy; someone desperate for love.
Grey caught a glimpse of himself as he passed by the mirror, and his heart stopped at the man reflected back at him. Gone was the put-together businessman with the piercing, cool gaze. In his place stood something almost feral, with flushed skin, hair in wild tufts, and hunted, fear-drenched eyes.
All because of one man.
“Christ.”
Unable to look at himself anymore, Grey slung a handful of ugly words at his reflection and then strode for the kitchen, needing a drink. He couldn’t stand himself in this pathetic state; no wonder Sirus let him walk away with hardly a word.
Pain tightened a band around Grey’s chest, making him stumble. Jesus Christ, he barely knew Sirus; there was no way this suffocating pain of loss could be real.
You know the most important thing; you know his soul.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know yours.” Grey swung open the refrigerator door and leaned his hand on it, talking back to himself. “He proved that today.”
The rafters suddenly shook with a slam of the front door that rivaled Grey’s own.
“Greyson!” Sirus’s voice rang right on top of the slamming door. “Where the fuck are you? We need to talk.”
Grey grasped the fridge door in his hand, squeezing until the tips of his fingers turned pure white. His heart raced madly, but he stared at the contents inside, refusing to turn around, even when the air crackled and heated, and Grey knew Sirus now stood in the kitchen too.
“What is the matter with you?” Sirus’s voice reeked with combativeness. “We were talking. You don’t walk away in the middle of a discussion.”
Go away. Grey squeezed his eyes shut, and spoke through gritted teeth. “There isn’t anything else I want to say to you.”
A growl erupted from Sirus, and a screeching noise assaulted Grey’s ears, making him think Sirus had kicked a chair out of his way. “Then maybe you need to shut up for a minute and listen to me.”
Every word Sirus spoke stabbed at the open wound in Grey’s chest. At the gaping hole Sirus had created, the one Grey could never let him see. “Go tell it to Noah.”
Sirus cursed something low and foul. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Suddenly, pure heat rode Grey’s back, and he knew Sirus stood right behind him. “Look at me, damn it.” Sirus grabbed Grey’s arm and spun him around, trapping him in the V of the open refrigerator door with spread arms. Mercury burned in Sirus’s eyes, turning them deep silver. “Are you trying to make something out of Noah being my friend?”
“I saw that wedding ring on his finger, but don’t for one second think I don’t know Noah is gay.” Grey looked Sirus right in the eyes, meeting the depth of passion and int
elligence there. “And don’t you dare try to tell me that you don’t know it either.”
Red crept up Sirus’s neck from beneath his shirt and jacket, turning his face ruddy. “I do now. He told me today.”
“He wants you.” Grey shook, fighting sickness as he flashed back to the muted longing in Noah’s eyes that evening at the diner, then jumped forward to the aggressive protective streak that reared its head today. “For more than a quick fuck too.”
Sirus looked Grey up and down, slow and lingering, making Grey feel it along his skin, like one long caress. “And you’re just going to let him have me? Is that what you want?” Smoldering heat worked its way into Sirus’s eyes, running frissons of uncertainty through Grey. He had no idea if Sirus’s gaze turned hot for him … or Noah. Sirus lifted his hand and brushed his rough fingers across Grey’s cheek, catching his thumb on Grey’s lips. “You want to walk away,” Sirus said softly, “like you did today? You want me to stay with Noah and help him discover what it’s like to be with another man?”
A crushing wave of denial rocked through Grey, terrifying him to his core. He saw himself crawling into a hole and dying, and could not concede such power over his wellbeing to another human being. He schooled his features to his best, no-fear business face, and looked at Sirus through dead eyes. “Do what you want.” His voice was cool, but he turned around, needing to break the contact before it killed him. “It’s your life.”
Sirus moved in behind Grey and dipped his head down, putting his mouth right next to Grey’s ear. “So you want me to go home, pick up the phone, and call Noah.” Sirus’s voice sank into Grey’s very being, each word contaminating his blood. Sirus stepped in even closer, not stopping until his chest seared itself to Grey’s back. Slipping his arms around Grey’s waist, Sirus tugged Grey’s shirt out of his jeans. “You want me to invite Noah over, make him dinner.” Sirus paused, licking Grey’s ear as he unbuttoned Grey’s shirt and slipped his hands up his stomach. “Take him to my bedroom and fuck him.”