by Alisa Mullen
“You as well.” Awareness sneaks up on me, telling me to get my shit together. I will have to wait and freak the hell out later. I’ll book a sudden trip to see my parents, take the trip with Carl, and dump this entire account on the guys. Yes! Brilliant idea, they can take it over. I will find a way to make that happen and both men disappear. Mitch, Leo, and Annie will understand when I tell them the truth. My non-judgmental friends will dig me out of the mud hole I have dug for myself.
“Luca, are you alright?” Annie leans into me while the four men leisurely stroll down the hall to negotiate a contract. I’m left dumbstruck. No one, and I mean no one, decides as quickly as these two did about putting his dream so quickly in someone else’s hands. Does Camden know who I am? My stomach plummets into my throat before dropping straight to my toes. Up and down repeatedly. There’s no way these two men would actually conduct business this way.
This coincidence with Camden and Heath is no coincidence at all. I’m suddenly sick. I dart to my bathroom without answering Annie. I brace myself over the toilet, hyperventilating. My body shakes from the inside out.
“Oh my fucking god, this cannot be happening. They know each other.”
I lean over the toilet, dry heaving until my eyes water. The word control is now consuming my mind. I’ve lost it, I have no control left. Not even in the only place I ever felt safe. My office. My company.
“Luca. What the fuck is going on?” Mitch pounds on the bathroom door. “Let me in right now, god damn it.”
“Mitch, I can’t do this,” I manage to croak out.
“For god’s sake, unlock this door.” Every single limb of my body is unstable as I try to stand, but I know he won’t leave my office until I tell him something. My reaction to the situation is completely unlike me. I’m never caught off guard. I’m never unprofessional. Twisting the knob, I open the door to my friend and colleague looking at me with concern all over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says as soon as he sees me before pulling me into his arms, wrapping them tightly around me.
“Oh hell, Mitch. I… I’m so sorry. This is a chaos. A mess, and I…” His hands slide up and down my back in a soothing motion.
“Luca, what are you going on about? You haven’t been yourself since you returned home. You need to start talking.”
“I’m not sure if I can.” I begin to cry, my tears soaking into his shirt.
“Sweetheart, what is it? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what is going on?”
Mitch guides me to my loveseat, where he pulls me into his lap, letting me curl into him like a small child. The two of us sit there in silence with him soothing me. How can I tell him? Where do I even start?
He beats me to it when he starts to talk. His words precise and to the point. “You know one of them, don’t you?”
“I know them both,” I whisper, clinging strongly to his now wrinkled shirt.
“Christ, Luca. Business or pleasure?” he questions. And here comes the moment of truth. The moment when the wheels will fall off of my life and I’ll be left clinging onto the brittle fragments that are left, or hopefully where my friend can help me find some sort of tiny shred of hope. The small trace of security and dignity that, up until a few moments ago, consumed me were gone.
For two long hours, I tell Mitch everything, leaving nothing about the last ten years of my life out.
He listens.
He asks several questions about things that he is curious about. He laughs when he thinks I have said something funny, then holds me close when I break down and cry.
When I finally get to the weekend prior and the time I spent with Heath, he tells me we will get through this as a team, a family. There is no disapproving tone in his voice, no bitterness, no pity. There is only concrete phrases of reassurance.
The soft sound of Mitch’s secretary, Renee’s, voice interrupts us through the intercom on my desk. I’m surprised someone hasn’t come in to check on us before this.
“Yes, Renee?” I find my strength, bringing my voice back into a professional mode.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” she says, sounding somewhat timid.
“It’s perfectly fine. I’m sorry I had to leave you like that. I had a pressing matter to take care of and Luca has been helping.” Mitch lies to her.
“I understand.” She doesn’t though. Not a damn person knows what I’m going through. What I’ve done. The position I have put my friends and our company in. She must think I’m crazy the way I ran down the hallway, past the three assistant desk, landing myself right where I am now.
“Luca, Mr. Steel would like to speak with you before he leaves,” she states rather abruptly.
I whip my head toward Mitch, unsure of what to do. He closes his eyes and I see a look of resolve shadow over his face. Finally, he looks at me and mouths. “You can do this.”
“Okay, send him to my office in ten minutes. Oh, and Renee?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.” I state calmly.
“You’re welcome, Luca. I hope everything is alright?” Her voice full of concern.
“Everything is fine. Thank you.” This time I lie instead of Mitch. I’m not fine. I may never be fine again.
I am undeniably, unequivocally pitiful looking, both inside and out. A disastrous mess. With nothing more to do with my appearance, I fidget in my chair, waiting for Camden. I glance down at the ring that graces my finger. It’s the only piece of jewelry I wear on a daily basis, from all the pieces I have, and it’s from him. Camden. The man who changed my life. I’ve always felt a pang of love for that man. He made me fall in love with my night life and with sex. Camden taught me so much in the little time we spent together. Did notice the ring still rested on my finger where he placed it all those years ago?
I glance down at the ankle bracelet I decided to keep on. This is some fucked up shit. The two men I’ve had the best time with, out of all of them, know each other. The rip roaring fuck of it all is that I slept with both of them.
EIGHT
“Luca.”
I hear my name every day, but hearing the sound of it coming from his mouth has my heart pounding clear out of the cavity that it is nestled in. I’m sitting in my chair, staring out at Lake Michigan, trying to focus so damn hard to see where the ice ends and the deep dark waters begin. That’s the best way to describe my life right now. Where does one of me begin and the other one end?
“Look at me, Luca. Please?” Camden’s deep gravelly voice sends me back so many years.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
It’s quiet, so very eerily quiet. I know he’s still here, I can smell him. He smells the exact same as he did a decade ago. Natural. Pure male with no strong odor of cologne. When I shook his hand a few hours earlier I felt nothing. And now, alone with him in my office, I feel it all. The undeniable chemistry is there, surrounding me until he is all I can see and feel.
“Hide away from anyone else, Luca, but not me. Never hide from me. And for Christ sakes, do not deny me the honor of being able to look at you.” I’m suddenly spun around in my chair, both of his strong masculine arms cage me in. God, he is undeniably handsome. With a slight amount of graying at his temples and slight specks of gray mixed in with his dark hair, he looks even more handsome than he did a decade ago. He has age lines that surround his eyes, yet his intense look still pierces deep into me. His body still calls to me. He is still toned and clearly still takes amazing care of himself in such a way that makes Heath look like a boy. There is no other way to put it, he’s an older gentleman who is drop dead sexy.
“You’ve been crying?” A finger gently swipes, skimming under my eye. My makeup is long gone, cried during my time with Mitch. Something about the way he’s looking at me makes me not care about appearance.
“I have but I’m fine now,” I simply say.
“Are you?” He stands tall, questioning what I say.
“Yes,” I lie.
“Well, at least one of us is fine
then,” he replies, crossing his arms over his wide chest. Like the woman I am, I cannot help myself but to reach out and take a trip down memory lane, touching every inch of his body. His chest is solid, muscles hidden under the white dress shirt he is wearing. My hands continue their exploration until they land on his dick that seems to be rock solid. I inhale in a ragged breath as I run my hand against his hardness, straining against the softness of his suit.
“Yes, you still make me hard just by looking at you,” he rasps out.
I merely whimper, squirming in my seat by his abrasiveness. “But, no games, Camden. This is my life, my business that we are going to discuss. Strictly business.” It’s obvious that I want my words bitter and angry, but at who? Him? No, I can’t be angry at him, not at all. He’s so big. So much larger everywhere than I remember. Especially the muscle in his body I know the best. God, I’m a mess. I’m a wicked, hopeless mess to even think about sex right now when my business could be tossed into the middle of the great lake outside my window.
“It’s a start, Luca, but you and I both know we will be discussing a hell of a lot more than business.” He turns, giving me a fine view of his rock hard, muscular ass.
Visions of my business sinking is all I can see.
“How did you find me?” I ask, straining to hold myself together and not fall apart from fear and worry.
He steps away, going to sit in the chair on the other side of my desk. I rotate my chair so I’m again facing him and place my folded hands on the table, trying to remain professional.
Whether he’s pondering my question or trying to come up with a lie, I have no idea until he answers with the last thing I ever would have thought about.
“Do you know how much of a coincidence it was, six months ago, when I happened to have the cockpit door open on my plane and I looked out to see the most beautiful woman who has graced so many of my dreams over the past ten years sitting in the very front seat of first class?” He raised his brow, looking at me, gauging my reaction.
“A coincidence indeed,” I say.
“There you were… after all these years, in the flesh. It wasn’t too hard from there to find out more about you. Your name right was right in front of me on the passenger list. Google is a splendid thing, Luca. I will say this, I’m very proud of you.” Camden winks at me.
God, how much does he know? Does he know everything? Does he only know about Heath? Does he even know about Heath or any of it? He can’t possibly know about my escorting. There isn’t a damn thing about me on google when it comes to that. It’s all kept very private for a reason.
“What do you mean?” I ask, tamping down my incredulity and curiosity that are getting the best of me.
“You’ve done exceptionally well for yourself. You’ve accomplished all of your dreams, haven’t you?” Somehow his proclamation doesn’t sound like he only means my billion dollar company. He knows about more that Heath. God damn it.
“I have, Camden. I’m still happily chasing my dreams. I never want them to end.” For some reason, I want to also say, there take that, fucker, but I don’t.
“Perhaps your resume and marketing strategy aren’t showing you in your best light, Luca.”
“Alright, Camden, damn it, enough. Spit it out. Just say what you want to say. Cut the bullshit.” I’m done with his beating around.
“You’re done with your weekend activities,” he says slowly, his voice low, almost a growl. His words send a jolt of absolute seriousness though my body making my spine lurch. Something is very wrong with this man and this situation.
“What the fuck did you just say?” I stand up, running my hands thought my hair which is already in complete disarray. Who the hell does this man think he is?
“You fucking heard me, Luca. You are done!”
His fierce bolt of control does not sit well with me at all. We’re standing, leaning slightly over the desk, both showing our assertion. Our mouths are so close to one another’s. It would take nothing for either one of us to fuse them together.
“So this is why you’re really here? It has absolutely nothing to do with business, with you wanting to use my firm. How dare you, Camden? You spent one weekend with me, ten years ago I might add, and now you think you have the right to storm into my office and tell me I have to give up what you so eloquently helped me achieve. Well, fuck you straight back to the land of fucking Oz, because there’s no way in hell I’ll give up what I love to do. Not for you or anyone else. Now get the hell out of my office.”
This man is insane. He needs a psychiatrist if he thinks he has the right to tell me what to do.
We study each other in silence for minutes, neither one budging.
“Camden, leave,” I whisper. “I’m none of your business.”
“What if I want to make you my business, Luca? What if I want to be the man I believe you need?” He paused for a moment, before continuing, his words softer, “And what if I want you to be the woman I’ve been searching for the last ten damn years.”
My stomach stirred to life with his admission. Dear god, what exactly is he saying? He wants to get to know me? Date me? Has he hit a mid-life crisis and suddenly realizes he could wind up alone for the rest of his life? I don’t understand. None of this makes any kind of sense to me at all.
“What are you saying, Camden? And how do you know I’m who you want?” Frozen stiff for a moment, I search deep into his eyes. My God, he’s serious.
“I know that when I spent time with you all those years ago that I never should have let you go. That’s all you need to know, Luca.”
All of my defense mechanisms tell me to slap him, hard, across the face.
“I want you and not in the way all those other men have wanted you. I want you to be mine. I want to show you the world and, by god woman, I want you to let me completely devour you. This?” He grabs my hand, shoving the ring he gave me in between the two of us. The diamond is glistening in the overhead light just as much as my unshed tears. “Means something to you. You wear it. Out of everything I know you have, you choose to wear the ring I gave you. If you can honestly stand here and tell me you haven’t thought of me every single time you’ve looked at this ring, I will walk.”
Camden’s pushing me. He knows he has me backed into a corner, yet he keeps pushing. I feel as if I’m plastered against the hard surface of a brick wall, unable to move.
“You can’t, can you?”
I merely shake my head. I’m scared of so many things. He cannot expect me to give it all up, can he? And what about this past weekend? Surely he knows about me being with his business partner if he knows about all the other men
“You’re thinking too hard. Have you forgotten the one thing I told you?”
“No.” My voice cracks.
“I told you to feel. Don’t think, just feel.” I try to maintain my calm. To hold on to any type of control, if only for my own sanity’s sake, but I can’t. This is all too overwhelming, too much to handle. I need time. I need to think. I haven’t been able to think straight for days. I don’t even know who the hell I really am anymore.
Maybe I’ve never known.
My lips begin to quiver and a whimper escapes from my mouth. I’m not sure if he takes it as a sign of weakness or a sign that I’m interested. I have no idea what he’s thinking or have time to think about it. His mouth descends upon mine almost the same moment the sound falls from my lips. His mouth is familiar in more ways than I ever thought possible. How can this feel so right yet be so very wrong?
When you move like lightning, you crash like thunder, and this is what happens when he wraps his arms around me and pulls me toward him, lifting me to the top of my desk. Papers fly all over the floor, as I scurry my body across the top of the glossy hard wood, tugging onto his tie, drawing him into me. On my knees, our mouths fuse together.
My sense of feeling erupts at his tender touch. The way he owns my tongue, twining it with his.
My sense of hearing awakens when our
moans try to outdo one another’s.
My sense of taste comes deliciously alive, as he sexually lures me inside of his mouth when he sucks on my tongue.
My sense of touch explodes when he threads his big hands through my hair, cupping the back of my head.
And oh god, my sense of sight is the one that combines them all, because when I open my eyes to look at the man before me, Camden Steel is looking back at me. His eyes are speaking everything I feel, hear, taste, and touch. He wants me. He means what he says. Kissing is such an intimate act, one I have done so many times without a second thought, but this kiss is so much more.
“You are so beautiful, Luca. Don’t deny us this. Come away with me. Stay here in Chicago with me. I really don’t care. Just don’t turn me away.” Silence falls between us and his deep blue eyes hold mine in place.
“Alright.” My answer finally comes, startling myself even more than I think it does him.
“I have to fly someone to New York tonight, but I’ll be back to take you to dinner tomorrow,” he huffs out through a ragged breath.
“Let me cook for you.” What the hell is that? I never cook. I never stay in.
“Then I’ll be there at seven.” Camden takes an enquiring look around us. Papers are scattered all over the floor. His papers. His marketing portfolio. Releasing me from the hold he has me in, he presses one last kiss to my lips. I watch him in awe as he picks up every single piece off of the floor.
“I’m here for all of you, Luca. That includes your firm. I’ve done my research on every aspect of your life.”
I sink into myself as he walks out the door, leaving me to wonder where in hell I go from here. My thoughts are all cluster-fucked together, I jump when I hear Annie call my name through the open door.
“Are you alright?” She’s looking at me as if seeing a stranger.
“Yes, no,” I answer, completely unsure. I’m not ready to share any of this with her.
“Are you going to tell me who he is to you or do I have to guess?” She crosses her arms over her plump chest. Jesus Christ, enough already.