by Mia Ashlinn
Hauling his arm away from his face, Caedon pried his eyes open.
He blinked several times as he attempted to force his eyes to adjust to the blinding sunlight inundating the room. The sunshine had been bad enough with his eyes closed. But damn, it was flat-out excruciating with his eyes wide open. “Close the fucking blinds, Addy. Please, just close them for me.”
Addy shrugged but did as he had asked. “All right, Caedon. No need to get snappy.”
Snappy? Shit, you haven’t seen snappy this morning, little girl.
When the room darkened a bit, Caedon rotated his head to the side where Addy stood. As usual, she looked stunning. The petite, vivacious beauty was a goddess among women. With her brown doe-eyes and her contagious smile, she’d topped more than one men’s magazine list for sexiest women alive. But predictably he felt nothing Three Rings and a Rose
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for her—at least, not sexually. Like I’ve felt something for anyone in the past two years.
Every time he turned around, a woman was throwing herself at him, and they weren’t the only ones. Men attempted to seduce him as often as women. Yet he felt no sexual stirrings, no physical yearnings.
His cock had shut down, just as his heart had.
It was rather ironic that after years of being a serial womanizer, Caedon had spent six months dating Gabriella, and that was the end of his love life. Even better, it was the end of his sex life. He could have his pick of lovers, but he wanted only one.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. If he was completely honest with himself, he wanted two. And his body constantly reminded him of that fact. A single thought about Gabriella or Micah, and he was ready to fuck like a damn machine. The thought of the two of them together was more than he or his celibate dick could handle.
As luck would have it, the two of them were the only people he desperately hungered to share. When several naked Playboy bunnies asked him to join them in a ménage, what had happened? A big, fat nothing had happened. They didn’t interest him in the least.
That disastrous scenario had been fun to politely turn down. The women had flipped out and accused him of all sorts of harebrained ideas about his sexuality. Of course, the tabloids had gotten wind of the story. Only they’d gotten it wrong. And the Playboy bunnies had flamed the fire by spilling all the supposed dirty details of their night with him.
The Bunnygate scandal had hit the news right after he and Gabriella had ended things. Since then, he’d been a hermit. If it weren’t for Addy, the world would probably be convinced he was asexual or whatever bizarre thing the press could cook up. Going out with her on occasion kept everyone at bay about his sexuality, not that it mattered to him. But in his glittering world, image was everything.
At least, that’s what his public relations team drilled into him all the goddamn time.
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“Caedon?” Addy asked, her voice reminding him that she was in the room. “Where did you go?”
Raising his eyebrows, Caedon told her without words what they both knew. His mind was where it always was—with Gabriella and Micah. I’m such a lame-ass, heartsick sucker.
“I don’t know why I even asked,” Addy muttered. “It’s a waste of my breath.” Walking to the edge of the bed, she lowered herself down, causing the mattress to sink slightly. She scooted back until her bottom bumped into his legs then dangled her legs off the side.
Clasping her hands in her lap, she glanced at him with too-perceptive eyes. “We need to talk, Caedon.”
“About?” he asked with feigned curiosity, prompting her to go on.
He had a general idea of what she wanted to discuss, but he thought it might be best to make sure he was correct. No need to stroll down that road if he didn’t have to.
“You know what,” Addy replied with a disappointed frown.
“Don’t insult either of our intelligence by pretending otherwise.”
“I would prefer to not get into this today,” he snapped. Sitting up too quickly, dizziness hit him harder than a two-by-four, and he amazingly felt worse than he had earlier. Falling back onto the bed with a grunt, he mentally cursed. This day is going to be a fucking disaster. I can feel it. The alcohol looked better and better to him, even in the face of the bitch of a hangover he had.
“Then when?” she asked persistently. “Because I am sick of this.
I’m so damn tired of watching you self-destruct, Caedon. I love you dearly, and we have been through a lot together, but I have never seen you like this. Things were bad before, but something changed. I don’t know what it was. I just know it did and now you are scaring the hell out of me.”
Unfortunately, Caedon knew what had changed. He’d talked to Micah. Two months ago, he had called Micah, and the whole damn thing had blown up in his face. God, it had been bad. Bullshit. It had Three Rings and a Rose
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been a fucking train wreck. What had started out as a strained conversation had spiraled out of control in less than a minute.
* * * *
Two months ago, early April…
Caedon leaned back in his chair and lifted one long, lean leg to the top of his mahogany desk. Bringing up his second, he crossed one ankle over the other as he propped his feet atop the rigid surface. He glanced at the glass filled with The Macallan’s 1824 Limited Edition whisky sitting just to the right of his ankles then dropped his eyes to the cell phone in his hand.
Eyeballing each number he needed to dial with deep-seated apprehension, Caedon cursed himself quietly for allowing his anxiety to override his confidence. What is it about Gabriella and Micah that turns me into a fucking weenie? Oh yeah. That’s right. I’m in love with them—both of them. Goddamn it.
Allowing his eyes to stray back to the tulip-shaped glass, the amber liquor called Caedon’s name, but he refused to answer. This was not something he should do while intoxicated. He needed to have a clear head, no matter how much his mouth watered for the ridiculously expensive drink.
Closing his eyes and taking a long, drawn-out breath to cleanse himself, Caedon mentally recited why this phone call was something he needed to do. No, it’s something I have to do. And he would do it—as soon as he figured out how to banish the nerves eating away at him. I need to take lessons from Nike and “Just Do It.” With that thought firmly entrenched in his mind, Caedon snapped open his eyes and started dialing. He ignored his shaky hands as his fingers stumbled over the telephone number—twice. Before he knew it, the phone was ringing, and he was fighting himself to let it continue to do so.
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Luckily, Micah’s deep drawl rolled across the phone line after only two rings, and he didn’t have time to end the call. A thrill raced up Caedon’s spine at the sound of Micah’s sensual voice, and he felt hope blooming inside him. Maybe I can fix this. Maybe we can work this out and be friends again. Maybe, just maybe, the past four months of working up my courage to make this call wasn’t a complete and total waste.
“Hello?” Micah repeated then said bluntly, “I can hear you breathing, Caedon.”
Laughing seemed highly inappropriate in the moment, but Caedon still felt the urge rising inside of him. He’d missed Micah, his brutal honesty and forward actions were only two of the things that he’d become so attached to when Caedon had been involved with Gabriella. In his foolish actions, Caedon had lost the woman of his dreams. But he’d lost this man, too. He’d lost the one man in the world that he loved. The one man he lusted after. God, I was such a fucking fool.
A voice popped into his mind. It was a voice he’d gotten used to hearing over the past sixteen months. Once he’d realized his royal fuckup six months after he’d ended things with Ella, the voice had moved in and never moved back out. “Are you sure about that? Yes, you made stupid mistakes. But were you really a fool or were you running scared? Most men would have been gone with the wind a long time before you were. Being in love with a woman and her bisexual best fr
iend wasn’t your smartest idea. It wasn’t like the relationship could have lasted forever the way it was. A ménage only works in the bedroom. No one could live their life in a three-way relationship. You knew it then, and you know it now. Choosing is your only option. And, what happens if you choose? You will destroy a beautiful relationship between the two people you love. Then you wouldn’t be a fool. You would be a bastard.” I’m not calling to start a damn thing with Micah. I want to check on him and Gabriella. That’s it.
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Micah cleared his throat, disrupting Caedon’s thoughts. “Are you going to actually say something or not? If you aren’t, I have more important things to do.”
“Sorry,” Caedon replied. “I didn’t really expect you to answer.” Pausing, Micah countered smartly, “Yeah, well, I thought about ignoring it. But I figured if you had the balls to call me, then I had the balls to answer.”
I guess I deserved that. Caedon didn’t even attempt to hold back his self-deprecating snort. “Now why doesn’t it surprise me that you only answered out of curiosity?”
Micah laughed, the amusement sounding bitter and even a bit hurt. “Did you think that I wanted to talk to you?” he asked. “Did you think I would enjoy hearing your voice? Did you seriously think I missed you after all you did to me?” He coughed dryly. “I mean, what you did to Ella. You walked out, not the other way around, Caedon.” No, but I had hoped. The words held firm on the tip of Caedon’s tongue. Part of him wanted to say them. Part of him wanted to spill his guts, but the other part realized it was useless and would only complicate things. He hadn’t been able to utter any words that indicated he gave a fuck about Micah when they were practically living together with Gabriella. What the hell made him think he could say anything like that now?
Besides, Micah wouldn’t exactly welcome any emotional declarations at this point. He might have before Caedon had broken things off with Gabriella and moved out. But Caedon had been too busy dancing around his feelings for the man to say a damn thing.
Hell, he hadn’t even realized how much he cared about Micah until he had his assistant remove his belongings from their apartment.
A few weeks after his assistant had dropped off his belongings at his Los Angeles home, Caedon had finally opened the boxes and found the letter from Micah. As soon as he read it, he’d known without a doubt that what he felt went above and beyond friendship or mere lust. Yet he didn’t realize how much more until he’d written a 22
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letter of his own to Micah but received no response in return—ever.
The pain of Micah’s silence showed him that he loved the man as much as he did Gabriella.
Before that, Caedon had been painfully aware of his lust for the powerfully built writer. Half the time they’d been alone, he’d struggled to not shove Micah up against the nearest wall, stare into his clear blue eyes, and kiss him until neither of them could breathe. But that longing had been only the beginning. He’d craved so much more.
However, he had denied feeling anything beyond the hunger for Micah to open his ass wide and fuck him.
Immediately, Caedon’s cock woke up from its usually dormant state, and he felt moisture gathering on the tip. Biting back an earthy groan, Caedon forced himself to focus on the conversation at hand before he made an ass out of himself. Like I always do with Micah.
So, instead of saying what was really on his mind, Caedon muttered, “No, of course not. I cannot imagine you would miss me or want to talk to me.”
The tension crackled over the phone line when Micah didn’t say anything. Only silence. A heartbeat passed then another and another and three more after that. With each passing beat, Caedon’s heart sped up as he fought for the courage to speak. If nothing else, he had to find the will and a way to ask two questions. He had to force them past his lips. Even if he couldn’t do or say anything else, Caedon had to know they were all right. He had to know they were okay without him.
Finally, Micah broke the silence with a brusque question of his own. “Did you need something?”
“Um, yeah,” Caedon said hesitantly. Damn, I need to grow some balls. Closing his eyes, he counted to ten mentally then blurted out,
“How are you and Gabriella?” before he could stop himself.
“We’re fine,” Micah clipped out then went quiet again.
Motherfucking monkey butt. He’s not going to make this easy on me. Frustrated and more than a little hurt by Micah’s cold shoulder, Three Rings and a Rose
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Caedon dropped his feet to the hardwood floor with a thud and sat straight up . Reaching out, he snatched up his glass of whisky and gulped down the fiery liquid quickly then slammed the glass back down onto the table with enough force to shatter it.
Glass scattered in every direction, the sharp edges cutting into Caedon’s skin in several places. The searing, burning pain gave him a twisted relief from the ache in his chest. Disregarding the warm blood seeping from the tiny cuts in his flesh and trickling down onto his desk, Caedon asked scathingly, “Why do you have to be like this?” Caedon knew the answer before he’d asked it, but he was unwilling to take the coward’s way out. If he wanted to face the situation, he would do it head-on, no matter how much he regretted it later. So he let his pain override his common sense, and he lashed out at Micah. “I know that I fucked up, and I realize that I hurt Gabriella, and I hurt you. But don’t you think I’m hurting, too? This is killing me. The last year and a half have been excruciating without my woman and my”— Fuck. What do I call Micah? Play it safe, play it cool—“best friend.”
Micah gasped, the hitch in his breath sounding tortured. “That’s what I figured. It’s all about you, Caedon. You know what? I don’t need this kind of negative garbage in my life and neither does Ella. I think you need to grow up and get over yourself. We don’t need you.
We don’t want you. Just leave us the fuck alone. Please. ” Click.
Now it was Caedon’s turn to release a tormented gasp. Pulling the phone from his ear, he stared at the receiver, hoping that he’d imagined Micah hanging up on him. No such luck. One minute Micah was there, and the next he was gone. Just like me. Only this time, Caedon was the abandoned one, not the other way around.
Getting to his feet abruptly, Caedon hurled his cell phone across the room, smashing it into the hand-carved mahogany mantelpiece with a distinct crash. The phone busted apart, plastic pieces flying 24
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around haphazardly before falling onto the floor by the crackling fireplace.
God, I can’t believe I just did that. What the fuck is wrong with me? Stalking across the room, Caedon knelt down and gathered up the cracked screen, mangled keypad, and all the rest of the phone’s components. But rather than getting up and dumping the pieces into the trash can as he’d planned, Caedon plopped down on to the floor with a grunt, his ass hitting the ground hard.
Staring into the flames burning in front of him, he couldn’t hold back the tidal wave of emotions swallowing him whole. Embarrassing moisture gathered in his eyes. Yet he couldn’t dredge up any remorse for the tears. He didn’t give a damn about crying, and he didn’t give a damn about anything else around him. Hell, at the moment, he didn’t even give a damn about the world because Micah was right. He was poison, and they didn’t need someone like that in their lives. Nobody did.
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Chapter 2
Present day…
“Where are you going?”
Addy’s voice yanked Caedon out of the past, and he realized that at some point he’d gotten out of his comfy bed and was now stumbling around his minimalist master bedroom buck-ass naked.
“Oh my God,” he groaned in mortification. But somewhere deep down inside him, he was thanking his lucky stars that there was hardly any furniture cluttering up the massive room. Otherwise, he would not only be showing off his backside to his best friend but als
o ramming into a million different things.
“Pish posh,” Addy murmured with a dismissive flick of the wrist.
“I have seen plenty of men naked. And even if I hadn’t, you aren’t doing a thing for me.”
Marching across the ebony flooring that had cost him a pretty penny, Caedon ducked inside the giant walk-in closet on the far side of the room. He pulled a pair of old ragged jeans off the shelf then tugged the tight pants halfway up one leg then the other and over his hips before zipping and buttoning them. Jerking one of his trademark plain black T-shirts off a random hanger, he hauled the shirt over his head before drawing it down and letting it fall into place.
Without missing a beat, he reentered the bedroom and said sharply, “For your information, Adeline Raines, I don’t have a problem being seen naked. I have a problem with you seeing me naked.”
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Addy peered at him over her shoulder, staring at him curiously, then giggled. When her girly laughter died down enough for her to talk to him again, she told him, “That’s really sweet, but I’m way past my virginal days, dearest.”
Caedon rolled his eyes. He despised her little pet name for him, but he let it slide—this time. “It has nothing to do with your innocence or lack thereof. It’s just that you are like my sister, and, God knows, I wouldn’t want Courtney to see me like that.”
“Ah,” Addy breathed. “I get it. Next time, I’ll close my eyes instead of ogling your cute tushy and that big, thick cock—” Caedon growled. “Shut up while you’re ahead. With the way I feel, it’s better for you to either keep your mouth closed or get the fuck out. I love you to death, Addy, but I don’t need this today.” Turning her entire body around, Addy crossed her legs and watched him closely. Too closely for his comfort, but there was nothing he could do to stop her. She was obviously not going anywhere anytime soon. “No, I think I should stay around. Besides, don’t you want to know where Gabriella is?” Yes! Yes! And hell to the yes! Instead of revealing the truth, he barked, “No,” then stormed out of his room and headed down the hall.