Stay (His Command Book 3)

by Piper Scott

  Gabriel sprang up from the bed and grabbed his bowl. Eyes wide with delight, he gestured to Adrian’s untouched breakfast. “Are you going to eat? I can save it for later. It’ll reheat really well, I promise.”

  “Later sounds good. I’ve got a little too much going on right now to worry about eating.” Adrian passed Gabriel his bowl. “But I will eat it later. Thank you for cooking.”

  Gabriel beamed. “Thank you for getting in touch with someone I know. Do you think Lucian will know where Garrison is?”

  “I don’t know,” Adrian said truthfully. “The faster you go do dishes, the faster I can call him and we can find out, okay?”

  “Yeah!” Full of energy, Gabriel rushed from the room. When the door closed behind him, Adrian let his head slump so his chin touched his chest.

  If Lucian did know where Garrison was, Gabriel would never find out. That was information Adrian would take to the grave.

  And if it turned out he was close, Adrian didn’t care what it meant for his future—he would find that despicable excuse of a man, and he would kill him with his bare hands if he needed to.

  Gabriel would never see a man like that again.

  24

  Adrian

  There was a locked door down the hall, just shy of all the penthouse bedrooms. Adrian had passed by it a few times before, but he’d never let it bother him. It didn’t take much to figure out what was on the other side. Either Sterling had childproofed his sex dungeon in advance, or he kept his business there under lock and key. Adrian could think of no other explanation for why he’d need a door with an outward-facing lock in a penthouse he lived in as a bachelor. And if there were secret business-related documents so precious that they needed to be locked up tight on the other side of that door, that meant that Adrian would be able to find contact information, too.

  Adrian wasn’t proud about breaking into Sterling’s office. No matter what he felt about Sterling, he knew it wasn’t right to intrude—but he also wasn’t interested in depending on Sterling any longer. Gabriel was his brother, and Gabriel’s problems were Lowe problems. To wait for Sterling to come home so he could ask permission to get Lucian’s number would be admitting that Adrian couldn’t take care of those closest to him.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  With a fillet knife Adrian had found in the kitchen in one hand, and a flattened-out paper clip he’d bent at the very tip in another, Adrian went to work on the lock.

  Once upon a time, in what felt like a distant reality, Adrian had learned lock picking out of necessity. After his first heat, his father—a staunchly ‘traditional’ man—had done what he’d felt was required to keep the sanctity of his household intact while he processed having sired an omega son: he’d locked Adrian in his room, and only allowed him out at designated times to make sure no one on the outside world learned who he really was. Three days into his imprisonment, bored out of his mind and affronted by his new reality, Adrian had taken it upon himself to break free. But even after his father had come to his senses and begrudgingly accepted his son’s lot in life, the ins and outs of picking a simple lock stuck with Adrian.

  It wasn’t a skill he used often, but it had saved him more than once from sleeping outside after misplacing his keys following particularly wild nights at The Shepherd. And now, it was going to help him get to the bottom of what had happened to his brother.

  Adrian slid the fillet knife into the bottom of the lock and tested its direction by turning it back and forth. When he found the correct way, he tilted the lock in that direction and slotted the paper clip in from the top. It took a little finesse and some luck, but as he slid the paper clip and did his best to manipulate the pins inside, eventually they fell into place, and the lock gave. With a satisfied grin, Adrian opened the door.

  What he found inside wasn’t what he’d expected.

  For a moment, Adrian stood stunned in front of the doorway. He took in the room and did his best to compartmentalize what he was seeing, but his emotions were too scattered to dream of sorting them out so quickly. Cautiously, he stepped into the room and took a closer look.

  While the rest of the penthouse was darkly sophisticated and handsomely modern, the room Adrian found himself in was light and airy. White painted walls and broad, cheerful windows were immediately visible from the doorway, plain enough that they allowed the art on display to steal the show. Adrian’s eyes traced from one piece to the next, not sure what to make of them.

  Children’s artwork hung in uniform intervals on the walls. Some of it was very juvenile—the stuff Adrian imagined a toddler would be capable of. Some of it demonstrated more skill. There was no rhyme or reason to how it was arranged, but there was a cohesion to the pieces that gave Adrian the sense that all of it was from the same child.

  Did Sterling have children?

  If he was almost forty, it was very possible that he had a son or daughter who was already grown.

  Adrian swallowed. A sinking feeling he couldn’t explain spread through his stomach, and he stepped into the room and took a closer look around. There was a neatly put-together desk and a comfortable-looking office chair. The room’s closet was left open, its door removed entirely. It was outfitted with filing cabinets, likely where Sterling kept his business records. A tall potted plant—some tree-like thing with waxy-looking leaves—stood in the corner. But it was the collage hung on the wall facing the desk that Adrian’s eyes were drawn to next.

  Picture upon picture had been slotted together, some old and fading, featuring a teenage Sterling and a small, female child, while others were newer and showed Sterling closer to his current age. The young girl in them aged as he did, and Adrian followed the progression of time thanks to her apparent age.

  In one photo, the tiny girl with blond pigtails with a too-big, bright pink backpack and a gap-toothed smile stood next to a young Sterling, silent pride on his lips. In another, Sterling and a skinny pre-teen girl whose hair fell to her elbows and whose grin was contagious—hands on her hips to tame some of the billowing graduation robes she wore—stood before a sign that read Parkdale Elementary School. Not all that far from that photo, Sterling, a little older and a little more haggard, stood at the side of a young woman who flashed the camera a big thumbs up with one hand while clutching her high school diploma with another.

  Adrian recognized her face.

  Clarissa.

  Heart pounding against his ribs for reasons Adrian couldn’t quite pin, he watched their story unfold. Sterling, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, carried a cardboard box to the open door of an apartment building. The shot was framed over Clarissa’s shoulder—she was shooting a selfie, and she winked at the camera as the picture was taken. In another, Sterling, in one of his fine suits, buried his head in his hands in obvious embarrassment as Clarissa stood by his side with her usual brand of zany confidence outside The Shepherd. There was a bottle of Knob Creek in her hand, and she held it out toward the camera as if to declare, “see what I’ve got?”

  There were rumors around the club that Sterling and Clarissa were dating. For a while, Adrian had believed them. He’d seen the way Sterling and Clarissa got along firsthand, and he knew that there had to be something between them. But now that he’d seen this, he understood.

  Sterling and Clarissa weren’t a couple. If Sterling was almost forty, he was a little too young to be Clarissa’s father, but by the looks of the photographs, he might as well have been. All his life he’d been by Clarissa’s side, watching her grow, accompanying her to all the biggest events in her life, sharing in her successes, and likely helping her through her failures.

  In all of the pictures, Adrian never saw another parental figure. He knew that it was possible that Sterling had simply chosen photos with only him and Clarissa present, but Adrian’s heart told him that wasn’t the case. The pride in Sterling’s eyes was paternal. There had been no one else in Clarissa’s life—no one there to celebrate and commiserate with her.

  Sterl
ing was it.

  And by the looks of Sterling’s office, Clarissa was all he had, too.

  Adrian tore himself away from the photo collage to look at the hand-drawn images on the wall. Most were done in crayon, the kind of abstract, blobby pictures that young children drew. But one, close to Sterling’s desk, showed advanced craftsmanship. He set his fillet knife and paper clip down on the desk to examine it.

  The drawing was far from perfect—the lines wobbled and there was something off with the proportions—but there was heart in it that couldn’t be ignored. A few indistinct bottles of liquor and a set of fuzzy handcuffs were placed together on the page, and beneath, in bubbly handwriting, was a message.

  Happy 5th anniversary to The Shepherd!

  You did it! So proud of you.

  Love, your little sister

  PS: all my friends think you’re the coolest but I still think you’re gross :P

  There was a coffee stain ringing the bottom right corner, and the paper had faded and gone brittle with age, but time only made the drawing more special. The Shepherd’s fifth anniversary had been twelve years ago. Even after all this time, Sterling kept mementos from Clarissa with him.

  The strange, alien tightness in Adrian’s chest returned.

  Sterling wasn’t pretending to be a wholesome man. He hadn’t suddenly changed his tune just because Adrian was pregnant, and he wasn’t trying to trap Adrian into a relationship via the baby. The nice guy act that had driven Adrian up the wall was genuine. All his life, even back in his teenage years, Sterling had been a family man—acting as a father to a girl who had nothing.

  And now that Adrian was pregnant, he was ready to step into that role again.

  Distressed, Adrian rubbed a hand over his mouth and stepped back from the drawing. His thigh hit the corner of Sterling’s desk, and he winced as pain flooded his nerves from the site of contact.

  Sterling hadn’t been trying to control him by telling him to calm down, Adrian realized. He’d been truly concerned for the life Adrian harbored.

  “You know,” Sterling’s voice said from the doorway, “if this were a movie, this is the part where I’d have to kill you for finding out my secret.”

  Adrian jumped. Heart hammering, he clutched at his chest and turned to face Sterling, sure that his entire face had turned red. He hadn’t heard Sterling come home. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  Sterling pointed at the fillet knife.

  Adrian reconsidered his sentence. “…Well, I did mean to invade your privacy. I guess that’s the only reason why I’d pick a lock, isn’t it?”

  Sterling stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. “Is that how you’ve been getting into my penthouse without a key? Lock picking?”

  “For someone with so much money, you really should consider investing in better security.” Adrian shrugged. His heart hadn’t left his throat just yet, but he was relieved to find that his mind was working just fine. “Pretty soon it’s not going to be just you living here.”

  “I know. But before I make any renovations, I have to decide whether I’ll be moving from here or not.” Sterling gestured to a small stack of papers on his desk—real estate listings. “The location isn’t what bothers me so much as the possibility of embarrassment. I don’t want my future son or daughter to have the nature of my business hanging over their head. There’s the exterior entrance, of course, but if word gets around school that they live above The Shepherd… well. I know how kids can be.”

  “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this.”

  “It’s been a long few months, Adrian.” Sterling’s face fell, and for the first time, Adrian saw beyond his cheerfulness and into his hurt. “I’ve had a lot of time by myself to think of what’s best for our child.”

  Not his child, or the child, or it.

  Our child.

  Adrian’s heart fluttered, and he crossed his arms tightly over his chest to try to combat his unwanted emotions. It wasn’t like he needed Sterling. He was perfectly capable of functioning on his own. But now that he’d seen what he’d had, the thought of Sterling as a father felt a lot more real—and sticking around to see his eyes fill with pride just like they had in his pictures with Clarissa felt a hell of a lot more tempting.

  When Adrian didn’t speak, Sterling shook his head. “So, what were you doing breaking into my office, anyway?”

  “I needed to find someone’s phone number.”

  “And you couldn’t have asked me?” Sterling raised an eyebrow.

  Adrian scowled, but on the inside, he wasn’t anywhere near upset. “You were gone.”

  Sterling hummed. He rested his back against the doorway and pointed to one of the filing cabinets in the closet. “You can help yourself to the filing cabinet there. It has employee records. It’s locked, of course, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue for you. Is that something they teach you in business school, lock picking?”

  “No.” Adrian grumbled. He leaned back against the desk, hands braced loosely beside his thighs. “But I’d feel better if you unlocked it now that you’re here. I only broke in out of necessity.”

  “Ah. A conscience.” Sterling moved from the door to the filing cabinets. He took a set of keys from his pockets and slotted one into the tiny lock on the door. As he worked, he continued to speak. “I’m sorry for how I treated you before. I don’t like to lose my temper, and I owe you an apology.”

  “For what?” Adrian frowned. “I was the one who said terrible things to you.”

  “I hold myself to incredibly high standards.” The cabinet clicked, and Sterling slid open the drawer. “If I can’t be in control of myself, how can I hope to take control of the responsibility of another? Whether that means a submissive or a child, it doesn’t matter. Self-control is tantamount to leadership.” Sterling leafed through the folders. “Now, who is it that you’re attempting to spy on?”

  “Lucian.” Sterling shot Adrian a flat look, and Adrian sighed. “I promise I’m not looking up his information to harass him or otherwise injure him. I… I just need to give him a call. I need to apologize… amongst other things.”

  There was nothing. No argument, no surprised look, not even a hum of interest. Sterling thumbed through the folders and produced two papers. By the time he reached Adrian, he’d flipped the second paper over so its blank back covered the written contents of the first. All that was visible at the top of the page was Lucian’s full name, his email address, and his phone number.

  Adrian looked up from the document to Sterling, startled by Sterling’s compliance. Sterling nodded to the paper. “Are you going to record the number?”

  “I…” Adrian sucked in a breath. “Yeah.”

  There was a pen cup on Sterling’s desk, as well as a post-it notepad. Adrian jotted down the number, then peeled the paper off the notepad and toyed with the adhesive strip on the back. Sterling put both papers on the desk, making sure they stayed concealed. In doing so, he reached over Adrian.

  Adrian didn’t miss how close Sterling came to him.

  The air grew thick, and Adrian’s heart thudded against his ribs almost uncomfortably. He lifted his chin and found his eyes locked with Sterling’s. Pretty pools of blue, illuminated in the bright light from the windows, shone for him.

  Adrian couldn’t move.

  Sterling had every reason in the world to be upset with him. If Adrian were in Sterling’s shoes, he’d never talk to him again. What Adrian said was inexcusable, anger or not, and it wasn’t the first time he’d done it. Sterling knew that he was bad, yet here he was, treating him with respect and helping him when he needed it.

  Adrian didn’t know what he’d done to deserve such kindness, and he didn’t think he’d ever truly understand it. All his adult life, all he’d done was cause pain, but Sterling was willing to see past the beast he was on the outside to find the fragile soul sheltered within.

  The massage. The kind words. The promise he would never be alone. All of it came t
o a head in Adrian’s mind, and he found himself weaker than ever before.

  Only Sterling had taken the time to get to know him. Only Sterling had thought to look for the thorn in Adrian’s paw before he dismissed him as irreparably savage. Only Sterling possessed the patience to coax him down from selfish torture.

  Adrian knew that he wasn’t a good Dom. The pain he’d inflicted hadn’t been for Sterling’s benefit—helping Sterling achieve subspace had been the last thing on Adrian’s mind. Yet still, even with tortured balls and a bruised ego, Sterling had shown him the way through kindness and respect rather than cruelty. In all things, Sterling was gentle, but gentleness didn’t equate weakness.

  The weak one between them was Adrian. Sterling was stronger than he could ever hope to be.

  “You look thoughtful.” Sterling’s voice dipped, an intimate sound in the tight space between their bodies. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m…” Adrian struggled to find the right words. Nothing he wanted to say was sincere enough. “I was thinking about last night.”

  Sterling didn’t make a move to draw away. The thickness in the air grew heavier, and when Adrian breathed it in, all he could smell was Sterling. Notes of lavender, a hint of cedar, and through it all, the unmistakable scent of alpha. It tightened in Adrian’s groin and woke that morning’s displaced arousal.

  “What about last night?” Sterling asked. The way his lips moved when he spoke was magic, and Adrian couldn’t help but look. God, did he want to kiss them.

  Where had these feelings come from?

  When he was near Sterling, his mind turned to mush and his stomach filled with helium. The strange sensation in his chest didn’t help. Adrian recalled the distant, dreamy look on Gabriel’s face when he spoke about Garrison, the tint of pink in his cheeks, and the curl of his lips.