by M James
I thought April would, at one point. Now I’m not so sure.
“Fine,” I say sharply. “What do you need me to do?”
“I’ve got a few small cameras that I need you to install, as well hidden as possible, in key places. Your room, Erin’s room, the master suite where Rain and Vincent sleep. And the study, of course, if you can manage to get in there at any point. I know he keeps it locked and the key on him at all times.
“Why those other rooms specifically?”
She sighs as if she hadn’t expected to have to explain herself. “Your room, because we need something to corroborate anything you give us from conversations with Sonya. Rain and Vincent’s room because we need to know if he happens to let anything slip with her, as unlikely as that would be. And Erin’s room because we suspect that Vincent will go after her next in some way. Try to pull her in.
I have plenty of thoughts about that, but I keep them to myself. I don’t think April is particularly interested in hearing my input about a lot of this. “Alright.” I shrug. “I’ll do it now while they’re in the meeting. I should have a little time before they come out.”
“Where were you headed, anyway?” She looks at me curiously. “Off to take a nap?”
I roll my eyes. “Rain is out in the pool, and she asked me to join her. I was just going to go grab a pair of swim trunks.”
“Oh.” April purses her lips.
“Just doing my job.” I sketch a quick salute in her direction. “I’ll go set these up now.”
“Good. And Chase?” April calls after me as I start to go up the stairs.
“Yeah?” I don’t turn back to look at her.
“Grab those swim trunks, too.”
“Aye, aye.” I keep going up the stairs, my teeth gritted the whole way.
---
It wasn’t hard to set up the cameras. The most difficult one was Erin’s room since she was actually in there. But I just made up some shit about how Rain wanted me to check on her, and while she rolled her eyes and said she didn’t care and that she was tired of being cooped up in this fucking house, that this was supposed to be fun. Now she’s just being treated like a kid; I managed to get the camera near her wardrobe, from where it would have a good view of the entire room. She didn’t even notice—she was too busy being pissed.
From my perspective, Erin did a really stupid thing. Rain was right to be upset about Matteo—the guy obviously was just using her. Erin isn’t as smart as Rain was at her age, that’s for sure. But I also feel for her. Neither she nor Rain got enough attention from their parents, but at least Rain had me. Erin doesn’t have anyone, really. Her parents are always preoccupied with her father’s drinking or her mother working herself to death, and now Erin feels abandoned by her sister, too. Whether or not that’s justified is up for debate, but the important part is that she feels that way. And that might make her do any number of desperate or stupid things.
Of all the places I think April is probably right to have surveillance on, it’s definitely this room.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Erin. “There’s not really anything I can do. But I’d say maybe talk to your sister. Tell her how you feel.”
“I’ve tried. It doesn’t do any fucking good. She’s too busy with her perfect life and her perfect future husband.” Erin pouts. “She’s too good for the life we used to live.”
Is that true? I really don’t think it is. Especially not after what April has told me about Vincent and how he treats her. I’m not sure exactly what he has on her or what’s keeping her here, but there’s got to be a reason. It’s the only thing that makes sense because my Rain never cared about any of this. My Rain wore ripped jeans and dirty sneakers. She spent what little money she had on notebooks to write stories in between classes and movie tickets for us to go see together. My Rain liked sneaking a bottle of vodka out of her dad’s stash and sitting in the park with me at night, mixing it with lemonade from the gas station and getting buzzed together. At the same time, we made up plans for the future that we knew would never actually come to pass. Plans that, for a long time, hadn’t included us together, as much as I knew Rain wanted them to.
Or at least, I had known they would never come to pass, for me at least. I had always known I wasn’t good enough for her, that I’d have to leave to keep from dragging her down with me. I managed to claw my way back out of the shithole that I’d been destined for, but no matter how many times a day I try to think of a way that things could have been different, I just can’t fucking see it.
“I think you might be giving your sister too hard of a time,” I say before I can stop myself. “She might not be as happy as you think she is.”
“You think?” Erin asks, arching an eyebrow. “Is that because you know her so well?”
I can feel us stepping into dangerous territory here. I’ve worried that Erin would recognize me for a while—I hadn’t changed that much from when I was a teenager and that she’d blow my cover.
“Just call it a hunch,” I say firmly, and then I slip out of the room before Erin can say anything else.
The last thing I want to do now is to go back down to the pool. Still, I’m sure April will have something to say if I don’t, so I go back to my room and snag a pair of swim trunks, changing into them quickly and leaving my clothes on the bed.
I look good. I can’t deny that. Despite the fact that I couldn’t exactly hit the gym while in Italy and had to rely on bodyweight workouts, I’ve kept up my overall muscle. My chest and abdomen are as cut as ever despite the pasta I did indulge in while we were there. I know I look a hell of a lot different from what Rain remembers—I worked out back then, but I didn’t have the gains that I have now.
A part of me is excited for Rain to see me like this, anticipating the look on her face, the lust in her eyes when she saw how much I’ve changed. But a bigger part of me is sick with anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I want Rain too much, still. And if she wants me too, then it’s just going to hurtle us closer to what April wants and what ultimately will lead to real problems for both of us.
But I head down anyway, with that sinking feeling following me all the way to the pool.
Rain is laying out on a lounge chair when I step back out onto the deck, her skin shimmering with some kind of oil, and I feel that all too familiar lurch as my dick twitches in my swim shorts.
“You were gone for a long time,” she says, without looking over at me. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“Had a hard time finding my shorts,” I say gruffly. It’s a dumb excuse, but it’s the best one I can come up with at the moment.
Rain sets the book aside that she’s reading—something with a fantasy-like cover and intricate font spelling out the title—and stands up from the lounge chair. She’s way too close to me when she does, and I can smell the scent of her sunscreen and tanning oil again and the heat coming off of her skin. I’m instantly hard, and all I can do is hope that she doesn’t notice. My cock is pushing against my shorts, throbbing, screaming at me that I’m only a few inches away from her. It would be so easy to grab her, lay her back down on that lounge chair and push her tiny bikini out of the way, and sink all of myself into her hot, tight little pussy.
I bet she’d still feel every bit as good as she did all those years ago when I took her virginity. Maybe even better, because as much as I hate to think of her having slept with other guys while we were apart, she’s more experienced now. She’s a woman, not an innocent teenager.
We could fuck the way I’d always dreamed of fucking. Sweet and slow at first, and then hard and dirty, until every fantasy I ever had about her was wrung out. And then I could come up with some more.
“Chase?” Rain’s voice is slightly faint, and she looks up at me, her soft blue eyes meeting mine. “What’s going on with you today?”
“Nothing.” I clear my throat. “After you,” I say, gesturing to the pool. I figure the cold water will do wonders for calming down my angrily throbbing ere
ction.
Rain slips back into the water, sighing with a sound that makes me ache for her all over again, a small moan falling from her lips as she sinks down to her waist and then up to her neck before standing up again. “It feels so good,” she says softly. My body goes rigid all over with a pulsing, aching need that makes me want to crush things with my bare hands for how insanely, frustratingly, infuriatingly difficult this all is.
I want her. I want to fuck her, claim her, possess her, take her back. She was always supposed to be mine, and I feel like I’m going crazy because, at the end of the day, she’ll never be mine. I’ll do my job, and I’ll have to leave, and who knows where Rain will go when this is all over. But it won’t be home with me.
The FBI would never allow it.
The cold water feels like a shock to my system, stealing the air out of my lungs. To be honest, it’s exactly what I need. I dive underneath, letting the shimmering crystal blue water encapsulate me for a moment, wrap itself around me like a bubble, hiding me from everything above that wants to tear at me and force me to make choices I’d never make on my own.
When I surface again, Rain is still standing there, hip-deep in the water, the red bikini clinging to her like a wet second skin.
Fuck, I want her so goddamn bad.
“You remember when we snuck over to Mrs. Castro’s pool?” She grins, her voice low enough that no one will hear her if they walk out onto the deck, but clear enough that I can hear what she’s saying just fine. She’s keeping some distance between us too. Although it’s probably just so she doesn’t have to answer any questions if anyone were to see us, all I can think is that she must feel the same maddening lust that I do right now. The same aching need would cause us both to lose control if we were within touching distance.
“Yeah.” My throat feels tight. “I do, actually.” Fuck. The last thing I need is to go down memory lane with Rain right now. But that’s a good memory, a fun one. It had been a stupidly hot summer day, particularly for Indiana. Rain and I had been out walking while her dad was sleeping off another one of his benders, and her mom was cooking, heating up the house to the point that it was unbearable. I even remember what she was wearing that day, cutoff shorts from the thrift store that showed her faintly tan thighs and just barely covered her ass and a thin tank top that had clung to her skin with sweat. Her breasts had been small back then at seventeen—they still are, but there’s a fuller curve to them now—and she’d been sans bra. I’d been dating some girl that I can’t even remember now, but fuck if I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off of Rain’s nipples poking against the ribbed cotton of that grey tank top.
That’s the kind of shit that cements itself in a teenage boy’s mind forever. I probably jerked off that night thinking about Rain’s tits in that tank top and everything that happened after.
We’d wound up walking further than we thought, all the way to the end of the neighborhood where the one wealthy widow lived in a three-story brick house that seemed like a mansion to us, and a pool in the backyard. Hot and sweaty and reckless, we’d snuck into the backyard in hopes that she wasn’t home and splashed around in the pool until Mrs. Castro had woken up from her afternoon nap from all the noise and come out in her floral old-lady nightgown and curlers, screaming at us to get out and go back home before she called our parents.
I never forgot the sight of Rain climbing out of the pool, her soaking wet shorts dripping water and turned dark from being in the pool. The grey tank top molded tight to her body, her nipples hard as diamonds from the cold water, and her hair plastered away from her face.
I’d had dreams about that for years.
“I always said if I was rich one day, I’d want a pool,” Rain says softly. “That was a big dream of mine. To just be able to go into my backyard and get into the water.”
My stomach clenches. “Well, now you have it.” It comes out colder than I meant it to. “Vincent really has given you everything, hasn’t he?”
“Chase—”
My body feels tight with frustration and anger and the overwhelming feeling that I’m sick of all of this. Sick of being so close to her, sick of being pushed around by the agency, sick of wondering if Rain really wants this lifestyle or if she’s just trapped in it.
“I’m going back inside.” I push past her, the water swirling around me. I can’t fucking do this. I just can’t. I’ve never been so fucking miserable in my life, even as a kid, as I feel right now. I feel like the one thing I want more than anything else in the world is being dangled in front of me, and I could take it, but in the end, it would go against everything I’ve tried to do my whole life. And I’d lose her anyway when it’s all over.
“Chase!” She tries to call after me, but I don’t answer. I don’t want to hear that stupid fake name on her lips. I want to hear Zach, Zach, please, oh my god Zach, Zach, you feel so good. I want to hear her moaning Zach, breathing Zach, gasping it. At the same time, I fuck her harder than she’s ever been fucked in her life, until she forgets any dick other than mine, anything anyone else could give her. She belongs to me like she was always fucking supposed to.
I walk straight upstairs into the shower, turning on the hottest water I can stand, and brace myself against the wall as I grab my rock-hard cock, jerking it so hard and fast that I just about rub the skin off. It feels like I’m punishing myself at the same time as the pleasure of literally anything gripping my cock and stroking it, even if it’s my hand, curls my toes.
I shouldn’t want her. I shouldn’t care. It beats in my head over and over like a drum as I beat my cock, jerking harder and harder until my balls tighten up. My back arches, and I spurt cum across the shower like a bullet fired from a gun, spraying the wall with it as I clench my teeth to keep from groaning aloud in case Sonya is in the next room.
Images of Rain fly through my head as I come, and I can’t stop it. Her in that soaking wet tank top, her naked in her bed when I took her virginity, her lips on mine, her kissing me in the garden, her just now in that tiny red bikini, gleaming under the sun. It’s all I can do not to groan out her name, squeezing my cock with a death grip as I come for what feels like forever, until I’m panting with my forehead pressed up against the wall, my cum washing away down the drain instead of buried inside Rain like I want it to be.
God, I’m so fucked.
13
Rain
For the next week, things calm down a little. I don’t have to see much of Dena; she’s either sleeping or at work helping prepare the club for the opening night or out. I mostly just see her at meals, when she casually flirts with Vincent as if no one will notice, and sometimes at the gym. All of our conversations are surface-level, her always squealing over all of the nice things I have now and how much she loves her job and how she’s the hottest server there by a mile. I always knew Dena was self-obsessed, but it just seems to have gotten worse. And I don’t understand what either her or Vincent’s long game is.
Gianna stays out of my way, for the most part, tending to Ezio and tormenting the nurses who steadily come and go, helping to care for him. No one really wants to tell me much, but from what I gather, his condition is improving, even if he still can’t get out of bed. Sonya and Vincent spend a lot of time in the study, talking about business, and Zach avoids me as much as possible. When Sonya and Vincent aren’t having meetings, they’re at one club or another, handling business there.
So, for the most part, I’m alone again. Erin still doesn’t want to talk to me. She passes the afternoons in her room, watching tv and listening to music and scrolling through social media and doing her schoolwork—I hope. Every time I try to check on her or ask how it’s going, she refuses to talk to me. And Vincent has told me not to push her, that he’d rather her stay in her room than get up to trouble, so I don’t dare try too hard. When my mother calls every weekend, I just tell her that everything is fine, that Erin wants to stay as long as she can, and that her teachers have approved her to do remote schoolwork for as lo
ng as she needs to. The latter is true—Vincent made sure to get clearance for that, which means that Erin could be here all the way through her senior year if need be. The thought makes my stomach clench with anxiety, not because I don’t want my sister here, but because I’m worried about Vincent’s mood regarding her and what he plans to do.
I wish my mother would demand that Erin come home—even Vincent wouldn’t be able to come up with a good enough excuse to keep her here if my mother put her foot down—but she doesn’t, and I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s a relief for her to have Erin here and not have to worry about her—so she thinks, anyway—while she tends to our dad. I can understand it, but it still frustrates me.
With all of us crammed in the house like this, it’s easy to fantasize about Zach, to think about how things could have been different. I try not to. But every time I see him, I feel my heart leap in my chest. I didn’t realize how much I missed him until I saw him in Italy, and every passing day reminds me more and more. I want to know if he still feels the same way, if he’s still the boy I once loved in any capacity, but he keeps himself closed off from me. I don’t know if it’s because he’s falling for Sonya or simply because he doesn’t care about me anymore. Still, it’s as confusing as anything else.
Because I can’t forget how he kissed me in the garden on the night of my birthday. And I also can’t forget that I still don’t know the mystery surrounding why he’s using a fake name.
The morning of the club’s opening night, Vincent is in rare form, his mood brighter than I’ve seen it in a long time. When I come back into the bedroom from the shower, he meets me halfway across the room, reaching for the tie of the thin black silk robe I’m wearing. He’s dressed in only black sweatpants, his muscular chest bare, and I think of a time when I would have pressed myself against him, running my hands over his bare skin, hungry for his touch. Now I freeze as he slides the robe off of me, turning me towards the floor-length mirror as he stands behind me.