Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels (101 page)

He planted a kiss on my nipple. “You like it when
I
look at you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

He pulled away from me. His voice was hoarse. “Take off your slacks.”

I unbuttoned them and slid them over my hips, letting them drop to pool around my feet.

His gaze swept me from top to bottom. I was exposed except for my tiny cotton panties. They had a pattern of little green ribbons on them. I’d selected them for comfort, not for sexiness.

He closed the distance between us. He slid seeking hands over my skin, then eased them under the band of my underwear and began to peel them over my hips.

“You’re mine, Cecily. I want to own you. I can’t help it, it just seems like you were made for me. Your body is so sweet. I can’t handle the idea that you would belong to anyone but me. So, in a minute, I’m going to have you completely naked. And then you’re going to open your legs for me, and I’m going to touch your sweet pussy, and you are going to take my cock—”

He yanked at my panties then, exposing me, and his voice got caught in his throat.

I was wet for him. I wanted him. I stood on shaky legs as he planted a kiss on the top of my mound.

I sighed.

“All of my cock,” he growled, “just like you’re good at. And you’re going to let me fuck you until you come. And come. And come.”

I let out a shuddering sigh.

He cupped my naked sex with one hand, sliding his fingers between the lips to find my clit.

I cried out as shocks of rapture reverberated through my thighs, bewildering me with their intensity.

“Shh,” he soothed. “I’ve got you.” He stroked me. “Oh, you’re so wet, baby. You want me bad, don’t you?”

“Please,” I moaned.

He stood up. He got out a condom and handed it to me. With one hand, he freed his long, thick cock. “Put that on me?”

I did, trying not to be distracted by his fingers stroking my clit, his mouth nipping my breasts.

He picked me up, holding my buttocks, and he positioned me against him.

He slid inside in one long, excruciatingly wonderful stroke.

And then he held me there, kissing me.

I wrapped my legs tight around him, writhing against him, wanting his movement. “You feel so good, Vigil,” I whispered in his ear. “I love the way you fill me up.”

He grunted.

“Fuck me,” I said. “Fuck me forever.”

“Until the end of time,” he assured me, pumping his hips and thrusting deep.

Vigil was sitting propped up against one of the large vents on the roof, and I was curled up in his lap. We were kissing.

Perhaps there had been a bit of hyperbole in saying we were going to have sex until the end of time, but it had been quite a deliciously prolonged encounter, spanning half of the roof, several different positions, and so many mind-shattering orgasms that I had lost count of them.

At the moment, I felt pleasantly exhausted and a little sore.

I lay my head on his chest. “You lost my shirt.”

“Your shirt?”

“Mmm hmm,” I told him. “It fell when we were coming out the window.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I don’t see how I’m going to get home now,” I said.

“You’ll have to go topless,” he said, lazily touching one of my nipples. I wasn’t dressed yet.

I sighed as a sleepy pleasure drifted through me. “For that matter, I don’t even know where the rest of my clothes are. They could have all blown off the roof.”

“Well, that would be a tragedy.” But it sounded as if he thought it would be anything but.

I punched him playfully. “Shut up. I need clothes to get home.”

He kissed me on the forehead. “I will swing you home from roof to roof. We’ll go so fast that no one will see your lack of clothing.”

I arched an eyebrow, not quite believing him.

“Hell, I’d swing you home with my cock buried inside you if I thought it wouldn’t be slightly distracting.”

“Right, you’d get distracted and we’d die,” I said.

“But what a way to go, right?” He grinned.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me go. I need to find my clothes.”

He tightened his grip on me. “I like you right where you are.”

“Seriously,” I said. “You have no idea what this is like. Every time we do it, you’re fully clothed except for your dick. You don’t have to worry about
your
clothes.”

He let go of me. “Go find your clothes.” He sounded defeated.

“Hey,” I said, my brow furrowing. “What’d I say?”

He shook his head. “I know this is a less-than-perfect way to conduct a relationship, Cecily.”

“Well…” I chewed on my lip. “It’s not like people don’t sometimes dress up in masks and costumes to have sex. They wear those leather things. I don’t remember what they’re called.”

He flinched.

“What?” I said. “I just meant that it’s not
that
weird.”

He got up and started over the roof, kneeling to pick up articles of my clothing.

I watched him. “Vigil?”

He came back to me, handing me my pants, shoes, underwear, and bra. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You know, there are a lot of things you don’t want to talk about.” I started to get dressed.

He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

I buttoned my slacks. “You say this is a relationship. But if we’re together like that, you have to be honest with me. I need to know.”

His jaw twitched. He looked down at his feet. “I… I can’t. I can’t talk about it. It’s too hard.”

“Tell me the connection between you and The Phantom then.” I pulled my bra back on. “Tell me something.”

He didn’t speak. He folded his arms over his chest.

“I looked and looked, trying to find something—anything—that would tell me what you two have in common. But as far as I can tell, you’ve never interacted before. So, how could you be the only person that understands him? And how do you guys know each other’s identities? And why would exposing why you wear this costume also expose The Phantom?”

“It’s a long story,” he said. “I don’t even know how I could possibly explain it.”

“You know, the only time I could even find a Rutherford and Barclay together was this picture of your mother and his father together somewhere. Some charity thing or something. It’s funny because I didn’t even know that Frank Barclay, crime kingpin, went to charity events, but I guess he was trying to put on a good face for the public. And it’s weird that they would be talking. I mean, it’s not like they traveled in the same circles.”

He swallowed hard and looked at me.

And suddenly, it clicked.

“Oh,” I said. “They were together, because…”

“Cecily, Hayden Barclay is my—”

“Brother,” I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was dark, and I lay in the circle of Callum’s arms, in his bed. He said this was the only place he could talk about it.

His voice was only a ragged whisper, coming to me through the darkness.

“He’s my half-brother,” he said. “We have different fathers. But Veronica Waite gave birth to both of us.”

“Veronica ‘Legs’ Waite,” I whispered in horror. “That’s the reason he cuts off their legs, isn’t it? It’s about your mother.”

“We never knew her,” he said. “You have to understand that. We only knew her through those video recordings of her on Broadway in
The Phantom of the Opera
. We used to watch her play Christine over and over. She was so pretty, in her white dresses that fluttered around her long, long bare legs. And we’d watch as a man in a mask came up from underground to steal her away.”

I felt the knowledge settle over me. “It’s all connected to your mother. It’s why he dresses that way.” I paused and my voice dropped another horrified octave. “It’s why
you
dress…”

Callum’s voice was strangled. “It’s part of it. It’s not… all of it.”

“There’s more to it than this?”

“My mother apparently started to have an affair with Frank Barclay when I was pretty young,” said Callum. “I don’t remember. I don’t know. But at any rate, she got pregnant, and when my father found out, he was furious. He kicked her out, but he wouldn’t let her take me with her. So, I was here with my father, and she was off with Frank.”

“Oh,” I said. “But that’s not public knowledge?”

“It scandalous,” said Callum. “According to Nolan, my father paid a great deal of money to shut up the press about it. He didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Wow,” I said. “Why would she have an affair with Frank Barclay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “No one knows. She didn’t survive long enough for me to ask her. Nolan always says nice things about my mother. I don’t know if that’s because they’re true, or because he wants me to think that she was a good woman. Anyway, he says that he doesn’t think that she knew he was involved in organized crime. It wasn’t something that he advertised, after all. Maybe that’s the truth, maybe not.” He paused. “There aren’t very many people that I can talk to who actually knew my mother. My father’s dead too, you know.”

I did know. I wrapped my arms around him in the darkness. “They were killed at the same time, I thought. But how is that possible if she wasn’t even living with your father anymore?”

“She called him. That’s what Nolan says. They were in the middle of this big custody battle over me, and she’d just given birth to Hayden, and she called my father in a panic. According to Nolan, she’d just realized that Frank was part of the mob and that he was a murderer. She was trying to leave, but she feared for her life.”

His voice was rough and quiet. “My father called the police and rushed out to meet her. But by the time the police got there, both of my parents were dead.”

Right. I knew this story. I’d read about it. “All the news stories say that the killer was a thief and that he got spooked and killed them. Do you agree with that? Do you think that’s what happened? Or do you think it was Frank?”

“I don’t know,” said Callum. “Nolan doesn’t suspect Frank. It seems like the obvious answer, doesn’t it? But they had a lot of evidence on the other guy. They found him not too far from the scene, still carting along the weapon he used to shoot them.”

“Maybe he was hired by Frank,” I said.

“I’ve wondered it too,” said Callum. “But I don’t think Frank wanted my mother dead. Or—at least—I don’t think that’s the way he would have killed her if he was going to do it.”

I had a hard time wrapping my head around all of it. Why had I never questioned who Hayden Barclay’s mother was? I supposed it had never seemed important to me.

“Nolan thought Frank was okay,” Callum continued. “But he was wrong. Frank was not okay, not in the slightest.”

“What do you mean?”

He took a long, slow breath. “At first, Nolan only let Hayden come visit me here at the mansion. He knew that we were brothers, and he wanted me to have a relationship with a member of my family. Hayden was the only person related to me that was still alive. I think he would have liked to bring Hayden to live with us there, but Frank wasn’t having any of that.

“After a while,” he continued, “Hayden wanted me to come to his house. I begged Nolan to let me go. Hayden told me all about the cool toys he had and about the stuff we could do. It was only natural for me to want that and for or Hayden to want me to come over. We were kids after all.”

“Hold on,” I said. “You and Hayden played together when you were little boys?”

“All the time. We spent time together all the way into our adolescence, but then we drifted apart. He’s my brother, and we may not have grown up under the same roof, but we grew up close.”

I shook my head. It was hard for me to wrap my head around that. “But you’re nothing like him.”

He laughed bitterly in the darkness. “We’re more alike than you think.”

A shiver went through me. I didn’t want to believe that.

“Should I go on?” he said.

I hesitated. But I needed to know this. “Yes.”

“Uh…” His grip tightened on me, as if he was trying to reassure himself that I was really there with him. “Well, eventually, Nolan let me go to play at Hayden’s house. I suppose that he figured that even if I were visiting the house of a criminal kingpin, it was safe enough for his own children, and it would be safe enough for me. At first, it was. Nothing bad happened. Hayden’s stepmother fed us lots of food. She doted on Hayden, like he was her own kid.

“But.” His breath hitched. “One day, Hayden and I were playing this elaborate game of chase, and we were running all through his house. No place was off limits. Anyway, we happened to run into Frank’s study.”

I held my breath, afraid to ask what it was he’d seen there.

“Frank was, um, watching something.” He swallowed. “It was a porno. I didn’t know what they were at the time. I must have been about… five or six. Hayden was younger. Four, maybe. Anyway, uh, it was pretty low budget. I still don’t know if it was something scripted and staged or if it was… real. There was a man in it. He was wearing this outfit.”