The Dangerous Seduction (24 page)

“Ryan, what the fuck?”

“We need to talk,” he says. He reaches into his inside pocket, slides out the Polaroid Jack McNeil gave him, and tosses it to the desk in front of them. “About this. About you and McNeil.”

He watches Joseph’s face as his eyes flick down to take in the picture, then up once more to meet Ryan’s gaze. His expression hasn’t changed—still slightly pissed, that infuriating unreadable mask in place.

“I just had company during my Sunday morning coffee at De Angelo’s,” he spits. “You’d never guess who came and sat with me. He was a real chatty Cathy.”

“McNeil,” says Joseph, his tone as emotionless and unreadable as his expression.

“Yes, McNeil. Your ex.”

Joseph snorts, moving to sink into his desk chair. “Right.” He angles his head back to look up at Ryan. “So what did he have to say?”

“You mean, apart from the fact the two of you were fucking for God knows how many years?” He picks up the Polaroid again, throws it at Joseph so it hits his chest and flutters into his lap. Joseph picks it up without looking at it and drops it dismissively back onto his desk. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“It wasn’t relevant. Have I asked you about any of your exes?”

“That’s hardly the same thing! We’re fucking suing this guy, Joseph! A guy you used to be involved with! If anyone found out, our case would be over.”

“Which is precisely why I didn’t tell anybody.”

“But I’m not anybody! Am I?” he appeals. He swallows, feels those stupid twin pinpricks of pain behind his eyes and at the back of his throat.

Joseph’s mask seems to flicker for a moment; then he says, “No, you’re not.”

Ryan bows his head and lets out a shaky breath. He turns around and puts his back to Joseph, leaning against the edge of his desk. He curls his fingers around the wood edge and stares down at the carpet. He can remember the first time they fooled around in this room, just after they’d gotten back from Houston. He was hiding out in the office, unwilling to go home and confront Daisy and face up to everything he’d done. His body was still buzzing and tingling with the memory of how Joseph’s skin had felt against his own, so he’d come in here and let Joseph touch him and kiss him and jerk him off.

“If the clients found out, they would fire us! And if Frank Carson found out—”

“Frank Carson already knows,” Joseph says, and he sounds completely certain and unruffled. Ryan hears him scrape his chair back and get to his feet. He tenses as Joseph rounds the desk and sits next to him. “I was underage and McNeil was married when we met. Even a whiff of a rumor about a gay affair would ruin McNeil for good, never mind one with an underage kid. And they both know I have more than enough evidence to prove it. The stupid bastard still thinks he’s got a shot at the state governorship.”

“Underage? But he said you were eighteen. The age of consent in Texas is seventeen,” says Ryan.

“He lied. I was sixteen the first time he put his dick in me.”

Ryan jerks his head up, looks into Joseph’s face. He looks thoughtful, a small crease between his eyebrows, like he’s remembering something.

“Jesus, that sick bastard,” Ryan mutters.

Joseph shrugs. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, it’s all academic. At the time I wanted it as much as he did. I was hardly—” He pauses and licks his lips, the corner of his mouth twisting. “I wasn’t the innocent party, Ryan. I was never innocent. I saw him; I wanted him; I got him. I remember, it was at this employee picnic event, not long after McNeil Industries had bought out my father’s company. It was some big bullshit get-to-know-the-new-management thing, and Dad made me and my stepmother tag along with him. McNeil couldn’t take his eyes off me all that afternoon—it was so goddamn simple. My dad had no fucking clue what was going on.”

“Your dad. He told me that your dad wasn’t dead,” Ryan says, remembering.

Joseph hesitates at that, like he’s biding for time. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Yeah, he’s alive.”

“Jesus Christ, Joseph!” He pushes away from the desk, spins around to confront him. “You don’t lie about shit like that! What kind of sick fuck lies about their father being dead?”

Joseph blinks. “I’m sorry, Ryan. But you wanted a reason so much. You wanted me to be this guy that I just wasn’t. I had to give you something you would believe.”

“You wanted my dad,” says Ryan thickly. “That’s what this was all about! You wanted my dad to testify, to tell everybody that McNeil told him to sell before the crash. You needed… you still need his testimony to make your case. That was why you hired me, why you were so fucking
nice
to me! That was why you took me out to awards ceremonies and fancy steak restaurants and on trips to Houston. I thought it was because you thought I was good and then… after we, you know…. I thought it was because you wanted in my pants. But it wasn’t, all this time…. That was why you fucking
slept
with me, ’cause you wanted my dad! It wasn’t for me at all.”

“No!” says Joseph, and he’s standing up now, closing the distance between them. “No, that’s not true.” He grabs onto Ryan’s arms, peers up into his face, eyes wide and imploring. “No. I slept with you because I wanted you. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I told you that.”

“You just couldn’t help yourself,” Ryan murmurs.

“Right, right.” Joseph lets out a shaky breath.

“Just like with McNeil. You saw me, you wanted me, you got me. Just like you did with McNeil. You always get what you want, don’t you, Joseph? You always fucking win, no matter who gets trampled on.” He pulls away, jerking his arms out of Joseph’s grasp. “God, I’ve been so fucking stupid! I can’t believe I left Daisy… for… for what? For this? For you!”

Joseph is staring back at him with wide eyes. “Ryan, don’t listen to anything he’s told you. He knows he’s screwed. He knows we’re going to win, so he’s just trying to fuck things up for me… for us.”

“He told me you destroyed his company ’cause he got a new boyfriend. He told me you deliberately misled him about the Penrose acquisition just ’cause he found some new boy toy!”

“What? That’s fucking preposterous!” Joseph lets out a jagged, disbelieving breath. “Please don’t tell me you believe any of that crap?”

Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t know what to believe. So far, everything McNeil’s told me has been true… my dad, your dad, the two of you—”

“No.” Joseph shakes his head and takes a step forward, tentative, his eyes so wide, so imploring, and so green.
So pretty,
Ryan thinks,
so fucking beautiful.
He’s rooted to the spot, watching Joseph’s face. Joseph’s tongue slicks nervously across his lips, the color high in his cheeks as he approaches. He looks so un-Joseph-like, unsure of himself in a way Ryan has never seen before.

“Ryan,” Joseph whispers, and Ryan leans in. He can’t help himself—he’s so damn weak, just like McNeil. He feels a brief flash of compassion for the poor sap. Who could’ve stood a chance against sixteen-year-old Joseph? He leans in and feels Joseph’s hands go up to cradle his face. He leans in, closes his eyes, feels their lips fuse together.

“Believe me, please,” Joseph whispers, his lips tracking across Ryan’s cheek. “Believe in this, Ryan.”

He gulps, blinks, feeling his resolve start to melt as he turns to chase Joseph’s lips. Joseph murmurs into his mouth, “He’s jealous; he still wants me. He wants me to be miserable. He’s lying; he wants to hurt us.”

He called him his boy,
Ryan thinks,
but he’s not, he’s mine. Joseph is mine.

They’re sinking to the floor, Joseph’s hands squirming under his shirt and sweater, pushing insistently at his overcoat—
Get it off, get it off, Ryan
—and his own hands are under Joseph’s waistband, against his skin, tracing his hipbones as he whispers his name. His overcoat comes off, as does Joseph’s sweater. Joseph’s hair is sticking up with static, so Ryan smoothes it down for him, kissing along his jawline and his collarbone, breathing him in. McNeil can keep his twinky, treacherous Joseph, because this Joseph is all his. Joseph pushes him down, bunches up his shirt, kissing and breathing him in as he layers his chest and belly with kisses, stubble scraping against Ryan’s abs, clever fingers flicking the buttons on his jeans.

“I don’t want to be like that loser in
The
Last Seduction
,” Ryan mutters, and Joseph looks up, blinking and saying, “What? What?” He’s hazy-eyed and flushed and so desirable that it breaks Ryan’s heart.

“Please don’t make me like that sad sack in
The Last Seduction
,” he begs. “Please, ’cause I can’t, Joseph, I can’t give this up now… it’s gone too far. I gave up Daisy for you… for this.”

Joseph chuckles, his mouth breaking into a warm, affectionate smile that makes Ryan’s chest hurt. He smiles and nuzzles into him, kisses him and whispers, “What? No, you’re not. You’re not a sad sack, you’re not a loser, and this is real, I promise you, this is real. Don’t be stupid, Ryan,” and his mouth is swallowing down Ryan’s cock and Ryan is arching up from the floor and curling his hands into Joseph’s short hair.

They lie on the floor afterward, tangled up, Joseph breathing into his mouth. His breath smells and tastes of Ryan. Joseph’s own come is smeared across Ryan’s belly, the two of them bathed in each other’s scents.
This is real
, Ryan tries to tell himself.
This is what matters now.

He watches Joseph get up and walk over to the desk. Joseph turns around and Ryan notices that he’s holding something; it’s the Polaroid photograph.

“I remember this being taken,” Joseph says. “I was so much in love with him back then, on that night. Valentine’s Day, 2001, I remember it so clearly.”

“He said you made him go to a gay bar with him. He said he hated it and that’s why you made him do it.”

“Yeah, he would say that.” Joseph bows his head, looking down at the picture like he’s lost in the memory. “He never understood that I just wanted to be out with him, that I was fed up with hiding all the time, and I just wanted to spend fucking Valentine’s Day with the guy I loved. Our relationship was never really about love for him. Oh, he cared about me in his own fucked-up way, but it was an obsession. He was obsessed with me; he had to have me completely to himself. I was never allowed to see other guys, which was so fucking hypocritical of him because I always knew that I wasn’t the only one. Though I
was
the only one who got involved with his precious business, which was something, I guess.” He snorts contemptuously and drops the photo onto the desk.

Ryan watches him, heart beating fast as he hangs onto Joseph’s every word. It’s the most Joseph’s ever said to him about himself in all the months they’ve been carrying on this relationship. Joseph holds everything so close, never letting anyone see past the well-constructed facade of Joseph Van Aardt, super-lawyer. He thought he’d gotten past it once before, all those months ago when Joseph told him that story about his father, but that turned out to be a lie. Of course Joseph could still be playing him now.
Ask him about it. See what lies he comes up with,
was McNeil’s parting shot only an hour earlier.

But that wasn’t the only thing McNeil had said.

McNeil
did
love Joseph. Maybe Joseph has never been sure of it, but Ryan believes it. It was written in every vindictive and bitter word that spilled from McNeil’s lips. Just the fact that McNeil even bothered to confront him—to warn him off—made it so much more believable. McNeil is still obsessed with Joseph, and he still doesn’t want anyone else to have him. Joseph is right about that.

Ryan sits up. “Come here,” he says.

Joseph gives him an uncertain look before he pushes himself off the desk and crouches beside him. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan says truthfully. “But I think I should take that photo.”

“That—what?”

“That Polaroid. I want to keep it. As insurance,” Ryan clarifies.

“Oh.” Joseph bows his head. When he looks up again he’s smiling, half-ironic and half-affectionate. “Maybe you are learning from me.” He traces a line down Ryan’s chest, down his breastbone and belly, to his navel. “Smart boy.”

Ryan feels ridiculously flattered by the comment. Even now, even after all he’s learned today, a compliment from Joseph Van Aardt is still something special.

I really am in too deep
, he thinks. It’s not just about their personal relationship, or how Joseph makes him feel when he touches him, or how he can’t stop thinking about Joseph when they’re not together, or how he craves Joseph’s approval, or even how he lights up inside when Joseph gives him those slow, intimate smiles that no one else ever gets to see. It’s even more than that. It’s his career, his prospects, and his future. It’s being a successful lawyer and having every damn thing he’s always wanted: money and influence and respect and the ability to really make a difference, to make assholes like Jack McNeil pay. It’s all rolled into one thing, and that one thing is Joseph Van Aardt. He’s gotten used to having Joseph in his life; he’s not ready to give him up.

“I do want to believe you,” he says, because he’s not going to hide anything now. “I want to believe you so bad. If you’re lying to me, Joseph, and if everything you’re telling me is just another lie, then….” He hesitates, swallowing. “I don’t know what then. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do.”

“I’m not lying now,” Joseph says softly. “And, hey, look at me. Ryan, look at me.”

Obediently, Ryan raises his head, meeting Joseph’s gaze. Joseph’s eyes are wide, green, and so damn sincere. Ryan wants to believe him so badly that it actually hurts, his chest aching even harder than it did that awful night that he broke up with Daisy, but he’s seen Joseph use that face before, and he’s not so stupid that he believes Joseph has suddenly changed, that he’s never going to lie to him again.

But, on the other hand, maybe it doesn’t matter. His mind is already made up.

 “I’ve been thinking about the future,” Joseph says. “When this case is over. I’ve been thinking about what we can do. What do you think about helping me to set up my own practice?”