Chapter 14
14
C ALLAN
The following day
The house has been loud the entire morning.
The staff is cooking, cleaning, and setting the table for tonight.
We rarely spend Christmas together.
My brothers and I used to sit around a big table, indulge in great food and drinks, and have our friends and extended family with us, but not anymore.
Spending Christmas together brings back the painful memories of a different life.
So, each year, we use new reasons to justify not being here together anymore.
We pretend we want to be here when, but in reality, we don’t.
Things will be different tonight as I want to at least have the Christmas table ready.The way it used to be.
My phone rings for the fourth time, and I roll to my side, stretch my arm out, and pick it up off the nightstand.
“Yeah.”
“You need to see this,” Beverly says. “I’ll send you a picture.”
“Okay.”
We end the call, and I wait, sprawled on my back, the covers up to my waist, naked underneath.
My hand covers the phone pressed against the mattress, my eyes moving to the big clock on the wall.
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.
I rarely sleep in.
Okay, I never do, but I didn’t come straight home last night after dropping off Mackenzie.
I hit a club and returned in the morning.And then I tossed and turned and barely got a wink of sleep.
Taking that woman out didn’t quite go as planned. But what did go as planned last night?
Nothing did.
Fuck, was I stirred up or what?
I swear, I hadn’t thought about touching her.
I just wanted to get her out of there and frankly, learn a little more about her. I thought that, in a way, we had something in common.
She had no one to go out with, and I didn’t have anyone I wanted to be with besides her.
I thought we’d do stupid shit like walking in the park.I truly believed her when she said she wouldn’t have sex with me––not like that, anyway.
Now, I’ve been around the block a few times.
I know women say a lot of things when it comes to sex and change their minds at the drop of a hat. But to do a one-eighty on me? Her? My little devil, Mackenzie?
Boy, was I wrong about her?
My dick almost exploded when she put her hand on my crotch.
Let’s make something clear.
Women, as bold and beautiful and outrageously sexy they are, never cross the line with me. They never take the liberty to do stuff to me.
Not even Carmen, who is seasoned in any way known to man and who, allegedly, had no idea who I was, although I’m not so sure about that now. Not even she dared to touch me without getting the green light from me.
It was only fair to warn Mackenzie that she needed to keep her hands off me or she’d suffer the consequences, but I never thought I’d need to put it into words like that.
So she dodged a bullet, but I couldn’t stop myself from touching her.
I wanted to see her eyes glistening with arousal, her skin dotted with sweat, her pussy soaking wet.
I wanted to taste her like it was the last thing I did in my life, and my power reflected in her eyes was enough to push me over the edge.
But I promised her we wouldn’t do it any other way than how she wanted it and I’ll keep my word. I’m a man of honor when it comes to that.
My phone pings back to back, notifying me that a couple of pictures have hit my inbox.
I shift my focus to the message and swipe my thumb across the screen. Quickly, I get to them and enlarge them, not believing my eyes.
My phone rings as I push up on my elbow and check every detail of the photos.
“Have you seen it?” Beverly asks.
“Yeah, I did. How did you get the pictures?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How did you get them, Bev?”
She laughs at the other end of the line.
“Let’s say I found them on an unsecured server.”
“I need more information.”
“I thought so. You stop by my place later if you want to know more about this.”
“Not tonight. I have plans,” I say. “Tell me if there’s anything important that I need to know now.”
“Nothing other than what’s obvious in the pictures. Your girl is wearing it.”
“Carmen is not my girl. And this can be a clue. Or they use it as bait. Have you thought about that? Maybe you were supposed to stumble upon those pictures.”
“Maybe.”
My eyes go to the two pictures showing the root of a woman’s neck and my beautiful necklace resting between her collarbones.
How did Carmen get the necklace?
I only have two explanations for that. Alvarez gave it to her. Or the person coordinating the heist is using her to send a message.
Did they know each other before I got involved with her?
Probably.
Did she set me up?
Obviously. She did last night.
She didn’t seem to be in the know when I got to her after following her husband.
I wanted to send a message to the person responsible for this, and it worked.
I just got a response back.
It must be a man behind all this, and I believe it’s someone I know nothing about, although they must know my family history.
Someone with an axe to grind.
This is not about the necklace.
Yes, the piece of jewelry is expensive, but this is not about that. The whole story is atypical for a thug who wants to make a quick buck.
He uses men and women and sloppily leaves clues, a breadcrumb trail I’m following.
Could it still be one of my father’s enemies? I thought we’d settled that once it for all.
The people responsible for killing several members of my family got what they deserved.
They paid with their lives.
And as far as I know, there’s no one left in their family to vow revenge.
I thought I sent a message by messing with Carmen. And now their answer is clear as day.
They’re onto me and know all of my moves.
My focus shifts to Mackenzie, and I push back my unease. She is not that present in my life, so her life shouldn’t be in danger because of me.
Regardless, I go back to what happened last night and review the sequence of events, recollecting every second I had spent with her.
There was not a soul on the street when we stopped the car. Not a pedestrian––man or woman. Not a car passing us by.
I instructed my men to stand back before I took the car and invited her in. I wasn’t kidding when I said she couldn’t be safer in the entire city as long as she was with me.
Things surely would be different now if someone watched me.
Or if they watched her.
“They put the pictures there,” I say. “Watch your back, Bev. He knows about you.”
“He?”
“Yeah… It’s a man with a weird sense of humor.”
She thinks about what I just said.
“Are you saying he’s an outsider?” she asks.
“It could be anyone. For sure, it’s someone who has too much time on their hands and likes to fuck with people’s minds. Carmen is a pawn. Like her husband. Like Daniela. No one I know would spend so much time plotting this shit out. Maybe they’re after nothing in the end. Only running interference. But he’s a thug for sure.”
“Or maybe this whole thing is a decoy,” she suggests.
“Yeah… I wouldn’t dismiss that. Whatever it is, this is very personal. It’s more than someone questioning my power or stealing from me. Do me a favor. Go back to that file and check all the family members on that list. Maybe there was an uncle or a lost brother––someone aware of the feud between our families but not present when we were at war. Other than that, pay extra attention to any clue. The last thing I want is to have the authorities on my tail. I have a feeling this person would stop at nothing to have some fun at my expense.”
“All right,” she says after a moment. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you too.”
We hang up, and my hand drops to my side, my phone clutched in my grip.
A fresh scent drifts from the Christmas tree before mixing with the aroma of sweet bread flooding the house.
The smell alone brings back memories from when this house was full of people, and my mother and the staff cooked, and we, the boys, couldn’t wait to celebrate Christmas and get our gifts.
Who knew life would look so different in the future?
Look at us now.
I haven’t spoken to Ewan and Duncan in days.
The weird thing is that Ewan is still here in New York. He’s got a new house on the North Shore of Long Island.
I only stopped by his house twice. I had some business meetings in the area and thought I’d say hello.
The first time, no one was home.
He only has staff in the house a couple of days a week––he told me that a few days later when I caught up with him on the phone.
The place is beautiful and gloomy.As if a ghost lives there.
He’s not that far from resembling one.
He is not the man he used to be since the event that changed his life.
And Duncan?
I hate to say it, but he’s not much different.
Being older than us––Alistair and me––didn’t work in their favor. If anything, it made things more challenging for them.
They also lost much more than us.
Closing my eyes and scrubbing a hand over my face, I let out a sigh, my mind going back to that woman.
Mackenzie Prince.
The simple thought of her makes me hard, which is to be expected. I’ve already jerked off at the thought of her.
Twice.
Once in the early morning hours, when I came home and had a raging hard-on. As tired as I was, and as tipsy as I was, I only went back for a second to relieve every moment I had had with her.
The sweet taste between her legs.
Her wet pussy.
The tension in her thighs.
And did I say she’d shaved for me?
I said nothing about that, and she surely hadn’t confessed.
But she did it for me.
Her folds were smooth like velvet.
Her clit, pink and swollen.
I wanted to bite her pussy off.
I wanted to savage her, and that was the thought that got me off when I rubbed myself hard.
I couldn’t wait to get in bed.
I stood in the shower, the water running down my neck, my pecs, and my legs, my fist tight around my girth, and my eyes closed.
And all I had in mind was having her in front of me, on her knees, those pink lips wrapped around me, her tongue sailing around it, her cheeks hollow from sucking me hard.
It took me very little to get to the peak and shoot my load onto the marble floor.
Later, I walked out with a towel wrapped around my hips, still semi-hard. And still needing to revisit that moment when I had her legs around my neck like a collar made of silk and a woman's flesh.
I crashed onto the bed, rolled to my stomach, and tried to forget about her. It didn’t work in the slightest.
I grew harder and harder until I cuffed my engorged length and teasingly started running my fist up and down, thinking about her. Imagining her hand on my dick, her eyes sparkling, the tips of her breasts hard and round.
The second I had the image of her pussy spread open for me to lick, suck on, and then fuck, I made a mess on the sheets.
My chest was still heaving while I indulged in every bit of throbbing creating turmoil in my body.
And when that feeling left and got replaced by frustration, I pushed out of my bed, cupping my dick. I rolled the sheet off, tossed it into the laundry hamper, and cursing under my breath, I went to the small bedroom down the hallway.
Meaning here.
The memory puts a smile on my face, although the feeling is still there. Annoying irritation tinged with frustration, both gnawing at my patience.
I haven’t had a woman say ‘later’ to me in maybe a decade or more. It must’ve happened when I was nineteen. Not even then. Perhaps that’s what’s been fueling my need for her.
Or maybe it’s just the way this woman talks to me straightly without overthinking everything and attempting to seduce me.
Whatever it is, I will wait for her.
Now that we’ve taken a chance, we will get to the end of it, whatever that ending will mean to us.
With that thought, I forget about the foggy day outside, the clinking of plates and glasses in the house, and the distant voices on the floor below, and I go back to my fantasy.
Imagining her body under mine, her sweet center throbbing around me.
With that lingering thought, I'm soon tasting more pleasure, forgetting about everything else.