Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
FLYNN
“You never told me how you ended up owning half of Manhattan,” I murmured to Jules, who had his upper body draped over mine. Despite the late hour and the multiple times we’d made love, I hadn’t been able to force myself to leave his side yet. We’d ended up showering together, which had turned into another round of unforgettable and somewhat awkward sex considering the mix of hot water and a slippery floor. I’d ended up fucking him from behind while Jules had braced his arms against the tiled wall of the shower. If the water hadn’t started to turn from hot to warm, I probably would have urged him to the floor beneath the spray of the rain-style showerhead and either made love to him again or simply explored his naked body until I was content that I’d memorized everything about him.
The cooling water had determined our fate, so we’d quickly dried off and raced each other back to his bed.
Showering had meant Jules needed to wash his makeup away. Strangely enough, after he’d been completely exposed, there’d been the subtlest shift in his behavior. He’d gone quiet and while he seemed content to use my body to warm his own, there was something just a tiny bit off.
I couldn’t see Jules’s face but it was easy to feel his tension when I asked the question because I was stroking my fingers up and down his back and Jules was, or had been, toying with the hair on my chest. His fingers had stopped moving, though.
“When Uncle Ray died, he left his piece of the company he’d inherited from my grandfather to me. My father owned the rest. He’d assumed that if Uncle Ray died, he’d get Ray’s part or, worst-case scenario, my cousin Miles would get it.”
“That must have made for some awkward family dinners,” I offered.
“The only family dinners I ever had were when I was seven or eight. I used to fill all the empty chairs around the dining room table with my stuffed animals. The staff were really sweet about it. They’d set places for them at the table. I don’t even know where I heard that families often got together on a regular basis for a meal.”
“Your parents weren’t around?”
Jules shook his head against my chest. “My father had an apartment closer to his work. He kept whatever mistress he was fucking at the time there.”
“And your mom?” I asked. Jules’s fingertips were pressing hard against my chest, proof that my line of questioning wasn’t a topic he favored.
“She spent most of her time in the Hamptons. She liked throwing parties to show off whatever part of the house she’d had redecorated even if the room had been fine the way it was. I only saw the house once, but it was beautiful. Right by the beach, crystal-clear swimming pools, one inside, one outside. I remember asking her one time why I couldn’t live there with her because the house was so big and there’d be plenty of room for me, but she said I needed to stay in the city so my father could teach me the family business.”
I wanted to say that the fucking bitch obviously didn’t have room for her own son because she was too focused on herself but instead, I asked, “How old were you?”
“Six, I think.” Jules let out an ugly laugh. “I actually believed her. I spent years waiting for the day my father would come get me. I even started reading books about real estate development and business in my early teens. I couldn’t wait to show him how much I already knew about the business my family was in.”
“He never showed, did he?”
“Sometimes he stopped by long enough to deal with issues related to the house or the staff, but every time I asked him when he’d start teaching me the business, he’d just say ‘soon’ and then he’d disappear again. He always sent me this weird smile when I followed him to the door to say goodbye. Like he knew something I didn’t. Something humorous.”
“Who took care of you?” I asked uneasily because I had a feeling I already knew what he was going to say.
“There wasn’t any one person in particular who watched out for me when I was younger. A few of the maids would take turns making sure I got off to school on time in the mornings and that I ate when I was supposed to. I kept thinking of them as my temporary mother until the day when my own mother would make that call telling me she was on her way to get me and I should pack my stuff.” Jules laughed again. “I kept a suitcase packed with extra clothes and hid it in my closet. I’d even picked out which stuffed animals I’d take if there wasn’t enough room in the car to take them all.”
“Jules, I’m so sor?—”
“Don’t be,” Jules responded, his voice flat. If we’d been having this same conversation in a place where we hadn’t been able to touch each other, I probably would have bought his disinterest in the relationship he’d had with his parents.
“I had it better than most kids,” Jules continued. “It took me a while to figure that out, though. The older I got, the more entitled I behaved. I learned what having a lot of money meant, and based on where I lived and the fact that I was driven to school in a Bentley with my own chauffeur, I had way more freedom than any of the other kids at school did. They’d complain about their folks taking this or that away from them as punishment, or wanting but not being able to get the latest gadgets or shoes.”
“And you had all those things,” I offered.
“Not at first. I had no idea what my family was worth. Turned out that most of the stuff I got for special holidays and my birthday came from the staff with money from their own pockets. All the toys and stuff was from them. I also had an endless supply of books from my father’s library and a bunch of financial magazines that appeared like clockwork every month.” Jules paused before chuckling. “I thought my father was leaving the magazines as a surprise for me—like he wanted me to learn all the stuff in them so I’d be ready to join the business. Funny thing was that I had no clue what the family business even did. The magazines made no sense to me whatsoever at first but when I used my computer to start looking up all the terms and concepts, they started to make a little sense. I kept every one of those stupid magazines and spent hours every night reading them over and over. By the time I was old enough to drive, I knew more about stocks and hedge funds than any kid my age needed to know.”
When Jules fell silent, I kept my mouth shut and focused on trying to relax him again by caressing his back with large, slow circles while gently massaging his muscles at the same time. It wasn’t until he turned his head to look at me that I felt a measure of relief. Jules crossed his arms on my chest so he could rest his head on them while he watched me.
“We had such different lives, huh?” he asked.
“From the outside, yeah. But I think on the inside, we felt a lot of the same things. I at least had Frank to set me on the right path.”
“That’s what my Uncle Ray did,” Jules responded. “I’d met him a few times when I was a kid. As I got older and started getting in trouble at school or when I threw one of my wild, anything goes parties and the cops ended up getting calls from the pissed-off neighbors who lived in the apartment beneath mine, Ray was the one who fixed things.”
“Sounds like you were quite the little rebel,” I said.
Jules smiled. A genuine smile. “I tried to be, but only after being a saint didn’t work. I didn’t have many friends at school when I was little—I guess I really didn’t know how to make any. Turned out living people didn’t act like my stuffed animals.”
This time, I was the one laughing. “I’m sure that was quite the eye opener.”
“It was. When I heard kids talking about all the money their parents let them spend on stuff, I asked the butler, Alistair, if I had any money.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You had a butler. A real, live, ‘the butler did it’ butler?”
Jules nodded. “Yep. I didn’t know what his job was besides opening and closing the front door. I also wasn’t sure what all the staff were for when I was little. I figured they were like fairy godmothers… they were there to watch over me. I guess I was right because that’s what they did. I don’t think he was supposed to tell me, but Alistar explained that I had a lot of it in what he called a trust. All I had to do was ask for whatever amount I wanted and I got it.”
“So your Uncle Ray was the one who got you out of trouble,” I urged as I moved my hand from Jules’s back and began toying with a stray lock of hair that had just enough curl to it that the strands refused to be tamed when I tried to tuck them behind his ear.
“I don’t know why he showed so much interest in me, especially as I got older. He had his own son, so there was no reason for him to do things my father should have done. He’d take me and Miles to baseball games. We’d go to the park and explore or just toss a ball or frisbee back and forth. Miles didn’t like me from the start, and he had no interest in doing stuff with his dad as we got older. Uncle Ray had lost his wife, Miles’s mother, when Miles was a little kid. She was hit by a car that ran a red light while she was crossing the street. Anyway, Ray liked to do other stuff besides sports. He’d take me to the opera, Broadway plays and musicals, and my favorite, the ballet. I loved how graceful the dancers were. Their outfits, their makeup—I couldn’t get enough. That was when my interest in the family business all but disappeared. Videos of ballet performances replaced the financial magazines. Then I discovered all these videos of people explaining how to put on makeup. It wasn’t just girls doing it; guys were too. I guess from there I just naturally got interested in fashion.”
“Did your uncle give you a hard time about it or did you keep it a secret?”
“I never kept secrets from Uncle Ray. I think I was too na?ve. I figured if those ballet guys could wear makeup, then I could too. And the male models strutting colorful, sometimes even bizarre-looking clothing—that was normal too. They were so confident.”
“And those things made you feel confident,” I offered.
“Yes, but it was more than that. I felt like… me. I didn’t know that others didn’t see it the same way. A few beatdowns in school was all it took to educate me.” Jules let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know what would have happened to me if Uncle Ray hadn’t been there. He taught me the stuff I needed to know about life… the stuff I should have known about by then. It wasn’t even the business stuff. Uncle Ray was a good man and he proved it with everything he did. He took me with him to volunteer in shelters for the homeless, for teens who’d been rejected by their parents had no place to go, places that provided safe havens for women who were being abused by a partner or loved one. He didn’t just throw money at them and claim he was a philanthropist. He did donate money, but he was in the trenches as well.”
“He showed you the ugly side of life as well as the beautiful side.”
Jules nodded. “Funny thing was that the closer to Ray that I got, the closer Miles got to my father. It was like Miles and I had been switched at birth. Miles wanted power and money. He was at my father’s side when the business went public. My father sold thousands of his own shares in the business so he could rake in more and more money with the intent to buy even more properties. Uncle Ray didn’t.”
“So your uncle wasn’t really interested in the business,” I suggested.
“Actually, he was. God, that man was the smartest person I’d ever met. Even with all the charitable work he did, he knew everything about business, particularly the family business and what would happen once it went public. See, despite being brothers, he and my father weren’t close. They’d each inherited half the business from their father, but while my father was impulsive and focused on money no matter who got hurt along the way, Uncle Ray was more interested in the things that really mattered. He focused on the properties that he and my father had divvied up and made sure they were all in good condition. He didn’t kick out tenants just so he could tear a building down and rebuild it so he could sell off each unit at a higher price. He never forced people who owned small businesses next to or near one of his businesses to sell them to him so he could expand.”
I nodded because I knew where Jules was going. “He played it safe and focused on quality while your dad did the opposite.”
“Yep. And it served Uncle Ray well. I was too young to know it at the time, but when the housing market crashed, my father lost millions, maybe even billions of dollars. While he was scrambling to find new investors, Uncle Ray was quietly buying up shares in the business for pennies on the dollar. He’d saved up enough money to cover the losses caused by the crash and then some. By the time the market recovered, Uncle Ray owned two-thirds of the business, and not one of his tenants had been evicted from their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay their rent or mortgage.”
I smiled. “So by buying up more of the company he became the majority shareholder, which meant he had control of the business.”
Jules returned the smile. “Yep. My father did everything he could to get Uncle Ray to sell him back the shares that would once again make them even, but Uncle Ray said no. At one point, Miles was threatening his own father with shit like having him declared incompetent. None of it worked.”
“And when your uncle passed away…”
“He left everything he owned, including his stake in the business, to me,” Jules responded. He began blinking rapidly like he was trying to fight off tears. “I miss him so much, Flynn.”
“I know you do, baby. He sounds like an amazing man but more importantly, he was the father and mother that you needed him to be.”
“He was. He died a few months before I turned eighteen. It was a plane crash. He had his own little Cessna that he liked to fly whenever he had spare time. Something happened when he was landing it one day. The axle broke, causing the plane to flip several times. I don’t know if Ray was still alive when the whole thing caught fire. I have nightmares of him calling out to me but all I can do is stand there and listen to his screams?—”
I pulled Jules up so I could kiss him. “You don’t need to say any more, sweetheart. You’re never going to have to go through that again because I’m going to be by your side every night. I’m going to remind you how much your uncle loved you and the last thing he’d want was for you to suffer.”
Jules nodded. Silent tears streaked down his face as he clung to me. “I failed him, Flynn. When I lost him, I didn’t know who I was anymore. There was no one to love me anymore. I’d learned how to buy friendship when I was younger, but none of those kids had liked me for me. They’d liked me because I’d showered them with gifts since that’s what you did for the people you cared about. Uncle Ray showed me that wasn’t what friendship really was. When he died, I was so lost. So lonely. I went back to my old ways but since I was older, the gifts got bigger, the parties got wilder. I did anything I could to bring back that feeling I’d only ever experienced with Uncle Ray. None of it worked, so I started to become even more reckless. I practically dared people to say something to me by wearing outrageous outfits and so much makeup that I was a completely different person when I looked in the mirror. When the first guy came along and told me I was hot and how bad he wanted to fuck me, I mistook it for a chance at love. I learned real quick that sex didn’t mean love and random sex with strangers never meant love. But I became addicted to the high of someone wanting me for something besides money. That was when I changed my last name and lived a life that wasn’t truly mine.”
“You didn’t fail your uncle, my love. You just got a little lost, and as horrible as everything that happened afterwards was, it ultimately brought you here.”
Jules chuckled. “Very true.” He turned his head so that he was looking at me again, though his tempting mouth was now much closer. “Although, if you’d been riding BJ down pretty much any street in Manhattan, I would have known there was a real live hot cowboy in the area, and I would have hunted you down.”
I laughed. “Once you found me, I wouldn’t have let you go. Ever. I would have strapped you to BJ’s back and taken you away from all of that ugliness and shown you the world that existed outside of that city.”
Pleased that Jules was more relaxed and smiling for real, I asked, “How did you end up working for Brooks? You’re obviously brilliant and it sounds like you easily could have financially ruined your father and cousin, but I’m guessing you didn’t.”
“I didn’t really want any part of the company after Uncle Ray died. It was too painful to see those reminders of him every day. So I made sure to put the company in the hands of people I trusted then focused on partying. I met Brooks by pure chance in a gay club. He was like a piece of filet mignon surrounded by a pack of hungry dogs who knew fresh meat when they saw it. I could tell it was his first time in a place like that. I figured he was closeted or in denial about who he was and was trying to find the truth. I struck up a conversation with him and then asked if he wanted to go to this little diner that made the best pancakes in the world. He agreed. I think he was a little put off by my appearance, but once he relaxed, he opened up a bit more. I felt like we were kindred spirits, so when he mentioned he was trying to find a personal assistant to help him at his father’s company, I jumped at the chance.”
“And here you are,” I said.
“Yes and no,” Jules admitted. “Brooks kept me and everyone else at arm’s length twenty-four seven. I really liked him, though—” Jules stopped abruptly then said, “I liked him, but just the normal amount. I mean, I never wanted to… we never?—”
I rolled Jules until I had him pinned beneath me. “You never wanted to do this with him?” I asked as I nipped at his mouth until he was trying to force my mouth down to his. I rewarded him with a deep kiss. Jules had automatically opened his legs for me when I’d put him beneath me, so our dicks were touching. “And you probably never wanted to do this…” I continued as I began rocking my hips so our dicks were sliding against each other.
Jules arched his back, closing his eyes in the process. “God no,” he said. He jerked his head forward so fast that his forehead hit my chin. “Ow,” he groaned. I chuckled and began massaging the small bump that was already forming. “I meant yes to you and what you were doing,” Jules blurted.
“You mean this?” I asked as I began rubbing my dick against his again.
“Fuck, Flynn,” Jules groaned.
I kissed Jules hungrily as I felt our cocks growing stiffer and stiffer by the second. I would have loved to make love to him slowly, but slivers of light were starting to appear through the wooden slats that acted as blinds for the window.
“Next time,” I promised. I continued to grind against him until Jules was moaning. His hands were on my ass, urging me on. “Watch,” I ordered as I shifted enough that he could see our wet dicks making their own kind of love to each other. I took both our cocks in hand. Jules blew out several heavy breaths like he was trying to stay in control, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I pumped my hand up and down our dicks without any kind of finesse. Need had overtaken want, so my focus was purely on getting us both off. Pre-cum coated my palm, making it easier to fist our dicks. Knowing he was helpless to do anything but devour the pleasure that was consuming him, Jules wrapped his fingers around my free wrist and held on.
I kissed him hungrily as our dicks fucked my hand. I’d learned enough about Jules to know how close he was, so I made sure to use just the right amount of pressure and movement to make sure we’d climax together. When the simultaneous orgasms hit us, I used my free hand to cover Jules’s mouth. My guy never held anything back when it came to sex, including his vocal appreciation. It was something I’d learned the day I’d blown him for the first time. Now that we were in his bedroom, I’d figured out very quickly that I either had to kiss him or cover his mouth with my hand when he came so he wouldn’t wake up anyone in the house. Since I wanted to see what it looked like when we came together, I put my palm over his mouth.
Jules did, in fact, shout against my palm as we both came. The powerful orgasm nearly made me close my eyes, but the need to watch won out and as waves of pleasure hit me one after another, I watched my jizz mix with Jules’s as he came. I loved watching him come apart as he lost himself to the orgasm. His back was gracefully arched and his lower limbs were entangled with mine, despite the fact that I wasn’t lying completely on him. His fingers bit into my skin where he held on to the wrist of the hand that was covering his mouth.
It took every ounce of control I had not to shout in relief as my balls emptied every drop of semen onto my hand, dick, and Jules’s upper body. I managed to catch my weight as the natural high began to recede, leaving me with jolting aftershocks.
Jules’s body shook a few times and by the time it was over, his eyes were closed and his breathing had evened out. Physically exhausted myself, I would have loved to just crash next to him, but there was no delaying the light of day as it crept over the trees on the east side of the house.
I forced myself to move and quickly cleaned myself up then used a warm washcloth to wipe the sticky white fluid from Jules’s upper body, including his chin—further proof of how hard one or both of us had come. I pulled my clothes on and then dropped down next to the bed and ran my fingers through Jules’s soft hair. I studied his face and realized it didn’t matter to me at all whether he was wearing makeup or not. Jeans and a sweatshirt or a flashy outfit didn’t affect my feelings for him in any way. I would have proudly walked down any street, small town or big city, holding his hand so others would see how lucky I was to have captured the heart of such an amazing, beautiful soul.
Since I didn’t want to wake him, not even by sending him a text, I did the same thing he’d done three weeks earlier when he’d left me a note to say goodbye. I went to the bathroom and searched through his makeup until I found some lipstick. I returned to his bed and used the lipstick to write a quick note on his nightstand. Fortunately, the house was still silent when I went to the bedroom door. Unfortunately, when I looked back at Jules and saw the small smile gracing his well-kissed lips even as he slept, it made it that much harder to leave his side.
Soon I’d be there so that Jules was the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes and the first thing I saw when I opened them.
Damn, but soon needed to get here fucking fast.