37. Jacob
Jacob
C aspian looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. His nerves were making me nervous, even as I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to ignore him.
“Hope you’re happy,” I said. “I hope it was all worth it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.
“I don’t have anything to lose here. I’ve already had them both.”
At my confession, his cheeks burned a violent and dark pink. “I’ve sucked Vince’s cock and…”
I trailed off, not wanting to admit to the things Orion and I had done together.
“I’ve sucked his cock too,” Caspian said.
I relished the fact he had nothing to say about Orion. A sense of propriety that didn’t belong in that bedroom wrapped itself around me, untangling the tension that had begun to knot around my spine at Vince’s return home.
But what the fuck?
When had Orion been anything other than a hindrance at worst or a means to an end at best?
Scrubbing a hand down my face, I tried to focus instead on the labored way Caspian was struggling to catch his breath across the room.
“It’s not a contest. Would you sit the fuck down, please? You’re making me nervous.”
“Aren’t you anyway?” He threw himself down onto the edge of the bed, his back near my knee.
“No,” I answered honestly. “They don’t scare me.”
They did, but not in the way Caspian was afraid. Vince’s ruthlessness frightened me, and so did Orion’s obedience, but it also turned me on in equal measure. The trust and devotion between the two men was unmatched.
“I think I’m in over my head.”
I scoffed, stretching out my legs and crossing them at the ankle. “That sounds like an understatement.”
Caspian shot me a death glare, but there was a wall of unshed tears in his eyes that had him looking more like a kicked puppy than a hired hitman. How had a man like him gotten roped into this mess in the first place? What had Vince said his last name was earlier? Andersen? It didn’t ring a bell.
“I’ve just wanted him for so long,” Caspian whispered, bending in half at the waist and dropping his head into his hands.
“Who? Vince? ”
He nodded.
“So you decided to kill him?”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said to the floor.
“I don’t think I ever will, but you’re going to have to make sure he does if you want to get out of here alive.”
“I don’t care if I get out alive!” Caspian raised his voice, very nearly yelling. He sat up straight, fingers twisted into angry claws on top of his thighs. “If I can’t have him, I don’t care if I get out alive. But even if I do, it doesn’t matter, I’ll be dead anyway.”
“What?”
He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “You heard me.”
“I think you can at least make me understand that part,” I said.
“Vanessa will take me off the roster if I don’t come through for her,” he muttered. “I had one job to get the money I needed for my family’s debt. The job being Vince was just a bonus. I thought...”
I sighed, fully understanding what that feeling was like.
I definitely didn’t know the details of what my father was planning, but he’d thrown me into hiding to keep me safe until he was ready to use me to his own gain.
I don’t think he’d expected the man he was trying to hide me from would walk straight into my bed, but he was only a man after all.
There were only so many possibilities he could have planned for.
“Is taking you off the roster a euphemism?”
“She’ll kill me. ”
I hummed an affirmative noise. “In a perfect world, Caspian, what would you want?”
He glanced at me, mouth pulled up at the corner in a tight and sad kind of half-smile. “Oblivion.”
I bent my arm behind me, pressing my fingers against the still-healing wounds from the night Orion had flogged me until I bled.
Shivering, I let my hand fall away, wondering if Caspian meant the word in the same way I’d interpreted it.
Whereas I wanted Vince and Orion to the point of self-destruction, I was rather sure Caspian meant he wanted to disappear and never be heard from—or looked for—again.
“What else?” I asked.
“Peace.”
The things he wanted were things I’d already found.
If his arrival took them away from me, Caspian would have more to worry about than whether Vanessa or Vince was going to kill him. I might very well be the one to do it myself.
“How long is he going to keep us here, do you think?” Caspian asked, going limp again on the edge of the bed. He looked like he wanted to lie down, but we were strangers, maybe even enemies.
“As long as he wants.” I reached over and curled my fingers around his wrist, pulling him down beside me onto the bed.
He rolled onto his side, tucking up into the fetal position and staring toward the wall.
I didn’t know how it was possible, but somehow he managed to make himself look even smaller and younger .
I patted Caspian’s shoulder awkwardly because I didn’t know what else to do.
I wasn’t particularly interested in making him feel better, but there was a very real possibility that if we survived the night, and if I still wanted Vince—and Orion—Caspian would be part of that deal.
There had to be some interest for Vince to have brought him back home in the first place, but it wasn’t my place to understand his desires that deeply. At least, not yet.
Maybe one day.
But until then, just like with my father, all I could do about Vince was wait…and see.