16. Con
Con
I watch with the same smug expression I always have when security breaks up a fight that I start and they kick the other guy out. Phoenix, however, is standing next to me, her arms crossed as her gaze scans the casino.
“What the fuck is your problem?” I bark.
She should be easy by now. Soft around the edges. Breaking in like a pair of custom boots.
But instead, she’s coiled tight and unreadable, and for the first time in weeks, I’m not sure I know what to do with her.
She looks at me and raises a single eyebrow, but doesn’t say a damn thing. Something is up with her. Something is making her jumpy, and I don’t think it’s just the mind games the boys and I have been playing with her.
She looks scared.
I don’t get it. By now she ought to be more comfortable around us. She should understand our game and be sassing us every chance she gets.
Although ideally, if I had my way, she should be on her knees by now, begging for my cock so I can win this little game and finally fuck her the way I have been dreaming about since the one and only time I’ve been between her legs.
Unbidden, the memory of bruised skin and transparent excuses pops up and makes me frown.
Maybe it’s not us Phoenix is scared of. I follow her gaze, trying to find whatever it is she’s looking for, but I just see the same eclectic clientele as always—a mix of locals and tourists, old and young, the high-rollers and the desperate.
Nothing stands out as a likely reason for her fear.
“Come on.” I grab her hand and lead her away. We’re going back up to the suite .
When we get there, Storm, Atticus, and Maverick are sitting on the couch, looking as though they’ve been in deep discussion. More than likely they’ve been plotting how the fuck one of them is going to take my prize from me.
The only answer to that is from my cold, dead fucking hands. I love my brothers, but I swear to all that’s holy—and unholy—that I am winning this game. I’ll happily share her later, but not until after I claim what is mine.
“What are we doing tonight?” Maverick asks.
“The same thing we do every night, pinky,” Atticus says, and Storm cracks a smile, which is as close to laughter as he’s gotten recently.
“I was actually thinking we should take out the boat,” I say.
“Man, no,” Maverick whines, laying back on the couch. “I don’t want to bring any more of the hookers or strippers or whatever on the boat, because when I’m done with them, they’re stuck there. I mean, I could throw them overboard, but that seems extreme, even for us. ”
Atticus laughs at Maverick’s not-a-joke, but I ignore it.
“No hookers. Just the five of us. I need a night away from the bullshit, away from people and?—”
“Your daddy issues?” Maverick finishes for me.
I answered with a single finger. He fucking smirks in response, like he sees through my shit.
He does see through my shit. We all do; that’s part of the reason we’re so tight. Nothing comes between us, least of all our parents.
I’m sure it’s very difficult to build an empire like Titan-Wynn, but we didn’t exactly hit the jackpot with our parents.
Atticus’s mother is a manipulative narcissist, while his father is her controlling, gaslighting counterpart. He uses us to hide from his parents’ bullshit, but it’s never a permanent reprieve. With their primary estate here in Savannah, they’re always just a bit too close for comfort.
Storm’s relationship with his parents is equally fraught. His mother is casually vicious—her ceaseless picking and judgment rendering him a disappointment over and over .
We try to keep Storm with us as much as possible, not giving his mother an opportunity to get him alone.
His dad may have simply been more preoccupied with the business of Titan-Wynn than raising his son, but his mother took a fiendish pleasure in berating him, breaking him down, and even abusing him.
I often wonder if she takes the anger she has for Storm’s father out on the son who looks so much like him.
And then there’s my dad. The head of Titan-Wynn, he’s a shrewd, calculating asshole who has always expected me to be just like him. He’s short on praise and big on correction, and we’ve been at loggerheads since I hit puberty.
“Really man,” Maverick says with a bright smile, “ I think you need to see a therapist about those daddy issues.”
“I’ll get over my daddy issues when you get over your mommy issues,” I toss back, my tone purposefully light but pointed.
Maverick’s mother is his only sore spot.
He believes completely that she left because he wasn’t good enough.
It’s not the normal guilt most kids from broken families deal with, but something deeper and more difficult to break free of.
His mother actually told him she was leaving because he couldn’t be good, the psychotic, money-grubbing cunt.
The levity drains from Maverick’s face, and his jaw tightens as he stares daggers at me.
If anyone else had said something like that to him, they’d have been laid out on the floor. I get away with it only because he’s my brother, the same way he’s one of the few who can get away with saying shit to me.
“So,” Atticus says, breaking the tension. “The boat?”
“Yeah, sunset is at six p.m. tonight. Let’s head out about five-thirty?” I say.
“I’ll let the staff know.” Atticus picks up his phone. He’ll make sure everything is arranged so that the yacht is ready for us, stocked with food and drink and anything else we could have need of while sailing.
“Is she coming with us?” Storm asks.
I look at Phoenix, surprised to realize I’m still holding her hand. “Yeah. She’s coming. ”
I’m actually a little conflicted about bringing her with us.
I don’t have a choice. It’s part of the deal with my father that she goes with us wherever we go, even if we stay on the property.
But the boat is special. Despite Maverick’s joking, it’s not for hookers, drugs and parties.
When it’s just the four of us in the open water, we’re not Titans.
It’s the only place where we get to be Atticus, Maverick, Storm, and Con. No pretense, no bullshit, no games.
“Go get changed,” I whisper in Phoenix’s ear. “ I want you in those daisy dukes and a white top.”
It was the only outfit in that entire closet that wasn’t stripper wear with easy access.
At first I wasn’t even sure why I bought it, and then I remembered.
It looked like her. Back when I first saw her, sweet, innocent and untainted by the ugliness of this world we lived in.
I was going to win this little game, but maybe tonight wasn’t going to be just about the game.
Maybe it was our chance to see if Phoenix really fit, if she could possibly be one of us.
Disturbed by the realization that maybe revenge wasn’t my end goal after all, I go to get ready.
The second we step on deck, the wind wraps around us like a breath held too long and finally let go. Salt air, diesel, and sunwarmed teak fill my lungs—sharp and grounding.
I glance at her. She blinks against the breeze, one hand brushing her hair off her face.
The moment her feet hit the deck, something shifts. Her shoulders drop half an inch. Her breath comes out easier. She doesn’t say it, but I feel it.
She’s safe out here. And I hate how much that fucking matters to me.
When we board the boat, Storm goes below deck, where he keeps his throwing knives. After an incident involving his mother, a hotel guest, and some wallpaper when we were kids, he was no longer allowed to have them in the resort, so the boat is the only place he gets to practice.
Atticus goes to the helm to program our destination. We won’t be going far, just far enough that we can’t see land. Far enough to not feel like our parents are watching us. Far enough for their expectations to blur and lose shape .
Maverick goes to go do whatever the fuck Maverick feels like doing.
I grab Phoenix and bring her over to one of the main decks, and sit down with her on one of the lounge chairs.
I lie back, wrap my arms around her, and turn my face up to the fading sunlight.
It takes far too long for the tension in her body to recede, but she finally relaxes into me and closes her eyes. The ocean breeze skims over us, cool and bracing.
“Why are we out here?” she asks, not opening her eyes.
“Out here, no one is trying to get to us. There are no family expectations to deal with, no townie girls or randos trying to get in our pants.”
Phoenix snorts.
“What? You don’t think we get tired of being chased after?”
“I don’t think you mind the attention,” she says with just a little bit of snark .
“You’d be surprised. Out here we can be whoever we want. We don’t have to be the Titans. Out here, we can’t get into any trouble by ourselves, so you don’t have to be our little babysitter tonight. I mean, you have to be out here with us, but tonight just relax. Just enjoy it.”
Her body has gone stiff again, so I press my thumbs into the nape of her neck and start massaging her shoulders.
Almost instantly, her muscles go lax, and a low moan escapes her pretty lips.
“What do you like to do for fun, Phoenix?” I ask. A need to understand her—to figure out what makes her tick, what she loves, what she hates…why she left—seizes me..
She only laughs at my question.
“No.” I press my fingers deeper into the muscles of her shoulders. “Don’t do that. Tell me what you like to do, princess. Do you like to go to the movies? Do you play video games? What do you do?”
“I work.” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing.
“Right, but what do you do after work? ”
“Currently I live at work, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but being your keeper is pretty much a twenty-four/seven kind of gig.”
Her clap back makes me smile. I wouldn’t tolerate the sass from anyone else but the Titans.
For some reason, though, I kind of like that she has a little bite to her.
I want her to be submissive in the bedroom.
I want her pliant and begging me to fuck her.
But I can get used to her being like this when we’re just hanging out.
“Before this, what did you do when you weren’t working at the resort?”
She takes a deep breath, and I move my fingers lower and start using my thumbs to press into her shoulder blades.
“I honestly can’t remember the last time I just had fun,” she admits. That bothers me.
“Then why don’t you have fun with me tonight?
” I whisper in her ear as I kiss the side of her neck.
She relaxes into me further, and I trail my hands down her torso until I have them wrapped around her waist, pulling her more firmly back against me and letting her feel how hard my cock is under her .
Maybe this is what she needs. Maybe she needs softness to beg. Or maybe it is just what I want at that moment.
I keep kissing her neck beneath her ear, and then I trail kisses down the long, elegant column of her neck to her shoulder, my hands moving up her flat stomach to her full breasts. It has been so long since I have actually felt tits that are still soft…natural.
She smells so good. Jasmine, vanilla, and the warm spices of her perfume mingle with something that is solely her and absolutely perfect.
“Con.” She gasps my name, and I want her to do it again. I want to hear my name on her lips, just like that, over and over. I kiss back up her neck and place my hand on her jaw, turning her head to bring her soft lips to mine.
“I missed you, Con,” she whispers, the words stilling me just before I steal the kiss.
I missed you, too . The words catch in my throat, blocked by a residual surge of hurt.
I could say it. I want to. But if I do, this stops being a game, and I’ve never played for anything real before .
She’d own me. And I don’t know if I’d fight it—or fucking beg for more.
We’re so close that I can feel her breath against my lips as she waits.
A loud bang comes from one of the other decks, followed by Maverick swearing.
“Fuck,” I say, leaning back in the chair, the moment broken.
“What was that?” Phoenix says, standing and obliterating the last little hint of our own private bubble.
“That would be Maverick trying to cook,” Storm says, coming over to our side of the deck. “It’s your turn to deal with that.”
Storm shrugs, the picture of innocence, as I give him a dirty look. It is my turn, but that asshole is doing this on purpose.
“You better hurry before he burns the entire yacht down. I don’t think we’re going to get another one.”