Dirty Ties (34 page)

But the strong arm around my belly, the chest against my back, and the warm mouth brushing my shoulder? Best feeling ever. His comforting embrace was completely mine. A languorous smile took hold of my lips, and pure joy swished through my veins.

I stretched like a cat, arching my back and rolling in his arms to see him. His hair was a tousled mess of hotness, his eyes half-lidded and admiring. The lazy contentment on his face seemed to brighten the light spilling in the windows, warming my insides and tingling filaments of delight over my skin.

He lifted a hand and stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. His fingers slid down my face and under my chin, where he lingered with a caressing knuckle. “Christ, you look sexy in the morning.”

“You should talk.” I was absorbed in the dark whiskers on his jaw, the creases on his cheek from the pillow, and all that exposed muscle definition leading to the gathered sheets around his waist.

I could look at his body for hours, but my eyes kept returning to his face and the unabashed way he devoured me with his stare. We lay on our sides, face-to-face. My arm bent beneath my head to pillow my head, and his did the same. This silent intimacy was something I’d never experienced with another person, yet it came so easy with him. With just a simple look, I had everything I ever wanted.

The eye contact broke when his mouth closed over mine. A kiss that intensified as his fingers entered me. When carnality took over, it was no longer just a kiss but a merging of bodies. His cock buried deep, our tongues twined together, and our orgasms peaked simultaneously gentle and replete.

We showered, taking turns washing one another. Neither of us could stop smiling, nor could I stop kissing his turned up lips. I sampled his smile so thoroughly and frequently with my mouth I felt it burn inside me.

But as I wrapped the towel around my body and walked toward the doorway to exit the bathroom, dread trickled into my mood. It was Saturday, and Collin would be awake somewhere in the condo. The looming confrontation with him slowed my steps and lumbered my pulse.

And stopped my heart when I entered the bedroom.

Collin stood beside the bed, his arms crossed over his bare chest. Black silk pajama pants hung from his narrow hips, the same shade as his neatly-combed hair. His disbelieving glare aimed at the quiet presence behind me. “What the fuck?”

He knew what Logan looked like. Hell, every employee at Trenchant had seen their CEO’s face on the company newsletter. His rigid posture had nothing to do with me bringing a man home, and everything to do with how Logan had hurt me.

But how did he know Logan was here? I adjusted the towel, trying to calm my fingers. “You used the key to my room?”

A tic bounced in his jaw. “The door was open.”

I glanced at the door and twisted to look at Logan. He knotted a towel at his waist, his eyes on Collin. His lips pinched in a white slash, but his expression was…thoughtful. Had he unlocked the door before joining me in the shower? He must have, but why? Motherfucker, he was up to something.

My pulse picked up, and my hands grew restless on the towel. How would this play out? So many secrets, all of which Logan knew. But Collin… Oh God, if I trusted my gut, Collin knew nothing.

Silence stretched through the room, strumming with tension. I turned back to Collin. “Where’s Seth?”

His face hardened, his blue eyes firmly locked on me in silent question. I’d mentioned Seth in front of Logan. He thought I’d told his secret. “He had a photo shoot.” The cold reverberation in his tone conveyed his shock and brewing anger. “Why, Kaci? The snake used you and stole your job.”

“Collin, he’s not a snake.” It was a weak argument considering I’d asked him to help me deliver three dozen of the slithering things to Logan’s office. I could feel Logan’s heat at my back, but he made no move to interject. “I didn’t tell him about you. He—”

“I can’t believe you crawled back in bed with him after what he did.” Red splotches formed on Collin’s neck as his eyes darted to my towel. “And you brought him here?
Him,
of all people?” He pushed his hands through his hair and paced through the room, his protection of me radiating from the tenseness in his body. “Goddammit, Kaci. You know what he’s capable of. He’ll hurt you again. He’ll turn our marriage into a media nightmare.”

I walked toward him and pulled his hands from his hair. “Listen, he’s not interested in…”

Collin’s attention caught on the movement behind me. I followed his gaze over my shoulder and watched as Logan dropped the towel and strode through the room in all his naked glory. The fluid muscles of his strong legs, the soft, heavy fall of his cock, and the flex of ass when he passed us, every inch of him gorgeous and distracting and—

Oh no.

I spun back to Collin and found his eyes tracking Logan. Anger darkened his face, but there was something else, too. Something he was trying to hide…

Oh fuck no no no.

My stomach twisted, and I grabbed his shoulders to turn him away, but his gaze swept over Logan. “Collin, dammit, don’t look at him like that.”

Logan walked toward the windows, stretching all those rippling muscles with his arms over his head, the sunlight reflecting off his smooth skin. Fire swept through my bloodstream and heated my cheeks. What the fuck was he doing? If Collin didn’t know they were brothers…

Oh my God. Realization punched me in the gut. If Collin knew any of Trent’s secrets, Logan’s blood ties would’ve topped the list. I’d bet money that Logan unlocked the door and streaked the room to test Collin’s reaction.

Really fucking sick. I grabbed the closest thing I could find—a hairbrush from the dresser—and hurled it through the room, landing a hit on the center of Logan’s back. “Put some damned clothes on.”

He flinched and rubbed the hurt, but when he looked over his shoulder, the bastard grinned.

Collin cleared his throat and scrubbed a hand over his jaw, but his friggin’ eyes tracked back to Logan’s body.

Gritting my teeth, I stepped between the two men and shouted, “Logan, stop baiting your brother!”

I had to give Collin some credit. He’d unknowingly ogled his brother’s junk and didn’t vomit his guts when Kaci explained our family ties. But man, his face turned a ghastly shade of white.

When I woke this morning, I made the sudden decision to meet him for the first time in my birthday suit, just to see his reaction, to find out how much he knew. Though wrong on so many levels, it proved one thing. He hadn’t known we were brothers.

Which meant Kaci’s faith in him might not have been misguided. Maybe his parents really hadn’t involved him in their shit.

Two hours later, she finished walking him through everything we knew, including all the secrets she’d kept from him over the years, as well as my connection with the underground races. She used the flash drive I’d brought to show him digital copies of the evidence on her laptop. His family’s crimes, my mother’s death, the proof of our blood relation.

He responded with a whiplash of emotions. Shock that Kaci had kept so much from him. Denial that his family could commit such crimes. Disgust when he saw the evidence. And now he seemed to be settled on anger. Maybe we had more in common than just DNA.

He pushed his half-eaten plate of French toast across the kitchen table and stared at it with a clouded expression. “We need to kill them.”

I coughed behind my hand to hide my smile. Wasn’t he full of surprises? But Kaci wasn’t amused. She glared at him, at me, back at him. Sitting at the table beside me, her hair a cascade of gold to her waist, she pulled her feet onto the chair seat and wrapped her arms around her bent legs.

I couldn’t stop my gaze from roaming over her tight jeans where they stretched around her ass. That earned me another shriveling look from Kaci. Damn. Definitely still pissed about my naked walk in the bedroom.

“Okay, fine.” She leaned back, hugging her knees and staring at the vaulted ceiling. “We kill them, then what? What happens to your show? Your career?” She leveled him with a glower that was tinged with exhaustion. “You would be a fugitive. And what about money? We have enough to survive for a while, but when it runs out, are you going to wait tables with me in Shitknob, Mexico?”

From there, they launched into the pros and cons of murder. I left them to it, content with watching their interactions as I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. I had a solution for her financial concerns, but it wouldn’t placate what was really bothering her.

She slid into my vacated seat to sit closer to Collin, her hand reaching out, fingers lacing with his. The touch was familiar, the kind found in the intimacy of a lifelong friendship.

Seeing them together was reassuring in a way that defied explanation. A reassurance that had me trusting him within two hours of meeting him. His devotion and loyalty shone in his eyes. Eyes that followed my every movement when I was near her. If anything happened to her because of me, he would feed me my own dick.

Fuck, I respected that. I’d been alone my entire life, with the exception of Benny. To be here eating French toast—that
my brother
cooked—and plotting the future of Trenchant was fucking surreal. I wanted Collin in her life, in our lives.

With their fingers entwined, her other hand traced the ridiculously squared edges of his jaw and pinched the indention in his chin. “You’re not a murderer. You’re not
them
. And Jesus, Collin, we’re talking about our parents. Our
family
. You don’t just order their deaths and walk away from that without it playing over and over in your mind for the rest of your life.”

His eyes flew to mine. I’d told him about the murders I’d committed, but by then, he was already overwhelmed with the barrage of his family’s crimes. As he studied me now, it wasn’t with judgment. Curiosity, maybe?

Were the lives I’d taken etched in my face? Shadowed in my eyes? Was he wondering if the same would happen to him? If the spilled blood of his family would creep inside him and haunt places he couldn’t reach?

I justified every life I’d taken, but could Collin do the same?

I’d known about my brother’s existence since I was thirteen, since the night my mother was killed and I read her diary. But I didn’t know
him
. So for two hours, I watched him the way he did me, sizing him up and looking for similarities.

He took after his mother, her Italian heritage blatant in his black hair and olive complexion. His sharp cheekbones and slender face were rather aristocratic. His blunt jaw might’ve resembled mine, but his features as a whole—the refined way he carried himself, his charisma, his fancy shirt and slacks—all of it was made for the camera. Not for murder.

“She’s right, Collin.” I grabbed the coffee pot and brought it to the table. “You don’t have calluses inside you, hardened tissues that will never heal. You didn’t watch your mother’s murder at thirteen.”
And hide under a bed doing nothing to stop it.
I refilled their mugs, stifling the tremor in my hand, and set the pot on the table. “Killing isn’t a part of who you are. I would gladly do the job myself, but your consent to that is the same thing as doing it yourself.”

Something softened behind his eyes. Maybe it was understanding, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure.

I sat beside Kaci, and my hand instinctively went to her hair to feel the comfort of the strands between my fingers. Collin’s eyes tracked the movement, his expression unreadable.

She leaned toward me and placed her hand on my thigh, stroking the leather of my pants. “We’re not killing them.”

Collin stared out the windows behind me. At the skyline? The clouds? Who the fuck knew? His fingers around his coffee mug looked like he was holding on for dear life. “If we turn them in, my father will make sure I go down with him.”

She rubbed her brow as if warding off a headache. “We can fight him.”

His eyebrows gathered as he glanced between her and me. “The evidence my father has against me… It’s not all purchased.”

A sick feeling curled through my gut, and Kaci tensed beside me.

He swallowed, his face pained. “You remember Brad? The artist from SoHo?”

Her hand on my thigh clenched, and she wrinkled her nose. “An old boyfriend, right? Like…eight years ago?”

She’d told me a lot about her life last night, including some of the details of her and Collin’s approach to sex. As hard as it was to hear about her sharing lovers with her husband, I was grateful for her honesty. It gave me a new perspective on her loneliness as well as some insight into this conversation.

My first thought was this Brad guy had shared a bed with Kaci and Collin. But they’d only been married for seven years, and she didn’t seem to remember him.

Collin nodded in answer. “We got in a fight one night. It was bad.” His knee bounced, stopped. “He hit me, I hit back. His head hit…” He shoved a hand in his hair, and his knee bounced again as he struggled to maintain eye contact with her. “His head hit the wall at an awkward angle. I thought I killed him.”

Fuck. I could fill in the rest, but Kaci did it for me. “You called Trent for help, didn’t you? Except he didn’t help you.” Her tone lowered, her hand on my leg sliding restlessly. “He finished the job and used it as a threat against you every day since. Am I right?”