No Returns (The Blankenships Book 6) (3 page)

When he came down to earth, he was weeping. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered, softly. “I’m so sorry.”

She knew better than to think he was really speaking to her, but she was still aching, still wanting, and maybe some absolution would be helpful. “I forgive you,” she said, pulling herself up and off his softening dick.

He looked at her, his dark eyes swollen with so much need that he had no outlet to fulfill, and she slipped forward, pressing his face towards her pussy, full of his seed and swollen with frustrated need. She told herself she’d back off if he offered even the slightest hint of hesitation, but—oh God—instead, he leaned forward, straining at the cuffs again, but this time, he was licking urgently at her, devouring both of them, and she had thought she’d been miles away from coming, miles and ages, but he was making these urgent, desperate sounds as he devoured her, sucking her clit and doing his level best to fuck her with his tongue. She threaded her fingers through his for balance as she came, hard and urgent, no less desperate for the sharp need that washed through her. “Oh fuck,” she heard herself murmur, “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fucking fuck.”

It was something other than release, something other than pleasure. It was almost an epiphany, a sense of completion, of coming full circle. He didn’t stop as her pussy quivered, just kept fucking her with his tongue and teeth, and the pleasure stretched out like honey, through an almost endless rising and falling pleasure, wiping her out over and over, destroying her and remaking her as she cried out.

And then the moment crossed from pleasure to pain, and her body was tired and lax. She managed to un-cuff him as she slid down his body, and they curled up together on the bed, stroking each other softly and delicately as they both cried, broken hearted that the house was too quiet, too empty, and turned inside out and alone.

Zoey could feel the moment when the walls inside his heart slid shut again, closing down and shutting her both out and off. She tried not to let it sting any more than it had to. She’d known it was coming — or at least that it was likely to come again. She tried to cling to the moment they’d had. She had an idea that she was about to walk into a desert and that it might be a while before the next oasis.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rodriguez, Rodriguez, and Martin set up a meeting for Alex with the police the following morning. Both of them were still badly jet lagged, and Alex had barely spoken throughout the day. Zoey had tried to get him to let her take care of some of the funeral planning, but when she suggested it, he’d given her such a cold stare that she couldn’t think of anything to do other than nod and walk out of the room. The police asked a thousand questions, and the lawyers said, over and over, “You don’t have to answer that.” They did tell the police that Cindy Walden had come to them, given them information about her siblings, and suggested that she needed their help to keep herself and the remaining half-siblings safe.

Luke Pyramus nodded, his expression calmly reserved and neutrally listening. “Yes,” he said. “We’ve heard all of this. What I’m not understanding, though, is why you didn’t come to the police at that time. Three people were dead, after all, and you believed that you knew why they were being killed.”

Alex sighed and rubbed his temples. “I had no idea if it was true or not,” he said. “Cindy didn’t want to go to the police.”

“And what about you, Alex? We’ve been friends for a long time. Why didn’t you trust me?”

He looked at his old friend and tried to remember. He, Luke, and Leo had been a trio of hellions in school, causing trouble every chance they got. He’d gotten them out of trouble by invoking his father, Leo had gotten them out of trouble by spreading around his money, and Luke — Luke had gotten them out of trouble by being innocent. By giving people a look exactly like the one he wore now, where he looked like some sort of carved angel, too good to hurt anyone.

Alex glanced at Martin who shook his head. Alex clamped his lips tight again and waited for Luke to ask another question.

Luke sighed, turning his desk chair gently from one side to the other. “You know what I think?” he asked, almost conversationally. “I think that you saw a chance. I know the wording of your father’s will was strange and that it could be used to claim shares for your half-siblings, which would dilute your mother’s power and make it easier for you to take over the company. I think you decided to use her. And I think that’s what got her killed.”

Something inside Alex’s stomach was clawing at his ribs, trying desperately to escape. He had the disconcerting feeling that if he gave voice to what was tearing him up inside, he would let out an angry howl of misery that would destroy him. Shred him.

Martin sighed. “Mr. Blankenship, I think you know this, but you obviously do not have to say a word about any of that. Commissioner, unless you have any actual questions to ask my client, we’ll be leaving now.”

Luke made an angry sound, gesturing towards the door. It took a moment for Alex’s brain to click into gear, for him to stand and follow Martin to the door.

It felt awkward to move. It had since the night in the car. All of his joints felt too loose in their sockets, while his muscles felt too tight around his frame. He knew he was moving like an automaton, not like a man. No one had said anything about it yet, not even Zoey, but it felt like it was only a matter of time. He needed to be who he had always been, the easy-going, deeply intellectual man who could capture a room with a smile, the playboy who never kissed and told. It was the only way he could avoid losing everyone.

There was a terrible, nihilistic corner of himself that was spreading a different message, whispering in his ear that he was better off without all these other people, all these other weights, dragging him down. Suggesting that he’d been wrong to let Claire matter so much, sister or not, and that Zoey was another mistake in the making. That to be the man he needed to be, the man he was supposed to be, he needed to stop letting people matter, at least in the specific. Saying that people mattered in the abstract was good PR.

He knew exactly whose voice that was, whispering in his ear, and he did his best to ignore its venomous whisper.

“Alex? You okay?”

Martin was standing close to him, too close. Why so close? Oh, because they were standing, stopped still, in the middle of the hallway at 1PP, and people were starting to stare. Alex forced a smile onto his face, hoping that it didn’t look too much like a grimace, and shoved his feet into motion. “Of course,” he said.

How could people hear his voice and not hear the horror and despair that was tangled up inside of him? How was it even possible?

But then, Martin was giving him the kind of long, steady look that said he wasn’t being fooled, not even a little. His jaw moved for a moment, and then he offered his client a similar smile that didn’t come anywhere close to his eyes. “Would you mind dropping me off at the office?” Martin asked. “I can call a cab, if it’s out of your way.”

“No, it’s no bother,” Alex said. After all, it would give himself a way to distract his mind from the way his heart started to slam as he stepped into that long, black town car. This morning, on his way to 1PP, he’d squeezed his thigh so tight with his fingers he’d worried abstractly that he might tear his pants. The crease had been utterly ruined; his hand had been sweating. He’d half considered telling David to take him to the ER, as he’d thought he might be having a heart attack.

Martin held the door open for Alex, outside, and Alex managed a wan grin as he slid into the seat. He squeezed his eyes shut until he felt the car shift as Martin settled in. He opened his mouth to tell David to take Martin to his law office first, but no sound came out.

Martin saved him, but his voice seemed far away, underwater. Alex heard David respond, and then the car was in motion, gliding into New York traffic with David’s expert guidance. He tried to focus on his breathing, but in the peripheries of his awareness, he knew Martin had reached past him and slid the divider up between the two seats. “Alex,” Martin said, his voice much calmer and quieter than seemed right for a man of his age. Alex forced his attention up and over, but looking up, acknowledging that there was someone else in the car as well, made the panic swell and swamp him.

“Water,” he gasped, gesturing at the small built-in cooler that David had always kept stocked. Martin went for it as Alex reached into the breast pocket of his coat. He shook out one tiny white pill from the bottle he kept there, and swallowed it with his spit as he took the bottle from Martin.

The relief came quickly, and he knew it was just a placebo at this moment, that even the most rapidly acting medicine couldn’t work this quickly, but knowing that soon, soon his heart would stop slamming in his chest like a runaway train, that soon, he’d be able to breathe—even just that gave him enough distance from the panic to be able to find some small measure of comfort.

“Benzos?” Martin asked, his voice just as calm and quiet as Alex could imagine, as if he hadn’t just watched his client wrestle through a panic attack in front of him. Alex nodded. “Are they legal?”

Alex rolled his eyes and dug the bottle out of his jacket pocket, passing it to Martin. “Prescribed and everything,” he said.

“When was the last time you saw your therapist?”

It wasn’t a question he would have put up with from anyone else. Olivia had no idea, of course, and Claire — his heart twisted with aching pain — had asked once, and he’d put her off. He knew all the statistics about how stigma kept people from seeking the mental health treatment they needed, especially men like him, whose identities were caught up in being strong and powerful and unflappable. He’d never mentioned it to Zoey. She’d never noticed the faint scars around his wrists, and he liked that. That he had healed so much that the scars weren’t visible anymore. He knew where they were, but they’d never been very deep anyway. He’d made that first cut, and then realized that if he was in control of the end, then he could be in control of so much more. It had sapped his desire to end things—or maybe it had woken his desire to continue them. It hadn’t mattered, in the end, really, how it was phrased. He’d decided to stop, and to get help. And he’d turned his life around.

“It hasn’t been necessary,” he said, pushing the words out through his clenched teeth. The panic tried to come surging back on wings of
he doesn’t trust me, no one trusts me, I don’t deserve trust, we know that now for sure
but he was able to choke it back and down, into the cauldron of his belly, where he tamped the stress down with a chug of cold water. “I’ve kept my prescription up to date, but I haven’t used the pills in a long time.”

Martin’s voice stayed calm, stayed light, but his words were almost impossibly heavy. “As your lawyer, I need to say—”

“Oh fuck you,” Alex surged, the anger lit on the tinder of his fear. “Don’t give me that shit.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Alex knew what he was looking for. He wanted a reaction just as strong as his, something that told him that the other man was just as upset as he was, just as ready to break things into pieces and tear the world apart until it—what, gave him back his sister? As if that were even possible.

Tears came, then, destroying his anger before it was even fully formed. He fought it just as hard, though. He hated this roller-coaster, hated this sense of being outside of his emotions, utterly lacking in control. There were few things worse, if anything was at all.

“As your friend, then,” Martin said, his voice somehow even calmer, a feat which should have been impossible. “Make the call. See the therapist. You’ll need the outlet. Take a break from work.”

“Everything but the last,” Alex said.

Martin made an unhappy sound. “Alex, come on. You’re better than this.”

“Better than what, exactly?”

“Better than him.”

A chill rolled down him, like fog sliding down a mountain. The panic, the anger, the grief at his sister’s loss—all of it fell away, leaving him shockingly numb. “I’m just like him,” Alex said, and he heard his voice echoing from miles away, as if he was speaking a prophecy and completing a circle that had been building for years. “I’m my father’s son.”

Martin tried to talk to him after that, but Alex found that the best way to handle the situation was just to turn his head to the side and stare out the window until David pulled in in front of Martin’s offices, and the man was gone. There was no way to make him understand. No point in trying.