Release (26 page)

“Shhh,” he whispered before he pressed his lips to Genny’s damp brow. “You okay?”

She nodded. Sean covered her external sex with his hand in a protective gesture. He couldn’t recall ever taking a woman so forcefully. His need had never felt so powerful.

But as usual, his need to cherish her was equally as great.

“Little sore?” he murmured regretfully as he kissed her lips.

“I’m fine.” Her whisper had been so soft he’d barely heard her.

Regret swamped him when he saw the anxiety start to creep into Genny’s gray eyes again. He swallowed thickly. Even though he’d always felt supremely comfortable talking to Genny, he realized he didn’t know what to say to her at that moment. That was when Sean first realized he’d lost something. Burning in Genny’s fires had been the type of experience he’d have sold his soul for.

It began to dawn on him that was precisely what he’d done.

He’d kissed both of her eyelids. “You look so tired. Go to sleep, girl. It’s all going to be okay, I promise.”

He felt like a coward, knowing he’d only suggested it so he didn’t have to consider his own reflection in Genny’s eyes at that moment. He’d sagged in relief minutes later when he sensed the tension ease out of her body as she sunk into a deep sleep.

“I hope she was everything you thought she’d be.” Max spoke quietly.

Sean lifted his head, removing his face from the fragrant warmth of Genny’s neck. He turned and stared at Max. The older man looked entirely comfortable laying there naked on his back, his thick mane of gray hair resting on the pillow. Sean gave him an annoyed look. Some kind of defense mechanism had clicked on in his brain that night. Sean’d
known
Max was in bed with him and Genny, but he’d also been able to miraculously ignore the man’s presence at times . . . block out the fact that he’d watched while another man touched Genny . . . while another man fucked her . . .

If he’d let the knowledge enter into his awareness too greatly, he wouldn’t have been able to stand it. It’d been a kind of survival instinct. Not for
his
survival.

For Max’s.

Max rolled over onto his side. Sean’s gaze dropped to his groin. The other man sported quite an erection. Sean resisted an urge to get off the bed and leave the room. He didn’t want to move away from Genny at that moment, though.

He didn’t
ever
want to move away from her.

His just glared forbiddingly at Max instead.

A small smile pulled at Max’s lips as he reached around Sean’s body. The guy had balls, Sean’d give him that.

Sean held himself on a tight leash as Max Sauren wrapped his hand around his cock and began to stroke him.

Sean shook his head slowly. An old, primitive fury rose in his gut. He fought that ugly feeling, that old enemy—an anger born from a vulnerable child’s instinct to survive. He fought it mightily, but Max’s cocky grin only fueled it.

“So. This was what you had in mind when you offered me Genny?”

“We all have to pay for what we want, Sean,” Max said warmly. “It’s one of the unspoken laws of the universe.” Sean felt Max’s cockhead brush against his ass. All the defense mechanisms he’d acquired as an adult thinned. Ice flooded his veins.

He resisted an overwhelming, primal urge to murder the son of a bitch.

“What are you going to pay
me
for not killing you, Max?” The older man’s hand paused in stroking his cock. “I assume you actually
want
to live?” Sean prodded.

Max’s dark eyes met his. After a tense moment, he let go of Sean’s flaccid cock. Max laughed softly as he lay on his back on the bed, his hands behind his head.

“You really would, wouldn’t you? Kill me for something so meaningless,” Max asked, humor filling his handsome face.

Sean’s nostrils flared in fury. “If Genny wasn’t here, I just might.”

“Guess it’s true what they say. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“I wouldn’t try tricking me, Max. Period.”

“We’ll see,” Max replied, his smile never wavering.

Sean suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, like he was smothering in his own rage. He needed to get out of that penthouse, before he did something he regretted.

He tried his mightiest to ignore Max’s stare as he gathered his clothing and rapidly dressed, but his anger threatened to explode out of his chest at any second.

“I wouldn’t spare too many thoughts for any future dalliances with my wife. She may have enjoyed having you in bed, but she’s a little out of your league, wouldn’t you say?”

Sean just continued to dress methodically, realizing he was being baited at this point, although the knowledge was helping only minimally.

“Genny may have grown up in the roughest of circumstances, but as you know, nature shaped her into the rarest of jewels. Maybe you’ve imagined that the two of you have something in common because of your backgrounds, but don’t kid yourself, Sean. Genny is about as different from the women in your life as an exquisite diamond is from a grain of sand. Your mother, for instance . . .”

Sean’s fingers stilled in the action of buttoning his shirt.

“I understand she relapsed yet again, and had to return to that residential facility for addicts. Shame, really, that they actually have the nerve to call those places ‘rehabilitation centers’ when they serve as a revolving-door pit stop for the dredges of society. Genny mentioned your mother’s circumstances to me once. Genny’s so impressionable, you know. So kind. The pity I heard in her voice for your mother—and for you, as well . . .”

Sean closed his eyes and willed the red haze that had begun to cloud his vision to clear. When the raging surge of his heartbeat quieted in his ears, he opened his eyes and fixed his stare on Genny.

He finished buttoning his shirt, his gaze never leaving her still form. He walked toward her.

“Don’t even think about trying to remove her from this penthouse. She’s my wife. She belongs here, with me,” Max warned quietly.

Sean’s glance was full of loathing. He’d thought he’d understood Max Sauren pretty well before that night, and he hadn’t been wrong, technically speaking. But coming into firsthand contact with the dark void at the center of the man was different than speculating about its existence.

“I’m putting her out on the couch to sleep. Don’t touch her. Do you understand me?”

Max merely shrugged before he peeled back the covers and slid his feet under them. He pulled the sheet up to his lean, muscular chest and yawned. “She doesn’t even interest me if you’re not in the picture.”

He’d rolled over, turning his back to both of them.

Sean would have wagered Sauren was sleeping peacefully within the underside of a minute.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

S
ean grimaced at the memory as he clicked open another file on his computer. He
should
have awakened Genny on that night. He should have insisted she get dressed and come with him.

Instead, he’d left her with the devil.

The only excuse he had for leaving her was that he had no reason to suspect—to hope—that Genny would have wanted to come with him. Yeah, she wanted him—that had been made abundantly clear—but did that imply that she would have forsaken her life with Max because of one night of intoxicated, impulsive pleasure?

He’d settled her on the couch and retrieved a blanket from the extra bedroom to cover her.

If he’d known he wouldn’t touch her again for three years, nothing could have made him walk out that door. If his brain hadn’t been vibrating with fury, maybe he would have started to suspect why Max was playing with them like a cat with a couple of trapped mice.

Sean’s head swung around when he heard a muffled dinging sound. His brows knitted together in puzzlement. It wasn’t a familiar noise. He stared at the partially opened paneled door in his office. He sprung up from his chair and entered the small, six-by-six-foot room.

It hadn’t been his preference, but he had eventually moved into Max’s old office about a year after Max had died. As the executive director of the intel firm, Sean was responsible for getting new contracts and building business. Max’s large corner office was much better suited than his old office had been for entertaining prospective clients.

It wasn’t until after Sean had moved into the office that he’d realized that the wood paneling to the right of Max’s desk was a disguised door. Inside the secreted compartment had been video monitors for camera feeds from various places inside Sauren Solutions—places that weren’t on the more commonly used company surveillance. Max’d placed cameras in the reception area, the exercise facility locker rooms, the company break room, the firing range, and the elevators. Apparently, Max had liked to watch people
everywhere
in his domain.

Max had considered anyone that he had to deal with on a regular basis as a kind of opponent. Watching them while they were unaware of it was just one more way that Max acquired an upper hand.

A constant source of that rare commodity: information.

Sean had locked the compartment on a permanent basis, finding it a disgusting invasion of not only Sauren-Kennedy clients’ and visitors’ privacy, but also an infringement on their employees’ rights. Besides, Sean had updated all the surveillance equipment for the premises, making sure that all video taken at points of entry and other key areas was sent to an external location, preventing an intruder from merely destroying the local server and any video evidence in the process.

Just this morning, however, in the midst of his preoccupation with Rook and worry about Genny, he’d entered the small room and activated some of the out-of-use cameras. He’d run a diagnostic on his own system earlier, and found that everything was in good working order. But he recalled that Max’s cameras used a wider angle on the streets surrounding Sauren-Kennedy Solutions than his own. If Rook was, indeed, in Chicago, and if Genny or something she possessed interested him, he may very well be staking out Sauren-Kennedy. Sean wanted to observe some of the cars parked on the street. He was likely to notice anything unusual, as deserted as the Loop was with this storm raging.

Apparently when he’d used the equipment earlier he’d left on an audio-indicator for movement on the elevators. He hit a keyboard and a visual flickered onto one of the screens.

“Fuck,”
he hissed. He hurried out of the compartment and raced toward his office door.

A minute or two later, he waited in the dim, nearly empty Sauren-Kennedy parking garage, his hip leaning against the driver’s side of Genny’s dark blue BMW sedan.

“Going somewhere?”

Her muscles jerked reflexively and her brown leather carryall thumped onto the concrete floor.

He watched as the color drained out of her face. With a quick glance, he took in her haphazard dress and mussed hair. She hadn’t even bothered to run a comb through it, he realized as his anger built. She’d awakened, saw his note, and realized he was gone.

Then she’d grabbed everything and run out on him.

All his insecurities about not being good enough for her—and the inevitable subsequent surge of stubbornness—swelled in his chest.

After he’d seen the video of her on the elevator, he’d unsecured the lock on the stairs and plunged down the twelve flights to the subterranean parking garage. He’d arrived just before she’d hastened out of the elevator. His posture might look casual enough as he waited for her, but tension tightened every muscle in his body and fury boiled in his belly.

He straightened from his leaning position and bent over, shoving the nightgown Genny had worn just last night back into the bag—the same soft, emerald green, sexy gown she’d taken off, baring her beautiful body, before she’d given herself to him so completely.

Apparently she’d given herself on a short-term basis only.

He lifted her bag. “Let’s go,” he said simply when he met her wide-eyed stare again.

Her jaw dropped. Before, she’d just looked stunned, but now, anger entered her expression.

“Don’t
tell
me what to do, Sean.”

“All right,” he murmured as he stepped closer to her. She took a step back before she held her ground. “If you’d rather I just picked you up and carried you back to the penthouse, I’m real fine with that.”

Her chin went up. Her gray eyes smoked with rising anger. “Don’t you dare threaten me with force.”

He stopped within inches of her and stared down at her pale, upturned face. “It wasn’t a threat. It was a fact. Haven’t you been listening to a word I said? Have I been talking to myself this whole time?”

“Sean, I—”

“I have good reason to believe someone wants something from you, Genny, and I don’t think they’ll care one way or another if they hurt you while they’re getting it.”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “That’s just speculation on your part.”