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ELEVEN

KENJI

This day had gone completely off the rails. I prided myself on being able to roll with the punches, but even I couldn’t absorb this many hits without taking a few moments against the ropes to recover.

“Don’t talk to me,” I snapped before reaching for the buttons of my shirt and kicking off my shoes. I had one destination in mind, and it was the now perfectly cleaned and pressed bed I’d left several hours ago.

“Are we having sex?” Landry asked incredulously. “Now?”

I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer to the universe to have mercy on Landry whatever-the-fuck his name was so that I didn’t strangle him right now with the lavender-scented sleep mask that was resting on a porcelain tray on the bedside table.

“You may be,” I said in a clipped tone. “I am not.”

I yanked off my shirt and dropped it on the floor before shoving my pants down and stepping out of them. My underwear and I climbed between the heavenly sheets and let out an involuntary groan of relief. “Thank fucking Christ for this bed and everything associated with it,” I breathed, settling into the luxurious bedding and closing my eyes. “Pull the curtains closed, please.”

“You were serious about napping?” Landry asked.

“I wasn’t until I saw the bed,” I admitted. “But I’m known for my adaptability.”

The light dimmed behind my eyelids as I heard the soft clink of metal curtain rings sliding across rods.

“We need to talk about this,” Landry said. “There’s time to correct this. To let you go back to the States.”

I kept my eyes shut as I listened to him yank another pair of curtains closed. I refused to acknowledge that I’d been planning to do exactly that—leave Landry and his lordly crisis management team to handle the boots-on-the-ground work while I did my part remotely.

More to the point, I refused to consider why I’d changed my mind.

“And leave you here to turn this into an even bigger clusterfuck?” I scoffed. “I don’t think so. You pay me to keep your life from imploding, Landry. Remember?”

The sound of fabric moving against fabric continued as he moved around the room. “I think everyone would agree pretending to be my husband is a bridge too far, Kenj.”

I shrugged, snuggling deeper into the mattress. “Silas did it for Way. What’s the difference?”

The mattress dipped on the far side as Landry slid between the covers. My lungs seized in surprise, leaving me unable to snap at him or tell him to get the fuck out of my napping chamber.

Landry’s voice was deep and familiar. And close. “The difference is the two of them were actually married,” he said, moving closer until his hand grasped one of my wrists and gently began moving my body where he wanted it.

My heart rate skyrocketed. “I’m not… we’re not… this isn’t… you aren’t the boss of me.”

I bit back a groan. He was literally the boss of me.

“I am your husband,” he said in a voice full of knowing, full of heat. Full of something I wanted more than I would ever admit. “And you will go where I put you.”

I was still angry. So, so angry. And hurt. And embarrassed.

But my dick was already half-hard, and Landry’s deep voice commanding me in bed was enough to make the blood abandon my brain with all haste and hotfoot it down to the fun party as fast as humanly possible.

I opened my mouth to snap, “You are not the boss of me,” until I realized I’d already said that and already reminded myself it was untrue. And I was probably too far past the point of being allowed to speak with any semblance of self-respect.

“Norf,” I said instead.

The low rumble of his laugh hit the back of my neck on a hot breath. “That right?”

“ Eing .”

“Let me have you,” he pleaded in a soft, desperate voice. “Please.”

“Call me husband,” I said, trying to make it sound snarky and sarcastic. Trying and failing. It came out in a drug-slurred voice, low and wanting.

Landry’s hands moved around to my chest and stomach. “Do you have any idea what I want to do to you, darling husband ?”

Wavy air filled my head, and hot fire lit my cheeks. “ Nuhfh .”

His hard cock pressed against the top of my crack and lower back. The warmth of him surrounded me as his lips teased my ear and neck.

I tried to clear my head, at least enough to make me stop spouting nonsense and set some boundaries. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Of course not, darling,” he soothed.

“No, I mean… oh, god …” His hand moved down into my boxer briefs to grasp my cock right as something in my brain suddenly served up the realization that while I’d been meditating in the bath yesterday, Landry had acquired my preferred brand of underwear, pants, shirts, and sweaters. He’d somehow managed to buy shoes in my size, the exact model of computer I used, and everything else he thought I might need for the less-than-twenty-four-hour time frame I’d planned to be here. How had he done that? Why had he? “…h-husband,” I finished.

The word shouldn’t have come out sounding so real. Sounding so right.

I shook my head. “No,” I breathed into the sheets.

He froze. “Kenj?”

Suddenly, I realized he’d interpreted my no the wrong way. I grabbed his hand to keep it on my cock and reached back with one leg to wrap my foot around his ankle.

He released a sigh of relief. “Tell me to stop if you don’t want this.”

“Don’t stop.”

“You know you can tell me to stop.” His voice had taken on a knowing, teasing quality I didn’t appreciate.

I tightened my grip around the hand he had around my dick. “Don’t. Fucking. Stop.”

It was his low chuckle that finally threw me over the edge. I lurched forward and grabbed the sleep mask off the table before turning and shoving it over his head. “You don’t get to watch.”

I yanked it into place on his head, trapping his hair in the strap so he looked ridiculous, and then I shoved him onto his back and moved down his body, nipping and teasing him with both lust and anger in my heart until I got to his cock.

And then I went to town on his gorgeous fucking cock in a way that was aggressive and brutal. It wasn’t the first time I’d done this with him. In fact, he’d come up with a name for it about a year into our… encounters.

The Spite Suck.

Whatever. My purpose was to bring both of us to completion as swiftly and brutally as possible. Before anyone caught feelings. Before it had a chance to mean anything. Before?—

“Fuck, baby, you feel so good around my cock. So good for me.”

A humiliating noise came out of my throat. Landry was doing this on purpose. He knew what words like that did to me.

I moved off his cock completely.

Fuck him.

Instead, I traced the seam of his sac with the tip of my tongue as lightly as humanly possible. But it turned out the joke was on me because seeing the skin crinkle as his balls drew up only made me harder.

I reached back to slide a finger over my hole, remembering the times he’d teased me with his fingers.

“Dammit, Kenji. Suck my cock.” His voice was graveled with need. “You know you want to feel my dick on your tongue. You know you want to make me come.”

I bit the inside of his thigh lightly, appreciating the swift intake of his breath. His hand found my head, tangling fingers in my hair. “Baby, careful,” he warned, even while he spread his thighs further.

I moved down to take one of his balls into my mouth, reaching up to stroke his shaft with one hand while continuing to tease myself with the other.

“Are you touching your cock, Kenji? Are you imagining my fingers on you?”

“I need you to stop talking,” I snapped. Except my voice sounded panicked and high-pitched. Something in it made Landry yank his mask off and reach down to grab me under the shoulders, yanking me up his body and flipping us around until we were face-to-face with him peering down at me.

His hand gripped the back of my head. Instead of kissing me, which was what I expected, he lifted my chin so that I had to look at him. “Tell me you want this.”

I blinked at him. Usually when he did this, when he called an end to my attitude and manhandled me where he wanted me, there was an unspoken agreement that all verbal communication was over and he was in charge. I went where he put me and took what he gave.

As long as he didn’t give me attitude or emotion.

“No,” I said automatically, regretting it the instant it was out of my mouth. “Wait!”

His eyes widened a split second after I’d seen the spark in them dim. My heart thundered. Is he going to call a stop to this? Do I want him to?

No. Hell no.

“I…” My chest heaved with rapid, shallow breaths. “I want this.”

“But you’re still angry at me.”

“Yes.”

He stared into my eyes. His own were glassy pools of verdant water on new grass. “Do you have any idea how much I want you? How much I’ve always wanted you? How scared I was when you?—?”

My heart climbed into my throat. “Landry, stop talking. That… that isn’t what we’re about?—”

His big hand moved between us and pressed firmly against my mouth. “I need you to stop talking. I don’t want to hear your lies.”

My lies? Mine ? The irony of Lord fucking Landry saying those words was galling.

But at the same time, I had to admit… he wasn’t entirely wrong. I was a lying liar, too.

I’d come to some realizations in San Cordova about why I’d been holding myself back where Landry was concerned. For years, I’d accused him of being incapable of commitment and taking a relationship seriously while I’d been the one tap-dancing around the truth.

I cared about Landry. A lot. Too much.

Which was why it hurt so fucking badly that he’d been hiding such a large part of himself from me. His family. His name. His whole second life.

And while my anger was justified— more than justified, damn it !—it didn’t change the facts.

We weren’t enemies with benefits. Not anymore, if we ever had been.

I could tell by the look on Landry’s face he wasn’t going to leave me hard and aching, but I could also tell he was as angry and hurt as I was.

He’d been lying about who he was, yes. And I’d been lying about who he was to me .

He moved down my body, leaving his hand on my mouth with his impossibly long arms, and proceeded to wreck me with his mouth.

He took me to the edge over and over again with long sucks, breaking off as soon as I gave any wordless indication that I was on the precipice. Then, he’d tease me with short strokes and a grip that was just one degree too loose to bring me any relief while delivering teasing licks to my balls, my taint, and my hole that made me writhe with a different kind of pleasure. Just when I was ready to scream in frustration, he’d suck me down and begin the beautiful torture all over again.

Every time I bit out my frustration in a curse, something inside me realized that no one knew how to take me apart like Landry Davis. It was a masterclass in my own destruction, as if he’d been studying me for the past three years.

Landry had never edged and teased me for that long before because I’d never allowed it. If he’d drawn a sexual encounter out to the point I felt vulnerable, I’d always done something to provoke him into finishing because I’d known on some level that if I’d truly put myself in his control, all of the barriers I’d erected between us would come crashing down and leave me in the dust.

And it turned out I’d been right.

By the time he took mercy on me and finally let me come, his hand was long gone from my mouth, and I was clamping my own hand over it to keep from crying out. When the aftershocks of my orgasm subsided and I felt his hot, sticky release on my leg, I turned to thank him…

And found an empty bed.

After pulling myself together and cleaning up, I still couldn’t bring myself to show my face downstairs. The knowledge that I’d hurt Landry left me feeling like I’d just stepped onto a boat in unknown waters during a squall. I didn’t know how to navigate this.

While it was very tempting to believe my own excuses about why I’d blurted out the marriage lie in front of the Winthrops—that Landry needed my help—the truth was, I’d been suddenly, shockingly, viscerally jealous.

Jealous like a pampered dog guarding purloined table scraps. Irrational and primal. Unnecessary. Ridiculous.

But the feeling had been so sharp and bitter I hadn’t been able to stop myself from blurting out the word married , verbally pissing on the man, because what I’d really wanted to say was Mine.

Mine, mine, mine.

Had I really claimed Landry publicly just to reject him? Was that who I was? Was that actually what I wanted?

I sank down on the little couch in my guest room and tried to marshal my thoughts. I was fueled by organization and logical efficiency. But when I tried to think about Landry objectively, to make a pros and cons list, I couldn’t stop remembering earlier today, when Cora had brought the three of us to a little office.

I hadn’t noticed much about our surroundings at the time, too overwhelmed by the man beside me and the fallout of my possessive overreaction. Now, I considered the details of the room itself.

A familiar crystal statuette shoved to the back of a bookshelf had been one of Landry’s Model of the Year Awards.

The stack of spiral-bound reports on the desk with their unique mottled blue-green covers were the annual reports from Sterling Chase, the Brotherhood’s shared venture capital firm, which I prepared for them at the end of each year.

The scattered hair bands beside the stack of opened mail in the antique wooden desk box were the type Landry used.

The tiny mason jar filled with candy dicks was a gift Silas had given the Brotherhood for Christmas.

The room we’d escaped to had been Landry’s office, not Cora’s. And it was obviously well used.

He’d brought the candy and the reports with him to England, even though he’d stopped in New York between leaving Majestic—where he’d received both the candy and the reports—and arriving here.

Hell, I was surprised he hadn’t left the reports in a recycle bin at Dev and Tully’s house. I’d never known Landry to pay much attention to the Sterling Chase business details.

My fingers initiated a phone call to Bash before I could stop to think about it.

“Thank god you’re okay,” he said as soon as he picked up. “You are okay, right? Landry said you weren’t hurt.”

I reached up to touch the edge of my forehead where the cut had disappeared into my hairline and the bruise was easy to hide. “I’m fine.”

“Good. Are you back in the city, or are you headed to Majestic? Rowe and I are still in Majestic and think it would be a good place for you to recuperate. But if you’re in the city, don’t even think about going to the office.”

I walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Deep shadows cut across the view of Regent’s Park as the sun slipped behind the buildings.

“I’m in London.”

Bash hesitated. “Wait, still? I thought that was just a temporary thing.”

A couple walked hand in hand down the sidewalk. The woman chatted excitedly while the man shifted a tote bag on his shoulder without losing his grip on the woman’s hand.

“Landry had some things he needed my help with,” I said, remembering Chaska’s wisdom. Clarity comes in simplicity.

“Oh, well, good. I hope it’s not too demanding. I’m sure he could use your help with his statements to the media and whatnot. As long as you get some time to recover.”

For a split second, I thought he knew about Landry being a British peer and about our sham engagement-slash-marriage… but then I realized he must have been referring to Landry’s retirement from modeling.

Bash obviously hadn’t seen the news yet, but then again, it was early in Wyoming, and when the guys were together at Dev and Tully’s house, they were more likely to be focused on Lellie than their phones.

I cleared my throat. “Actually, we have a situation here. I thought the Brotherhood might need to be aware of it.”

“What is it?” Bash asked, his need to control coming to the surface in his tone.

“We landed in London to a bit of a media frenzy,” I began. “There are some wild headlines floating around—romantic headlines—and we’re currently strategizing with a PR team to figure out the best response.”

“Romantic headlines? You mean, about you and Jamie Winthrop? Landry told us about the rescue plans. Did the press think you and this Winthrop guy were together just because you were rescued together?”

I wanted to laugh, bark out a snort, and then explain it was all a big joke. If only it were that simple.

“No, actually. I, ah… I was holding Landry’s hand when we stepped off the plane. There was already a misunderstanding, and the image of the two of us together added fuel to the fire. It’s kind of exploded.”

Long story short, the world thinks we’re married.

Bash’s voice carried a smile. “Holding hands, huh? You mean you finally threw Landry a bone?”

I heard Rowe’s voice in the background making a bah-dum-bum sound.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked, sounding more like a ninety-year-old butler than myself. I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose.

“Come on. Landry’s a good man, Kenji, and he’s pretty obviously had a thing for you for a while. Maybe don’t be so hard on him.”

Rowe’s snickering intensified. “No pun intended,” he called out.

“He’s a child,” I insisted, unsure whether I was referring to Bash’s husband or Landry.

“Landry’s a hard worker, and you know it. Unless you’ve forgotten about Milan Fashion week two years ago when he added a charity sponsorship to his already overpacked schedule, resulting in his working around the clock for two straight weeks while nearly comatose from jet lag. Or the times he’s had to skip our vacations to check on his dad back in England. Or that time he skipped the opportunity to be seen at the Oscars so he could bring you zosui soup from Hirohisa when you had the flu. Or the time he hired a fucking SEAL team rescue for you on the other side of the world. Or the time he got Rowe into that backroom couture lingerie sale so he could get?—”

Rowe squawked in the background.

Bash sucked in a breath. “Never mind. That’s… private. Anyway. Landry has a giant heart, an impeccable work ethic, and an overwhelming crush on his executive assistant. The two of you either need to fuck and get past it or go on a date. But stop whatever the hell this is because it’s killing Landry. He looked like a kicked puppy at Christmas.”

Another couple on the street had entered my field of vision. Two women walked arm in arm, bundled up in coats and scarves. They were talking with their heads together, unsmiling but obviously close. They reminded me of a couple who’d lived in my apartment building until last year when they’d decided to move to Vermont in search of a slower-paced life so they could spend more time together.

At the time, I’d thought they were crazy. I’d fully expected them to be bored within a month, but here we were, eight months later, and their Instagram feeds were full of photos of their happy life together in the mountains. Their house had a wide, sweeping view of a meadow leading to low peaks where the sun painted swaths of warm colors every morning and night.

It reminded me of the painting of Three Daughters in Majestic that hung over my bed.

Maybe I’d never let myself imagine a life like that because I didn’t think it would ever be within reach.

Maybe it never would be if I kept throwing up roadblocks and pretending I didn’t care when I did.

“Landry wanted me to go out to eat with him,” I admitted softly. “Like… like a date.”

Bash’s voice held a smirk. “For real? You have to admit it would be kind of funny if Landry never needs to reveal the secret of the Brotherhood billions to his life partner because the guy already?—”

Rowe squealed again. “Oh shit. Oh shitttt. That’s what he meant! Landry said at Christmas his partner already knew. Omigod omigod!”

At the time, I’d thought Landry was just being dramatic. I hadn’t been able to allow myself to consider any other reason for his comment. But now… “He told me he wanted to have a relationship with me. Something more than physical.” I swallowed. “He wanted me to be his boyfriend.”

There was silence over the line. I knew Bash well enough to know he was either lecturing himself in his mind to tread lightly, or he was staring wide-eyed at Rowe while mouthing what the fuck do I do?

“And you… declined?” he guessed.

“Obviously.”

“Why?”

I huffed out a laugh, causing the glass windowpane to fog in front of me.

All the reasons I’d given myself for years danced in my brain. I knew Landry Davis, I’d told myself. Knew everything about him. Landry was a playboy who didn’t know what responsibility was. Who didn’t take anything seriously. Who wasn’t the settling-down type. Who didn’t know what long-term commitment even looked like and wasn’t a family man.

But not only had Landry been faithful to me for three freaking years, but he was obviously dedicated to his family. And if there was anything that screamed long-term commitment more than a centuries-old family legacy, it was having a man lie to the freaking prime minister for me .

The true answer was because I’m a fucking idiot .

But what came out of my mouth was, “Because he’s a freaking lord who’s going to get talked into serving in Parliament, and I wouldn’t make a good countess. I have to go.”

I ended the call and threw myself onto the bed again, yanking up the duvet and trying hard not to feel the tsunami of guilt pour over me.

I really was a fucking idiot.

And it was becoming clearer and clearer to me I was also in love with one.