Page 28 of Integrated (Mistress & Master of Restraint #11)
Agent Smirk was kind enough to allow Roarke to hang out in Grant’s suite while I visited Marcus. I thought the man would follow me in, but all he did was open the door and wait to close it behind me.
“I can tell by your facial expression that this is going to be a painful conversation,” Marcus says to me as I enter his private suite at Whittenhower Estates. Lounging on the sofa with an issue of Consumer Reports dangling from his fingertips, he looks more like a billionaire playboy than a prisoner in his own home.
Heavily lidded amber eyes, Marcus licks his lips in anticipation.
Is Marcus trying to flirt?
Seriously, what the fuck?
Ignoring the look, I also ignore his mercurial moods. “What’s up with all the Mr. Smiths?” I demand as I fall to land opposite him on the loveseat, hoping he gets the Matrix reference.
“You can blame your progeny for that.” Marcus grimaces like he has a bad taste in his mouth.
Any mention of Ava has me acknowledging my own failings. “What does my daughter have to do with Kent Preston and his men in black?”
“Emergency Whittenhower family meeting.” An expression of total awe washes over Marc’s face. “ The man is in the house.”
“ The man? As in the President of the United States is on Dominion soil? That explains all the Secret Service– I knew Kent wasn’t important enough.” With a sigh, I lean against the sofa to rest the back of my neck. The past few days have taken a heavy toll on all of us.
“Misery Castle is inundated with Secret Service for the duration of their stay. Being as I am the least criminal of our associates– for a politician, that is –even I feel the need to hide. I put word out to avoid Whittenhower Estates at all costs. Not a one of us is innocent, even Generation Next should be locked up for fifteen-to-life.”
“I only have a vague idea of what you’re getting at, but I see the implications. Explain,” is a demand that needs to be heeded. “Especially your cryptic comments about my daughter.”
“If I were you, my son, anyone with my blood wouldn’t enter this house. Ever again . Just saying.” Marcus doesn’t sound amused at all. By the expression on his face, he’s scrambling to figure out where to move next. ASAP. Even though he’s engaged to one of the mistresses of this castle, with his future stepson one of its masters.
“That bad?” I ask, hating how my voice breaks.
“I’m sure Wesley– the guy at the front of the house –wasn’t impressed when you gave him your name. Thanks to Ava, we’re on our government’s shit list.”
“You do realize no one has given me any details about what the fuck is actually going down, so how about you remove my ignorance before I get within an arm’s reach of my daughter.”
“Your fourteen-year-old daughter effectively launched the equivalent of a nuclear strike on the United States Government– political terrorism at its finest. Remember the video that surfaced a few days prior to the polls opening? They were hoping to discredit them with the salacious nature of underage, incestuous sex.”
“Yeah, the video went viral, with every news media outlet saying it was Whitney and Niel–” sucking in a deep breath, it all hits at once. “Oh, shit. You mean that video was actually Whitney and Niel? Shit, she’s pregnant. It was.”
“You think?” Marcus glares at me. “The media was quickly shamed for airing what might have been a sex tape of minor children. The gravity of that had everyone ignoring who may or may not have been filmed in the act. With Whitney actually pregnant, it will be hard to deny the video wasn’t true. The next President of the United States and the next Vice President of the United States are currently in Whittenhower study interrogating the entire family.”
“What. Happened?” No longer willing to play this feeding me crumbs game, I’m at the end of my rope. “Tell. Me. Now.”
“I don’t know.” Marcus gestures around the bedroom. “I’m not in the meeting, now am I? Regina wasn’t even invited. She’s off playing nice with your soon-to-be ex-wife for some reason.”
“Don’t start that goddamn conversation until this one is finished.” Snarling, I’ve had just about enough of Marcus lately. I have no idea what fucking game he’s playing, but I refuse to be a game piece. “Stop the evasions and answer me.
“What part of I don’t know don’t you understand?” Something else entirely is bothering Marcus, but I have no idea what. We’re in no position to pour our hearts out to one another any longer.
“On the outside, it looks like Ava was angry that Niel was cheating on her with Whitney, so she snuck up on them having sex, then uploaded it on YouTube as punishment–”
“Ava wouldn’t do that–”
“Oh, she certainly would, Dad .” Marcus stresses, instinctively knowing Ava and I are cut from the same cloth. “I don’t think she did, though. You’re a man of science, and I’m a man of human nature. Since Niel and Whitney are closer to Ava than ever, I don’t buy the lies.”
“After Katya brings the kids home, we’re talking to Ava about this.”
“Yeah, well… that will be too late to save her reputation, no matter what actually happened. To the outside public, it looks as if Niel was in a love triangle– all three of them cousins. All related to Kent and Katie in some manner. The president is here because this could be the end of their reign before they are even inaugurated.”
“Goddamnit!” Slumping forward, I rest my head in my upraised palms. “This is a nightmare.”
“Niel’s parents disinvited, the president is currently asking a grandfather, a grandmother, a father, and a mother whether the truth should be released, or if it’s acceptable to mark the girl as a whore who fucked around and got knocked up by some random asshole who will never surface. Whitney and someone other than Niel starred in that sex tape, marking the media as perverts for suggesting the incest angle and for airing a video of a minor. The truth means smearing their image, the other means keeping the presidency and ruining a girl’s life.”
“So much for feminism,” is snarled between clenched teeth. “Whether Whitney was with Niel or anyone else, that doesn’t make her a whore. No one would say that if Kent had a son who got a girl pregnant.”
“Be that as it may, I’m more worried about my granddaughter than the Whittenhower grandchildren. Ava is only fourteen. No matter the actual truth, this will follow her through her academic career and beyond. No one will trust her ever again. She’ll look like a monster. A mean girl. Her conception was already unveiled during our media shit-storm. Now the revelation that Waters is actually Atwater, making Ava’s cheating boyfriend of four years her cousin. No one will care what the truth is when this is more scandalous.”
“Katya is going to kill me.” Arm wrapped around my midsection, I try to keep my organs where they belong. Mouth watering profusely, bile threatens to erupt up my throat. “Katya is going to kill Ava, no matter why she did it.”
“No doubt.” Laughing without humor, Marcus is acting out of character. Splayed in the chair, he doesn’t seem to care that our world is crumbling to ash around us. “Your Kitten is sharpening her claws and teeth. Feisty little minx grabbed my crotch, just the other day.”
“You’re a goddamn liar, you know that, right?” Sneering at the man I call father, I’m not sure where the anger is coming from, but it’s fierce and powerful and undeniable. Maybe it’s displaced fear over Ava, or maybe the rage I’ve kept at bay over Cortez has finally bubbled over.
“Ah,” Marcus breathes, trying his damnedest not to laugh. “Said the pathological liar… takes one to know one. Shall I say neener, neener too?” Lips twisting into a beatific smile, Marcus captivates me as he taunts me.
“Cut the shit!” Lunging to my feet, if this is how it’s going to be, then I’m making sure Agent Smirk can’t interrupt. I flick the lock on the door to the hallway, and for security’s sake, I do the same to the lock on the adjoining door between Marcus and Regina’s room and Grant’s bedroom. Mustn’t have Jamie interrupt our conversation, since he’s in there with nosy, demanding Roarke.
“Very well, no lies between us this afternoon then.” Marcus shifts in his seat until he no longer looks salacious. “Regina is waving the white flag, so to speak. My idea, of course. They needed a distraction from what is happening in the study. Niel, Spyder, Ella, and Regina are joining your soon-to-be ex-wife and your children for lunch.”
“Is that wise?” I ask as I slowly move closer to Marcus. There is a strange air about him today, as if he knows we’re going to have a conversation eighteen years in the making.
“You tell me, Ezra?” Marcus mutters. “If you have to look your victims in the eye, especially when they’re with their family, are officially now a part of your family, it makes it more difficult to pretend you didn’t cause harm. Does it not?”
“What if Ava had her reasons? I don’t like the thought of Regina bullying my child because she doesn’t know what actually happened. You know how she gets, self-righteous in her anger, unable to see past her own point-of-view. Ava is a child. Niel and Whitney are a breath away from the age of majority. Regina is going to be a grandmother. My daughter should be the least to be blamed in this whole affair. But Regina will put a target on Ava’s back if that means not accepting her own role. Hell, she’s probably blaming Katya somehow.”
“No doubt,” Marcus twists wryly, as if the thought of his soon-to-be wife and my soon-to-be ex-wife throwing down is entertaining. “Ava is no innocent– look at the destruction she and her cohorts wrought with Generation Next. She had a role in not only that video, but also the creation of another human being. Ava has to take responsibility for that, not blame it on someone else. I felt it apropos if Ava had to look Regina and Niel in the eye over lunch.”
“Looking your victims in the eye, it’s so much more traumatic than you can imagine– a constant reminder you cannot deny,” I grumble as I sit opposite Marcus on the loveseat.
“Yes, I think it was very wise of me how I’m forcing Ava to look her victim in the eye, as well as his mother and sister.” Smug, ruthless, and filled with rage, Marcus glares at me. “Spyder may pretend around Ava to make her best friend/niece feel better, but she’s torn up about it too. Your. Daughter. Fucked. It. All. Up.” Marcus slowly enunciates.
“I wish everyone would stop talking to me like I’m hard of hearing,” is grumbled in confusion. “My daughter is also only fourteen, the youngest involved by years.”
“Ava’s destruction was just the same, no matter her age.”
“Regardless, Ava had help in her exploits, whatever they may be,” I admit, blaming myself. “You act as if Niel and Whitney didn’t fuck, not use protection, and get pregnant– probably still fucking. Forget the video, that is not on my daughter. You’re also tone-deaf where it comes to Generation Next, which was created by Niel, Ava, and Whitt, with Regina financing a portion of it. As I said, my daughter is the least who should be blamed, but will undoubtedly take the fall, because God forbid a Whittenhower pay for their own actions.”
“I’d say Whitney is paying the ultimate price. The video. The pregnancy. Either lie and take the fall or let her father’s political career tank. Having a baby, probably not going to college– her future just incinerated because everyone else’s future matters more.”
“Yes, Whitney and Ava. Two young women, while Niel and the adults walk off without a ding to their reputations. Thank you for pointing that out. They are all culpable for their parts they play. Me out of anyone understands the guilt over never paying the price, compounded with the entitlement it breeds. Stop blaming my daughter to appease your pissed off cunt of a fiancé. Regina is no saint.”
“Regina is a cunt now? Hmm… she’s very cross with me at the moment, because she’ll be a thirty-six-year-old granny,” Marcus twists out, trying hard not to laugh again. “Since my granddaughter is to blame, I’m enemy number one on Regina’s shit list. If we have a child together, it will be younger than its niece or nephew. Trashy– Regina’s words, not mine.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, feeling like shit and not knowing why. “I didn’t even realize Ava was up to anything.”
“Because you weren’t to know, Ezra. Ava is your daughter, capable of the same ghastly shit you are. Ask her, she won’t lie, because she’s as honest as blunt-force trauma to the skull.”
“As soon as Kat brings Ava home.” Exhausted by the prospect of that future conversation, I realize the one I came here to have is even more emotionally crippling. “I came here to–”
“Don’t!” Marcus warns, not giving me a chance to explain myself. “Don’t you dare fucking apologize to me. It’s unwarranted.”
“My God, would it kill you fucktards to allow me the release of saying the goddamn words? Just once I want to say I’m sorry and have someone acknowledge it. Someone other than Cortez, that is.”
“Maybe we don’t want to hear it.” The arrogant ass has the audacity to shrug.
“Too bad,” I snarl. Closing my eyes, I speak the truth as I know it, before Marcus can stop me. “I’m sorry I made you leave Dominion.” I whine, voice warping with guilt and agony. “I apologize for turning you into a monster. I feel sickened over what you had to endure in Las Vegas, knowing it was because I pushed you there. I’ve never blamed you for what happened between you and Cortez, because I’m at fault for making you both behave that way. My actions pushed you together. My actions gave you those needs that had to be fed. Everything is my fault.”
“Ezra, would you have touched me like that otherwise?” Marcus cautiously asks, ignoring the long list of sins I just laid at his feet.
“No, I-I-I truly wanted you to love me as a son,” is stammered, anxiety and stress affecting my speech pattern. “At least as a big brother and mentor, even if you adopted me legally, because of how close in age we were. I didn’t want you like I wanted Cort. I-I-I’d trick you and tease you, but it was a test to see if I could trust you. I needed to know if you wanted to be in my life because you loved me, or if you just wanted to use me like my mom was using me.”
“I know,” Marcus says with great patience. “You were a boy who wouldn’t have done what you did otherwise. You were trying to please your mother, seeking her validation and pride.” Marcus shifts in his seat, leaning forward until our faces are inches apart. “I was awake.”
“What?” I flinch back, suddenly terrified over how close Marcus was in my personal space.
“ I am the monster .” Marcus admits, expression so heartbroken and sincere that tears spring to my eyes. “I was very young and na?ve and innocent. I loved you, yet I was unsure on how to express that love to you. When you touched me, I woke, and I allowed it to continue because I enjoyed the connection. A normal person would have stopped you.”
“None of us are normal– we didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell at being normal, no matter the circumstances.”
“True. Nevertheless, you were there to please your mother, but you stayed to please me. You knew I woke up, maybe you’ve purposefully forgotten that so you could play the martyr who takes all the blame– like we’re blaming Ava now, when you’re right about everything you said in her defense. You were a child, and I was an adult.”
“I was older than Ava is now, and you weren’t much older than Niel is–”
“Don’t defend me. Young or not, I was your mother’s husband– I had just signed the adoption paperwork. I could make excuses about being too innocent and in need of affection and intimacy, but that doesn’t make it right. When you finished your task, I pulled you into my arms and told you it would be okay. I held you while I touched you, making sure you felt good too.”
Surprisingly, Marcus doesn’t sound ashamed, just resolved over our strange and sick beginnings. That manic edge has evened out, leaving the man I remember to be seated across from me.
“Marcus, I remember. I was there. You don’t need to repeat it.” Shuddering in remembrance, I try to get my emotions under control. “I don’t want the memory to resurface. The memory of you–” I try to think of a less icky term. “Masturbating me.”
“It was the first time I ever felt powerful. I was just Rebekah Zeitler’s dutiful grandson, doing as she told him to do. Then I became Diane Holden’s whipped husband, ignored and kept on a short leash for use as arm candy at charitable events. But then there was you, my newly adopted son who was susceptible to my demands, advice, and affections. The power wielded over another human being was highly intoxicating. Addictive. I had no idea what it meant, but I knew I owned you lock, stock, and barrel. You were the first person I owned, Cortez second, with Jamie owning me.”
Gasping in surprise, I never saw the past through Marc’s eyes before, with that bit about Grant being a revelation. Cortez keeps bringing Grant into every conversation about Marc’s recent instability, now I understand why.
“Most of my confidence is false.” Marcus keeps talking, not sensing my mind has wandered. “I don’t have this all-encompassing power over anyone but you. The pull is strong, but nothing like it is between us, because they can fight it. Even Cortez can tell me no. But you, my son, never could, never can, and never will.”
“That’s not true,” is a murmured denial, mind spinning in a billion different directions.
“Isn’t it?” Marcus muses. “I wasn’t aware you’ve ever told me no. In fact, I’ve tested you throughout the years, getting high off the control. Not once have you said no.”
“I– um…”
“Take Cort for instance. If any other man had touched your precious Cortez Julian Hunter, it would have resulted in an automatic death sentence. You would have snapped their neck, dead before they hit the ground. Yet I’ve fucked your man’s mouth since he was twenty years old.” All arrogance and smugness, Marcus practically rubs it in my face. “And not once have you raised a hand against me. Not only that, just a few months back, I quite literally fucked Cortez.”
“Why are you being so cruel?” Whimpering in a mix of agony, shame, and guilt, I stare at Marcus, showing him all the betrayal and hurt I feel over him touching Cortez and not me. Hurt because Marcus closed me out and didn’t allow me to be there with them while they were intimate.
Marcus is the only person on the planet who I’ll never see as competition when it comes to Cort, instinctively understanding that ownership he flexes over us. The rest of the populous, as long as we negotiate and are both present, then I could live with that. Another man touching Cort the way Marcus has, I would have executed on the spot.
“Cruel? Try realistic. You called me a liar, so now I’m giving you the truth. You came here today to apologize and seek forgiveness, correct? That isn’t necessary, because I was the one in control who lost control. We all need to take responsibility for our own actions. You. Did. Not. Make. Me. Leave.” Marcus slowly enunciates while staring me in the eyes, projecting his words as truth.
“Yes, I did,” is gritted out between clenched teeth, more frustrated that he’s making me say it aloud than anything. “I-I-I raped you.”
“Did you? Did you, really ?” Marc’s lips twist into an unpleasant smirk, and I fear what he will say next. “It’s about time we had the balls to get this out in the open, so we can heal and move forward with our lives.”
“I’m trying to do that in every way possible,” I whisper, scared shitless.
“Ezra, there were two of us in that bed so very long ago. I was awake, and you know it. If you’d asked outright, I would have said no, because rational thought would have won out. But with you conveniently squatting over me… I was a horny virgin. No man is saint enough not to take what was so selflessly being offered.” Marcus says in a manner that has a blush burning my cheeks in an instant.
Like a filter being removed, Marcus finally allows heat to enter his expression. He looks at me like a lover does when they anticipate what it’s like to bed you.
“I was twenty and innocent and beyond horny. Starve-gutted for attention and intimacy. I needed to feel connected to another human being, but I also craved that high I felt the first time you came to me. I was in control of every action that took place in that bed. I was the adult, you weren’t. If you recall, I grabbed your hips and thrust up– I was the one who joined us. It was most definitely mutual, and it was the most profound experience of my entire existence,” Marcus tenderly whispers.
“Yes,” is a breathy rasp, experiencing it in the now as I did back then. Uncontrollably shuddering, I wrap my arms around myself. Whispered in a childlike voice, I’m as lost now as I was back then. “I felt awful afterward. I made you hurt my mother, then I made you leave.”
“I could sense how awful you felt, and it influenced my behavior, because I was angry at myself. You didn’t make me hurt Diane, and you sure as shit didn’t make me leave. I’m responsible for all of it, as is your mother. She shouldn’t have asked that of you, and I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. I could have put a stop to it before it had gone too far, but I didn’t. I left because I was going to hurt you, Ezra. I was going to hurt Cortez too.”
“That’s not true,” I fiercely deny. “You love us!”
“I do love you… now take your cock out of your trousers and stroke it,” Marcus orders in a patient tone. “Do it now,” he coaxes.
“What?” Gasping in shock, my hands quickly do as Marcus bid, tearing at my zipper and tugging my pants down. Gape-mouthed, I look down at my open pants and see my hard flesh showing… and I don’t actually remember doing it.
“Now unzip mine.” Marcus calmly gives his next order. “Hurry, my patience is running thin.”
In a daze, I find myself kneeling in front of Marcus with his pants undone and his thick cock gripped in my fist, burning my palm as it pulses and throbs and dampens my flesh with its precum. The potent scent of sex hits my nostrils like the most addictive of drugs.
I haven’t touched him since that disastrous night, and I never contemplated it either.
Confused, on the verge of madness, I find myself kneeling at Marc’s feet with my dick hanging out and my finger wrapped around his cock. I slowly roll my eyes up to look to the man I call father and want to burst into tears.
“I-I-I… why?” With a stuttering cry, I gaze up at Marcus with betrayal marring my expression. Amber fire shines back at me, face flushed, lips parted on a pant, Marcus looks wild. Unbridled.
Scared.