Page 94 of The Lost Zone (Dark Water #3)

Alex screamed – not from pain, not even from pleasure, but simply because he could.

Finally, he could shout out his emotions.

Months of repression, of humming and yoga, of pretending and hiding and being in total control of himself, were over.

He screamed, and shouted, and banged his fists on the bed, letting it all out.

Tyler had staying power and he wasn’t a selfish lover, either. He took Alex’s cock in his hand and caressed it in time to his rhythmic thrusts. Fuck, it felt good. Fantastic, even. Tyler was as good in bed as he was in business, but then again, he always did have to be the best at everything.

“I’m better than Purvis and Bagshaw and all those other fuckers,” Tyler told him, riding him relentlessly. “Aren’t I? Say it!”

“You are… oh God, you are, sir,” Alex agreed happily. There was nothing good or wholesome about this. It was all kinds of fucked up, but that didn’t matter. It was as necessary as it was ugly.

“Wait for me to say when,” Tyler ordered, needing to control even his orgasm.

Alex held back, waiting for Tyler’s permission to come, and Tyler rode the crest of that wave, enjoying his obedience.

“Now!” he shouted suddenly, and Alex let go, coming all over Tyler’s hand, his first unmedicated orgasm in months.

Tyler came, too. Arching his back, he yelled, then looked down on Alex like a conquering general surveying his fallen enemy.

“I knew I could make you beg, make you enjoy it,” he crowed triumphantly.

“You did, I did…” Alex whispered pathetically.

Tyler removed the condom, tied it off meticulously, and threw it into the nearby bin. “Am I the best you’ve ever had?” he demanded.

“Yes. How can you doubt it?” Alex smiled at him hazily. Was that true? It didn’t matter.

“I knew it. I watched you with all those others, and I knew they weren’t reaching you. I knew I could, if you just gave in to me.”

Then, much to Alex’s surprise, Tyler lay down on the bed, gathered him in his arms, and spooned him.

He was naked, Tyler still fully clothed, and he felt vulnerable and yet oddly safe nestled against him.

He closed his eyes, refusing to make sense of his feelings right now.

He was doing what he had to do. How he felt about it, good or bad, was irrelevant.

He fell asleep to the sensation of Tyler gently kissing the back of his neck.

He woke a couple of hours later to find Tyler’s arms still wrapped around him. Despite the fact it was only the middle of the day, they’d both been exhausted from the sex, from the battle, and from all of what had gone before that had led them to this moment.

He lay there for a long time, wondering how he felt about being held so tenderly by the man responsible for his worst nightmares. He had no answers. His feelings were too fucked up, too contradictory.

Gently extricating himself, he turned over to find Tyler still asleep. He looked younger in repose, less intense. Alex gazed at him for a long time. Did this change anything? What happened next? And where the hell did they go from here?

He pressed a finger against a little vein pulsing in Tyler’s neck.

He could murder him in his sleep. Wrap Tyler’s own tie around his throat and strangle the life out of him.

Or he could find some sharp object in the apartment and stab him with it.

He removed his finger. No. He could never kill anyone in cold blood, not even Tyler.

That had never been the plan, never an option.

Alex knew he didn’t have it in him to kill anyone.

Joe could do it, but not Alexander Lytton. He was an artist, not a soldier.

He wanted Tyler to pay for what he’d done to Solange, but in a courtroom, in front of the entire world.

He wanted him to feel his disgrace, to have all his power removed from him and all his control taken away.

That would be more of a punishment for a man like Tyler, anyway.

He slipped back into the circle of Tyler’s arms, closed his eyes, and was soon fast asleep once more.

When he woke again, he felt rested, his body alive with sexual energy. He hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. Stretching out lazily, he opened his eyes to find that Tyler was also awake. He was lying there, unmoving, staring at Alex as if he was an alien.

“What’s the matter? Is there a problem?” Alex reached out and caressed Tyler’s face, inches away from his own.

“Yeah. The problem is I didn’t expect to wake up.” Tyler sat up abruptly and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I thought you’d kill me in my sleep.”

“Kill you?” Alex sat up, too, thinking, You’re the killer, not me. “I could never kill you.”

“I thought all this was a game, a charade, that you were pretending in order to get close to me.” Tyler glanced at Alex over his shoulder.

“I was sure I’d find you out at every turn, but you didn’t crack.

I didn’t expect this.” He waved his hand at the bed.

“When I finally fucked you, I thought it’d be the last thing I’d ever do.

I thought that once you had me alone in here, you’d try and kill me – smother me in my sleep, strangle me, stab me with whatever you could lay your hands on – but you didn’t.

How else does it end, you and me, except with one of us killing the other?

” He turned towards Alex with a look of fury.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you try and kill me? ”

“I couldn’t kill anyone, least of all you. I’m your indie, and you’re my houder. I just want to serve you,” Alex said quietly.

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’ve changed that much.”

“But you sent me to Belvedere to change me,” Alex said earnestly. “And I have changed.”

“Can it be possible?” There was a small light of hope in Tyler’s eyes. Alex was giving him a way out other than mutual destruction. Would he take it?

“I’ve been trying to prove it to you. What more can I do?” Alex asked helplessly.

Tyler stared at him, his expression oscillating between scepticism and hope.

Alex expected to be thrown out again, as he had been so many times before, because Tyler clearly couldn’t live with the cognitive dissonance of his own doubts.

Then he saw the desire in there, warring with Tyler’s other emotions, and he seized on it.

Leaning forward, he gently pressed his lips to Tyler’s, just as he had in the duck.

Tyler sighed, accepting the kiss eagerly.

Alex felt a great wave of something pass through Tyler, something deep and heartfelt, a need to be loved – a longing to be loved.

He felt almost dirty as he preyed upon that need.

Of all the things he’d expected to pass between them, it wasn’t this.

Tyler swept him up into his arms and pressed him back down on the bed. Alex smiled up at him, caressing his cheek gently with his hand.

“Please make love to me,” he whispered, using the word deliberately, needing to know if his suspicions were correct. Not fucking. Love. Tyler’s eyes went dark, and he gathered Alex up and kissed him repeatedly.

That’s when Alex knew the truth. That for all his money, power, and ruthless ambition, George Tyler was a lonely man who wanted to be loved. It felt wrong, cruel even, to play with his emotions like this, but Alex was beyond caring.

If this was what it took, then he’d do it.

End of Book Three