Boss (16 page)

This feels too fucking good to be his first time.

He repeated for what felt like a lifetime. It was a never-ending wave of pleasure and Ezra could feel it coming to a head.

“I’m gonna blow,” Ezra’s buttocks clenched, “you might wanna move.”

Instead of moving, Joshua sped up, his tongue batting his head as the hand continued to do the work. All it took was one glance of those blue eyes for Ezra to lose his shit. Forcing himself to keep his eyes open, he let the feeling rush through his blood as Joshua took his load. Joshua’s eyes clenched but he quickly swallowed like a pro, which made Ezra’s cock twitch and spurt even more.

“Fuck,” Ezra gasped, “fuck, Joshua.”

He let his body flop against the door as he fought to regain his breath. Basking in the warm glow of his orgasm, a small laugh escaped his mouth as he felt Joshua standing up.

Wiping the sweat from his lashes, Ezra opened them to see Joshua with his back turned from him. With his hands on his hips, it was clear he wasn’t sure how to feel.

“This needs to stop happening,” Joshua dropped his head.

Rolling his eyes, Ezra pushed his still hard cock into his trousers so he could fasten his belt.
Straight guys.

“Didn’t I mention that all employees must give the boss special favours?”

“Fuck off, you -,”

“I’m kidding,” Ezra laughed.

Joshua seemed to calm down slightly but he still didn’t look like he had recovered from giving head for the first time.

“I should get back to work,” Joshua pointed towards the door, his eyes planted on the ground, “I clearly need to polish up my typing skills.”

“Wait,” Ezra grabbed Joshua’s hand before he let him leave, “What you did was great. I was just being a dickhead to see how you’d react.”

Joshua’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped, “You fucking -,”

“Trust me,” Ezra pulled him in close, “that was the last thing I was expecting. I thought you’d either try to kill me or leave.”

“There’s still time.”

Ezra looped his fingers through Joshua’s as they stared into each other’s eyes. The anger was still there in Joshua’s gaze but it wasn’t as strong. Staring into his diamond blues, Ezra felt any suspicion drift away. He didn’t care why Joshua was there, he just cared that he was.

“Do you want to get some lunch? There’s a great little place around the corner.”

“Are you serious? I can never tell with you.”

“Cards on the table,” Ezra tightened his grip on Joshua’s fingers, “I just want to spend some time with you not arguing.”

He could tell Joshua was forcefully trying to figure him out but for once, Ezra was telling the truth.

“Fine,” Joshua blinked slowly, “I could eat.”

“Joshua?” Ezra whispered.

“What?”

He let go of Joshua’s hand.

“Kiss me again.”

And he did. He didn’t hesitate, he just pulled Ezra’s face in and kissed him. Their tongues quickly danced together and he could taste himself on Joshua’s tongue. When he pulled away, he didn’t look shocked or confused, he looked like he knew what he was doing.

“I still hate you,” he turned around and headed for the door.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

This boy is going to be the end of you.

After his first day working at the tower, Joshua wasn’t sure how he would feel. He had come to expect that whenever he was around Ezra, he wasn’t going to act right. He had also come to accept that their relationship had somehow become a sexual one without him even intending.

He was trying not to question it or over analyse it but that was practically impossible. Ezra was making him feel things internally and externally that he never thought possible and it was only muddying the waters.

If I could just keep my hands off him, maybe I’d fucking get somewhere.

“So, we can go to a bar or we can go back to my place for a drink? Your call,” Ezra said as they headed through the emptying reception of
Silverton Tower
.

He didn’t know how he had agreed to going for an after work drink with Ezra but he had.

“Bar,” Joshua plumped for.

He wasn’t ready to spend time in his old home just yet. His father’s ghost could still be stalking the place and he wasn’t ready to face those memories.

“C’mon, my car is parked out front,” Ezra started walking towards the exit but when Joshua’s phone started to ring, he held back.

“I’ll catch up with you,” he mumbled when he saw ‘
Tobias Cole
’ on the caller ID, “Tobias? What’s up?”

“Joshua? Where are you?”

“I’m at the tower,” he said, “what’s going on?”

“Can you get to my office? I think we need to talk.”

He watched as Ezra walked through the revolving doors. Part of him wanted to tell Tobias that he was busy because he secretly wanted to spend more time with Ezra but there was a panic and fear in Tobias’ voice that made him agree.

“Change of plan,” Joshua smiled apologetically, “Violet needs me for some wedding stuff. I gotta go.”

“Oh,” Ezra squinted, “I’ll give you a lift home.”

“No,” Joshua waved his hand as he walked down the street, “see you tomorrow.”

Congrats Joshua, you’ve probably just made him suspicious as hell.

When he got to Tobias’ office on
Fleet Street
, the front door was already open for him and the receptionist looked like she had gone home for the day. Tobias was sitting behind his desk with a pair of glasses on the end of his nose as he shuffled through papers by his reading lamp.

“Knock, knock,” Joshua said as he walked in.

“Joshua,” Tobias quickly stood up and shook his hand, “please, sit. Lots to discuss.”

The last time he had visited, the desk had been empty but now it was piled high with cases and paperwork. Joshua wasn’t too sure if any of it was to do with him but when Tobias started to shuffle through them he got the idea they were.

“Have you been digging for something?”

“I must admit, when you left, I felt bad. I knew none of this was your fault, so I started to do some digging of my own into this case. I managed to trace it back to a company up north. I knew it wasn’t like your father to go so far afield but I guess he didn’t want us catching him out.”

Tobias seemed flustered and excited but Joshua was only confused.

“What have you found?”

“Well,” Tobias tugged his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, “not an awful lot. This case is more complicated than I thought it would be because there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t add up. They did everything in such a rush and yet they covered their tracks perfectly.”

“So you call me here to tell me you’ve found nothing?”

Tobias finally plucked a piece of paper from the bunch and passed it over to Joshua. He quickly scanned it and it looked like the final page of a contract. At the bottom of the page, it had been signed with his father’s signature.

“That’s a copy of the final contract absolving your father of his estate before he signed it over to Ezra Steele.”

“Okay?” Joshua scanned a couple of the lines but none of it made much sense to him, “Where is this going?”

Tobias plucked another piece of paper from the bunch and passed it to Joshua. This time, it looked like a page from his will, but again, not much of the content made much sense to him. It was signed and dated at the bottom in his father’s hand, much like the first.

“Notice anything strange?” Tobias nodded excitedly.

He knew Tobias got a thrill from finding loopholes and gaps in the law that they could wriggle through.

“What am I looking for?”

“Look at the signatures,” he nodded, “don’t they look different to you?”

He compared them side-by-side but they both looked like his father’s signature.

“They look the same,” he shrugged, “the one on the contract is a bit messier but that’s all.”

“Wouldn’t you say it looked weaker?” Tobias suggested, “As if it’d been written lightly by a weak hand?”

He looked closer and he could see what Tobias was saying. It didn’t look like as much pressure had been applied, which was unlike his father’s usual confident signature.

“So?” he said, slightly irritated, “Cut to the chase.”

“I’ve been digging through all of the paperwork surrounding what happened. After I requested it from the company on your behalf, they were happy to hand it over with you being his next of kin. I’ve noticed a pattern with your father’s signatures. The later the date stamp, the lighter and messier his signature became.”

“He was dying, wasn’t he? I doubt his handwriting was top of his priorities list.

“Exactly,” Tobias slammed his hands down on the table, “there is your case. There is your way in.”

Joshua looked at the two signatures in front of him, hoping they would unlock whatever Tobias was seeing.

“Are you saying my father’s writing has been faked?”

“No!” Tobias almost laughed, “The writing isn’t what’s important here. The important thing is that your father was dying.”

“And that’s important why?”

Joshua was starting to get frustrated. He felt like Tobias was giving him half of the jigsaw pieces and expecting him to figure out the puzzle.

“Joshua, don’t you see,” he leaned into the glow of the lamp, “if we can prove your father wasn’t of sound mind towards the end of his life, we have a case. If we can prove that he signed everything away, not really knowing what he was doing, it is as good as yours.”

His mind was running one million miles a second. Collapsing deep into the chair, Joshua stared at the signatures waiting for his father to speak to him. The silence was louder than anything he could say beyond the grave.

All along, Joshua had believed everything Ezra had told him. He hadn’t wanted to but he had believed him. He had believed that Bill had given Ezra everything willingly but what if that crucial piece of information was a lie? What if Ezra had seen his chance and taken advantage? That’s what Joshua had believed before he found out Ezra’s true identity as the ‘
third party
’, but he had somehow convinced him that wasn’t the case.

Ezra was charismatic and manipulative. Ezra had managed to get Joshua alone at
The Dorchester
when Joshua had hated him on first meeting.

“What were you doing at
Silverton Tower
?” Tobias crashed into his thoughts.

“I work there,” he muttered, “I started today.”

“Wait, what?” Tobias laughed, “You’re working under Ezra? How did you manage that?”

“I don’t even know,” he shook his head heavily, “it just happened.”

Whenever I’m around Ezra, things just happen.

“Are you close to this guy? Does he trust you?”

Joshua wasn’t going to tell him how close he really was to Ezra.
I sucked his dick a couple of hours ago. Is that close enough?

“I don’t know if he trusts me,” he said, “I think he wants to.”

“Oh, this is perfect,” Tobias laughed, “this is going to be easier than I thought. We’re practically halfway there.”

“What do I need to do?”

“You need to investigate and gather evidence that your father wasn’t in his right mind when he gave everything over to Ezra.”

He knew that was easier said than done. If Ezra was as clever and devious as he suspected, he wouldn’t leave signed confessions lying around in his office.

“How do you expect me to do that?”

“You need to talk to people. Find out what was going on in your father’s final weeks. Find out who was around him and what they saw. Look at the date on that final piece of paper. He signed that over two days before he died. Find out what happened, Joshua. If you want your inheritance, you need to catch Ezra Steele out.”

As the evening wore on, Joshua hoped things would become clear. Sitting in Violet’s lavishly decorated dining room pushing pasta around his plate, he knew things were going to be more complicated than Tobias expected.
Why did you have to get close to this man? He’s clouding your vision.

“Was your first day that bad?” Violet yanked the plate away from him, “You’ve barely said a word since you got back.”

“I’m just tired,” he shrugged, not able to look at her.

“I’m going for a cigarette,” Levi pulled the packet from his jeans, “you coming?”

“I’ll miss this one,” Joshua edged his head towards the door.

Levi rolled his eyes and made a joke about knowing when he wasn’t wanted, leaving Joshua to explain everything to Violet.

“So you’re telling me, you’ve been sexual with this guy in my kitchen and you’re only telling me now,” she narrowed her eyes, “I’m so glad the cleaner came this morning.”

“Violet, that’s not important,” he sighed, “Tobias thinks Ezra is a snake.”

Leaning in across the table, she moved the saltshaker and gripped his hands.

“Fuck what Tobias thinks,” she squeezed hard, “what do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “does Ezra seem like that sort of guy to you?”

“You know him better than I do. You want to know what your humble cousin thinks?”

“Always.”

She sucked the air in through her teeth as she strongly held his gaze.
Oh, God, she’s going to give it to me.

“I think you’re falling for this guy and that’s why you’re so conflicted.”

And just like that, she hit the nail on the head.

I can’t be falling for a guy, can I?

I can’t be falling for Ezra Steele.

I hate him…

But I want him…