Mutual Release (16 page)

“No, Evan, it’s man-up time. You are doing your sister’s memory a disservice. And I’m sick of it.” The sound of a cracking bullwhip made him yelp. She’d had it behind her back, but now it unfurled in the air, striking his shoulder, then his chest. He sat, let her do it, as a familiar quiet blanketed his aching nerves.

The pain focused him. He stood watching her. Her eyes were bright. She kept backing up and snapping the leather, hitting him just enough to make him wince and continue to slowly focus. He walked her up against the wall near the elevator, propped his hands on either side of her head and kissed her until he was dizzy. Then he stopped, cradled her smooth, dark face, and wiped the tear that dropped from her lashes.

“You’re right. Thank you. But what if I don’t want to leave… you?”

She shook her head as answer. Then smiled when he hit the down button but didn’t make another move towards him as he walked into the elevator and turned. Her face was set in firm lines, but her eyes betrayed her, welling with tears as she spoke. “Go. We’re through. Goodbye, Evan. I’ll never forget you.”

His heart ached as the doors slid closed. But he stood straighter, touching the stripes on his skin left by his Mistress and felt, if not truly himself, at least not ready to jump off the nearest bridge.

An improvement. A small one, but he’d take it.

* * * *

The house was in utter chaos when he got back, after stopping for a giant cup of coffee. He climbed out of his car, noted the lawn full of red cups, two empty kegs on the front porch, and wandered up to the front door. Running his hand over an apparent fist indentation across the wood, he unlocked it and stepped inside.

The first thing he thought was that something had literally died in the place. It reeked to high heaven. He bagged up some garbage in the kitchen, getting rid of the worst of the stale beer, old food, and whatever else stank.

But when he wandered out into the living room he looked down and saw a puddle of puke at his feet. And a hand, sticking out from under the table. Crouching down, he was horrified to discover his roommate and friend, Jack Gordon the ever-in-command, lying in another puddle of his own vomit. Evan shook him, his panic ramping up when the man didn’t move. He backed up, called an ambulance, and sat staring at Jack’s face and begging him to wake up.

Later, at the emergency room, doctors pumped his friend’s stomach empty of bourbon and whatever else he’d ingested. Evan made a quick call to two of Jack’s old friends to let them know what had happened. They released Jack to him that afternoon.

Evan stayed quiet, figuring the man would tell him the whole story when he was ready. He drove them home, turned off the engine, and started to get out. Jack put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Fucking whore. Why didn’t you tell me? She said you even… that she… and you… Oh, hell.”

Evan faced his friend. “Jack, Jenna is a slut, yes. And she came on to me, hard, but I didn’t do anything with her; I swear it.”

Jack shook his head, ran a hand down his rough face. “Yeah, well, I dodged that bullet, I guess. She laughed at me when I asked her to marry me. Told me I was delusional and that I’d never be man enough for her. Then proceeded to imply that you had fucked her and described her three-way with the boys upstairs to me. Fucking-A. God damn me to hell and back. That is the last time I ever let myself think any woman is more than…”

“Stop. Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t let her ruin you. C’mon, let’s get something to eat. Can your stomach handle it?”

“Sure.” Jack stared straight ahead, ending the conversation. “No. Oh, who cares?”

“Oh, and by the way, I will take that job you found for me in Ann Arbor. Thanks.”

“Great,” his friend muttered. But Evan’s heart felt slightly less like a dead weight for the first time in weeks. And he figured, or at least hoped, Jack was right. Starting over – for them both – was number one on the to-do list now.

Chapter Fifteen

“Adams!”

Evan rolled his eyes and turned, coming face to face with the one woman he dreaded, whose deep blue eyes and long chestnut hair had turned him into a six-foot three-inch boner for the entire year. “Yes, can I help you?” He swallowed hard, biting back his body’s annoying response to the tall, amazingly attractive woman who was his boss at his new job in Ann Arbor.

“As a matter of fact, you can.” Sophie Harrison had her hands on her hips, her patent leather shoe-clad toe coming just short of tapping with impatience as she gazed at him. “I mean, if you actually plan to finish that fucking Yarrington file. Don’t want to put you out or anything.”

“Ms. Harrison, I – ”

“If another excuse is about to spill out of your pretty-boy mouth, spare me.” She looked down at her watch. “I’m late for court.”

“If you’d just let me – ”

Evan attempted not to stare at how the dark-blue suit jacket gapped, giving him a clear view of the silky edge of a bra, or lacy shirt – really gave it the old college try. She held up a hand. “Stop talking. You are no better than the last so-called intern I got in here. Jesus. How you actually got into law school, much less passed the bar, is beyond me.”

Evan’s skin lit up with a combination of fury and pure, unadulterated horny. The woman was easily fifteen years his senior, but her bossiness had kept him on edge for so long he could hardly remember a time when he didn’t masturbate to intense fantasies of her naked but for those goddamn high heels. He took a breath, stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and kept silent, cursing his gift for lusting after the wrong women. She glared at him for a split second, then turned on her heel and stomped away, giving him an agonizingly perfect view of her ass, long legs. And that long, thick hair he was dying to thread his fingers in and tug, hard. He clenched his fists and jaw at the same time.
Christ, I need to get laid.

He returned his attention to the lame, bullshit, secretarial filing job he’d been doing for the last months. Being so hair-trigger horny was his own fault. He’d been avoiding female companionship since taking the job at Harrison and Winter. He needed to make some dough, bad. But, while demeaning and boring, it was a steady income. So he stayed focused on it and nothing else.

But a familiar antsy-ness had taken hold of him. He needed an outlet, and one that was fairly specific. He sat back and pondered his options. There was a club in downtown Detroit he knew of but hadn’t explored. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he was ready for that yet. Not after the hell he’d been through in Chicago. No, actually he just needed to get laid. His healthier-than-most libido, the one requiring the “fairly specific” activity, was starting to zing and hum and make him insane. He took a breath, processing the fact that his boss had been sending him pretty clear signals the last few days, ones his personality picked up on quicker than most. And that had not helped in the slightest.

“Okay, Adams, let’s go.”

She stood in front of him again. Evan dragged his eyes up the stunning line of her legs, hips and waist. His palms itched to touch. He needed … something. But what his twanging nerve endings were telling him was a different message than what he thought he wanted.

Sophie cocked her head at him, her eyes darkening as if she were reading his way too dirty mind. She took a step closer, entering a personal space bubble that would never pass the sexual harassment test. “Stop fucking me with your eyes, pretty boy.”

Her gaze narrowed and his cock slammed against the back of his zipper. He gulped.

“I know what you think you want, Evan Adams, but what I might offer you one of these days is a world rocking you probably can’t handle.” She stepped away, taking her intoxicating, lusty fragrance with her. “We are overdue in court.
Vamanos,
young man.” She smacked his ass hard and sauntered away.

Evan sensed every blood vessel in his body expand, including the concentration of them below his belt. She truly had no idea how experienced he was, on both sides of the sexual equation she was proposing. This could get interesting. He smiled, and then shoved the whole mess out of his head.

A girlfriend, a nice vanilla young lady with a few basic skills, a great rack, who wouldn’t prove too much of a challenge, who can help you take your edge off is what you need. Not another volatile playmate – been there, done that, left it behind, remember?

He looked around, making sure no one in the busy legal office had seen them, before he grabbed the Yarrington files and followed her out. His phone kept buzzing in his pocket, but he’d been on the receiving end of his boss’s vitriol one too many times over taking calls while he was supposed to be helping her. So he ignored it. By the time she’d requested and received the extension their client needed from the judge, his leg was numb from the incessant buzzing. He snuck into the men’s room, trying to balance the messy stack of files she’d shoved at him on her way out the door. Cursing himself for the millionth time for taking this job, he leaned against a stall door and tugged the phone out of his pocket.

It took a few seconds to process that his mother had called him ten times in the last hour, never leaving a message in her typical way. As if the very act of calling him repeatedly would force him to answer. Evan sighed and hit redial, girding himself for the latest crisis. But when she answered, he knew something was very wrong.

“It’s Olivia. She’s …” Evan clutched his phone at the sound of his twin’s name. “I found it. Her journal. Evan …”

His mother was not a crier. Even when faced with the most horrific thing a parent could confront. Her stoicism had always baffled him and spoiled him for women who actually did show emotion. Until he figured out his mother’s lack of it disguised a very shallow character. When he realized she was sobbing, loud, hitching, wet noises in his ear, his knees gave out and he sank to the floor, hand over his eyes.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I never thought all that stuff you kept telling me … about … about
him
could possibly be true. I didn’t want it to be. I wanted …”

“Mother, I know what you wanted. But now you know the truth. Do you have any idea where he is?” Evan fought the urge to let rip with all the curses he could summon before naming the man who’d driven his beautiful, fragile, prima ballerina of a twin sister to take her own life. “I know he still talks to you, thinking you are on his side. Where the fuck is Damian, Mom? I gotta find him before he does the same thing to someone else.”

He gritted his teeth, listened to a few more minutes of her sniveling and saying “I’m sorry” before ending the call. Staring at the phone a second, he let images of Olivia, of her smiling face at the end, pass through his brain before leaning over to throw up his lunch into the toilet.

Chapter Sixteen

Evan watched as Sophie Harrison convinced a judge their client had just cause to sue for patent infringement and tried not to let his gaze linger on her long, lean legs. He had kept his head down and his zipper closed, going out with Jack and his friend Rob for beers, darts and poker. But he avoided Jack’s invites to the downtown BDSM club. He was simply not ready.

His friend shook off the Jenna drama by burying his face and cock between the thighs of as many women as possible, seemingly going for a record, but Evan forced himself to abstain. It was a familiar place, really; he’d been there before, during his undergrad years. He viewed it as a sort of self-discipline and no small amount of punishment. Staying focused, working ungodly hours, drinking some, running for miles, and even locating a men’s soccer team to play with on the weekends – was the sum total of Evan’s existence.

But he knew himself well enough to realize the months of verbal abuse he’d sustained from one Sophie Harrison were about to push him past a tipping point. The dark edges of his vision had returned. And he knew why – was familiar enough with his body and mind’s reaction to the sexual deprivation he’d endured to acknowledge he had to get out and find a nice girl to date, seduce, and screw. Or he could simply take Jack up on his many invites to The Suite, Jack’s friend’s exclusive Detroit BDSM club.