Page 49 of Compulsion

“Tonight’s call at the club was from one of my uncle’s assistants. To ask for my response.”

“Which was?”

He worried at his lower lip, the thick flesh easing out between his white teeth. “I have asked for more time to decide. But I will say no if it’s proved we have been involved in anything illegal.”

“No temptation to take your cut?”

His gaze met mine, dark and determined. “Of course not.”

Had I really misjudged him so much? I’d been stupid all round, it seemed. “Do you think he knows why you’re delaying your answer?”

Seve shrugged. “I don’t know. My uncle says there’s a fine line between profit and profiteering. I thought it was a family joke.” He gave a short, harsh laugh. “But maybe that has been his strategy for all these years. Mama has always insisted on the importance of family, but she’s never really been close to him. He disapproved of her marriage to my father, for one thing. And he didn’t think she should have inherited so many shares in the Group in her own name. Things have been uneasy for many years.” He sighed. “I have not paid enough or the right attention.”

“You and me both,” I said.

Seve settled back in the couch again, his gaze still on me. “Peck had spoken to my uncle too,” he said. “About us.”

The casual us sent a chill down my back. I didn’t know if it was delight or horror. “What did he say?”

“He told my uncle I was seeing someone regularly. Too regularly. That was bound to irritate Uncle Alvaro, who not only insists my liking for men is a mere phase of sexual experimentation before I marry but who believes a man should live and breathe his work alone.”

I recalled Peck cornering me in the backyard, warning me off. I wondered if he’d told Uncle Alvaro about our London connection too. Maybe not, if Peck was trying to boost his reputation with his boss. He wouldn’t like to admit he let a courier out of his grasp—and one who was now intimate with a member of the Medina family. Messy.

Seve’s eyes flashed. “I told him it was no business of his who I dated.”

There was that us implication again. The chill was feeling increasingly like delight. “And your mother? What did she say?”

He stared at me, his eyes dark and deep. “She understood.”

I watched him sitting there, apparently calm. He’d flung his arm over the back of the couch, and his denim shirt was open to the top of his breast, showing the hairs on his chest. I remembered every line of muscle and bone of that chest. I’d kissed it—I’d caressed it. It had crushed itself against me as he fucked me, took me, my legs clasped around him, our tongues thrusting into each other’s mouths. I felt nauseous again, and the devil in me wanted to shatter his composure. “That’s not enough, though, is it? Why did you let us go on?” His gaze snapped up to me, startled. “There was only ever going to be trouble, Seve. Better to have dumped me quickly and kept your relationship with the club purely business. Better to have diverted all these fucking awkward questions and my sordid past, and found another fuckbuddy. Why, Seve?”

I’d unintentionally hit a trigger again. He sat up suddenly, his eyes blazing and his hands gripped into fists, his legs tensed as if he was ready to leap up—or thump me. “Why the hell do you think, Max? I’ll tell you why! Because I wanted you, and then I had you, and it was a thousand times more exhilarating than I’d ever imagined. I didn’t want to give that up!” As I gaped at him, he rushed on. “You met me on equal terms, unlike the sycophants who meet me through my family or the girls and men who enjoy my body as a way to attach to my money.”

“You’re not telling me you haven’t taken advantage—”

“Please. I know, I’ve had fun, I’m not denying that. There was always satisfaction—but only for a moment. No one has ever given me more, Max! But you give as much as you take. You’re honest with your desire. I never felt that you surrendered to me, only that you willingly participated. We enjoyed each other, and I didn’t see that we needed anything else. I trust you, Max.” He stopped, his mouth half-open, his expression stricken. “I cannot find enough words. I want you. I don’t want any other.”

My head struggled to work around the twist in my heart. “No, believe me, your words are fine, Seve.” Shockingly fine. “I just never knew you felt… as strongly as this. You could have said something.”

“Of course I could.” There was misery in his voice. “But I never have. I don’t act that way, Max.”

“But you’re doing it now.”

“Yes. Well… trying, perhaps. For you. To try to make you understand me. I need you to understand me.”

What I needed was to kiss him—to touch his skin, to absorb his warmth. My desire was both torture and thrill: a hunger that always teetered somewhere between striking and seducing. I suspected it was the same for him. It had been that way with us from the start, hadn’t it? Fierce and frustrating and fabulous. But I’d never heard him speak this way about personal feelings. About me. I wasn’t sure it was any protestation of love—I mocked my own ridiculous feelings in that department. But it was something more than indifference. Dammit, much more. I let the warm, tentative hope trickle a little way into my heart, still afraid it’d bring disaster and disappointment in its wake.

I was tired and hurt and unusually vulnerable. But that seemed to be my default status nowadays. I didn’t move away when Seve reached out to pull me closer. “Seve. It’s not over yet.”

He sighed into my ear, his lips brushing the lobe. “I know. But we’re free from it for tonight, maybe?”

“You said you trust me.”

“Shouldn’t I?” He brushed the hair back from my neck, and I found myself leaning into the caress.

“Peck knows,” I said. “He knows I have information on the club. On the drugs and the… on other things. I should go to the police with it.”

Seve stilled. “Yes, you should.” He turned his head to look into my eyes, his expression wary again. “That’s the right thing to do.”